A Second Sexual Revolution

A second sexual revolution?! Geez wasn’t one enough? Well, no. Certainly, thanks to Kinsey and other pioneering scientists we learned women can orgasm, several times in fact in one setting. We learned there is a spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity. We learned how ridiculous it was to expect seven billion people to fit into one sexual mould with rigid gender roles. That would be just as unnatural and creepy as the entire world population all having the exact same creative talents or personalities. Most importantly, we began to refine and redefine what was morally acceptable or dysfunctional based on more informed, universal and humane benchmarks instead of asking a religious authority if it made God mad enough to bun we ass in hell.

We lost faith in that old method because it became apparent to many of us that it was a ruse. When it comes to dictating religious standards about sexuality, there is always leniency for the rich and powerful and Draconian measures for the poor and unrepresented. I can understand if you do not see the rat, but even the most avid believer in any organized religion must smell it by now.

So we began asking more important questions: Was the aspect of human sexuality in question harmful to the individual? Was it harmful to society, in particular children? Did it threaten the fundamental human rights (life, liberty, security, property) of anyone else? Suddenly a greater amount of sexual freedom became permissible. Some would argue it was a premature opening of Pandora’s Box. Others would argue it was a jolt back to reality, honesty and natural authenticity. For in their view the world that existed before the Sexual Revolution was unnatural, overly-controlled and detrimental to authentic happiness for many people who could not fit into the narrow gender and sexuality molds.

Fashion sensation Andrej Prejic is in his early twenties…yes I said HIS. He has not had any surgery. This is all him and he is considered one of the most beautiful examples of natural androgyny. He models both male and female clothes. We have thanks to more enlightened perimeters embraced the existence of gender diversity in our natural world. It hurts nobody, poses no threat to society, robs no one of their fundamental human rights.

Many of those who still feel inadequate, wronged, disempowered, scared, uncertain, confounded by human sexuality often hold it and the Revolution in contempt. Some accuse it of untethering us from the beliefs that confined and controlled our inherently fallen, evil-prone sexuality. For them, the training wheels or life-jacket is more important than learning how to master our balance, momentum and steering of our sexual lives. And gain the ability to swim, despite the weight of our animal inclinations and the turbulent sexual waters. They point to the fact that when the Sexual Revolution took off the training wheels and threw us in the deep end, there were casualties. They are right. Marriages ended. More children grew up without any comforting wool pulled over their eyes. Men saw an increase in sexual rejection by women, even by many who were supposed to be grateful for any attention at all. Insecurities and uncertainties increased as did expectations of porn-star-esque bedroom gymnastics. Herpes, HIV, new strains of the clap and chlamydia came out to play!

But it would be also be dishonest to pretend that the Sexual Revolution did not also free and save lives by forcing society to deal with issues like incest, sexual abuse, sexism, violence against women and homophobia.

Gary Ross, Director and Producer of the critically acclaimed movie Pleasantville had this to say about the film, "This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression...That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop". In the movie, those who became free of personal repression in the 1950s utopian, black and white television world started to manifest color and certainty gave way to uncertainty but also freedom. What we had before the Sexual Revolution was not the utopia that many social conservatives make it out to be, even if it was less complicated and had more reassurances built into it…like riding with training wheels.

The Sexual Revolution was not perfect and worst of all, when it was not even half-way finished it was co-opted by mercenaries in the corporate world. To put it crudely: We were taught how to fuck better, feel better about fucking, associate more products with fucking, watch people fucking and sing catchy songs about fucking while doing dances that made us want to fuck some more. But we were not sufficiently taught how not to fuck up ourselves, not to fuck up those we love and not to fuck up the planet. It was style without substance. A hard cock without a soul or mind behind it. It was knowledge without power and freedom without responsibility and our priorities became well….fucked.

The darlings of corporate oligarchy, the pharmaceutical companies, tackled erectile dysfunction instead of breast and cervical cancers. Hollywood and the fashion and cosmetics industry promoted unnatural standards of beauty and exploitation of girls and boys as sex-objects as soon as their endochrine system whispered, “puberty” and sometimes even earlier *ick*.

After the Jean Bennet-Ramsey tragedy, what’s to say Toddlers & Tiaras is not the equivalent of Cinemax after eleven…for pedophiles.

Religion continued to exploit our fear, guilt and shame with ex-gay programmes, advocacy against women’s choice; opposition of equal rights for sexual minorities and promotion of Sharia Law. As usual, while there was more severe punitive action against the poor while loopholes were made available for the rich and powerful. It has become so glaring now, we have people like Newt Ginrich speaking about the "sanctity of marriage" while on his third. Meanwhile the plebs beat up their gay teenagers, continue to support a church that allows priests to rape our children, give money to pastors on the down-low and excuse imams advocating for terrorism, domestic abuse of and subjugation of women.

Isn’t the goal of any revolution to bring a greater sense of power to the powerless? Well the Sexual Revolution left us with all kinds of powerlessness the most glaring being: The billions of men who are floundering, grasping, struggling to hold on to self-esteem, sense of purpose and power that for far too long could only be enjoyed at the expense of other people and the planet.

The Revolution is also not complete because we still have billions of women still carrying the yoke for their societies, while being denied the fullest benefits of those societies. The billions of women who can enjoy the fullest benefits of society, but still carry the scars of guilt, ignorance, shame, disempowerment and so sabotage themselves in ways that can still be used to hinder their progress.

 

The Revolution is yet to reconcile those who wrongly thought sexual freedom and spirituality were incompatible and sacrificed their spirituality for hedonism and are now in their later years hollow and handicapped to address issues pertaining to forgiveness, inner-peace, self-love, purpose, trust, unconditional love and social justice.

The LGBT community who are still suffering under prevailing archaic laws in my Caribbean territory with no end in sight thanks to the cowardice of our elected leaders, apathy of influential gays and lesbians, ignorance of the populace and hypocrisy of the religious community. Our planet which is struggling to keep up with our ridiculous rate of procreation.

Snap your fingers. Seriously, do it. Ten thousand babies were just born. Snap your fingers again, another ten thousand. Two thirds of those babies will be born into poverty, unjust societies and polluted environments. One out three of the girls born will be sexually abused. One out ten sold into slavery. Less than half were born to parents who want them, will do what it takes to love, care and provide for them, let alone raise them with selflessness and all the best knowledge we have on childrearing. Yet, snap your fingers and ten thousand more have been born. They have been born into a world with dwindling resources and harder choices than their parents will ever have to make. No higher mammal on the planet reproduces completely out of sync with its societal needs and natural environment like we do. We are clearly out of balance, misdirected and not fully evolved in this area of our life.

So yes, music videos are raunchier. Women can now be cougars instead of just middle-aged. A Surgeon General actually said that masturbation is good. Pre-marital sex is a prerequisite of finding a committed partner, saving a lot more couples sexual incompatibility catastrophes after a binding contract has been signed in front of family and friends. You do not feel “tarnished” if you have had more than one sexual partner or a child out of wedlock. You can buy birth control without shame in more countries. Women can divorce cheating husbands and get alimony. Underage arranged marriages and female genital mutilation is frowned upon. Women can equally require men to man-scape and manicure, primp and preen to appeal to their discriminating tastes. Gays and lesbians can get married in almost all first world nations. Bravo! I mean it, Bravo!

But in my humble opinion, the ultimate goal of the Sexual Revolution should be (1) Awareness of how to use this sexual knowledge and sexual freedom to achieve a higher state of existence in harmony with our environment and fellowman. (2) Supporting, researching and innovating ways of making the aforementioned a reality.

After all, if we are still so powerless and miserable after our sexual revolution in the West, how do we convince nations across the Atltantic that are in dire need of similar revolution that it is a good thing? That they should allow their women equality and not chop off their clitorises and marry them off to an old man for twelve sheep and a donkey when they are still too young to be fully empowered in their own mind. How can we defend the revolution when religious leaders can still point to unhealed scrapes and sprains, among those who discarded their training wheels and life vests and tried to peddle and swim using their own abilities? We have a long way to go yet. There is still fight in me. What about you?

Fight Season

It would be easy to blame my work for this long absence from the Bloggershere but that would not be entirely honest. It's not that I wasn't a bit brain-fried and running on caffeine and adreneline. I was. The reason I was however, is what was most important. Constantly going meant not having time to stop and check myself in all the areas that need checking.

But as of now, I am off the coffee/insomnia/sleeping pill spin cycle! Weaning myself off caffeine was a roller coaster of fun for all! Headaches, low energy, irritability, constipation ah yes, good times. I do not recommend it for anyone who does not have an understanding significant other and boss. As the dizziness of the spin cycle subsided, a new state of clarity emboldened me to enter into a Fight Championship.

It’s an annual event at a Fight Club reserved for those of us who dare to confront our shit and once again, more roller-coaster fun for the whole family. First Match: You vs. the world. You win that one essentially by shutting out the world and taking some to focus on yourself while trusting that "the world" will take care of itself and fall into place when you get your shit in order. Do that and you advance to the... Second Match: You vs. the people you love/ed most in the world. That one always ends in a comforting stalemate of unconditional love, if you lucky and have the right people in your life. They are the kind who only provoke you because they unintentionally smoothng away your rough edges and the friction does burn sometimes. Get through that and then it's the grand finale! Championship Fight: You vs. Yourself. What you get out of this bout. Well, if you win, a whole lot of forgiving, asking for forgiveness, remembering to love yourself and love others and let others love you. I real bloodied and bruise up yet somehow it was worth it. I can write without feeling like I bullshitting.

2012 Survival Kit- Face Your Fears This Year

I won’t mince words.

You will not survive the times ahead if you are still enslaved to fear. Fear is the prison warden of the old, skewed-patriarchal, consumerist system. Fear keeps your mouth shut in the face of blatant injustice and corruption. Fear keeps you showing up to a job that makes you sick on every level. Fear cracks a whip of insecurity over your back so you continue keeping up with the Jonses. Fear keeps you in your ethnic ghetto. Fear traps you in the closet, invisible and insignificant making it easier for others to defame and dehumanize who and what you are.

Ready to be free? Good. Let’s get right into it with some common fears.

Fear Of The Unknown

This is the most primal fear. In fact, Fear Of Death is actually a heart-stopping hybrid of Fear Of The Unknown and Fear of Loss/Change. Can you imagine the first time our ancestors saw the vast ocean? Can you imagine how long it took them to wade into it let alone try to cross it? It is actually not a “fear” at all but a feeling of uncertainty. It is pure trepidation.

When you have no way of knowing what might be coming around the corner, the primal passive reaction is the Fight or Flight Response.

The goal of the lifelong truth-seeker, self-mastery pursuer is to ensure that whether their reaction is Passive or Active it is not Unconscious but Conscious.

Keep this in mind as we explore the other fears. Your goal is responding out of Enlightened Conscious Choice instead of Primal Unconscious Instinct, even when staring down an eviction notice, a parent’s finger pointing out the door, the barrel of a gun, a worthy romantic rival, a wave of riot police, a hostile audience or the crushing metal of a tank.

Choice obliterates Fear because it guides your reaction (Passive or Active) in such a way that you can achieve a brief moment of contemplation (Zen/Surrender/Focus) in order to acquire the knowledge to turn that adrenaline rush of fear into positive fuel to act in your best interests and/or that of others.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 1
A woman who holds decision making position wakes up to the fact that she is working for a corporation that uses unfair trade, child labor and is doing wrong to the planet, cheating its customers and also making her miserable. It is horrible! But she is afraid that if she quits, she faces an uncertain future.

She can respond either this way...

or this way

As you can see, the latter is preferable. It offers many choices and options to fully exploit the abundance of the Universe. Also there is no longer any separate Passive and Active but a hybrid of the two. When you face Fear like a spiritual warrior you learn: how, when, where to strategically give way or push through, block or punch.


Related To Fear Of The Unknown: Fear of Death, Fear of Change, Fear Of Moving, Fear of Growing Up, Fear of Losing Identity/Status, Fear of Taking On Leadership.


Fear Of Abandonment

This is another primal fear. Our ancestors saw what happened to the wailing baby buffalo abandoned by its mother. We knew if we were suddenly alone, in the wild, we were on the menu ourselves. We are social animals. Community is very important to us and exclusion from the community was preparation for death. It was what we did to former alpha males who were past their prime. They were relegated to the fringes to be picked off by nature.

Wanting to belong and be at the very centre of the community is still a desperate, primal need even though we are no longer at the mercy of the wild and healthy solitary survival is quite possible, even preferable in some cases. Rejection by family, peers, community is so strong a motivating force, it kept people silent during history's most atrocious events. Even today, it makes the teenager within her clique who sees bullying happen, stay silent, secretly hating her lack of courage.

The fear of being rejected by family, peers, community is so strong, it can make people do things on a social level what they know is wrong on an individual level.

I make it a habit of treating with intense suspicion ANY organization that has a problem with individualism and tries to force community contact and their members constantly try to insert themselves into your life, particularly when they try to make you afraid of everyone and everything outside their group. I see it as an attempt to groom people away from self-sufficiency, self-awareness, self-examination and ultimately self-actualization. Any system or organization can become an opiate when this happens.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 2
A young man realizes he is gay. Despite how he was raised to carry on in his father’s footsteps, be stereotypically macho and get married to a nice woman; despite the culture which focuses on heterosexual love and focuses on homosexuals in a negative or contentious light; despite the religious indoctrination against being gay, he cannot help but be attracted to other men instead of women. He is deathly afraid of losing everyone he ever loved and being a pariah in his community.

He can respond to his fear in either this way...

or this way...

It is incredible how people unthinkingly allow themselves to be herded into all the belief systems and arrangements that have massively failed the vast majority of humankind simply because it is what is “expected” of them. We allow systems to continue at levels beyond what it takes to have products recalled and marketing plans tossed out. We will never sync human development with planetary preservation if we continue to operate this way.

There are people who want us to stay in certain herds and camps because it benefits them, not us.

Developing nations cannot simply unquestioningly adopt the economic and diplomatic systems imposed on them. The Caribbean region in general and Trinidad and Tobago in particular will not survive climate change, food shortages and natural resource depletion if we continue to crave belonging to the North American, consumerist herd.

Fortunately for us, in Trinidad and Tobago, we have more than a few with revolutionary ideas. We just need to bring economic and political clout into the new spaces they create so that real change can happen. We have a significant advantage in this respect over other Caribbean islands where the people have been herded so well into their respective camps based on color, family name and social status and for the most part, remain in their camps out of fear of ridicule and diligently police their fellowmen who step out of the pigeon hole. It is sad because in today’s world a sense of community is just a click away. All the more reason why there is no excuse to remain among people who are not nurturing your soul and/or require you to hide your unique splendor under a basket.

My native island of Trinidad and Tobago has one of the highest numbers of awesome, freaks, free-thinkers, creative mavericks and revolutionaries per capita. If I were to list them all, it would take pages upon pages. But here are just a handful. Clockwise from left: Winston Bailey “The Mighty Shadow", a genius in the art-form of calypso, V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel Laureate, Dwight Yorke, the Fred Astaire of English football, Kevin Baldeosingh, our most outspoken atheist newspaper columnist, Anya Ayoung Chee, Project Runway Winner 2011, Godfrey Sealy our first ever openly gay AIDS activist and theatre actor/director/producer, Yao Ramesar, the most prolific Caribbean filmmaker, Rachel Price, fearless, straight-talking comedienne, Rikki Jai, chutney-soca pioneer and innovator, Keith Smith, beloved, poignant, social and cultural commentator, Meiling, genius fashion designer, 3Canal, Rapso prophets and revolutionaries, Gillian Lucky, fearless, un-closeted legal eagle and former Parliamentarian, Darren Cheewah, tattoo shaman and mas re-inventor, Denise Plummer, the boss-lady of calypso, Peter Minshall, the high priest of high mas (Carnival Masquerade).

I applaud all the people who have taken a good look at their inner-being, compared it to what is being offered within their current camp and made a conscious choice to step outside their camp in search of the important missing aspects, essential to their soul development, even if it means being an outcast temporarily or permanently.

The truth is, right now we need outcasts, free-thinkers, fearless creators, explorers, experimenters. We need freaks! How else are we going to come up with alternatives for unbridled, subsidized capitalism based on unfair-trade, irresponsible consumerism, exploitative labor and planetary destruction? How else are we going to come up with alternatives to oppressive fundamentalist religions? How else are we going to come up with alternatives for the monogamous nuclear family as the only respectable means to enjoy shared property, legal protection, sexual fulfillment and family-life? How else are we going to address in inadequacies of our educational system, judicial system and class inequality?

Related To Fear Of Abandonment: Fear of Being Embarrassed, Fear of Being Unpopular, Fear Of Being Invisible, Fear Of Being Wrong.

Fear Of Pain

This is a recent and unnatural fear.
Pain is something I have written extensively on before. If you do not feel like reading through it just yet, I will sum up the marrow of that previous essay:

Pain is not evil.

Pain is a natural, beneficial signal our bodies and minds were designed to feel to ensure our own self-preservation. It is how we know to STOP! SLOW DOWN! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED! It is the equally valid opposite signal to pleasure which tells us to: PROCEED! ENJOY! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY REINFORCED!

When you relax, listen to the signal of Pain and surrender to it with conscious understanding that you should PROCEED, ENJOY because although SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED, it is for the best, pain can re-signal itself as Pleasure.

You can learn how to develop a high pain threshold or better yet, a highly enlightened pain threshold.It is an experience I have had while taking “cut-ass” from my father, being pierced, tattooed and getting a little freaky in the bedroom. It is an experience avid exercise buffs feel. It is even an experience women giving birth have had. The body releases endorphins to turn pain into pleasure when you accept the pain as something beneficial.

Bliss is actually Pain AND Pleasure firing at the same time. Orgasm involves both pain and pleasure nerve endings.

There was a time when we understood that pain was not in of itself evil but very useful to our survival. We worshipped not just the positive but also the negative aspects of nature because we saw it as part of one essential cycle. We incorporated pain into our various initiation rites. We knew hard toil brought sweet harvest. Calloused fingers produced lovely music. Wanting to live a life of eternal pleasure only was unfathomable to us, perhaps even scary or unnatural. Where was the contrast going to come from? Wouldn’t it be boring?

It was only when we began the class system of relegating the majority of the population to endure an unnatural, imbalanced, unnecessary amount of pain without any purpose, context or contrast while a few enjoyed as much pleasure as possible, that we lost this perspective and became either desensitized or oversensitive. When we selected who will enjoy more pain based on factors other than their own actions, factors like race, gender, culture, origin, then the utopia of eternal pleasure became desirable, particularly to the masses experiencing nothing but pain for no good reason. We turned something that was supposed to be harmonious into ridiculous extremes and both extremes of pleasure and pain are forms of suffering.

This, for eternity, with no contrast, is only appealing to those who live a life of meaningless suffering. To others it would be extremely BORING!

It may not seem like the person enjoying an unnatural amount of pleasure is suffering…not yet. But trust me, something vital is atrophying because of serotonin and dopamine overload and sooner or later a strong pain signal will be needed to establish balance. Negative feedback…you cannot fight it and when an entire society has pleasure overload, Mother Nature Herself will provide the negative feedback.

Fear of Pain is actually a hybrid fear made all the more intense by our current economic system and development as a species. We no longer have to do things the hard way. Water comes to us. Meat is nicely cut, cleaned and packaged for us in a refrigerated store. We can take a pill and lose weight instead of exercising and having to deal with muscular pain and stinky sweat.

Learning to face pain still is an essential rite of passage for many indigenous tribes still in existence around the world.

But all of it comes at a cost. Remember BALANCE.

There was wisdom in our ancestors’ take on pain and all bitter, smelly, gross, unpleasant aspects of human existence. You might as well deal with it and learn how to work with it. You cannot run from it. You cannot sanitize it, not completely. You need a little hardship, a little toil, a little inconvenience for contrast and most of all BALANCE. If you had to kill and gut your own chickens, do you really think you would eat so much KFC and develop clogged arteries and man boobs? If you had to collect and transport your own water, do you really think you would allow WASA to waste so much of it?

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 3
A young woman wants to be healthy, fit and beautiful but hates the discomfort, inconvenience, sacrifice involved in doing it the holistic way.

She can either take this approach...

Or this one...

The threat of pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience drives the consumerist economy. How many products to make life easier do we need? Was the pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience really such a bad thing if it was making us slow down, do things with more thought, care, love? Worst of all, it stops us dead in our tracks when we want to do the right thing.

Related Fears: Fear of Discomfort, Fear of Work, Fear of Delay, Fear of Inconvenience, Fear of Loss, Fear of Punishment/Consequences.

Practical Tools To Fight Fear

This is a Survival Kit after-all, so this discourse would be incomplete if I left you without some weapons to put into use right away. Feel free to copy, enlarge, print and share.

Have you noticed that in tackling Fear, the one major, recurring Spiritual/Intellectual Gap is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. Our greatest ally in surviving the rapidly changing world ahead is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. From this, everything else will naturally flow and fall into place. It is no wonder that the war on Knowledge, Context and Mastery has escalated in the last decade or so. Blatant falsehoods are being touted as facts even in the information age. History is being re-written, forgotten, sanitized to allow past atrocities to return. More and more products and services are being introduced to make us lazier, complacent and even more pleasure-addicted.

Beware those who wish to restrict your access to as much knowledge as you desire. Beware those who wish to erase, twist or sanitize history so we do not learn from its context. Beware those who insist you are weak, helpless, lost, fallen without their particular system, group, product, service and want to discourage you from independently questioning, seeking inner strength and capability.

That is about the only warning or “doom and gloom” you will hear from me about 2012. Apart from that, I truly believe it will be an eventful time in the best possible way for many of us who are learning how to become comfortable with growing pains and be productive, happy, peaceable in spite of them.

May 2012 and all the years to come sing for you!

Intimacy In A Time Of AIDS

Some time ago, on the Saint Lucian radio talk show called What Makes Me Mad the host, Andre Paul led a discussion about his grievances with an AIDS awareness ad that advocated condom use if you believed your partner might place you at risk. The question he sent out over the airwaves was, “Would you continue to have sex with your wife if you knew she was HIV positive?”

The flurry of responses ranged from many disgusted “Absolutely not! I will get an instant divorce!” to a scant number of more tolerant “Yes, I will have sex but only with a condom”.

After the heated debate over the safety of having sex with a person with AIDS went on for a good thirty minutes, it became quite obvious to me that when it came to sex, the callers had a very one track mind when it came to sexual intimacy. The only thing on their minds was vaginal penetration and nothing more. This lack of imagination saddened me, especially when there are hundreds of safe and loving things a couple, even a couple where one person might be HIV positive, can do to share intimacy and pleasure. And so, it led me to ask, “Could our lack of imagination when it comes to sex be one of the many reasons why AIDS is spreading so rapidly in this region?”

Maybe if we were focusing more on the quality of our sexual experiences instead of the quantity of times we “get a juk” (especially the men), it would be easier to implement safer sex into our sexual routines. Could it be that true lovemaking and a fulfilling intimate sex life between couples is one of the answers to the AIDS epidemic?

Are Afro-Caribbean men unskilled and unimaginative when it comes to sexual intimacy beyond the athletics of jukking?

In the 1990’s several Sex survey studies at the UWI Gender Affairs St. Augustine indicated that Caribbean men are seriously lacking in sexual sophistication as they do not particularly enjoy the act of reciprocating orally. They also did not understand the importance of foreplay or that basically is it just the outer third (about three inches deep), of the vagina that gives a woman the most pleasure (so the obsession with size is unnecessary). The sex study dubbed the typical Caribbean male’s approach to sex “The wham bam” technique.

The study also went on to show that Caribbean women are also very much to blame for their lack of pleasure. They simply are not communicative enough and dishonestly fake orgasms. In fact, a lot of women are guilty of simply being mere outlets, present but yet not present during the act. How sad, especially when you consider that women are the superior sex when it comes to sexual pleasure.

We have a body part designed for nothing else but pleasure. Unlike, the penis, a woman’s clitoris does not serve any double function; its only purpose is to send us crazy with ecstasy. It has over two times the pleasure nerve endings of the male organ. As if that wasn’t enough, we were blessed again, with an internal G spot and are capable of having multiple orgasms. But how many of us are living up to our true pleasure potential? How many men are taking the time and care to truly make love to their women with care and comprehension of their needs? And are we women communicative with our partners? What do these questions have to do with AIDS prevention?

Designed with an organ only for pleaure with twice the nerve endings, twice the orgasm duration and the ability to have multiple and extended orgasms. You would think more women would be actively involved in speaking up about their sexual fulfillment but many are still not doing it.

The fact is safer sex goes hand in hand with good sex.

That goes for all sexual couplings but particularly the heterosexual and the MSM (men who have sex with men) community as lesbians remain one of the least infected groups when it comes to HIV (but not necessarily other STDs). Then again, women love to share their feelings, especially with each other and they do not wield the potentially dangerous, intrusive sexual organ called the penis, at least not the organic kind that is full of micro-organisms.

This organ can be a lethal weapon when wielded by an insecure, ignorant, impulsive selfish, guilt-ridden, self-loathing, unbalanced, compulsive man, gay or straight.

Within the gay male community, HIV is on the rise and there continues to be a problem of men simply not getting tested, not caring if they have it, not caring who they infect if they have it and worst of all, not even caring if they get it.

Why?

I used to think it was a “gay” problem caused by self-loathing particularly in homophobic societies like the Caribbean. Gay men are subjected to so many hateful and shame inducing indoctrination about their sexuality-“You will never find love!”, “You will troll the streets for strangers to satisfy your evil lust!”, “You will live a superficial life that revolves around vanity, materialism and hedonism until you can no longer afford it or grow old and ugly and get kicked out of the club”, “You will abuse drugs to numb your shame!”, “You will get AIDS and DIE!”

Many gay men unwittingly self-fulfill the prophesies levied against them because there is little else opposing those messages with love, self-acceptance, inclusion, family-life, unconditional love, real relationships, real intimacy and a healthy way to express joy, sexuality, individuality.

But I am beginning to doubt whether that is the only factor. For even in developed nations with liberal social attitudes, support systems, mainstream pop cultural acceptance and legislation that protects the equal rights of homosexuals, HIV continues to plague the gay male population. This makes me wonder if the problem is actually a MALE thing. Could it be that the same poor male attitudes towards sex, intimacy and respect for self and other that are making straight men infect their women with impunity are also present among gay men? Then further compounded by societal discrimination and criminalization that keeps sexual activity closeted and HIV status untested?

Could the risk-taking, careless, predatory approach to sex by men (both gay and straight) be rooted in something more primal?

While doing a “Prostate Cancer Awareness” campaign for the Brian Lara Cancer Treatment Centre in Trinidad, the chief oncologist revealed some of the male attitudes she has to deal with which include a reluctance to visit the doctor even when the signs show up, get tested and even get treated (if diagnosed). She said men have this risk-taking and defeatist attitude when it comes to their own life. But of course! Men were the gender that had to go out and face down saber tooth tigers and charging rhinoceroses. They were on the front lines, daring to hold a spear steady while multitudes charged. They learned that risk can bring immediate and long term reward. They learned to feed off adrenaline. Women on the other hand learned life is precious and the most important thing is protecting themselves and their young. We faced off with our mortality every 28 days and won. We were the ones nagging our children not to run with scissors.

Could it be that safe sex is just BORING to men? Could it be that the claims of decreased sensation is all in their mind because the thrill of skin to skin is not there, the danger (of potential pregnancy or infection) is not there?

It is clear that men, gay and straight will have to learn how to replace this thrill with something else. But that of course will require IMAGINATION and INTIMACY and here is where our problems start.

Imagination is the easiest to fix of course, especially for men. I am sure it will not take a great deal of effort for them to think up right now of 50 ways to ejaculate outside of a vagina or asshole.

Pick up a copy of the Karma Sutra, read ancient erotica, use your imagination! Our ancestors were forced to be inventive about sex in order to keep their populations under control and in harmony with their eco-systems and seasonal patterns. Children were supposed to be well-timed accordingly, thus all the various fertility festivals that still influence our annual ceremonial calendar. Learn from them!

The real problem is intimacy. The things that get in the way of it are well entrenched in our culture- ignorance, shame, macho attitudes and disempowered female attitudes (and that includes disempowered female attitudes of gay men who are “bottoms”).

We will never get couples to practice safer sex when men still treat the female anatomy as a mere outlet instead of an actively engaged lock to their key, with special hidden keys of its own. We will never get couples to practice safer sex when they aren’t even in the habit of communicating their most intimate needs and desires because they are ridden with shame about it. If a man’s approach to sex is completely self and penis-centered, do you really think he’s going to care about his partner’s needs for a slower pace, gentler touch and most of all, putting on a condom? How can a woman who does not even value herself enough to insist her partner pleasures her properly truly care about him protecting her reproductive health?

Good sex comes from a kind of intimacy that allows openness of communication, concern for each other’s pleasure and health, mutual exploration, sharing desires and fantasies and freedom to feel safe within a loving relationship. As a bonus, much of the infidelity that often results in the spread of AIDS would also decrease if both parties were deeply satisfied in their sex lives with each other.

In this day and age of the AIDS epidemic, one would expect our imagination to grow beyond just rudimentary coitus. We have stubbornly held on to their outdated hypocrisy and shame. We are not widely providing sex aids, sex counseling, couples counseling or open and honest education about sex and sexuality. Yet at the same time we continue to nourish the primal sexual drive in our music and culture.

Why is this more acceptable, easy to do, easy to emulate?

But not this?

I attended a World Aids Day rally on Brian Lara Promenade in Trinidad, in 1996 and there was a kiosk set up by a brave young activist group. Their mission: show how safer sex could be fun and practical in a real life context. One of their members, a gutsy woman at that, demonstrated on a very life like dildo, how to put on a condom orally, as well as many other very practical and pleasurable safer sex techniques. She did this fully clothed and to an adult audience only. Yet still, there was a huge moral uproar! Funny, that same uproar is missing when some soca or dub artist teaches a new sexy dance to the public, including children.

It is no coincidence that the countries with the highest HIV contractions are those that still have deep seated conservative, repressed and hypocritically religious views on sex.

Here is my very novel message for this year’s World Aids Day, ladies, be open and honest about what you would really like him to do. Men, take the time to care about more than just a quick hole in one. Slow down and really be intimate and in that quality sensual time you spend with your mate, you will discover how easy and sexy it can be to introduce safer and imaginative techniques. It’s the message AIDS awareness campaigns missed completely- TRUE, EMPATHETIC LOVE MAKING, even if it takes the form of spontaneous, urgent sex that is a little rough in all the right ways…is ALWAYS safe and fulfilling.

The 2012 Survival Kit Series will continue in the next post.