October 2005

Why is safe sex for adults only?

    

  

 
Some 60% of 18 year-old conscripts are already sexually experienced, he said.

Immediately, it reminded me of a short newspaper article that I saw in late September, or maybe the first week of October. I can't find it now, and I wish I had seen the importance of it then. But I think what I was hearing from this army doctor was related to what I had seen in the press.

He said another army doctor was doing a study using a large sample of army recruits. In Singapore, all male citizens and second generation permanent residents have to serve 2 or 2-and-a-half years in National Service. Many of them are conscripted at age 18.

Apparently, the study is not yet completed, but preliminary results (based on my memory of what I had read in the press) were that not only was a majority already sexually active, many of them have had 5 or 6 sexual partners by 18. Some had had first sex at age 12 or 13.

 

Then in the Straits Times recently, I saw another story, about the rapid increase in sexually-transmitted infections among those under 20. See the story on the right.

In fact, the earlier statement by the army doctor about 60% of 18-year olds being sexually experienced was also made in the context of infection. Singapore now has a handful of cases of 17-year olds diagnosed with HIV. Saddened by this, we were trying to tell the Health Ministry that some way must be found to deliver safe sex education to teenagers.

The Ministry's stance was that such an idea was "no go". More than that, independent NGOs were strongly advised not to do it either. There is only one permissible message to be given to teenagers: abstinence.

In a way, the reasoning is not wrong. Teenagers are still wards of their parents. It is problematic, at the very least, for third parties to be giving them information which parents may object to.

What about school? You may ask.

Indeed, there is implied consent when parents send their children to school, for the children to receive such information as schooling entails. But in Singapore the notion of schooling has never fully encompassed sex education. A parent told me that she had to sign a form consenting to sex education before her daughter could attend the class. Whether this is universal practice across all schools, or was a play-safe measure in just that school, I don't know, but it does suggest that at least in some cases, sex education is viewed as outside the curriculum for which implied consent has been given; additional explicit consent had to be obtained.

Now this, mind you, is for a sex education package that only approves of abstinence (and clearly disapproves of homosexuality). For any other kind of sex education package, it may prove far more controversial.

So in a sense, the reasoning is sound: if parents don't want their kids to learn about sex, if parents don't want their kids to think homosexual orientation is anything other than sick and criminal, who are we to tell the kids otherwise?

Yet, one can fault the above logic in two ways.

The first is, what if what the parents want their children to learn is either useless or wrong? Should we continue to teach the children the useless and/or wrong stuff anyway?

Consider for a moment the kind of news that come out Middle America, where parents demand that Creationism (now disguised as Intelligent Design) be taught in school and evolution treated as just conjecture. There are lots of stupid parents in the world. Don't imagine for a moment that Singapore is free from stupidity.

The second is, what do the children need? How do we balance the social responsibility to provide children, as they grow up, with what they need – be it nutrition, education or safe harbours from abusive families – against the principle that the children are wards of their parents?

The debate we had a few years ago as to whether education should be compulsory also pivoted on the same issue. If parents choose not send their children to school at all, what is the state's responsibility?

If parents don't want their children to know about sexual safety and responsibility, what is the state to do? Should we turn a blind eye if 17-year-olds are diagnosed with HIV?

In fact, it is worth remembering that parents never had a hand in designing the sex education package. I dare say no more than 1 percent of parents have anything but the vaguest idea what's in it. The great majority of them would simply trust that the government knows what it is doing, and so long as the kids don't end up saying outrageous things at the dinner table, there are far far more pressing family matters.

So the abstinence (and anti-gay) message that the schools put out is essentially the invention of the Ministry of Education, rationalised as what the parents would want if only they had time to think about it. It's imagined to be "everything parents would have wanted to tell their kids, but never dared to".

The Health Ministry then defers to the Education Ministry, not wanting to challenge the Education Ministry's preemptive rights over teenagers' minds.

And despite the anti-gay message being put out, increasing numbers of teenagers are coming out as gay or lesbian. They reject the message.

But others absorb it. For those who are inherently homosexual, it screws up their psycho-social development and breeds destructive self-hate.

For those who are heterosexual, it may breed another generation of ignorant and hurtful homophobes.
 

Yet we're sitting on a small mountain of data that tells us (a) the message is not working and (b) the kids really need other kinds of information. They are getting pregnant. They are getting infected.

As the army doctor found, 60% were sexually active by the time they were 18. And, per our policy, we have not yet begun to tell them about safer sex.  

 

© Yawning Bread 

  

17 Oct 2005
Straits Times

Spike in number of teens with sex infections
by Mardiana Ismail

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of young people hit by sexually-transmitted infections.

Figures from the government-run DSC Clinic show those aged 10 to 19 now form 6 per cent of all sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) - double the 3 per cent in 2002. They accounted for only 206 cases in 2002, 490 in 2003 and about 600 cases last year. In the first six months of this year, some 300 have already been struck - more than the total figure for this group in 2002.

In total, the DSC Clinic reported more than 16,000 STI cases from January last year to June this year - 10,697 last year and 5,459 in the first half of this year.

Youngsters made up 6 per cent of all the cases seen during the period, it said.

Significantly, Malays make up almost half the STI cases among youngsters.

Counsellors at the clinic attribute this disturbing spike in sex diseases among the young to a cavalier attitude towards sex.

'Their more immediate concern is unplanned pregnancy and, ironically, they try to prevent this by practising the unreliable withdrawal method,' said Ms Theresa Soon, DSC's senior executive.

A 16-year-old, Normal stream student who wanted to be known only as Marina, revealed that she had had sex with four men. She was forced to have sex with her first boyfriend, she said, but began to enjoy it six months later when she dated a 28-year-old man. The student, from a school in Bukit Panjang, is suffering from an STI and being treated at the DSC Clinic. 'It's better not to start so young,' she said.

The disturbing trend of young Malays accounting for most of the cases has not escaped the community's political leaders and religious representatives.

Assyakirin Mosque executive chairman Muhammad Faizal Othman said 'We need to address the gap between mosques and modern, young Malays by organising more vibrant, secular events like our recent hip-hop and graffiti competitions.'

Madam Halimah Yacob, an MP for Jurong GRC, applauded mosques for using creative ways to reach out to troubled teens.

'We need to strengthen the value system of our young, so that they understand the virtues of keeping chaste and shun pre-marital sex and promiscuity.'

 

 

The last quote from Halimah Yacob (above yellow box) tells you what's going wrong. The choice of words are loaded with condemnation and archaic notions ("chaste"?). This is precisely the kind of approach that turns teenagers off.

I'm not suggesting it is impossible to get teenagers to be responsible and to give them enough self-esteem to withstand peer pressure, but its the attitude that adults start with, that makes or breaks the attempt.

Supposing a kid has already had sex. Would he feel labelled by Halimah's "promiscuous"? If he does, is he is going to listen to the rest of our message?

It's very important not to go off like that. Even if a kid has started having sex, we can still win his trust and his ear, and get him to slow down or play safer... provided we don't get righteous and preachy.

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