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2005
Choice is bad, for people may then choose evil
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In the name of a more consultative government, the Media Development
Authority (MDA) issued an open invitation for people to participate in a
focus group discussion about their censorship guidelines for print media.
I submitted my name and went to the 2-hour session on 6 April 2005. There were about 30-35 people present, about 75% male. The brief introduction informed us that the session would be about guidelines for 'lifestyle magazines' Some existing guidelines were put up in a slideshow together with selected magazine covers and inside pages. The MDA wanted people’s opinion as to whether the pictures shown breached the guidelines.
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The guidelines included statements that
magazine covers shouldn't have nudes with only nipples and genitals
covered by hands or small objects; the captions on the covers should not
mislead as to the contents of the magazine; the pages within shouldn’t
contain pictures that are exploitative, etc.
Of course there were the usual admonishments borrowed from the Religious Rightwing of America, such as not promoting "alternative lifestyles", or "deviant lifestyles", lumped together with child pornography. All the examples of magazine covers and pages shown featured women, looking like they're in heat. I had the feeling the MDA was hoping the audience would resoundingly agree that they violated the guidelines. Ban, ban, ban the whole disgusting lot!
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If so, they would have been disappointed.
While opinions varied, the biggest body of opinion tended to be, so what?
In fact, most of the criticism centred on the guidelines themselves rather
than the magazine covers and pages shown, the commonest complaint being
that they were too vague, leaving too much room for interpretation.
Some in the audience were of the view that many of these pictures demeaned women and were unsuitable for children. One woman spoke of how difficult for her as a mother to take her child to a convenience store when rackfuls of such magazines were on display. She was among those who disagreed more with the pictures than with the guidelines. It was important to ensure children are protected, she said. That’s a reasonable concern, and throughout the whole session, the question of a rating system kept coming up. Many spoke in favour of ideas such as having racier magazines shrink-wrapped with consumer advice on the cover, or even, for some titles, brown-bagged. It seemed a bit absurd to be discussing censorship guidelines unless we first had a classification system. Are we talking about magazines meant for children, for adults, or what? Towards the end of the session, I stood up to say that the entire focus group session should have begun with a bird's-eye view discussion of classifications before going in-depth to dealing with what censorship standard to apply. To that, the MDA representative said, "Oh, a rating system would mean having to change the law." He made it sound like it would be so difficult. Then again, maybe it would. When the moderator asked for a show of hands to gauge how many might like a classification and rating system for publications, more than 3 in 4 in the room raised theirs. But at the same time, it became strikingly clear that those who had taken a conservative position during the discussion, didn't raise their hands. I sensed that the moderator, like me, found the voting pattern a little strange. So he asked the mother who had trouble taking her children to the convenience store to say out loud whether she agreed or disagreed with having a rating system. She confirmed that she didn’t raise her hand, and that she objected to having such a system. Then the arch-conservative in the room -- you know, the type with a permanently dour expression, tense and humourless -- said, "I object to a rating system if it means liberalisation." Aha! That’s why! You see, the bit about protecting children is only part of the explanation; you might even say, it's just a smokescreen. The unspoken part about the conservative position is that they want to deny everybody else access to anything they deem bad. Never mind if others are adults with an equal right to make up their own minds what to read and see. They -- the righteous -- will decide for everybody else what may or may not be enjoyed. * * * * * The abstinence brigade The same folks who believe in censorship would equally populate the abstinence brigade. This is the religiously-motivated bunch who push the line that the solution to teenage sex, out-of-wedlock pregnancies and HIV, is for people to be told to abstain from sex until marriage.
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Like the issue of not exposing children to sexual images in various media until they are ready, the idea that people should be taught to be responsible in sex, is not controversial. But the abstinence brigade takes it to unrealistic extremes, and worse, use all kinds of half-truths to promote their cause. For example, US Senator Bill Frist, in a TV program on 5 December 2004, 'This week with George Stephanopoulos' claimed condoms had a failure rate of 15%. This is patently untrue, though he's not the worst. Others have claimed 31% failure. Peer-reviewed studies have shown that the perfect-use failure-rate for condoms is around 2%, and the typical-use failure-rate may be as high as 13%. But first we need to understand what is meant by "perfect-use" and "typical-use". Generally, "prefect-use" means a situation where people use condoms consistently and correctly every time they have sex over a 1-year period. 2% of these persons encounter condom failure some time during the course of the year, which in many studies is evidenced by pregnancy. Note, it doesn’t mean that out of every 100 times you use a condom, 2 times it will fail. It means over the course a 1 year, having sex as often as people usually do, only 2 in 100 persons will report failure. "Typical-use" includes people who use condoms, whether or not they use them consistently and correctly. With this broader measure, condom failure rates up to 13% have been reported. That's sounds pretty bad, right? And so the abstinence brigade would have you believe. They maintain that only abstinence gives you 100% confidence. Ah, but they don't tell you that that's a theoretical figure, based on perfect-use scenarios. It is dishonest to compare perfect-use effectiveness of abstinence with typical-use effectiveness of condoms.
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In real life, how good is the abstinence message as a public-health method? A recent study presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society (APS) found that over 60% of college students who had pledged virginity during their middle or high school years had broken their vow to remain abstinent until marriage.
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In Minnesota, abstinence programs were implemented in
many schools in 1998- 2002, and a study was conducted to measure the
effects of the programs on teen behaviour. (See www.saynotyet.com/report.htm Some counties implemented the programs fully, others less so, or none at all. The researchers found that generally, 78% of 9th graders were abstinent, but "no significant variation was found among 9th graders, regardless of counties with strong, moderate, weak or no program implementation." (The study focussed on 9th graders because that cohort had received the full curriculum.) A year later, the follow-up report found that, "there was little impact on youth attitudes, sexual intentions and behaviours after one year." If anything, the study reported declines.
Other studies however, have shown that kids who have undergone an abstinence course have delayed first sexual intercourse. But not by much. Even then, as a December 2003 essay in Guttmacher.org, pointed out:
Why are they more likely to have unprotected sex? Because abstinence programs spend so much effort rubbishing condoms and other forms of contraception, people are left with the erroneous belief that they are not worth the bother. Monica Rodriguez, an official at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US, told CBS news (April 2005):
But as I said earlier, this doesn't mean there is no place for encouraging people to be more thoughtful before jumping into bed with someone else. This mild degree of abstinence is do-able, unlike total abstinence, which effectively demands that you deny your sexual needs. But education must include information about how to protect yourself when having sex, so that when you choose not to abstain, you still do it 'right'. The abstinence brigade will have none of this. They don't like giving people the choice not to abstain. So they resort to lies and censorship (Federally-funded programs in the US demand excision of all information regarding condoms and contraception except mention of inflated failure rates). Why do they get so hysterical about it? Because it has little to do with public welfare, just as censoring magazines has little to do with protecting children. It's got to do with eradicating the evil called 'sex'. And the evil is so great, the ends justifies all means. Even dishonesty is justifiable. As for choice: how can we allow people to choose evil? So ban! Censor! Forbid! To hell with safer-sex information! To hell with magazine-rating systems! As
we all know, only a certain religion views sex as evil. Which only goes to
show,
they are out to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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