Breaking the Silence on Sex Ed

What inspired you to start your venture?

I did my undergrad at Brown University, and it was culturally dramatically different from anything I had experienced growing up in Kolkata, India. In my first year, I met someone who was volunteering to teach sex ed to high school students. I remember my college peers making jokes about, oh, you use water-based lube with latex condoms. I had never heard these words before. I had no idea what lubricant was or how condoms worked.

A year later, I applied to be part of the same volunteer group and got trained under Planned Parenthood and volunteered for three years to teach sex ed to high school students while I was a college student myself. In the process, I learned so much about my own body, sexuality, gender, and topics about which I had never had this level of in-depth conversations.

I thought back to the type of sex ed we got in school — and it was shocking to me that we were teen girls in relationships who had never had a conversation with a trusted adult about how to put on a condom. It was honestly life-changing and empowering to feel like I had the knowledge to make informed choices.

There was one moment in particular that keeps coming back to me. I remember I was teaching a lesson about consent to a high school classroom, and I showed them examples of what a "yes" would look like, what a "maybe" might look like, and what a "no" might look like in terms of the way people might express consent through other words or nonverbally. When we discussed what to do if you ask someone, "Hey, would you like to do this?" and they say "maybe," you should treat that as a no. You usually don't keep trying to convince the person, as that can add unwanted pressure. And I remember there was a boy who was in the front row who was surprised to learn that, but also said, "OK, cool, that makes sense, I had no idea." And it was such a casual shift for him, but it would have had such a profound impact on any type of interpersonal interactions he would have had in the future.

Especially in the context of the #MeToo era in 2016, it felt like imperative work to not just talk about how to prevent sexual violence, but to also talk about what "good" looks like, what good communication entails, and what healthy relationships look like. We see examples over and over of what not to do, but we don't always see examples of what we should be doing. That is a moment that really stayed with me.

Another moment that really stayed with me was when I was talking to high school students. I described to them the differences between pornography and real-life sex, and their mouths dropped open. I remember thinking, "Wow, they would have probably gotten into the next few relationships and sexual interactions with very skewed perspectives had we not had that conversation proactively."

While these moments did not immediately propel me to start my own venture, they showed me the value and unshakable need for sex education with young people. When I moved back home in the pandemic, I realized I wanted to keep doing this work in a serious way, but I had very few channels to do it. Schools were closed, and the few nonprofits that worked on the problem were not operating in my city. I began working online, made my Instagram page, and the rest was history.

What impact are you hoping to achieve?

Talk You Never Got imagines a world where sexuality is seen as key to social, physical, and emotional health and everyone has agency and knowledge across developmental life stages. We want affirming, evidence-based sex ed content to be more accessible than pornography to young people.

What's the hardest part about building this?

The hardest part about building this has been the cultural taboo around sex, especially when we talk about topics like women's health, female pleasure, and LGBTQ identities. In India, it is very challenging to create buy-in and channel resources towards an issue that is so taboo. Administrators often hesitate to talk about sex and sexuality, let alone introduce a curriculum for sex education.

But more importantly, the work online has also faced a lot of cultural pushback. Meta, Instagram, and other social media platforms have been censoring any content related to sexual health and women's health. The widespread censorship has been well documented and studied, particularly for women's health issues, ranging from even topics like menstruation and cervical cancer. Representatives from the companies have told me the algorithm is supposed to know and understand the difference between what is educational content and what is not. However, that has been far from my experience. I have posts flagged and taken down, even if they are simply talking about policy related to sex education.

Using online platforms has become dramatically more difficult for this work in the past 2 to 3 years, as we see larger cultural and regulatory shifts around sexual and reproductive health in the U.S. The ripple effects reach our work in India and impact the type of reach we could have. While we work on developing communities and channels that try to creatively bypass this, it seriously limits the potential of our work.

Have you always been involved in this work or did you transition into the work?

I have been freelancing as a sex educator for the past 10 years. It started with my journey as a peer sex educator in my undergrad, and then I took my learnings back home. Since 2020, I have been creating online content and freelancing part-time in addition to my full-time role in social impact consulting at Dalberg. The moment I realized I needed to work on this full-time, I came to Harvard to pursue my master's and develop my business plan. Growing this work has been the core of what I've been doing in my time here.

What's the craziest (or most unexpected) moment so far?

I was once taking an early morning flight within India at the start of a vacation. One of the flight attendants came up to me and asked me, "Are you 'Talk You Never Got'? I'm a fan!" She said that she had been following the content I had been making on Instagram for years, and wrote me a thank you note on a paper napkin and gave me a cup of coffee! She said we had exchanged messages 1:1, where I had answered her questions.

I have had the privilege of having many more such moments in years to come — at concerts, in coffee shops, and even on the bus here in Cambridge. There is something magical about meeting the real people behind the 50,000+ usernames who are often quietly watching my videos without engaging at all (often for privacy reasons and due to social taboos, their accounts are also anonymous). They're always young women who are so excited about having a person — and a space — that acknowledges and recognizes our agency and pleasure. In later years, we have done in-depth user interviews and had in-person workshops where these folks come out to learn — and it continues to delight me how energetic and wholesome these spaces can be.

What's been one of the coolest moments in your journey?

In 2020, I wanted to reach youth with sex ed content, but schools and colleges were limited in resources and capacity. This is when I started my Instagram page @TalkYouNeverGot with the intention to reach my friends and family with content none of us got growing up. I remember a 24-year-old middle school friend messaging me and saying, "I had no idea the urethra was separate from the vagina."

But honestly, nothing could have prepared me for the HUGE response I got right away for the content I was posting. The first time I truly went viral was in 2021, when my video got 5 million views. It was a strange video to go viral — I was cutting open a condom to show how you can make your own dental dam to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) transmission through oral sex. People were so shocked and confused — even seeing an Indian woman with a condom so openly in a video was so surprising to people, let alone the commentary about STI prevention. Nobody I knew in my life in India talked about oral sex, STIs, or condoms openly, let alone publicly online for millions to see.

Going viral showed me the true potential of breaking taboos. Soon after, I was awarded Sexual Health Influencer of the Year from the NHS's SH:24 and Brook; and in the next couple of years was a finalist for awards among the top 3 influencers in my niche (in a country of over a billion people). This experience solidified for me that using social media as a vehicle for sex ed and other forms of health communication had huge, untapped potential.

What lesson have you learned that you wish you could save future folks from having to learn themselves?

Speak out loud against things others are too afraid to talk about; even if you can't change the toughest minds, everyone else is listening. When they hear you, they are more likely to take risks and be themselves too.