What I want to teach my daughter
Priya Joi on chatting to kids about sex
I hope you see how the light of the universe shines within you — you radiate light.
I hope you see how it shines on you — you are blessed and you are so loved.
I hope the light envelops you in its warmth and helps you heal.
I hope it brings you clarity and lights your path forward.
I hope it lights you up and brings you joy.
As Priya said on Instagram, in such a heavy and dark time in the world, we must believe that light can conquer darkness.
Happy Diwali to all of you who are celebrating today! Have a piece of mithai on me.
I found
and her excellent words through the wonderful Substack community. I was intrigued by her background: a mix of science and journalism isn’t something I come across often. It turns out she studied genetics at university and went on to do a Master’s degree in science communication.She’s now a freelance science journalist, the author of M(other)land — a memoir on parenthood, race and identity — and writes the
newsletter. “I started it to have more freedom in the way I talk about science and health — the way I might talk to you if we were both refilling our drinks in the kitchen at a house party,” she says on why she started her Substack.Excitingly, Priya and I have both lived in India, England and Spain — another rare mix I rarely stumble upon. She’s currently living in Barcelona with her partner and her nine year old daughter.
Why do you think sex is so taboo in South Asian communities?
Shame and secrecy are tools to manipulate and control women.
Sex is considered taboo and people aren’t meant to talk about it, right? And yet, everyone is OK with men doing it and discussing it. That's men, right? It’s expected. So when we say it's shameful or that it should be secretive, we actually just mean in the context of women. It all comes down to controlling women and their behaviours and bodies.
What impact do you see that having?
Once you swim in waters of shame and secrecy, everything to do with you as a woman somehow feels a little bit wrong. Shame silences us. When women are assaulted or raped they often stay silent because they've been conditioned to think that it's their fault. Read that again: Women feel shame when they're the ones who have been attacked. It's horrific and heinous.
If we don't talk, we don't have power.
We need to be more progressive. But what does the word progressive actually mean? You discussed this in one of your previous articles. The thinking is, the more you throw yourself into sex, the more progressive you're considered — as if that's a contemporary thought! Throwing yourself into sex has been happening for centuries, both secretly or not. No, progressive is the freedom to do what you choose. Freedom to have all the sex or none. To marry or not. To love whoever. To advocate for yourself. To speak up. To not have shame. Freedom is progress.
How do you think we can change that for the next generation?
We need to talk to kids about sex openly and plainly without it feeling super heavy. Kids are very receptive. It definitely shouldn’t be one big sit down talk because that can feel quite intense. Instead, introduce new ideas and concepts into conversation, naturally. I’m trying to with my daughter. She's nine years old so there are layers of what I can talk to her about at the moment.
I put sexual health in the same bucket of education as explaining how our lungs function or how blood goes around the body, for example. I don’t want these chats to trigger thoughts in her like, ‘Oh no, my parents are having another sex chat with me. Cringe.’ So many of us can pinpoint the moment our parents sat us down for the chat. It was one conversation and I bet it was super uncomfortable. And then it was never mentioned again. I want better for her.
How do you talk to her about sex?
Firstly, it’s important to understand that both my husband and I talk to my daughter about sex and biology. It’s not just on me to give her a science lecture. I've talked to her a little bit about periods and the odd conversation about sex. Still nothing very in depth but it will become more so as she gets older.
When we first discussed what sex is, a couple of years ago, we centred it on a heterosexual relationship and told her that, “Sex is a way men and women show they love each other. They sometimes do it to have babies and sometimes they do it just for fun.” We followed it with a brief description of how genitals are involved and attempted to describe sperm. We don’t use euphemisms. We need to use words like ‘vagina’ and ‘vulva’ because then things will start to connect in her brain as we have more conversations For example, if my daughter knows a woman has eggs in her cervix and that an egg comes out every time she has a period, she will then start to connect that, ‘OK, so periods are connected to how my body functions and connected to sex and that’s all happening in the same region of the body.’ She won’t think periods are over here and sex is over here.
Segmenting conversations makes it hard for children to be able to piece it all together and have a holistic understanding of their body. We all need to deeply understand how our own body works so it can feel like home.
What other conversations do you want to prioritise as she gets older?
I want her to know she doesn’t need to lie or perform. Whatever she chooses to — or not to — do is normal. She needs to communicate her own needs. When you lie for so long about something to please someone else — like faking orgasms or enjoying a particular sexual act — you can fool yourself and what you actually desire.
I also want her to know she doesn’t need to be completely sanitised. The rise of products targeted at women’s smell and discharge is a real problem as those things are the first signs something is wrong. They’re also trying to erase all forms of women's sexuality by saying, ‘how you smell normally, is super weird and not wanted.’ I don’t want my daughter to be controlled by marketing bullshit.
I’m also keen on teaching her about sexually transmitted diseases. There is still too much stigma and not enough education around these topics. Conversations around protection solely seem to exist to instil fear of pregnancy. But I want to teach her that it is also about protecting both partners’ health.
I will tell her that germs enter through anything that’s sticky in our body — so our mouths, noses or genitals are where bugs like to go in. So sex can put you at risk of contracting diseases which is why condoms and dental dams are so important. They can form a barrier against anything entering the body.
I will ensure she has a deeper understanding of topics that need awareness, protection, and need compassion. For example:
- HIV: It often feels so distant to people, or just an issue that impacts gay men. She will know better. She’ll understand the medication people take, how safe it can be and how to stay protected.
- HPV: We tell girls to get screened but we don’t tell them how they might develop it. We also don’t tell them that it can be passed on to men because we're all so fucking squeamish and can't talk about oral sex. But she will know that men can get throat or mouth cancer from it. She’ll learn that HPV is preventable by vaccine and that they’re available in the UK.
- Drug resistance: Some STDs used to feel like the punchline of a joke when you went down the pub with your mates after a mistake. You’d go to the doctor and it was easily treatable. With drug resistance rising, you could have a fairly minor infection that becomes problematic and it just isn't treatable. So we need to approach protection more seriously.
What do you want to teach your daughter about pleasure?
It’s already been mentioned to her as we tell her sex isn’t just for making babies, it’s also to feel good. It’s an important thing to get across to her because when she, one day, wants to have sex to feel good, she’s going to feel like she’s doing something wrong if she’s only been told it’s to procreate. She deserves more.
I also want her to understand consent. Both my husband and I have told her that she only has to hug and kiss people she wants to. She also knows if anyone hugs her or touches her in a way she doesn’t want, she can say ‘no’ and can come and tell us or another adult she trusts, like her aunty. She’s already internalised this lesson and uses it against me all the time when I want a hug!!
No but truly, I’m so proud that she is going to grow up knowing her body is actually hers. Unlike I did. She is growing up knowing that not everyone can have a piece of her or do what they want to her without recrimination. She holds so much power.
Let’s talk a bit more about you. Growing up, did you talk about sex at home?
Sex and periods often go hand in hand for a girl — especially when she starts her period, the sex conversation seems to have added urgency to avoid the shame of pregnancy.
For me, the period chat was super minimal. I was 11 years old, living with my grandparents in India and my grandmother said to me: ‘You'll have a period where you'll bleed for a few days. The first day will be heavy, the second day will be a bit less, and by the third it will almost disappear.’ My periods were nothing like that. They were full on. Her description lacked acknowledgement that the experience may be different for different women and it made me think there was maybe something wrong with me. I don't know whether it because she didn't know — maybe she didn't talk to other female friends about it. When you talk so little about something that is so momentous and monumental, it does us all a disservice. We are unprepared. I almost don't know whether nothing would have been better than just a little chat. And there are parallels with sex.
The conversation around sex was around when I started my period. She said, ‘You know, you need to be careful playing with boys.’ I have quite a few male cousins and I didn’t understand if it meant I couldn’t play with them? I didn’t realise she was being very obscure and it was meant to be a euphemism for sex. When I was 16 or 17 — I was living in England by this point — I became very interested in boys and my parents were freaking out about what this meant and what might happen. But all my mum said to me was, ‘We just don't want you to do anything that would make us not be proud of you.’ Like, what does that mean? What are the boundaries? Is it physical or emotional? Can I kiss someone? She didn’t explain to me anything about what sex actually is or even outline the moral dimensions that sex has, rightly or wrongly.
When did you become more comfortable with the concept of sex?
I probably ‘got’ sex because I studied biology at A-level and then genetics at university. I knew a lot about the dry mechanics of sex but I didn't understand a whole lot about consent or pleasure or different types of sex, or how sex can be an expression of your personality. Or how sex can be with yourself or it could be with a partner. I just had zero understanding until I was in my early 30s. It’s understandable if you look at how we talk about sex — it is so binary! As women, we're seen as either puritanical — a virgin, a saint, ‘clean’ — or we're complete slags. These are all strong emotive words and it starts so young. When cussing someone at school, calling them a virgin is an insult, as is calling them a slag. So we spend our lives trying to straddle the middle ground and it’s super confusing and mixed up with a whole lot of morality.
You were born in the UK, but spent four years in India as a child. Did you notice a difference in the conversations around sex?
Everyone talks about sex, whether they're open about it or not. In England, I was older, so it felt like people were talking about it more. What was definitely different though was that at 16 it was accepted in England that you might be having sex. In India, it was hard to know if people were active but I'm willing to bet that some were and just being secretive. Looking back, I do feel like there was a lot of bravado at school: boys pretending to know more than they did and girls pretending to have done more than they had.
You can find Priya’s writing over at
.Her book is available to purchase here.
Let us know in the comments what else you’d want to teach your child about sex. We’ll compile them for a future edition!
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