The province of Alberta, here in Canada, has opted to make matters of sex, sexual orientation,* and religion OPTIONAL for their students. Parents can yank their kids out of school when they disagree with the premise at hand. [Story here.]

Religion? Okay. Fine. I’ll give you that. Make that optional. I not only understand having strong beliefs on faith, I respect it. I do not, however, understand refusing to listen to other views, not having faith in your children to be intelligent enough to hear more than one viewpoint, or shutting down education when it seems fit,  because I feel that teaches children that the teachers and education itself are not credible.

But on matters of sex? Sex education?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Seriously! Are you?

Because I’m of the understanding that I pay ridiculous taxes on EVERYTHING in my life, as well as absorb considerably more expensive cost of living, all so I can enjoy the privilege of being Canadian… and have access to a universal healthcare system.**

Whether it’s cancer caused by HPV during sexual contact, infection of AIDS or HIV, unwanted pregnancies, or even the murder of doctors because they administer abortions for those who’ve “accidentally” gotten pregnant — all these things can only improve with a more educated populace that understands how the causes are spread and what they can do to prevent it through safe practices.

Allowing people the choice of remaining ignorant when it’s MY tax dollars cleaning up after their messes? Not cool. Nuh-uh.

Worse, though, is that these things — sexually-transmitted diseases or unwanted preganacies — are big contributors to social ills of many kinds.

The cycle of poverty perpetuates through ignorance and young, inexperienced parents who are often undereducated before they give birth, and who struggle just to get by, often having to make compromises that other parents may never face. Our already overtaxed medical system bleeds with the stresses placed upon it through demand and limited resources. Unpreventable diseases work our system to death. We’re going to ignore the prevention of easily-preventable ones now?

Education is THERE to do the job many parents fail to do at home. It’s there to ensure children learn to read and how to socialize, that they have broad horizons and perhaps more opportunity than their inheritance might allow. It’s there to ensure children have access to all that society offers, and not just some hand-picked universe that keeps the “other guy’s beliefs” outside so as to preserve some naive homogeneous old-school delusion of what society ought to be.

Children should be forced to learn about sexual contact. They should be made to understand the consequences of their actions, and not in just a fire-and-brimstone rhetoric kind of way.

Let’s teach sexual education to all. It’s important. It’s not whimsy. STDs and unwanted pregnancies don’t just affect lives, they change our society. Teach kids that. Show them how it usually turns out when 15-year-olds give birth, or what AIDS looks like in late stages. Give them realistic consequences and show them the destruction that can be wrought from badly chosen encounters.

Let’s not romanticize sex, at all. In education, let’s tear it down and make it science, psychology, and sociology. Let’s be brutal. Let’s be real. Let’s take the delusion of “sex only happens when you’re in love” out of the equation and realize it also happens when you’re drunk — so maybe getting schooled might be wise.

Let’s not be optional.

Skirting these issues hasn’t been working out for us. STDs are on the rise across the board after having education shaped by moralistic do-gooders who think “abstinence” is any real kind of solution under a New World Order sought by George Bush — and don’t kid yourself, it’s not just in the US, but around the world via the US policy to not give funds to most organizations that refused to teach abstinence-only. Ignorant asses like that still believe in the rhythm method.

Educate the kids, but don’t skirt the issues. Don’t just dally with the information, shine a million-watt floodlight on it so there’s absolutely no misunderstanding: Casual sex is a dangerous game, and sex should never be considered something to do for kicks just ‘cos cable sucks and Pammy’s party got cancelled.

As adults, we choose and we live with our choices. But the presumption is that we know what we’re choosing. And we all know what a fallacy that is.

Most adults could use sex education. Kids are there, ripe for the knowledge.

And here we go, failing them again. Well done, Alberta. You’re continuing your legacy of horrific social governance. Let’s not even mention eugenics, shall we?

*It’s too big a topic to throw on top of this one, but sexual orientation — as long as kids are still committing suicide and hate crimes continue, opting out of discussion on sexual orientation should NOT be legal.

**Before someone wants to get their asshatty combative panties in a twist and turn this into a debate about universal medicare, don’t even fucking bother. I will OWN you. I both feel that the Canadian Medical System is partly responsible for my mother’s death while being grateful she died in this country. I fully recognize and understand all the flaws of this system, I feel it needs improvement, and I would take it HANDS DOWN, seven days a week and twice on Sundays, over the United States. Enough said.

I imagine that, if I ever really wanted to know what an “asshat” looked like, you’d be Exhibit A. I mean, what other excuse is there for that ridiculous hat?

And it’s funny, such a big hat for a man who has such an obviously small brain.

You’re now speculating that condoms are part of the problem with AIDS.

Right. Because rubber is so sieve-like.

You prick. Taking another promotional tour across Africa to again preach your message that using condoms is a sin, and now you’re blatantly LYING, you hypocritical fuck, and saying condoms make the AIDS situation worse?

The BBC reports this:

On his way to Cameroon, the Pope said HIV/Aids was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem”.

People die every single minute from AIDS in Africa. On a continent where education is so hard to come by, and society is rife with discrimination against those afflicted, and the governments have, for the most part, abdicated their responsibilities to care for and protect its citizens at large?

How DARE you? Motherfucker.

Love Steff.

*** *** ***

I’ll cut this short, because I think one of my best postings ever (of a political nature) was on this very subject. Without ado, I give you: Fuck the Pope.

[Note: These opinions of mine are strong. Aren't they always? But it should be said that I think it's with irony, too, as the majority of sex bloggers I've followed on Twitter tend to speak of condoms as necessity, not options. I believe the sex blogging community is indeed having responsible sex more often than not; this posting isn't about their personal practice, it's about the image they're portraying in their writing, which I would like to see more match their reality.]

I know the perception is that condoms aren’t sexy.

I know it fucks with the cadence in real life, stopping the action to fumble for protection, but putting on a condom CAN be hot. It CAN be incorporated into the play.

So why don’t smut writers include donning protection during casual sex scenes they write?

People are using less protection than they were 10 years ago. In fact, reports in the UK are that a staggering half of over-30 singles regularly have unsafe sex.

How fucking dumb are these people? Well, pretty dumb. If you’re having casual sex without a condom, I think you’re a fucking moron. If you’re not in a longterm absolutely safe monogamous relationship and you’re not using condoms, guess what? Yup, moron.

STDs have been caught by an amazing 1 out of 4 current teenage girls. I don’t even want to think about my generation. The stupidity, it seems, is endemic.

Sex bloggers want to carry this “rah-rah, we’re sex-positive!” mantra, yet I notice a conspicuous absence of proactive sexual protection happening in their stories. Unsafe sex, people, is NOT sex positive.

There is a growing apathy about the dangers of AIDS, HIV, and other STDs out there. The Bush administration made sure of that. We’re still at an infancy in science and medicine. We don’t really know the far-reaching implications of things like repeat yeast infections or vaginismus. You have to wonder, though, what medicine might suspect if American health carriers will often reject women for coverage if they’ve had multiple innocuous little yeast infections, since some suggest it leads to higher instances of cancer.

We take too many risks as a society. So many problems today are so easily fixed after the fact and for so cheaply that we fail to take the precautions we would be well-advised to take. Look at the economic recession, for instance. Thinking about consequence isn’t exactly today’s society’s strong suit, now, is it?

Casual sex is a way of life for many, and that’s just fine, we likes the sex. But it needs to be safe. Not only for you and your would-be partner, but for all those who’ll come after the fact. You owe it to society to use a rubber.

Sex bloggers are on the cusp of what I see as being a new kind of sexual revolution. We’re changing, opening, and lightening up, en masse. As a society it seems as if we all suddenly woke up and realized that getting laid’s kinda a fun thing to do, and often no one even loses an eye. Besides, it’s a recession: Sex is cheap! As long as you skip the dinner-and-a-movie thing and stay home with a pirated DVD and a box of Kraft macaroni, you can get your shag on for less than $10 for two. No date in the world can match that financial payoff.

Sex bloggers make sex hotter, make it more ubiquitous and attainable. Bloggeurs de smut come in all shapes, sizes, incomes, styles, and genres, and they represent us. They’re real. But if they/we’re not talking about the supposedly unsexy things like condoms in a way that sensualizes them, then I feel they/we’re shirking some of the responsibility I think they/we need to uphold.

We, in the literate and informed public, want to shame the mainstream media for failing to be thorough in their reporting, for often failing to take the proverbial “greater good” into account when creating stories for our consumption. Yet sex bloggers do the same, crafting stories of convenient appeal without including the not-so-exciting necessary behind-the-scenes preparations leading up to the end results we see so gloriously splayed for all to enjoy. It’s deceptively neat and tidy.

Hollywood has failed to uphold its social responsibilities in showing condom use in motion pictures and television. My hope is that sex bloggers can be better, more socially responsible, and more realistic than Hollywood has proven it can be.

If some 17-year-old happens upon some smutty story and reads that a condom was used, and they think about it before they get to shagging that next or first time, then isn’t that something that we sex bloggers as a community should be pursuing?

Can’t we take the preaching out of condom use and bring it back to being a bit sexy? I know we’ve all had those times when getting the condom on was actually half the fun. Isn’t it time we make that more known?

I’ve been fascinated by the history of the Congo for some time now, thanks to the brilliance of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghosts and the history of the first real genocide, the slaying of ten million Congo Africans during the rise of the rubber trade and height of African colonialism at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century.

10 million Africans slaughtered for rubber. Never mind the millions stolen and forced into the slave trade from other regions, or those slaughtered when colonial interests take over.

I’m fascinated by genocides. I’m more fascinated by the horrors of Africa today, though. The legacy of that death and brutality.

It’s sadly funny, the justifications of whites and ‘manifest destiny’, how they felt Africans were “savages” who required a civilizing hand.

Now, Africa has descended into chaos — Somali pirates, Darfur’s genocide, South Africa’s rape crisis, and list goes on and on — and still you hear the pundits saying how Africa’s just a different kind of place. They’re uncivilized and brutal. It’s the African Way, they’ll say, in quiet, hushed voices that don’t get a lot of airplay.

It’s kind of like Bush saying the terrorists were in Iraq, so the war went there. And now, of course, terrorists are in Iraq. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, Africa has become a savage place.

We talk so much about head-shrinking (the psychology kind) here in the west, how our little childhood traumas stay with us for a lifetime.

But how about the systemic slaughter of millions of your countrymen for a little thing called rubber? How about the legacy of foreign invaders who put the heads of your people on stakes along the river to remind you to collect as much rubber sap as you can? After all, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was a virtually-true account of legendary rubber trade captains, like Captain Leon Rom of the Force Publique, a Belgian military force in the Congo.

How long does THAT stay with a country? How long does THAT influence the society? How do you, as a people, get past knowing you were so devalued that a bucket of rubber was worth more than a life?

So… I think about these things sometimes, the societal ramifications of the ills of the past. It’s the historian in me. And no place in the world has greater, more horrific, or even more recent ills and horrors than that of Africa.

And I find it interesting now, that the BBC has run a story this morning stating that it’s the early 1900s, in Leopoldville, in the Congo, that now appears to be the birthplace of AIDS, when AIDS made the jump from primates to humans.

The rubber trade was at the height between 1885 and 1920, the very same years (1889-1924) they say AIDS made the jump. In the Congo. Where millions of Africans were brutalized, murdered, and forced into hard, brutal labour that often involved getting hurt or maimed as they tried to extract rubber for a growing rubber trade. (The main cause of the desperation for rubber? The need for bicycle and car tires as the transportation evolution began, oddly.)

Had these Congo Africans not been forced into this labour, would the virus have jumped from apes to humans? Had so much blood not been shed, and people not injured, in the jungles in those years, would AIDS have made the jump? Had the brutality of Western civilizations not been forced upon these people, would we even know of AIDS today?

Of course, the article focuses primarily on the growth of cities and how living in close proximity to one another would have been the main reason for its spread. But Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, was created as the hub of the rubber trade. It was Ground Zero for the genocide and slaughter of 10 million Africans.

It just makes one wonder, I guess, if we’re really aware of just how evil some of the evil we do really is. And just how far-reaching the consequences of our actions can be.

I’m not saying AIDS is entirely the fault of Belgian imperialists. I’m just saying we need to take this into consideration. We need to think about just how much that may have played a role. We need to accept that there could be more to this story than we’d like to assume.

But it breaks my heart a little to think this disease that threatens the entire continent of Africa, thus the world, may be yet another consequence of imperialism. And it bothers me that our legacy of imperialism remains that dirty little secret no one really wants to talk about.

The images, albeit creepy and disturbing, are some very effective AIDS-awareness posters from France. I thought they illustrated this posting well.

A reader named Helen left a great comment today on a posting I think everyone should read, personally, called Getting Laid, Getting Tested, Getting AIDS,* that I wrote two years ago.

(Proof that I see every single comment I get, so start commenting more, peeples!)

Helen wrote:

What really irritates me is that guys still ask for [sex] ‘without a condom’. As soon as I hear that now, it’s such a big turn-off, as I know they’ve done that before, and probably don’t give it the concern I do. Even if we use condoms, yes there’s still a risk of herpes, warts, there’s still contact. And I end up thinking about that too much. Why do they ask?

Of course, the worst is the guys I know who seem to lose it as soon as the condom is on. You’re all turned on, gasping for it, and it’s gone. It’s like being held to ransom. He’s feeling bad, you want sex, it’s all too easy to give in and make it alright. Do you have any tips for this? Because it drives me crazy. I know it sounds weird, but can’t they try to masturbate with them, or somehow try to associate them with sex? I know it doesn’t feel as good, but there’s clearly a mental element too that they could work on.

I just wish they found the prospect of HIV as much of a turn-off as me.

And condoms can break, so even then you’re not guaranteed protection, which is why I “sleep around” very, very objectively, even with condoms. 99% ain’t 100%.

I had a sexual “professional” in the escort biz email me once to say she’d used a condom EVERY SINGLE TIME she had ever had sex, and somehow wound up pregnant. This development left her absolutely terrified to continue in her profession.

As for Helen’s example, I’ve had that happen, that when a guy puts a condom on, he suddenly deflates. He tried to use the “Yeah, well, I’ve been in a relationship for the last 11 years, so I just can’t get used to it” bullshit excuse.

And that’s MY problem, how? “Wear the fucking condom, or we don’t fuck. You can’t wear it? Your loss. I have vibrators. I’m better off without fucking someone like you, anyhow, because now I can’t trust you,” was my response to him, and the night came to a very premature close.

My advice, Helen? Stay the course. If men want to argue against wearing condoms, then fine, let them. But don’t give in. Never, ever give in. It takes ONCE. Just once. See my addendum at the end, because my friend who knows the night he was infected, he’s dying as a result. From once, just once.

You’re absolutely right — the ones who ask for bareback ARE the ones who’ve done it with others. They’re the ones to be concerned about. Just because they’re charming and got that far with you doesn’t mean they’re safe. It’s the excessively charming guys that worry me more, to be frank.

I have a male friend who just recently decided a couple months of seeing this chick meant it was a nice, committed relationship, and he felt he could trust her. They had unprotected sex, and the next day, literally, he happened to see a text message on her cellphone in which a guy texted her “BTW I think I came in you the other night. Too late for a morning-after pill?”

My friend told me he ran to the washroom and vomitted, since he’s never been a promiscuous guy and only recently got out of his 12-year marriage, and has been just gutted with worry the last month.

The day BEFORE he told me that, I’d been to my doctor and was talking about getting tested again, for my bi-annual test, whether I’m sexually active or not. Doc told me rather darkly that he’d just finished testifying in a court case in which a FEMALE patient of his KNOWINGLY infected a male patient of his with HIV.

We want to believe everyone’s as ethical as we are. We want to believe they’re not fucking with skanky people who use no safe practices. But that’s just naivety at its finest.

There are untrustworthy people out there. There are mean people out there. There are people with no scruples nor standards. There are destructive people out there.

Vigilance is the only thing we have to protect ourselves with, aside from condoms, and neither are 100%.

God, since the late ’80s we’ve heard the slogan “No glove, no love” and you’d think people would get it by now. Particularly these men who want to keep asking for bareback sex.

You think condomless sex doesn’t feel better for women, too? Of COURSE it feels better. I LOVE BAREBACK SEX. Love, love, LOVE. I just never have it. Why? Because it’s so fucking 1970, man. Jesus.

Women have more at risk than our random male shags might. We could get pregnant — which often is a greater motivation than protecting oneself against AIDS and other STDs, and is stupid, but there you have it. If that’s what it takes for women — who are the fastest-growing demographic for new AIDS & HIV infections — to start forcing partners to wear condoms religiously, then I’ll take it.

Guys, if you’re one of these selfish pricks who has a fucking problem wearing a condom, THEN GET OVER IT. Whiners.

It’s a MENTAL problem and YOU need to deal with it, not US. If it means jacking off with condoms as practice, then do that. I don’t know what you but-I-can’t-wear-a-condom, you-can-trust-me men need to do, but you got to fucking figure it out. We’re your lovers, not your mothers, so figure your shit out without burdening us with the hassle.

And to all the men who are religious about wearing condoms: We love you men for making this easier for us. You have no idea the bullshit every single woman has dealt with over the years from those ignorant, dumb-ass men who are selfishly thinking only of getting off, and not taking our well-being (or theirs) into consideration.

AIDS isn’t over. In fact, the picture is even less rosy than it was just weeks ago. Why? The CDC in America has released a study in which they report that they think their estimates for new annual AIDS/HIV infections are a whopping 40% TOO LOW. Instead of 40,000 new cases a year, it’s 56,000, and growing.

In fact, Ronald Johnson, the AIDS Action Deputy Director, says, “This is not just another set of statistics. There are people behind these numbers. People are becoming infected with a disease that is preventable. We know how to prevent HIV, but we have been fighting this epidemic with one hand tied behind our back, reflecting a disturbing dismissal of HIV-prevention as a public health priority. The new, higher estimate is yet one more wake-up call to our national leaders that they need to do more, starting with developing and implementing a real national AIDS strategy.”

I’m gonna guess that strategy is that of educating ignorant people about wearing condoms.

Personally, I think that, even if you’re in a longterm committed relationship, and you even THINK your partner is cheating on you, you should demand condoms be used. Ain’t a conversation I’d be keen to initiate, but when your life’s literally at stake and trust isn’t what it used to be, that’s a conversation that needs having.

What can I say? The lack of sexual responsibility used by some segments of society leave me absolutely paranoid about who it is I should or should not sleep with, and as much as I trust my instinct… I’m no fool.

Neither should any of you be. Why chance it?

*NB: The friend I’ve mentioned that contracted AIDS from a night he could pinpoint is not doing as well as he was in the posting I originally mentioned. He’s now made a will, has become incredibly depressed, has isolated himself, and his health is spiralling downwards, filling fear in us all, because we think he doesn’t want to fight. While life can be sustained longer than ever with the drug cocktails now prescribed for AIDS, the quality of life is often difficult.

As I wrote in that original posting, a little too presciently for my comfort, “The virus is not the same in everyone. It is a living, breathing thing, and like all evolutionary beings, it can – and will – adapt to new and different environments. Some people will be to HIV like a match is to a stick of dynamite. You really think you’re invulnerable? Go ahead. Roll that dice. But every risk you take, you subject another to, and, that, you have no right to do.”

Earlier this year, studies showed that an average of one out of every four (26%) of teenage girls are now carrying an STD in the great USA. Never mind the teen pregnancies. These are sexually transmitted diseases, people.

The news is alarming now, but imagine five, ten years from now when the fallout of the STDs exchanged between today’s youths are really felt and known.

It’s been a few months now since the story came out. I’ve been quietly waiting around for the shitstorm to unleash, for when parents start screaming in outrage that their baby girls having a 25% likelihood of carrying an STD, and soon… But the shitstorm never came. The anger never rose.

I don’t understand. I can’t fathom how American parents can calmly abide by this bullshit of teaching abstinence only in schools, or how news like this doesn’t make parents horrified.

I understand that the parents who are most outraged are instead taking it upon themselves to school their own kids, but in a society where parental attention seems a luxury rather than commonplace, we absolutely cannot assume parents will take the responsibility they ought to, because this isn’t just a question of morals. This is a question of public health!

I mean, the number one STD they’re finding right now in teen girls is the HPV virus, which can cause cervical cancer. The number two? It’s the leading cause of infertility.

Probably the most depressing statistic is: it’s more than half of black teenage girls who are carrying an STD, versus about 20% for whites and Hispanics.

You want to know something surprising? I actually support abstinence-only education, but only within a framework that allows for the possibility of being human and shagging when weakness rolls in, you know? Absolutely must teach about condoms. Absolutely!

When you’re talking about teens who, as we’ve known for almost five years or more now, consider oral sex to actually NOT be sex, and therefore give head like it’s a party-favour because “it’s not sex” and therefore there are no STDs (WRONG, kids), then the time is fucking nigh to get some edumacatin’ on the go. And fast!

But here we are, more than three years after a report that more than half of 15-19 year old teens are engaging in oral sex, and regularly, and yet what has really been done?

Nothing. NOTHING. It’s the status quo. Worse yet, it doesn’t get discussed — not with passion, not with angst, not with anything.

But these people don’t fucking get it. STDs are a big deal. It’s not just yeast infections or genital warts. It’s AIDS, viruses that cause cancer, syphillis, and more. Diseases that can lie dormant, that can spread easily, and diseases that can kill.

I mean, we’re talking about AIDS, something the Red Cross wants to see declared a “disaster” in some regions of the world, something that has literally almost wiped out an entire generation of Africans. But even worse is, AIDS is on the rise in North America, and most alarmingly: amongst women!

You know how epidemics start to become epidemics? By becoming clusters first. All you need is one kid to start spreading HIV in smalltown America, a cluster forms, a couple kids take off to different universities, start having unprotected sex, and boom, 10 years down the line we’re in a whole new scary ballgame against a disease capable of laying waste to entire generations. Hot zones, as they’re termed in the viral world, just need the right conditions and the right players. You can’t tell me America today isn’t producing the both the conditions and the players.

We have an entire generation of teens engaging in unsafe sex because no one wants them to learn about condoms. (Hmm, sounds like Africa, no?) If a school district teaches about condoms, then they often don’t get the abstinence funding that makes such a difference in the cash-strapped school budgets of today.

But if it’s so reprehensible to see such lack of education in Africa, where poverty is the norm, corruption often rules the day, and tribal traditions often still linger, then how fucking disgusting is it that the one of the richest, most powerful, best educated, most modern countries in the world fails to educate their own young in the Information Age?

COME ON! Where’s the outcry? Where’s the concern about what future might come tagging along with these STDs being exchanged so freely amongst teens? Where’s the panic that one of these kids is going to luck into AIDS or HIV and is going to start a wildfire spread of the deadliest epidemic known in the world today?

It’s nowhere I can fucking see. Have McCain or Obama talked about these issues? Not that I’ve heard.

It’s a different time out there. Even when I was in my teens, oral sex was getting to be a bit different. We were just starting to have oral sex before sex, but it was still a big deal. Most of us understood diseases spread that way, too. Now, though, ignorance is bliss, but it’s also an epidemic in the offing.

I may sound like an alarmist now, but I’d rather be prematurely alarmed than right, but methinks I’m cruising towards being both. And that’d be a real fucking shame.

It’s a mad, mad world, baby. A mad, mad world.

A couple articles referenced for this posting: MSNBC, USAToday. The image is from MSNBC as well.