Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporter
DR. GLENDA Simms, gender expert and consultant, is urging women to wake up from their "induced stupor" called passivity in sexual matters.
She said that it was time for Jamaica to seriously re-examine the way in which girls and women are being socialised.
Factors to be reconsidered, according to Dr. Simms, include the family structure, where many girls are still being told to do as they are told and the church, which either fails to recognise women as sexual beings (stating that marriage/sexual relationships is for reproduction) or gives them a false sense of security by promising them fidelity in marriage.
"The home, the schools, the church and faith-based organisations help us to be passive so that when it comes to say sex, you just take it," she said. "Women must take back their bodies from passivity ... Women, when will you break out of your induced stupor and be strong and say: 'I will not continue to die from HIV/AIDS'? To say: 'I will be strong and be true to my womanhood'?" she said to applause during The Gleaner's Editors Forum.
The forum was held under the theme, 'Passive Women, Active Men: Sex Gender and HIV/AIDS' in association with the University of the West Indies' Faculty of Medical Sciences at the Main Medical Lecture Theatre.
Another panellist, Hope Ramsay, lecturer, in the University of the West Indies HIV/AIDS Response Programme (UWIHARP), said that education of women must start early.
"Parents wait on the school system to teach children about sex and HIV," she said.
More parents must talk with their children openly about sex and HIV prevention, sharing their own experiences, she said.
Mrs. Ramsay said that parents should help their girls realise that they can be self-reliant and help their boys to realise that girls are equal partners, not helpers or sexual objects.
The consequences of this lack of knowledge are usually negative.
Ms. Ramsay said studies show that when young people do not have access to condoms, they use alternatives such as plastic bread bags, kisko bags and hand gloves.
Myths also abound that girls cannot get pregnant if they wash their vaginas with blue soap or douche with a vinegar solution after sex, sprinkle the vagina with pepper and salt, jump up and down after sex or suck on a copper coin during sex.
The reality is that the youth become exposed to HIV or girls get pregnant, which is treated as a shame on the family and pregnant girls, unlike boys, usually have to leave school, she said.
"When your child asks: 'What is sex'? Don't say: 'When you find out let me know' ... Don't let it seem like you are such a paragon of virtue, that you never had sex or you never kissed or fondled. Don't pretend. Be honest with your children," she said.
