Unsafe sex

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th March, 1992

Though it’s more than a fortnight since I first saw it, a news photo has continued to haunt me. In the background a group of students wait to enrol; closer to the camera a girl is carrying a basket of condoms, to promote ‘safe’ sex.

Let’s get  real. There’s no such thing as safe sex. Sex is dangerous, and you’d better believe it. And no amount of condominiuming between couples will help. While the attitude is ‘I’m all right as long as I wear a condom’ we’re missing a dangerous truth in sexual behaviour.

We have this notion that somehow the world has now grown up because we talk loudly about sex in every place and at every moment. Many would have us believe that in the past no one ever mentioned the subject, and that consequently everyone was quite ignorant. Piffle. Humanity has managed sex just as well in the non-promiscuous  times as in the promiscuous. The big difference in the former was that marriages and families were more stable, and societies weren’t plagued by nonsense about sex at every turn.

I said sex was dangerous. You think I mean pregnancies. Sure, they’re part of the matter, but to look at the world’s attitude to pregnancies would take another column. I’m talking about other dangers, such as being under the delusion that a quick one-night stand is okay. You might get by without contracting Aids, as long as you wear your famous condom. But no condom will protect you from the consequences that the purveyors of ‘safe’ sex don’t talk about.

The problem isn’t really the wearing of the condom or the contracting of Aids. The problem is treating another human being – male or female, it makes no difference – as though they were there merely for the first person who came along to have their way with them. In the end everybody involved is prostituted. Safe sex is prostitution under another name, only the price isn’t usually in dollars.

We all look down on the world’s supposedly oldest profession, but hopping into bed with all and sundry isn’t the slightest bit different. We’ve believed the lie that adultery and affairs and one-night stands and sleeping around are all somehow better than rape and abuse and pornography and other evil sexual practices. In fact, any form of sex that uses others is evil. And any form of sex that takes place outside of a committee permanent relationship is already debased.

We’ve mocked the idea of commitment for so long now, few of us think it has any worth. No wonder people today – and it isn’t just the kids – find it isn’t worth the struggle to hold onto something valuable when the going gets rough. There’s no encouragement to do so. In fact, we’re lambasted from every corner with encouragements to give up what we’ve got and go find something else.

The trouble is the grass is green on the other side of the fence for only a little while. And it has to be mown just as often.

I’m  not even a partially raving royalist, but it sickens me the way much of the media seems hell-bent on destroying the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. The assumption is that no one, from pauper to royal, has a hope of sticking together for long, so let’s take the lot down into the gutter as quickly as possible.

Forget all the crowing about ‘safe’ sex at every turn. I want to start crowing about Unsafe Sex; sex that debases; sex that hurts and causes emotional pain (not just the bobby-sox pain that occurs in soap operas but real cutting twisting pain); sex that leaves lives in a shambles from which the only escape may be death itself.

Sex is dangerous.

 

The following two letters to the editor were printed in response to this column; I don’t have a date for one of them, and I don’t know if there were more. These are the only two I managed to keep a copy of.

 Sir – I would like to record my support for the contribution of Mike Crowl in the March 18 edition of the Star Midweek. It takes courage to go against popular conceptions. His remarks are something that should have been said long ago, most certainly by those who have a much wider range of influence. My congratulations to Mike, keep up the good work. I hope the message will reach much further than the area covered by the Star Midweek.

S B Harlow.

 

26.4.1992

Sir – I wish to thank Mike Crowl for Column Eight ‘Safe Sex’ (Midweek 18/3/92). Few, in spans of years have tackled this subject of sex with such clarity, so soundly in such truth. Many readers, especially those among the young, may never before have had the opportunity to regard the matter in such a manner. Mike Crolw has given in a short space, plenty to think about. This article should be published far and wide.

Mary Wickliffe