Nerina maqueira
09/12/2020 - 7:46
Clarín.com
Society
Year 1990. I am in the fifth year of high school in a nuns' school.
With my friends, we take advantage of the free hours to huddle around the seat of one who has already had sex and who gives us details that, otherwise, we would not know.
A few months later, another in the group begins to "do it" with her boyfriend.
He also tells us the details.
One of them seems to live it with more happiness and naturalness and the other with something more akin to guilt.
It is impossible to know if there are more people who live it naturally or if there are more who live it with guilt.
In any case, should we live it with guilt?
It is also impossible to know if there is only one way to experience sexual practice or several.
I have no way of getting rid of all the doubts about sexuality that haunt my teenage head.
At least not at school.
In the five years of school they only taught us that to have sex you have to wait until marriage, that women “come to us” every twenty-eight days and that secondary sexual characteristics develop in adolescence.
I kept reading
The questions that still cause discomfort
Society
Year 2010. The vocation came late.
Or, actually, I took over late.
I studied Psychopedagogy, Production and direction of video and television and, finally, I surrendered to what I think had always been latent, and became the English teacher.
Precisely, I am teaching the conjugations of the
verb to be
when a fourteen-year-old student raises her hand and shoots: "Professor, when anal sex is practiced, does the penis come out dirty?"
That was the first question related to Comprehensive Sex Education that they asked me.
It was absolutely unexpected and out of context, but I answered it.
From my own experience, I knew that if I did not respond with seriousness, information and without scandalizing me,
she and her classmates and classmates would seek the answer to that concern and many others on the Internet
or among their peers.
Neither option seemed reliable to me.
On the other hand, answering that question, disruptive, allowed me to open other topics, such as caring for the body, consent, autonomy in decision-making and other issues addressed by the comprehensive Law 26,150.
Teddy.
The author with the gift of her first boyfriend.
It was a different time, she says.
If being a teacher already represents an adventure and a challenge, dedicating oneself to Comprehensive Sex Education (ESI), which is one of my functions at the Balvanera public high school where I have been working for thirteen years, opens up an unimaginable range of situations and emotions of all kinds.
I entered the school with a few hours as an English teacher.
Later came the first-year tutoring.
Then the need to train in ESI arose and, from there, the task of being a school reference on that subject.
The first situation that had a strong impact on me was that of a fifteen-year-old student who told me that her stepfather repeated to her a thousand times that he was in love with her and that she no longer knew what to do to make him leave her alone.
It seems that this man, who was twenty years older, was so obvious in his abusive attitudes that the mother of my student
had noticed it and, then, to avoid problems, had decided to ask her daughter to move to the house of another relative
.
This house was close to the house in which my student's mother and her partner lived, so he continued to harass her, even though they did not share a roof.
In Comodoro Rivadavia.
Nerina spent summers there.
A tranquility that you long for today.
On another occasion, another student, also a minor, asked me if she had a little free time for us to talk alone because she needed to tell me something.
We went to the library, to be able to chat without interruptions, and there she confessed that she had taken money from her mother so that her boyfriend, who was an addict, could buy drugs.
The details of the story were so shocking that I trembled on the inside, while on the outside I put on a poker face, just as I had been taught in college when I was studying Psychopedagogy.
Do not judge, do not be scandalized, do not say anything that could interrupt the story or make the person feel intimidated to speak freely.
When we finished, I accompanied the student back to her class, I went through the classroom where the coworker I had the most confidence with at the time was, I asked her if I could go out for a minute, I leaned on her shoulder and I left cry.
In my student days, the biggest fear that we all had of a possible pregnancy was the quite certain possibility of being expelled from school and not being able to finish school.
Many years later, after profound changes in society, being an ESI teacher gives me, among other things, the possibility of accompanying my students with children until they have their secondary degree.
In one of the pregnancy situations that I had to follow, together with a colleague we summoned the mother of a 15-year-old student who was only a few weeks old, so that she could give her the news at school.
We knew that the mother used to punish her physically and we were afraid of what might happen
if she told her alone at home.
We received the lady and, preparing the ground, we told her that sometimes in life there are things that perhaps are not what we want to happen but that simply happen.
She didn't open her mouth, didn't make the slightest gesture, or anything.
In that climate, the daughter told him about her situation.
The woman continued to look at us at three o'clock, without moving a single muscle in her face or saying a word.
Faced with that reaction, which, of all of them, was the only one that we had not anticipated, we asked our student to return to the course so that we could stay chatting with her mother.
We delicately took turns asking her what she was feeling, how she was doing, how the novelty had fallen on her ... She remained completely silent.
After a few minutes that took forever, she told us that she was only going to continue feeding her daughter, not the unborn baby.
With my partner we thought that as the pregnancy progressed, she would change her mind and accept the situation.
In fact, the following months she accompanied her daughter to all the check-ups.
Everything seemed to be on track.
However, on January 26, while on vacation, my student called me on the phone to let me know that she was being discharged after giving birth and that the mother would not let her return home.
She did not know what to do.
Neither do I.
While I was telling him that
we were going to find a solution, that he would give me some time to see how we could solve it
, the idea of giving him accommodation in my house crossed over and over again.
I knew it was wrong and that there had to be another way to solve it, but at the same time, I was desperate that I couldn't help her.
Finally, the legal guard intervened and sent her to live in a home for mothers under eighteen years old many kilometers from CABA.
Not only did she stop being a student at our school, but for long months in that place they didn't even allow us to talk to her.
When she came of age, she was no longer allowed to stay at home.
At that time, from some sporadic contact, she had been able to rebuild a little the bond with her mother, which then allowed her to return home.
As she was still a year away from graduation, she enrolled in the night school that runs in the same building as our school, where she finally got her degree.
His tenacity and strength were the key to being able to fulfill the objective
that he told me he had as soon as we met: to finish high school.
Just as some situations are resolved in a way that is far from ideal, leaving a bittersweet taste, others develop smoothly, despite their complexity.
In her first year, she had been an English teacher and tutor to a student who most of the time felt sad and dull.
At the end of that school year, we stopped sharing the classroom, but we continued to greet each other at recesses and exchange a few words about school issues and their moods.
Over the months, she was seeing noticeable changes in her way of dressing and in her haircut.
What did not change was her sad look.
At one point I read a thread on Twitter that began with these words: "A twelve-year-old son is being born in the exact place where my daughter was twelve years before."
That story touched me and, at the same time, it opened my eyes.
It seemed to me that something in the order of her gender identity could be happening to my former student.
I was reluctant to speak to her because I was afraid of being invasive, but I was concerned that she might be
going through such a profound process alone
.
One day I proposed to her to chat and asked her what had been going on inside her during the year or so that we had not shared a classroom.
He told me that he did not like who he was, that he felt discomfort with his body, that he did not identify with the name they had given him at birth and that for a long time he had chosen not one, but two male names.
Until that moment he had not discussed the subject with anyone.
So much silence and loneliness while inside the world was turned upside down… From there, we began to think about how we would open the subject at school, with authorities, classmates, preceptors and teachers.
We also evaluate the best way for you to tell your family.
At school, we first put together a friendly network, small but very reliable.
Girlfriend, best friend, rector, vice-rector, a former tutor and a wonderful teacher.
In the framework of a gender workshop, with Law 26,743 in hand and with a lot of nerves, he
told who he really was and what he wanted to be called from that moment.
Courage, courage, pride, admiration were some of the words of the rest of the course towards him.
When she finished speaking, the preceptor, moved and on her own initiative, immediately changed the name on the list of students.
Everything was fine at school, but she still needed to be able to talk to her family.
Once she did, we invited her mom to chat at school, to see if she needed some kind of guidance or, perhaps, support.
I had contacted Mauro, the author of the Twitter thread, so that together with his family group they could give me some guidelines on how to properly follow this process.
This information was also useful and valuable for our student's mother.
For its part, the Tutelary Public Ministry guided us through the entire legal journey that needed to be done and in December of last year, he was able to receive his secondary degree with the names chosen by him.
At that moment, as in others throughout this accompaniment, it was impossible to hold back the tears.
Each story that goes deep and leaves a mark, usually begins with a "Profe, can we talk?".
Violent dating, unintentional pregnancies, stepfathers, uncles, grandparents, brothers-in-law or neighbors who disgustingly believe themselves to be the owners of the bodies of fifteen-year-old girls with impunity.
There are not a few male students who come, to count the times they had to
interpose in front of their father or stepfather and thus prevent the blows from reaching their mothers
.
Some of the experiences of these students are so tremendous that, as I listen to them, I think there could be no worse.
However, a more painful story always appears.
One of the most gratifying things about this role is when, after a few years, already graduated students who are in a complicated situation, or who have doubts about something related to their sexual health, are contacted again: “Professor, I finished school long ago;
I don't know if he remembers me ... I wanted to ask him something ... "Then I think of all that we couldn't talk about when I was a student and I smile.
"Of course I remember.
Tell me".
-------------
Nerina Maqueira
is a psychopedagogue, an English teacher and a teacher trained in Comprehensive Sex Education.
She teaches at Colegio 5, “Bartolomé Miter”, in the Balvanera neighborhood.
Very porteñísima, but with half her heart in Comodoro Rivadavia, where she spent all the summers of her childhood.
He has been writing intimate diaries from the age of eight.
A fan of San Lorenzo, she enjoys the ceremony of going to the court with her brother.
She does not conceive a barbecue without choripan or a dessert without chocolate.
It is difficult for her to find moments of leisure and, if she does find them, she does not enjoy them too much.
The mixture of Italian and Lebanese blood generates a certain effervescence.
Easy to tear, anxious and impatient, she considers that her students know her best version.