Peter Espeut IT'S ONE thing to have a problem, and quite another to know how to solve it! Problem: little girls as young as eight years old are being sexually interfered with by older men. Solution: lock these disgusting men up! Problem: teenage girls of fourteen while still in school are getting pregnant for their schoolmates. Solution: lock up these precocious boys! Sorry!
DOES NOT ADDRESS THE PROBLEM
There is a problem! Sexual intercourse, one of the most beautiful ways a man and a woman can express their love for each other, the route to generate new members of family and society (procreation), has been turned into recreation, and has been commercialised. Everyone who watches local or foreign television is pilloried with sex scenes outside of any personal commitment. Our young people are fed with a diet of lyrics that promotes sex in the same light as hamburgers or fried chicken: "If it feels good do it!" "Do it 'till you're satisfied". "Don't stop 'till you get enough".
MIXED SIGNALS
Young people get mixed signals. There is no legal minimum age at which one may eat hamburgers or fried chicken, but there is a law stipulating the minimum age at which young girls may have sexual intercourse; at the same time there is no legal minimum age for boys to have sex. The law is one-sided; a 15-year-old girl has all the sexual equipment and all the sexy guile to play the temptress. If she dresses sexily, and 'winds' up herself on a man (old or young), and touches him and pushes herself on him and insinuates herself into his bed, the man can go to jail as the abuser, and the Jezebel is deemed the victim. I don't know why gender activists don't cry 'Inequality!' and 'Discrimination!' The trouble is that today feminists pose as gender activists. They only care about the welfare of females.
Now a female parliamentarian proposes that the age of consent (for girls) be raised to 18. Now 17-year-old girls will be victims, and their 18-year-old boyfriends and lovers will become criminals. This ignorant suggestion is designed to do nothing more than put more young black men in jail. And it doesn't address the problem.
Gender activists tell girls to fulfill themselves, and not be held back by backward mores that force them into positions of powerlessness that restrict their freedom to enjoy life and not to reproduce! But making 18 the age of consent assumes that at 17, while girls can go to university, they are so incompetent that they are not responsible for their actions; if they have sex, it is because a man has forced himself upon them. Nevertheless, a 17-year-old boy is competent to go to jail and have a criminal record for life by having sex with his willing girlfriend. What an insult to the female gender! But the gender activists (surprisingly?) support this sort of argument.
SOCIETY NEEDS ORDER
Of course, it is just not true! At 17, girls are more conceptually developed than boys, do better in school than boys; and are more responsible than boys. But the anti-male sentiment (and anti-black male sentiment) out there is strong, and boys will always be blamed, even if the girl is more sensible and is the initiator.
Here, I speak as a sociologist, not as a clergyman. Society runs best when there is order, and that is the purpose of law: to bring order to society. And order is required in every sphere of human life, including our sexual lives. As a nation we profoundly lack order in our sexual lives; but the real question is whether passing legislation is the answer.
I remember when the global AIDS epidemic began; years later Jamaica had its first AIDS case; now we in the Caribbean have the second highest AIDS rate in the world. Why is it that AIDS spreads like wildfire in Jamaica and the Caribbean? Because our sexual lives are not in order. Let me repeat: I am not here making any religious or prudish argument. I am raising questions about how our sexual lifestyles affect our national economy, the crime rate and public health.
For me, it is an issue of self-control. Part of growing up part of maturity is learning to control ourselves and our lives. Immature persons practice immediate personal gratification: eat and drink and smoke what they want when they want; in the words of my colleague deacon, "There are some people who scratch every time they itch". People who can't control their eating habits will be obese; people who can't control drinking will become drunkards; people who can't control their spending will always be short of money, and will always owe others money; people out of control will take drugs, or gamble away their earnings; people who can't control their sexual desires will end up with unwanted children, sexual diseases and with unfulfilling relationships with the opposite sex.
WE NEED TO BE MATURE
People who learn maturity (deferred gratification) will save their money, eat and drink frugally, postpone sexual activity, complete their education, have meaningful personal relationships and live ordered lives. What we need is to become mature as a nation and as individuals.
Our sexual culture is driven by forces, some frankly superstitious. "If you don't have sex, you will get sick". "A man must release fluids from his body or he will get sick". "Not to have sex is unnatural". "Sex with a virgin will cure venereal disease". "You are not a real man unless you have sex with a lot of women". "You are not a woman unless you have had a child". All these folk norms and values promote early sexual intercourse, and childbearing before marriage, and trap young people in the cycle of poverty. Many aspects of our national culture are immature.
People who have sex with persons so much younger than themselves that there is no mutual relationship, are sexually immature and deviant. People who see sex with others as ways of expressing their power and dominance, are sexually immature. Persons in authority who sexually exploit their employees or students or church members are sexually immature. Married persons who seek other sexual partners were probably sexually and emotionally too immature to have entered the commitment of marriage in the first place. Young people who confuse exploring each other's bodies with having a personal relationship are sexually immature; but they certainly are not criminals, and they are not much worse than the immaturity shown by many of their elders.
What we need is a national drive to promote proper values and attitudes toward sexual activity, helping people to take responsible decisions about their lives, and increasing the ability of our people to take responsibility for their good and bad decisions (which might in some cases lead to prison). What we should want is to become adult as a nation and as individuals. This is not a religious matter; this is a matter of national and personal survival, growth and development!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
