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Forget TV, Read this

Getting Blunt by Cedriann Martin • Sunday 21 August 2005 • 867 words

Forget Sex, Watch TV. Last Wednesday, the Express reported on a memorable message delivered by Prime Minister Patrick Manning to his constituents at a cottage meeting in Tarouba. (Yes, the same Tarouba in which the $850 million stadium will be built. And yes, the same stadium that's worth its cost because, apart from reducing crime, it could also double as a shelter should a natural disaster strike. And yes again, your Prime Minister said that, too.)

Manning proclaimed, quite rightly, that people should not make more children that they can mind. One way of practising effective birth control, he went on, was to buy a television and "instead of doing other things, keep looking at the programmes until you fall asleep".

With that in mind, let's examine the fare to which many of those who heeded the PM's birth control advice would have been treated. (Because let's be blunt: if you're going to rely on TV to keep you occupied, you're better off with cable.)

Visions of Passion. While working on her latest project, a filmmaker accidentally records her neighbour's tryst with a married man. Adult language, nudity, strong sexual content. One hour and 25 minutes worth of it.

In Bar Girls, outside forces threaten a budding romance in, of all places, a lesbian bar.

And Demi Moore was reportedly paid US$600,000 to bare her beach ball breasts in Striptease. Local viewers could have viewed the goods on Wednesday night. Until they fell asleep.

So that clearly won't work. Let's take it that the PM was being provocative. Let's interpret his advice as a suggestion to poor people that they can master their fertility and improve their quality of life through abstinence. Now abstinence is wonderful as a personal decision. A couple may decide: "You know what, let's try other ways of being close until we ready for another picknee. Kiss up. Hug up. Hold hands." Or a young woman may take a stand: "You see me, I ain't giving he nothing until he making sense." Individual resolve to be celibate must be both empowering and worthwhile. Not to mention foolproof.

But you can't legislate people's sex lives. Note the responses of Tarouba residents as reported in the Express on Thursday.

"I find that to be very insulting," said a mother of eight.

"God made man and woman for one thing, and is not to watch TV in the night," blurted another woman, photographed with her two children.

"He probably think he government have to spend too much money to maintain house and light and water," observed a mother of seven.

These women-just like upper class ones or childless ones or university-educated ones-have sex. And they have a right to enjoy fulfilling sex lives. They also have a responsibility to themselves, their children and the rest of society to care for the children all this love-making brings. Unless you're of the view that the only point of sex should be procreation (in which case, don't bother reading to the end of this column. We're not on the same page), all arrows point to family planning.

Poor women are no less capable than everybody else of understanding how family planning works and of choosing a contraceptive method that's best for them. What they often lack is information about the options available to them, the wherewithal to access sexual and reproductive health care services and, too often, the power to negotiate contraceptive-use in their relationships. If the government wants people to manage their sex lives more responsibly and stop making children they can't mind (a reasonable and laudable goal), there are many concrete things it can do.

An increased focus on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of citizens must be priority. The health sector must work in tandem with the NGO movement to reach all citizens, giving people adequate access to the information, products and services that they need. The negative effect of unequal gender roles on family life and relationships must be addressed systematically. (By the way, what's the word on the Draft Gender Policy, Mr PM?) And critically, our youths must be equipped to become enlightened, empowered adults.

This is why an approach to sex education in schools that has made an abstinence-only programme its crown jewel won't work in the long run. All of these young adults will inevitably outgrow the abstinence-only message. (Hopefully later rather than sooner). We need to tell them now-not when they're 50 years old with seven children-that they have the right and power to decide on how many children they want and when they want them. And as a matter of life and death, we should also tell them that in order to avoid contracting sexually transmitted infections they should be faithful to a (faithful) partner. And if they are either having sex outside a monogamous relationship or they're doubtful of their partner's monogamy, they should use a latex condom consistently and correctly.

If we'd get that message across to our children, then in 15 years our would-be PM won't have to make serious jokes like "forget sex, watch TV".