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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
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- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
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7 comments:
Yawning Bread,
A response to your footnote 3. The passage referred to by the Flying Dutchman was actually written by the blogger "Mr Wang". It was posted on 22 Jan 08, under the title of "Safety in the Syllabus".
Senior Citizen
Eh? I looked at Safety in the Syllabus... not there. Nor in the comments trailing it.
Mark van Cuylenburg, aka. "The Flying Dutchman"
it seems to me this article received less notice than it deserved (maybe because of the Jeyaratnam oblituary drawing away eyeballs, maybe fewer people feel interest in gay problems), raising both the media-government issue and the morals-government issue
on the first issue - well of course mediacorp journalists have to look over their shoulders; since the latest programme is an improvement over the one a few years ago, well that's progress
on the second issue - so the programme has outdated authority figures as the villains; but is it so simple?
10, maybe 15 years ago, a US Surgeon General was forced to resign after she suggested that young girls ought to seek sexual relief through masturbation, reducing the likelihood of premarital sex - though it sounds like an eminently sensible suggestion to me, her superiors simply found it too embarrassing to have a government official "promoting" masturbation; if many parents and educators came out in favour of her suggestion, the outcome might have been different, but they did not
in much the same way, schools often find it hard to give prominence to contraception in their sexual education programmes, since they would seem to be facilitating sexual activity; sexual education almost always starts with the message to girls to keep their virginity as their "gift" to the future husband (which actually is also quite sensible, just nobody would listen to it these days), with contraception included almost as an afterthought
if "promoting" masturbation and pre-marital sex is risky, how do you expect any officials to risk being seen as "promoting" homosexuality? in the end, inaction is the safest official choice - a sensible idea with noisy enemies and silent friends would just die quickly
With regards to footnote 3, the actual URL should be http://mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-should-sex-education-commence.html
The exact comment is as follows:
Mr Wang Says So said...
Recently I signed up as a volunteer to give talks at secondary schools, JCs, polys etc to raise AIDS awareness. Someone who had already been volunteering related her difficulties with MOE and these principals. It seems that talking about (a) contraception, and (b) homosexuality, is frowned upon. Abstinence is the only sexual thing that the authorities are happy for the volunteers to talk about.
Given that this is the attitude taken for quite-old students, it would not surprise me at all if MOE objects to sex education being taught in any way for kindergarten kids.
July 17, 2007 12:24 AM
Hope this helps.
> in much the same way, schools often find it hard to give prominence to contraception in their sexual education programmes, since they would seem to be facilitating sexual activity; sexual education almost always starts with the message to girls to keep their virginity as their "gift" to the future husband (which actually is also quite sensible, just nobody would listen to it these days), with contraception included almost as an afterthought
hrmmm so is also encouraging boys to keep their virginity as their gift to their future wives equally sensible?
> encouraging boys to keep their virginity as their gift to their future wives
female virginity, even today, is still a marketable commodity, especially in chinese culture; there are men who would pay money to have sex with virgins (even in USA you have girls advertising on the web to auction off their virginity); I am not aware of the same being applied to boys - even if a market might exist, it is hard to tell whether a boy is a virgin or not; with girls, there is at least something to go on
hyman restoration is a regular business in China and some other countries; in agony aunt columns, you would often see teary letters from girls "he broke off with me when he found out I was not a virgin"; occasionally I even heard (chinese as well as western) men boasting "my wife was a virgin till she met me"; again, you do not see the same occurrences with genders reversed
so though your question is rhetorical, even mocking, my simple, and serious, answer is, no
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