Tuesday, September 14, 2004

The All Boys are Bad for you Paradox

Has anyone ever thought about how stupid it is to tell your daughters that all men are jerks? Most parents know that most men aren’t jerks, and as a responsible older sister and a blatantly shameless one too, I constantly make sure my little sister knows that. My mom hates it of course, she says I’m poisoning her, but I think not.

Parents (Singaporean ones anyway) are terribly weird and wrongheaded when it comes to sexuality. They presume that adolescents do not know any better about things that pertain to sex and to relationships, but If I’m anything to go by, at 13, I clearly recall that I was most certainly very sexual, experimental and very aware of what I was doing. And I never did anything unless I felt thoroughly comfortable with doing it. I was lucky, I suppose, that I had parents that were rather candid about all things erotic.

As most other Singaporean girls, I was stuffed into a horribly orthodox Christian institution where I was expected to receive a relatively acceptable education, and conscientious religious care from daily prayer and a continual mental impoundment when it came to issues of morality.

Sex, Sex, SEX. I SWEAR. This whole society is so fucking obsessed with it, of course it’s not a wonder we’re all inherently perverse. It’s an absurdity. Moral education lessons, 30 minutes a week, and the topic any one paid any attention to was when the discussion fell on *drum roll* sex.

I’m not saying we should avoid it, I acknowledge that in most cases it would be even more detrimental. The ‘moral education lessons’ have had a positive effect as a forum for young people to discuss their sexuality. However, there is always the dilemma of whether teaching nothing is preferable to teaching something terribly erroneous. And I think that the context in which sexuality has been analyzed from in schools have been perfect nonsense.

I got into trouble with the authorities-that-be sometime back for criticizing the structure of these ‘moral education’ lessons. I thought that what they were teaching was clearly discrimination, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

What is the more important focus in a ‘moral education’ lesson? Acceptance of other fallible human beings, just as you are, or bigotry, because they do not conform to the absolute morality you were forced to obey all your life.

Of course there are people who think about sex in a far more sanctified ideal then I do, and I personally do not have anything against that. If you really believe in it, then you should be respected for it. But if you don’t, and are only pretending through taking a moral high ground based upon that charade, and going about gossiping and criticizing for the sake of indemnifying your secret sinning, then you clearly are in no position to be taken seriously in your preaching

The authorities-that-be had a rather strange, pointless answer to my accusation (that they were teaching discrimination).

‘We are a Christian school, therefore we must teach Christian values.’

But… but…Christ never portrayed prostitutes and adulterers as pathetic, insecure, evil, morally decadent creatures! Sure, he told them to sin no more, but not once did he tell them they had repugnant, poisonous thoughts. He never taught anyone that they ‘deserved their lot in life’ (think, oh serve you right, you have a fucking STD because you were such a slut).

What they should be teaching, instead, is to be responsible about sex. The government is clearly idiotic in it’s censoring of movies with sexual content. People, and especially young people, are sexual creatures, whether or not they are allowed to see naked people on the Big Screen, and they will always find ways to obtain sex, in whatever form.

If you go about refusing them first-rate art, expressions of the human psychology that pertain to sex, material allowing room for thought and for the formulation of a morality that individuals can ascribe to, and instead propagate the indiscriminate distribution of the virtue of abstinence, you are denying young individuals a substantial way through which they can develop sexual understanding and responsibility.

What results is instead an intensely warped view of sex. The consequences are different for different individuals, but on my part, they have turned out to be something that make me go, ‘I wish I’d know that earlier’.

So much of sexual introduction for a girl revolves around guys being bastards, horn-dogs and inconsiderate dicks. The idea, evidently, was to turn girls off boys so much so that they wouldn’t have sex with them. Apparently, these clearly disillusioned thought that girls would never desire sex in themselves. Part of the reason being that they were taught the same things as adolescents, and never saw sex as an act that could be mutually beneficial. These are the bitches from hell that accuse their men of ‘using their bodies’.

I am proud to say I constantly use my men for their dicks, and they do not mind it at all. Instead, I am constantly reciprocated for my selfish expediencies with tenderness, respect, care and a lot of good wine and numerous foot-massages.

We are all commoditizing ourselves, but the belief that someone necessarily has to loose out in order for someone else to gain reeks of egocentricity, and is essentially very unhealthy for anyone to have that. For one thing, it turns girls into bitter, bitchy, bitches.

In some cases, such warped socio-sexology (i.e. all guys are inconsiderate horn-dogs) has the intended effect. The girls grow up and do not sleep around all that much, for fear of ‘being used’. Here I must stress again that having absolute morality, because you truly believe in it, and that it is genuinely intrinsic within your being, deserves respect. But being forced into it out of fear, I feel, is unhealthy.

Then there are mad anomalies like me, that decide they want to have sex anyway and that it doesn’t matter if they are treated well or not, and they go into a relationship expecting to be treated badly.

Suffice to say, I was quite surprised when the guys I ended up with took me to nice places for dates, called me up often, and generally behaved in a very human way I was never taught possible.

Of course I expect a lot more now, then I did then. I’m not very particular, and am possessed of a rather compromising personality, but I certainly know how I deserve to be treated now. And most certainly, I make sure my sister knows how she should be, too.

xoxox

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