By Laura Ramos Tomás, Sexuality Educator and Founder, TabuTabu
The year was 1990, and Salt-N-Peppa gifted the world with a song that told us to talk about sex. 32 years later and, thankfully, spaces like the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) exist for professionals to talk about all things sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
But much to Salt-N-Peppa’s disappointment, the reality stands that sex(uality) remains taboo for people worldwide – and the implications are far-reaching and undeniable.
I launched TabuTabu in 2020 after four years of working with survivors of trafficking, sex workers, and youth and young mothers living in social vulnerability across Latin America. TabuTabu materialized from a series of very meaningful exchanges that highlighted the role of taboos at the intersection of poverty, lack of access to quality education, and gender and social inequalities:
- the conversation with a 12-year-old in a village in Central America who had just gotten her first period and anxiously believed this meant she was now ready to be a mother;
- the look of a young boy who was acting up in class as a way of coping with the sexual abuse he was enduring at home;
- the surprise of a sexually active 20-something-year-old vulva-owner when she found out that her urine did not come out of her vagina;
- the emancipated explanation of a sex worker who had recently learned that even as an undocumented immigrant, she has human rights and the police are not entitled to take advantage of her.
These and many more impactful exchanges highlighted the far-reaching impacts of taboos around sexuality, and the importance of contextually relevant comprehensive sexuality education.
Taboos are upheld by silence, and in TabuTabu’s experience, often the hardest part of dismantling a taboo is the very beginning: starting the first conversation can be really challenging, because it involves standing up to years, and often generations of silence, shame and, ultimately, fear. Conversations can happen internally, with oneself, as well as between people. It is through these latter interpersonal interactions that a mass shift in perspective can happen: It takes Community to lift the shame and guilt and judgment around taboos. It takes Community to detaboo.
At ICFP2022’s LIVE Stage on November 16 at 05:15 PM Pattaya City Time, I’ll be exploring, together with the ICFP community, which taboos must be tackled as a priority. By jointly breaking the silence, we’ll be demonstrating how to actively dismantle unhelpful taboos around sexuality and SRHR. You too can TabuTabu – join us as we make Salt-N-Peppa proud!
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This article is a part of PSI’s ICFP 2022 Impact Magazine. Explore the magazine here.
