Jamaica is a country of double standards and mixed messages. We are offended by 'daggerin' and the exposure of our children to lewd lyrics in songs, and we want to ban these songs from the airwaves; but we applaud little children when they put on lipstick and 'wine up' themselves. We applaud precocious behaviour.
Eighty per cent of Jamaicans are born out of wedlock; the vast majority of us have sex outside of marriage. We are rabidly against homosexuality, ostensibly because the Bible condemns it, and we have banned homosexuality in Jamaica by making it a crime punishable by law. But the Bible equally condemns fornication; I don't hear any calls for banning fornication, and making it a crime punishable by law.
We require female high school students who get pregnant to leave school, even in their CXC year, because they might be a bad influence on their peers, and send the wrong message; and we have our standards. But it is quite all right for pregnant, unmarried teachers to remain in the classroom right until the last possible moment. Clearly, we don't expect teachers to be an influence on their students.
The male students who get the girls pregnant: they remain in school to take their exams, and to glory in their manhood, and to boast about their sexual exploits to their peers. Nobody is worried about any bad influence they may have on their peers. Right!
In some countries that are considered 'civilised', politicians and public officials (usually men) exposed as being sexually involved outside of marriage are said to be caught up in a 'sex scandal' and are required to resign. In Jamaica, politicians and public officials (usually men) similarly exposed are lionised for their prowess, and their reputations might even be enhanced. Is there any such thing as a 'sex scandal' in Jamaica? Maybe, if someone is found not to be having sex - being celibate!
Highly sexualised society
As I said last week, Jamaica is a highly sexualised society, and lewd lyrics, and 'daggerin', and sex on school buses, and 'no panty days', and fathers offering their daughters to their politicians for their pleasure, and the dons having their way with the girls in their garrisons, are all part of the syndrome. From time to time, there will be righteous indignation, but you can bet that when the hullabaloo dies down it will be business as usual.
What we lack is a comprehensive National Sustainable Sex Policy. (We have a National Sustainable Mining Policy, and a National Sustainable Tourism Policy; we definitely lack a Sustainable Sex Policy, don't you agree?) For there are two different extremes in which such a sustainable sex policy could go.
On the one hand, we could highlight the beauty of sexual intercourse as a sign of mutual love between two persons who are committed to each other; we could hold up self-control and abstinence (until the right time) as the appropriate value system, rewarding fidelity and regarding promiscuity as unbecoming behaviour. This would mean requiring persons who fail in this area to suffer social demerits; for example, they might have to disqualify themselves from holding certain positions of influence over children; they might have to resign in disgrace if caught with their pants down.
Benefits of a national sex policy
The benefits of this national policy would be strong and stable family life, a reduction in STDs, including HIV-AIDS, a reduction in teenage pregnancy, a reduction in unwanted pregnancies, and improvement in educational performance, an improvement in discipline, and reduction in crime, an increase in GDP, and so on.
Or national sex policy could go in the opposite direction. We could encourage our young people to have sex by placing sexy advertisements on television and cable, allow DVDs showing explicit sexual intercourse to be sold on the street and shown on the media, encourage popular music to big-up things sexual, give young people condoms and oral contraceptives in school, and offer the girls abortions if they are careless and get pregnant; we could reward hypersexuality with incentives, such as fame and status and prestige.
The benefits of this national policy would be, well, we would be proving that we are a free society. This latter seems to be the policy direction in which we are going, for most of this is in place already.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.