Why the sex hysteria?

By Bukka Rennie
May 28, 2003

There is this constant penchant in T&T for widespread hysteria about relatively minor issues, most times downright non-issues. The present brouhaha about sex education in schools and the promotion of condom use is a case in point.

The Family Planning Association has been doing this for numerous years without blowing trumpets. The old folks and the religious pundits are today angry that children are openly engaged in discussing sex and sexuality.

What likewise astonishes is how Victorian, prudish, and ultra-conservative in thought most of us really are despite the claim to modernity and non-traditionalism.

Often we hear the present generation of youth being described as "Lucifer’s children" while the generations of yesteryear are painted with halos of sweet light and somehow held up as exemplars of some kind of divine virtue, graciousness, disciplined behaviour and proper deportment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is all about the wishful, fanciful thinking and nostalgic response, probably even the dementia, of the aged: everything of yesteryear is deemed virtuous and better than that of today.

Some time ago Emba did a calypso titled "I Prefer Now!" in which he destroyed this nonsense approach of irrationally glorifying everything about the so-called good old days. However, the tendency persists and is always most evident when these so-called burning issues flare up.

Defined as the transition stage between childhood and adulthood, teenager-ship has always been and will ever continue to be problematic. The pangs of puberty will always create inner-personality tensions and make the issues of sex and sexuality the most pressing and worrisome of all.

It involves the sudden awakening of a complex, troubling consciousness which brings a duplicity of sensitivity and sensibility that cowers between extremes such as the uncertainty of self on the one hand and the most wretched conceitedness on the other hand, or the quest for aggressive individuality coupled simultaneously with an insatiable thirst for the assurance of a belonging to the collective.

Teenager-ship can be a most maddening and dangerous period in anyone’s existence. It is a period of unstable personality.

Young societies like ours need to be aware and pay heed to the fact that there are "rites of passage" relative to the various stages through which human beings pass in the course of maturing. The very same emphasis that is placed on moulding infants within prearranged, controlled environments, is the same emphasis and requirement that should be placed on teenage development though with less direct and hands-on control of everyday affairs.

Teenagers need more persuasive guidance than direct control, they need physical and spiritual space of their own and it is for this reason that it is suggested that responsible society has by necessity to acknowledge the inherent elements of what can be deemed a "teenage culture" if it is to facilitate the easing of teenagers through their rites of passage unto adulthood.

In the case of T&T, where there is no such acknowledgement or official attributing of parameters of teenage culture, no distinctive social mechanisms, relative to this stage of existence, what obtains as the norm is that children assume adult posture overnight and are seen and treated as individuals who are "forced-ripe".

In this country neither the State nor private entrepreneurs provide distinctive "space" for teenagers, yet when they converge on Frederick Street or nowadays at the National Library, we are annoyed. We do not comprehend the importance and significance of organised leisure in their socialisation process. It is a developed society that places emphasis on organised leisure.

The people who seem to recognise this necessity for distinct teenage culture and "socialisation space" most readily in T&T now are the pastors and administrators of these small churches or non-conformist congregations who organise avenues of teenage expression and pastime as a normal part of church activity.

Moreso, they are the ones who have significantly democratised all the processes of doing church for quite obvious reasons. And yet the orthodox churches continue to wonder why their stock of faithful sheep are constantly being depleted.

One can be critical of the permissiveness of North American and European societies but at the same time one must pay tribute to the fact that in these societies there are distinct areas for teenage socialisation and teenage entertainment with strict laws of operation prescribed and rigidly enforced.

Any attempt by teenagers themselves to breach these laws and regulations are dealt with firmly. Just as well, any attempt by teenagers to enter areas of adult entertainment is rejected by management after rigid scrutiny of IDs. Nothing of the kind exists in T&T. Here it is everything goes and everyone goes.

In North America a place like Pier 1 would have had from inception to decide for whom it caters, teenagers or adults, and it would have been licensed accordingly. Bars, rum-shops, lounges, discos all serve any and everyone who may present themselves out of school uniform. Teenagers consume alcohol here as a matter of course.

Now when you add the upsurge of drug infiltration of the various communities to this already inherent general "slackness" or lack of social control relative to age stratification, one can only imagine the depth of damage done.

What is required is not hysteria, but the implementation of programmes and the strengthening of institutions relative to development of the various age groupings and social sectors in this here still very young society.

There is nothing new that this present generation does that was not done by the generations of yesteryear. Save and except the widespread use of drugs.

Today the vehicle of travel and of socialisation is the maxi. Long ago we had the trains. The "6 to 10" and "10 to 8" trains out of Port-of-Spain heading East were noted for sexual escapades of male and female students, and, mind you, there was much more scope for this within the trains that were comprised of many, long, dark carriages.

The advent of AIDS is what makes the matter now one of life and death and forces us to confront the issues of abstinence and safety. However, it is stupid to act as if the craze about popular music; the fastidiousness relative to clothes and "brands"; the rebellious stance against social order and established authority; sex talk and sexual posturing, and the creative underground language are not, repeat not, all par for the course with teenagers.

What is troubling today however is the quest for all to appear as "clones", whereas long ago we were fashionable and fashion conscious yet maintained individual expression. The fashion "cloning" we witness today has all to do with the present tendency of globalisation to reduce all and sundry to a sickening sameness. That, however, is an issue for a separate column.

What we must note though is that adding to the hysteria will not help to bring discipline to the lives of our teens, what will certainly do so is "arming" them, via institutional strength, to take responsibility for their own lives.

This is precisely what teenagers have always been demanding and yet, at the same time, shirking. They must be prepared by society to shoulder this responsibility with confidence. That is what the rites of passage and growing up are all about. And if we adults fail to facilitate this, then we will be guilty of "sticking".