I Love My Body Because Religion Told So

Indonesia 🇮🇩

Because sex experience towards sex education is overrated.

I'm not a person who is easily surprised.

There was an earthquake. I didn't run but took cover under the table. Except for this one though,

"Ayas, please get the glasses in my desk drawer"

I was still in my first semester of college. I came to my male friend's room to wait for other friends to come. After praying, I waited for the others on his bed while my friend was smoking outside the room. Without asking, I immediately opened his drawer. I'm silent, frozen. I can't hide my expression.

I found a bunch of condoms and sex toys there.

Immediately I closed slowly, as much as possible not to make a sound. Okay I think I'm in the wrong drawer. I opened another drawer, it turns out there were glasses. The glasses changed hands, and I changed my position to be outside the room with my friend. While inhaling the nicotine smoke that he sprayed from his lips I wondered, why can I not understand this about sex education? Why do I feel so ashamed to see birth control and sex toys? Those are the questions that got me thrown into the past.

I spent six years of my schooling during junior high and high school at an all-girls Islamic boarding school. We can't say that regarding sex education, our feelings towards the opposite sex were hidden and only shared with our closest friends. If the teacher finds out, I can get married right away. Chat about marriage is also limited to marrying young, invitations to avoid adultery, and circling there.

There was something my school forgot to convey, namely about reproductive education and our sexual rights as women. I still feel ashamed to say that a vagina is a vagina, not in other languages like 'peepee'. They have names, just like my parents gave me a good name, just like the eyes we call eyes. Often, Google is the answer to our dead-end questions about what's going on in our bodies. Even that didn't help because we could only access the internet once a week.

For years I have kept that amazement at my school, no one dared to ask or question why we are so secretive about our bodies, what we have and we have to take care of this. Sin, sin, sin is the stigma that is instilled when talking about the enjoyment of the sexual activity or other things such as reproduction. 

It was only after graduating that I dared to leave the religious teachings taught at my school, find out for myself through interpretations of the Al-Quran that are more compassionate towards women, deepen religious studies from a woman's perspective, and write about it through various writings in the media. I want all girls who have lost their way about this to realize and believe that sexual reproduction rights are no longer taboo to talk about. If not us? Who will talk about it?

Two years after that condom incident, I had the opportunity with my friends to win a grant proposal that allowed us to run our first sexual reproduction school program in one school in my city. Ahimsa with the concept of the show, Riri with her beautiful visuals, and me with the screening. All of them come together!  Many of students did not understand the concept of power relations, how to take care of vaginal hygiene, and so on, to bridging students and teachers about this. 

To this day, I, who have always been ignorant of relationships between the opposite sex, believe that experience is overrated. Religion doesn't mean that you have to be rigid in everything. Religion neither suppresses nor restricts its adherents from learning. Because loving yourself is part of faith.