is still a taboo topic in many Reading erotica is Sex parts of the world -- within America and outside of it. When is shamed for discussing it, a valid first step to one finding resources may be scary. Stumbling across it in a book be the first step into even learning about sex may knowing how it works. By Atirikta Kumar
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ooks open our minds to different kinds of worlds, perspectives and realities. We learn about various forms of cultures, places and perspectives from reading different genres. Reading can help us better understand ourselves and the world around us, so it’s reasonable to learn about sex through reading fiction – specifically erotica. Growing up in India, topics like relationships outside of marriage, sex and even 20 COOGLIFE
// February 2022
periods, are considered taboo, among many others. Given the tight-lipped nature of anything related to sex, my school in India had little to no information on sex-ed. In fact, the boys and girls were separated in my seventhgrade biology class when the chapter was on puberty. Skimming through everything in the textbooks, this chapter was a whisper in the curriculum that semester. Girls and boys could not talk about it in front of each other,
and how could we, when we didn’t know what to talk about? There was just this knowledge that our bodies go through changes when we are growing up, and that there is something called sex that happens and that’s how babies are made. When I moved to Texas at the start of my freshmen year in 2017, I wasn’t taught sex-ed in any of my health classes. I’m not sure whether it was because my class already had a lesson on that prior
