Monday, January 30, 2006
AJC recently held a sexuality education (wonder why they no longer call it "sex education" - sounds more profound?) workshop for the J2s and boy has it caused a major uproar in the news. My sister was coerced (what else? By institutional fascism) to listen to the talk for four hours, and when she came home and told me about what had happened, I was absolutely appalled. Lots of stupid things have been done in this world before, but this must be one of the worst.
According to one of the teachers, AJ held the workshop because there was a lot of talk going on about sexuality education. Apparently all schools have to provide a minimum number of hours of sexuality education for their students. It wasn't a surprise then that AJ had gotten itself on the news programme on the day of the workshop itself. Publicity promos are always welcome.
But now with that article in the Sunday Straits Times, AJ has gone from being Almost Famous to Dreadfully Infamous.
The workshop was conducted by an external church organization called the Family Life Society. Although the person-in-charge later claimed in the ST article that they never intended to impose their views on others, my sister and the worksheet booklet they gave out tell a very different story. According to my sister, the speaker (a MALE speaker; let me get back to this issue later) was extremely pushy in putting forward his views, which were really thinly-disguised Christian beliefs. The booklet is full of religiously-allusive maxims such as "Marriage is the only proper context for sexual union because of the procreative and unitive significance of the act of sexual intercourse", "Sexual attraction to the opposite sex in me is my awareness of the nuptial language of the body" and very blatantly, "Sex outside marriage is counterfeit love" (my italics). Therefore, one must "live a life based on charity and chastity".
Such religious rhetoric is firstly, out of place in a secular educational institution. Secondly, it actively creates the impression that the body's sexual impulses are derived from marriage; thus marriage is not a man-created institution, a social construct, but genetically inscribed in the body. Thirdly, these views are narrow-minded, sweeping generalizations that take no account of the complexities of relationships and sexual desire. How can one possibly denounce all people who have sex outside marriage as immoral? Surely one can marry a wrong person and love another outside the "legitimate" bounds of marriage (nothing biological here!)? Surely the high divorce rates nowadays demonstrate that marriage does not equate "perfect love" as they call it?
Contraception and sterilization is "explained" as such: "When procreation is deliberately excluded, the sterilized sexual act is not much different in its meaning from an act of mutual masturbation whereby the couple seeks to use each other (their bodies) to derive sexual pleasure." I'm sure the government and its family planning unit have a lot to say about that.
And the worst has to be the worksheets of declaration. "How can I make Pro-Life Choices in my life?" The prescribed answer:
"I must Reject, Avoid and Disapprove [of]... abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, contraception, IVF (!!??)..."
The students were told to write these things down and sign their names at the pledge on the back of the booklet. This contradicts the claim that the group was giving everyone the freedom to their own opinions. In fact, this is such a crude attempt at indoctrination it mocks your intelligence.
My sister said that the video on abortion was also emotionally coercive and tended to use fear to ram moralizing down their throats. I remember watching an abortion video in secondary school many years ago (I think most of us have seen it at some point in time in our schooling lives) and I remember feeling extremely disgusted with the way the MALE doctor, sitting so comfortably in his armchair, denounced all women for the sinful crime of abortion. What gives male authority figures the right to condemn women when they haven't the slightest chance of ever needing an abortion? And why is the woman's side of the story never told? It's time women stopped allowing men to dictate morality to us and to speak up about issues that concern us and not them. Women who undergo abortions are varied and have their various reasons, yet patriarchy, in its attempt to police women, has boiled everything down to reductive moral black-and-white terms.
Absolutely unforgivable! I hope this incident shows all of us the dangers of buying into fads like sexuality education without taking a closer look at what these external organizations are actually teaching the students. Sexuality education should be about providing information and options, so that people can make informed decisions, rather than blatant moralizing. My morality is my own concern and none of yours.
kaoru said at 1:03 AM
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