Had I stayed in Pakistan, I wouldn’t have received any formalized sexual education either. According to a friend who attended the same school as I did in Karachi, her classmates were separated by gender in the sixth grade to listen to a very basic lecture about puberty. They didn’t learn about sex, contraceptives, or sexually transmitted diseases. Instead, they patched together an understanding of sex through friends and the internet. While boys discussed sex in middle school and watched porn on DVDs, for girls it was a more taboo subject.“I think that many times, we’re taught from such a young age that sex is something that we should be afraid of,” said another friend of mine who also learned about sex through friends. “And this is particular to girls in Pakistan. Boys are still able to know that they can have sex, and sometimes live under the impression that they are entitled to it, and to enjoying it when women are not.”Many of the women I know in Pakistan have premarital sex with multiple partners — they just aren’t copping to it. And because they’re not able to talk about it openly, or haven’t had any sex ed, they often don’t have enough information about sex despite being sexually active. Munira was only one example. Another friend who had studied in Canada didn’t know that Plan B and the birth control pill were different — back in Pakistan, she routinely had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, popping a Plan B afterwards to prevent pregnancy. A third friend insisted that the withdrawal method worked, according to her mother, who swore it was more effective than condoms and birth control pills.Many of these women say that no one taught them that sex should be fun for them; some admit that they don’t enjoy penetration. Though they talk frequently about relationships and will tell close friends that they’ve “hooked up,” they don’t discuss the actual act of sex.If I could go back in time, and visit my grandmother when she was 13, I’d take a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves with me. That 1973 classic was instrumental to my own understanding of the female body, as well as my sexuality. I’d show dadi (grandma) the illustrations of female genitalia, let her read the explanation about how natural and healthy it is for a woman to masturbate. I’d tell her a clitoris can bring joy, not shame, and beg her not to deprive me of it.