Today's newspaper had an article in the forum section talking about how HIV does not discriminate gender or sexuality. This is very true. In fact, no disease in the world discriminates against race or gender, young or old. The very notion that SARS or Bird Flu is an Asian disease or epidemic is totally hogwash! If so, what was the Black Plague, a European's disease? There's no such thing. The sad, true fact is this: We are all host and living incubators to every disease known to men, and all those we haven't found yet.
The growing concern that some people have that more and more teenagers here are being tested HIV+ is more due to the fact that they think that they wouldn't get the disease just because it's not exclusive to their sexuality ie, being Heterosexual or being Catholic, that God will protect you from the disease if you're a good boy or girl!
It does sound totally fanatical doesn't it? But I've heard these words flow out of people's mouths in public! If I unknowingly have a certain form of Herpes even if I was that good, and I kiss you, I can pass it to you too, does that mean that we should all wear body protection? Imagine a world where everyone wears a rubber condom over their faces and look like bank robbers, on top of a neoprene suit and gloves to protect against touch!
This is ignorance at it's strongest. Be it the limited open-mindedness or the conservative society that we still pretend we live in, there can be no more ignorance. How difficult is it to get educated? How difficult is it to learn from or teach someone? How difficult is it to find the time? A young child can go onto the Internet and get educated in so many ways, online search engines, online encyclopedias, everything they want they can get if they ask the right question online with pictures too!
But no, lately the universal excuse is "I don't have the time."
In the past here, you'll find censorship sharpening their scissors to snip off any scene in the movies that has a prominent feature of breasts, the butt is fine, just don't show anything frontal with hair, chest hair is fine. Two people lying in bed talking is fine, but add them half-naked, panting, thrusting or suggestive movements of any kind and it's billed as a sex scene, we'll censor that too. SNIP! Remember poor Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic created a huge commotion here because her breasts were "snipped off" by the censorship people. However, the laws of censorship have changed this year and have laxed some, although not enough! Movies are how teenagers learn sex, violence and drugs, it is a window to another world, a make-believe world. It's the mentality of "I want to try that out too, coz it's so cool!" attitude that they venture onto thin ice. So it's a Catch-22 of whether or not to censor. The chicken and egg question. If I screen the movie uncensored, the violence and language will get across to the people watching it and they might want to act it out, increasing some amouts of violence and crime in our country. If not, we won't really get much of a movie to watch after all the cuts now would we? I have personally gone to the movies or have watched television programmes with friends where they go "Yeew, that's disgusting", "Are those her breasts?", "Gross!" when we come across a steamy sex scene or see a full frontal of an actor or actress. It's not the fascination that "Hey, how come I don't have those?" or "How the hell did they do that?", it's the distasteful view of a private act that should be been kept private. Newflash kids, sex sells everything from movies, to TV to commercials and advertisement. Nothing does not have sex in it, in one form or another. If anything, we're all amused.
Sex, like religion, has it's roots in hypocrisy. I think a definition is in order to remind us of the word:
Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have beliefs, virtues and feelings that one does not truly possess. The word derives from the late latin hypocrisis, and Greek hupokrisis both meaning play-acting or pretence. For example, to denounce another for carrying out some action whilst carrying out that same action oneself. Very often religion is used in this context. One could quote Jesus who says,"Let the one who is totally guiltless throw the first stone," pointing out that one must first be sinless in or to judge someone else for their sins: You kill the man for killing a man.
The more you prevent someone from doing something, the chances are, the more they want to commit the act in defiance. Either that, or the new invisible law: Do anything you can possible want to, but don't get caught!
Parents themselves should be having that talk with their children, not just about sex, protection and safety, but about sexuality, tolerance, embracing change and being open-minded. Condoms are the new in-thing that every guy and girl can carry around in their wallets, back pockets or handbags. There's no need to be embarassed by it, it offers a certain amount of protection against every known sexually transmitted disease known to men if used properly. It's become a fashion to carry colourful ones these days.
But at the end of the day - Mankind dwell in hypocrisy and ritual, it's in our nature, it's in our genes. And when all that double standards have failed, we go home and have wanton unprotected sex to please ourselves, knowing full well that we are what we are - alive and loving it!
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