I was at a workshop in Mbabane the other week when one of the organisers – a man from England – told us about the time he was present at the birth of his son. The audience (entirely Swazi) lapsed into embarrassed silence, before a couple of Swazi men broke into uncontrollable giggles. The absurdity of a man being with his wife while his son was being born was just too wacky an idea for them to take.
I was reminded of this recently as I was looking through past editions of a relatively new column that has been appearing in the Times of Swaziland each Friday.
It’s called let’s Talk About Sex and on a casual glance it appears to be a column of unbiased information and advice about matters of sexual health. However, if you look a bit closer they turn out to be columns of ignorance, bias and hatred.
Here’s a sample from a column about men being present when their wives give birth.
Vusi Dlamini, the sales and marketing manager, of an organisation called the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS), wrote the above nonsense. It turns out that Let’s Talk About Sex, isn’t really about giving Swazis unbiased, factual information about sexual health, it’s actually thinly disguised propaganda for FLAS, an organisation with fundamentalist Christian overtones.
Here’s another one. This time it’s FLAS on why women shouldn’t use sex aids.
In the FLAS universe a women without a man isn’t whole and they can’t (aren’t allowed) to exist in their own right. Also, FLAS has a thing about ‘whores’. Here’s FLAS on women who carry condoms.
Swaziland is a closed society and it can be very difficult to get good, unbiased information about any subject. It is that much harder when the subject under question is sex. Cultural taboos make it almost impossible for people to talk openly about sex and to share information and feelings on the subject. There is also a lot of hypocrisy on the subject, especially from the Christian Church. (We all know of pastors who rape children in their congregation, but preach that masturbation is sinful.)
An ordinary person in Swaziland has next to no opportunity to get information (about anything) other than through the media. All forms of modern communications are weak in Swaziland and people in the kingdom rely heavily on word-of-mouth. Culturally, people are likely to defer to people who are considered to be knowledgeable. Simply by allowing a person space in their newspaper, editors give that person the status of ‘knowledgeable person’. This is even if the person doesn’t know what they are talking about and do not deserve such a status.
That means the media have to be especially careful about the qualifications of the people who write for them and the quality of the information that they provide. Let’s Talk About Sex fails badly: it pretends to be unbiased information, but instead offers a very narrow prejudiced view of the world.
This worldview is not only misinformed, it can be incredibly dangerous.
I’ll leave you to think about the most recent column (7 September 2007). Here we are told that you can’t leave your children with homosexuals because ‘a great number of them’ are child abusers. Also, homosexual men are not born ‘gay’; they become gay because they have themselves been abused as children.
The person telling us this is Thuli Rudd, the president of the Gays and Lesbians Against HIV and AIDS Swaziland (GLAHAS). GLAHAS is in turn affiliated to the Swaziland National Network of People Living With HIV and AIDS (SWANNEPHA).
Every thing Rudd says is simply not true. There is no scientific evidence anywhere in the world to support what she says. What is very disturbing is that Rudd is a leader of an organisation that is meant to support homosexuals. Her organisation is in turn affiliated to a second organisation that should be welcoming to all people with HIV AIDS (including homosexuals). Rudd is peddling hatred against homosexuals, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she doesn’t realise it. After all the kind of blind prejudice she sprouts is quite commonly heard in Swaziland.
But the Times of Swaziland doesn’t get let of so easily. It should cancel the column forthwith. Let’s Talk About Sex is not journalism, it is the worse kind of ignorance: the ignorance that spreads hatred.
I was reminded of this recently as I was looking through past editions of a relatively new column that has been appearing in the Times of Swaziland each Friday.
It’s called let’s Talk About Sex and on a casual glance it appears to be a column of unbiased information and advice about matters of sexual health. However, if you look a bit closer they turn out to be columns of ignorance, bias and hatred.
Here’s a sample from a column about men being present when their wives give birth.
‘Men are attracted to most women by sight and in the same way will be generally repulsed by sight. When they see the actual birth of the child, some men feel that his girlfriend or wife’s private parts have been “stretched” and therefore the sexual appetite becomes low’ (17 August 2007).
Vusi Dlamini, the sales and marketing manager, of an organisation called the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS), wrote the above nonsense. It turns out that Let’s Talk About Sex, isn’t really about giving Swazis unbiased, factual information about sexual health, it’s actually thinly disguised propaganda for FLAS, an organisation with fundamentalist Christian overtones.
Here’s another one. This time it’s FLAS on why women shouldn’t use sex aids.
‘.. it is dangerous in the sense that some people tend to prefer it even when they are married and feel no satisfaction with their partners. It is said to be a thing for whores, yet a lot of people do it ….’ (10 August 2007).
In the FLAS universe a women without a man isn’t whole and they can’t (aren’t allowed) to exist in their own right. Also, FLAS has a thing about ‘whores’. Here’s FLAS on women who carry condoms.
‘The greater section of the public thinks it is promiscuous and you will readily be labelled a whore’ (3 August 2007).
Swaziland is a closed society and it can be very difficult to get good, unbiased information about any subject. It is that much harder when the subject under question is sex. Cultural taboos make it almost impossible for people to talk openly about sex and to share information and feelings on the subject. There is also a lot of hypocrisy on the subject, especially from the Christian Church. (We all know of pastors who rape children in their congregation, but preach that masturbation is sinful.)
An ordinary person in Swaziland has next to no opportunity to get information (about anything) other than through the media. All forms of modern communications are weak in Swaziland and people in the kingdom rely heavily on word-of-mouth. Culturally, people are likely to defer to people who are considered to be knowledgeable. Simply by allowing a person space in their newspaper, editors give that person the status of ‘knowledgeable person’. This is even if the person doesn’t know what they are talking about and do not deserve such a status.
That means the media have to be especially careful about the qualifications of the people who write for them and the quality of the information that they provide. Let’s Talk About Sex fails badly: it pretends to be unbiased information, but instead offers a very narrow prejudiced view of the world.
This worldview is not only misinformed, it can be incredibly dangerous.
I’ll leave you to think about the most recent column (7 September 2007). Here we are told that you can’t leave your children with homosexuals because ‘a great number of them’ are child abusers. Also, homosexual men are not born ‘gay’; they become gay because they have themselves been abused as children.
The person telling us this is Thuli Rudd, the president of the Gays and Lesbians Against HIV and AIDS Swaziland (GLAHAS). GLAHAS is in turn affiliated to the Swaziland National Network of People Living With HIV and AIDS (SWANNEPHA).
Every thing Rudd says is simply not true. There is no scientific evidence anywhere in the world to support what she says. What is very disturbing is that Rudd is a leader of an organisation that is meant to support homosexuals. Her organisation is in turn affiliated to a second organisation that should be welcoming to all people with HIV AIDS (including homosexuals). Rudd is peddling hatred against homosexuals, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she doesn’t realise it. After all the kind of blind prejudice she sprouts is quite commonly heard in Swaziland.
But the Times of Swaziland doesn’t get let of so easily. It should cancel the column forthwith. Let’s Talk About Sex is not journalism, it is the worse kind of ignorance: the ignorance that spreads hatred.
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