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"Be smart, play safe too"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(01/12/06)
BE it within the confines of a marriage or outside, whichever way you look
at it, yes, we Malaysians are quite a randy lot.
As a friend observed, Kuala Lumpur is driven by affairs. Fidelity is a
romantic concept, and really, when one intellectualises love, what is the
emotion really? (Do read John Armstrong’s Conditions of Love. Highly
recommended).
Cynicism aside, in the age of AIDS, Malaysia faces a looming endemic.
A Reuters report on Oct 25 said “… HIV cases in Malaysia totalled 70,559 in
a population of about 26 million, while 10,663 patients had full-blown AIDS
at the beginning of the year,” quoting official data.
The report said marginalised communities like injecting drug users were the
bulk of the statistics.
It said the Malaysian Government was making a concerted effort to eradicate
the disease through Harm Reduction Programmes as well as sex education for
youths who are pretty clueless as to what sex and sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs) are.
While I laud all these efforts, there is a major segment of society that
needs to be addressed too, when it comes to STDs and HIV, and that would be
the Malaysian professional, the same professional who has the money, time
and resources to explore sex in its various forms while believing he or she
is AIDS-proof.
We associate HIV/AIDS with drug users, and the poor and destitute.
To many HIV/AIDS at the end of the day is a poor man’s illness and something
that happens in Africa.
Nobody’s going to admit to the fact that HIV happens even to the successful
urban family. We’re way too smart for that.
Infidelity has been ingrained in our culture for hundreds of years. While
the world decries the injustice inflicted by polygamous Muslim husbands, the
fact is that wealthy Chinese have hidden wives as well, and Indians also
have their mistresses.
In Asian society, having Another Woman is carte blanche to a powerful world.
It marks a man’s manhood; in ancient China, the more educated and wealthy a
man was, the more debauched his sexual life should be.
Kuala Lumpur is a pretty wild town. Here, the wealthier you are, the higher
your stakes.
And when there are contracts to bid for, you’d do quite a lot of things to
get them. Entertainment or rather “administrative expenses” are a norm to a
corporation’s well-being.
Deluxe karaoke lounges, sushi girls, escorts, degree-holding mistresses,
rent boys, transvestites – whatever you want, darling, you can find pleasure
in this city.
Too far out in the sticks? There are the purported papaya farms in estates
for the enjoyment of estate owners. Or so I've been told. I can’t wait for
them to come up with cucumber farms. Can’t let the boys have all the fun,
can we, girls?
I have been to social gatherings where the wives actually talked about whose
husbands’ mistresses were better looking.
For all the bitching, there was a misguided sense of pride too, for it
proved to their circle that their husbands were more powerful than other
women’s.
I have gay male friends telling me about being harassed by straight and
successful married men with families, all wanting to keep them.
Surf the Net – it’s a playground for men and women.
You can’t blame the men either, for women too are playing just as hard.
And some are playing with sexual Russian roulette. Many refuse to test for
AIDS and STDs, out of fear, and, yes, shame.
In spite of the glossy facade, we, the educated ones are not ready to
announce to our health practitioners that we are sexually active.
A United Nations report dated May 24 noted that Women, Family and Community
Development Ministry secretary-general Datuk Faizah Mohd Tahir spoke on
Malaysia’s education, health and labour policies affecting women; and
touched on women’s political participation and legislation that protected
their rights.
On women’s health, she said the maternal mortality rate was low due to
improved antenatal and postnatal healthcare, as well as the effectiveness of
the Safe Motherhood Initiative, launched in 1987 as part of the global
effort to reduce maternal morbidity.
However, she said, women were indeed in the high-risk category for HIV
infection, with the number of infections rising from 7.9% in 2000 to 11.6%
last year. The report did not elaborate on the race of these mothers and
whether they were part of high-risk communities or married to partners with
substance abuse problems.
But think of it as frightening, for these mothers may give birth to children
with HIV and, if the numbers escalate, the new generation of young
Malaysians will impress upon the State a set of issues that it may not be
prepared for.
It’s easy for the conservatives – be they Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu
– to say that abstinence and saving one’s virginity will help keep the
disease away.
But I have met many young Malaysians bright-eyed and in love with Love on
whom the hell-and-brimstone talk will not have any effect. The more you say
no to these kids, the more they will do it. And when you’re told, “But,
kakak, cannot tahan … how?” what can you say?
I wrote about how sex is intrinsically linked with power and one’s
confidence a year ago.
In the essay, I discovered how infidelity and the abuse of sex are excused
by society because many feel that as long as their homes are in order, they
really don’t want to know about their partners’ other live(s). About how, in
spite of religion, as long as a man behaves responsibly towards his family,
all is wonderful.
You need to address the values of self-esteem. You must face the fact that
loneliness and celibacy can muck up your mind. You must also realise that
money and status can make you feel invincible. It is no longer a matter of
religion promising hell and heaven to the individual, it is also about
taking into account what 21st century Malaysian life is about.
Empower us with knowledge, not with taboos. Reason with logic. Emphasise
religion and our values; marry these with the cold hard facts of AIDS. What
worked before may not work now.
Am I advocating sexual permissiveness? On the contrary. I’m pretty
conservative! But I am also privy to the reality of sex in Malaysia: I know
too much of what “real” marriages and relationships are like.
The emotion you call love in this country is imagined; it just helps keep
the family together, whatever the stakes are. I’d like to think that
somewhere out there, there are husbands and wives who are faithful and
practise healthy intimate lives, but the truth is that such people are few.
Call me a cynic. I’m just being realistic.
Play hard if you must, but be smart about it and play safe too.
* Dina Zaman is a writer based in Kuala Lumpur. She was recently awarded the
DaimlerChrysler Red Ribbon Media Award. You can Google her published essay,
‘After Dark, My Love’.
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