Why aren't condoms working? Well, not literally...why are our young people (and others), ignoring the importance of safe sex?
The amount of money spent on "selling" people on the need to protect themselves when having sex is mind boggling. Billions and billions of dollars, pounds, euros, etc., yet not only is the developing world facing overwhelming AIDS rates, the developed world, specifically the US and UK, doesn't seem to be able to slow the ever-increasing numbers of STDs and teen pregnancies...
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Why are people over 50 the new "victims" of sexually transmitted diseases? How come many gays have abandoned safe sex? Why are Hispanic-American women one of the fastest growing HIV?AIDS groups?
The seniors think they are immune! Gays may be suffering from message overload. And Hispanic women may not be getting the message at all or in an understandable manner.
But teens? Those who are the most targeted regarding condom use, aren't getting the message that this is the only thing coming between themselves and deadly disease, with birth control thrown in, a freebie. These are questions that are not fresh and new, but some of the answers are coming from the teens themselves. And what they have to say is certainly a nasty statement about our societies in general!
Programs targeting teens with the safe sex message have been told by that group that one of the primary reasons that many of them do not use condoms consistently - or at all - is because they either can't get them or are made to feel guilty when they do buy them or collect them from sex clinics (UK). How come, they ask, sex is everywhere - TV, movies, magazines, even newspapers - but they are made to feel like paraiahs when they do try to "do the right thing." Meaning, why trust adults when the messages are a confusing hypocritical mess; sex is "ok" in the marketplace, but if you are a teen, it's a no no.
Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands...they got rid of the righteous and went with the strictly practical and it worked. Their STD rates are incredibly low, as are their teen birth rates AND, interestingly, it appears they are far less likely to have "inappropriate" sex than their American and UK counterparts. Education, governments, they all dropped the "moral" message and peddled only the practicle, using shared resources to do so. It would seem that this actually boosted what many would consider a "good thing," that is, that fewer of these countries' teens are treating sex as if it were nothing, of no consequence. Self esteem, educational levels, all those areas we look to to judge just how successful we are in raising our children appear to have a direct correlation with practicality rather than puritanism....perhaps genuinely safe sex - not having it until it's "right - is the product of open discussion, not mixed messages.
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