Accident Waiting to Happen

Woman is like fire, and man is like butter.

                                                                    --Srila Prabhupada 

Srila Prabhupada compared boys and men to butter and girls and women to fire. When boys and girls are together, they become attracted to each other. When men and women are together, they become attracted to each other. They are like magnets. "Just like a young man and young woman, when they are present [together], naturally they become agitated. In the sästras it is said just like fire and butter. If you put butter before the fire, automatically it melts." (Lecture 10/12/72)

In America and other western countries, people are led to believe that it is not good for girls to marry young, and that girls should shop around for their own husbands, trying this boy and that, instead of depending on their parents to arrange for their early marriage. A girl is encouraged to date a variety of boys. The justification for this is that she can analyze the different characteristics of various boys, and eventually decide after trial-and-error which one suits her best. Srila Prabhupada called this type of practice “prostitution.” "Now, at the present moment, father, mother, sends the daughter for prostitution: ‘Find out a suitable man. Attract a suitable man. Don't marry abruptly. Just test this man, this man, this man, this man, this man. Then marry.’ So father, mother, they are teaching daughters prostitution." (Bhag. 6.1.56-62, Surat 1/3/71)

Most modern schools place boys and girls together in the same classrooms. Because of the co-ed classroom settings girls find themselves in year after year, they can’t help noticing different boys and becoming attracted to them, and the boys can’t help noticing the girls and becoming attracted to them. Thus when they come to the stage of puberty, there is every chance that a young girl can be lured into the wrong bed and end up pregnant.

Unprotected girls are in a predicament. As young teen-agers, if they have had a moral upbringing, they are faced with the challenge of trying to remain chaste virgin girls and simultaneously waiting until they are (at the minimum) eighteen to twenty years old to get married. In America, or at least in many American families, eighteen to twenty is the undocumented but socially acceptable minimum age at which a girl should finally be allowed to think of marrying. At the same time, such girls are plagued with a burning desire, nay, a need, to be married and on top of it all, they are expected to find their husbands on their own! Such girls are accidents just waiting to happen, and unaware of their precarious position.

When girls are sent to co-educational schools, they naturally associate with boys. When boys and girls associate together, they naturally become attracted to each other. Because of the unnatural arrangement of putting boys and girls together in schools from age five or younger up to college age, there is much melting of buttery boys with fiery girls. If girls are not protected from boys, then by the practically irresistible force of magnetic attraction between the two sexes, unprotected girls can very easily end up being taken advantage of by unchaperoned boys and losing their virginity before they are married.

Srila Prabhupada frequently mentioned that this practice of putting boys and girls together was dangerous and must be stopped. As mentioned above, he even called it "prostitution." In a conversation on April 29, 1977 in Bombay, Srila Prabhupäda said, “…[It] should be stopped, this practice of prostitution. This is a very bad system in Europe and America. The boys and girls, they are educated--coeducation. From the very beginning of their life they [the girls] become prostitutes.” He also said in the same conversation, “Girls should be completely separated [from boys] from the very beginning.” Srila Prabhupada understood that when boys and girls are mixed together for the purpose of education, they tend to get into trouble and end up producing unwanted children, called varna-sankara.

Srila Prabhupada gives a very practical explanation. In his purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam 9.24.34, he warns, “According to Vedic civilization, if a girl gives birth to a child before she is married, no one will marry her… The custom is that a girl should be married aksata-yoni, that is, with her virginity undisturbed. A girl should never bear a child before her marriage."