NO PENETRATION PLEASE

Now I’m frightened. I just read an article in”The Times of India”.” Draft bill allows non penetrative sex by age 12.” Yikes. What they mean, among other things, is that its perfectly all right if two children both over 12 years and under 14 indulge in consensual non penetrative sex with the idea of sexual exploration with each other. My foot! Hell, my elder daughter is 11. So in another few months after she is twelve she can tell me, “Ma I’m going to the other room to sexually explore some XYZ” and my reaction is supposed to be, “yes beta, just make sure you do not penetrate!” Are you mad? No, don’t laugh. I wonder what brought this about. In my own limited intelligence, I find this is supposed to be a Bill for the Protection of children from sexual offenses…OMG. Is this how they do it then, “yes beta, take her to your room but don’t get too excited, haan..”
What are we doing here? And what, if God forbid, one child is a trusting sweet sensitive 12 year old and the other is a well read, well informed, strapping 14, who’s going to ensure that the exploration stays under control? Are the parents supposed to watch and guide things along as well? I can just imagine a parent sitting there with a whistle in one hand screaming “time out” from time to time!!!!!!!! Isn’t there enough promiscuity in society without dragging pre teens into it? Oh some of you will laugh, it’s been going on for years, you say…in the garb of doctor-doctor games and all, but at least they maintained some level of innocence. Now you mean to say I can come home from work one day and find a strange boy in my house. “Don’t worry ma, we did not go all the way.” What am I supposed to do, smile and offer the boy a coke, or hit the roof and scream my head off?
I know, I know, in the end it’s all our upbringing and the values we teach them etc etc etc but how the hell can I be sure that the friends my daughters mix with are being taught the same values? And a twelve year old has neither the maturity nor the sense to give consent far less understand what she is getting into. And God forbid that an unsuspecting 12 year old does give consent and then emerges from the experience traumatized? 12 is no age for any child to be playing adult games….after all the laws against child marriage, we may as well just go back a few hundred years and allow them to marry then, “just don’t penetrate”…we can write it in bold letters above their bed!!!!!! So what is this Bill in aid of? Do we want more suicides, more child molestation and more rapes of minors? Instead of protecting the children, we are proposing to throw open a world of sexual diversions to them, “come, come, learn first hand”…as if the TV and the internet is not enough! What kind of perverted mind shall do this to a coy immature 12 year old? Oh, I say, let them discover sex themselves, at their own time and pace, let them learn it may be beautiful or not, let them make the discoveries when they are ready for it and with someone they may like for what that person is and not just for the “exploration” experience. Why impose it on them like its, say, Algebra? “OK so now you are 12 years old, you should know all about algebra!!!!!!”
Gosh, in this day and age when the papers are full of stories of scams and scandals, suicides and the rising prices, world cup cricket venues and mad yatras and mindless violence, can we not do something constructive to alleviate those situations? As it is, todays kids are over burdened. Like it or not, from the moment they enter school, they are part of a colossal rat race. Can’t we do something to ensure that our children stay safe, or at least as safe as they can be?
Why complicate matters further for the children?