Why sex talk is not easy for many people
Besides often getting asked for money, a job, and many other things I also often get asked to change the page my column appears on. I get amused when I get such requests because I know exactly why I’m being told to do that. First of all let me clarify something. I don’t own The Star (yet) so I’m not at liberty to suddenly wake up one fine Thursday morning and decide where Friday’s column should go. It just doesn’t work like that. Also the reason why I’m often asked to ‘please change from this page’ is because of my friend Valentine Njoroge who resides above me on this page.
Valentine unabashedly talks about anything and everything that’s related to relationships and sex and manages to ruffle some feathers while she’s at it. Clearly it’s not her content that does that. It’s just the fact that she talks about sex and let me just call a spade a spade here; many Kenyan Asians don’t feel comfortable openly talking about sex. You don’t discuss these things openly and especially not with your children.
Honestly speaking, there will be times when Valentine manages to make me blush as well. I think this goes down to the way I was brought up with the old-fashioned values and all but she’s just educating and addressing issues that get swept under the carpet.
Every once in a while I will receive an email or a phone call from someone who will tell me to request my editor to change the column page. I get told that young kids also read my column and it’s ‘not nice’ when they have to read about bedroom antics and other ‘unmentionable’ things. I actually don’t know how to react to this. I too have kids who read what I write and keeping my upbringing in mind, I seem to have unwittingly done with my kids what my parents did with me and kind of gone into ‘sheltered and protective mode’.
I’m not comfortable that my 11-year-old daughter will be exposed to reading all that Valentine writes. I have no idea how it will enhance her life at the tender age of 11 and I don’t think I have answers to any questions she might have. I got her a book about the birds and the bees and had a Mummy Talk with her and she’s perfectly comfortable talking to me about all that she might know or get to hear from her friends. She’s inquisitive and likes to ask questions and I answer honestly. The only thing I don’t think I’m comfortable with is some of the strong content Valentine might talk about in her column and she gets to read that. I have the perfect solution to that. I just fold the page in half and tell her to read what she’s meant to.
What do I do? I’m a Mum first! It does put me between the proverbial rock and the hard place to have to filter out what my kids read and it does get awkward for me when they’re exposed to overtly sexual content, clinical or not. I don’t think the column is going to be shifted any time soon so if your kids read this, just fold the page in half like I do! Thank you for reading the Star. We all know that smart people read the Star!