Do they want to control our bodies or our minds?

Hi guys, sometimes my readers approach me with questions and challenge me to offer an intelligent response to a complex situation - whilst I was on holiday in Poland, a reader approached me and asked me about something that was happening in Singapore. This is the battle over the CSE (Comprehensive Sexuality Education) programme, my reader said that some conservatives in Singapore are shocked by the nature of the content covered in CSE and fear that all hell would break lose, if it was ever implemented in Singapore. They have gone out of their way to make the content of CSE sound really immoral and obscene; thus my reader wanted to know what my take on it was: are the conservatives scaremongering or is there an element of truth to it? Furthermore, what should be the role of CSE in the age of the internet, when young people are exposed to a lot of adult content online from an early age? What is the real agenda behind their opposition to CSE then? Finally, what is actually going on, when it comes to young people and sex in 2024? 

Firstly, if you haven't heard about CSE, allow me to explain that this is a programme according to the United Nation's technical guidelines with the collaboration of a range of NGOs like WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNAIDS and UN Women. It is designed to set a minimum standard for sex education for countries around the world and ensure that the key issues are covered. This is a recent initiative that started in 2019 in America and now the aim is to make it worldwide. After all, if America has already spent all that time, money and effort coming up with such a comprehensive programme, the other countries can simply cut & paste this formula. However at least in Singapore, this has been me with a lot of resistance from the conservatives who believe that the only form of sex education should be the strict adherence to abstinence, that there should be no talk of sex in school at all and that no sex should happen before marriage ever. I did take a look at the material within the CSE programme and found it to be pretty much bog standard, there really wasn't anything that offensive or obscene in there - it certainly wasn't encouraging young people to go out there and experiment with all kinds of sexual activities. However, the conservatives are insisting that the moment you talk to young people about sex without condemning it as the most immoral sin that well condemn them to hell eternally, then they will get so curious and start having sex. I am rolling my eyes at this because that couldn't be further from the truth and the fact that they insist on taking such a stance shows how they are totally out of touch with what is happening in countries like Singapore these days. Now you might think, Alex you moved to London back in 1997, you have lived in the UK for 27 years so of course you're going to be a lot more liberal than the average Singaporean so why are you surprised that they are anti-CSE? I am not surprised that they are against CSE but in today's post, I am going to talk about why their stance is wrong as they do not even understand the current situation in Singapore with the younger generation. I do have a nephew who is going to be 21 this year therefore I am very aware of what young people of his generation in Singapore are going through now. 

The conservatives in Singapore have made a fundamental flaw in their assumption that the moment you talk to young people about sex, they will get interested in it and start having sex with each other - that is not the case at all. What instead is happening is that sex is becoming a spectator sport: young people who access adult content are not at all encouraged to participate in sexual activities as they realize, oh shit, I'll never ever be able to perform like that, I will fail and make a fool of myself. Combine that with a lack of social skills, they simply become asexual: that means they do not have sex, despite consuming adult entertainment content online. Allow me to use an example to bring this down to earth for you: like many young people these days, I have short attention span and thus there are certain social media platforms like TikTok, Youtube shorts and Instagram reels that cater to people like me who want to be entertained in under a minute. One sport I enjoy watching is cliff diving when divers dive off platforms as high as 30 meters high (the height of a 12 to 15 storey building) which enables them to perform an insane number of somersaults and twists before hitting the water below: it is high adrenaline, it is very exciting and of course, part of the reason why it is so fun to watch is the fact that there is no room for error, if the diver gets the timing wrong, they could seriously injure themselves. This sport has been popularized through a series of tournaments sponsored by the energy drink Red Bull. Now when I watch a video on cliff diving, does that make me want to go find the nearest cliff to dive off? Hell no, I am too scared, I don't want to get hurt, I don't have the skills to perform those difficult dives. I am very content simply turning it into a spectator sport where I watch the experts do what they do best. Just because I enjoy watching cliff diving on Youtube doesn't mean I have any desire to participate in the sport in the future - it is quite presumptuous to imagine that just because I like watching it, it mans I would automatically want to take part in it. No, I am rational enough to conclude that cliff diving is best enjoyed as a spectator sport and  that is the conclusion that most people arrive at, it isn't rocket science. Thus by the same token, a lot of young people who have seen pornographic content online have simply decided that sex should be just a spectator sport by the same token. The Japanese word to describe people like that is otaku おたくand in Chinese it is diaosi 屌丝.

It is so incredibly easy to access porn online these days and it is a highly competitive market like social media: if you put out poor quality content, then you will be at best ignored, at worst mocked. But if you put out quality content, then you will get a lot of attention - you have to be extremely skilled at your craft in order to compete in this market. Let's compare this to Youtube to bring it down to earth: when you log onto Youtube, the algorithm will naturally suggests the best videos that will suit your taste. Say you like learning Korean, Youtube will then suggests the most popular Korean tutorial videos for you on Youtube in order to give you the best possible experience and keep you on that platform. Likewise if you go to any other adult entertainment platform, the same principle applies: the algorithm will always suggest the best content that has proven to be very popular. Hence as a result, the majority of people consuming porn online are watching the same top 20% most popular videos whilst the bottom 80% of the online porn out there get very few views. This is exactly the same process with Youtube where there are millions of poor quality videos out there with like 20 views - this does create a situation whereby we usually only see the top porn stars in the world do what they do best when they perform. But then the reaction of most people when they see that content is actually, "nah, there's no way I can perform like that, I am just going to consume this content online and treat it as a spectator sport." So imagine if I were to be shown a series of videos on Youtube introducing diving for beginners, where the students are doing the most basic dives from the poolside or the one meter springboard or platform - that kind of video is designed to make it look easy like, "Kathy is a 50 year old mother of two who works as an accountant in Manchester, but today, she is going to have her first diving lesson and we are going to teach her the basics of diving". Contrast this with the kind of cliff diving videos where you see the very best cliff divers of the world, the video would begin with the kind of warning that goes, "this video features extremely dangerous dives performed by professionals - do not attempt any of the dives you see in this video." Which video is going to get more views on Youtube? Of course it would be the latter as it would be a lot more entertaining, but the message is clear: just enjoy this video as a spectator sport, please do not try this at home, you can't do this and you shouldn't do this. Don't try to copy what you see in this video, leave it to the professionals - the same happens with porn. 

Another aspect of modern technology that is going to perpetuate this trend is artificial intelligence (AI) and you must be aware that AI has been used in porn production. It is a lot easier to simply get AI to generate some graphics or video of whatever you wish to portray rather than try to get real people to perform. In the vast majority of AI generated porn content, the humans we see embody physical perfection - this is because it is led by demand, the creators want to give the consumers what they want to see and this is easily achieved through AI. Most normal people would look at these AI generated images with perfect bodies and think, "I look nothing like that, I'm not just ordinary, I am ugly, unattractive compared to that." How is that any different from when I watch a cliff diving video and think, "I look nothing like that cliff diver, his body is so perfect because he trains so hard every single day and I am just an ordinary, average man in contrast, I am unfit and fat in comparison." Thus in both cases, the conclusion is the same, "I can't do what they do, even if I like watching it as a spectator sport." These algorithms and new technology have the goal of maximizing viewer satisfaction by giving you exactly what you want to see, but it doesn't take into account whatever impact that may have on your self-image and self-confidence when it comes to your own body. Thus consuming a large amount of content celebrating people with perfect bodies doing things we can never ever do may be precisely what we enjoy watching, but at the same time, there's no one to step in and try to deal with whatever impact that may have on our confidence and body image. This is because most humans aren't that rational - for example, we crave junk food. When I was in Poland recently, each time I walked past KFC, I noticed how cheap it was compared to the UK and all I wanted to do was to go in there and have a big meal of fried chicken despite the fact that I knew that it wasn't healthy at all. We don't have a benevolent relationship with modern technology that is hell bent on making us spend more money on their products or more time on their websites - they're not going to encourage us to view content that will have a more positive impact on how we feel about our bodies, quite the opposite happens: we are constantly fed content that makes us feel rubbish about our ordinary, average bodies and this leads to many concluding that sex should only be a spectator sport for them. 

Let me share with you a story from my gymnastics club to illustrate my point - since I don't want to talk about real sex to make my point, I'll use gymnastics instead. I met Henry (not his real name) last year as he came to one of my gymnastics classes. Henry is a young man in his mid-20s and he told me that his best friend was getting married in about six months, thus he had this big group of friends who are going to do a dance routine at the wedding reception, he had this idea of doing a back somersault as a part of this big dance routine. He had no gymnastics background but thought it was a something he could learn in six months, given that he was young and physically fit. I thought, okay, why not? We can try to teach you how to do it but no promises. Henry loved the idea of being able to do a back somersault but he wasn't really prepared to put in the hard work in order to learn how to do it. He was so disappointed when I told him that he couldn't just learn a back somersault on his first lesson but had to learn a lot of the basics first before progressing to learning back somersaults, you have to learn to walk before you can run. I'm afraid Henry never really made it past the basics and just to make sure he didn't feel too discouraged, I started him off on some drills for back somersaults. Once it dawned on Henry that the skill he was trying to do was going to be a lot more difficult than he had originally thought, he just gave up and forgot the idea of doing that somersault at his friend's wedding. Ironically, he follows me on Instagram and often would leave me a like on some of my training videos so I know he is still looking at my posts but I didn't want to message him and ask, "when are you coming to training again Henry? I've not seen you in a while." No, I know he gave up and that's his choice - after all, he has given it a fair go, he realized just how hard it was and has decided not to pursue it. He is still enjoying gymnastics as a spectator sport through the means of social media but even with the best coaches and a great training environment, I'm afraid Henry just couldn't perform. I don't want to judge Henry too harshly, at least he tried for a few weeks, many people simply give up without even trying at all. If Henry can fail despite getting plenty of help - how much harder is it for young people trying to become sexually active with little or no guidance at all? 

There is one other assumption that the conservatives make about sex which is totally wrong - they assume that the people who try it will firstly, be good at it and secondly, will enjoy it. Remember how Henry struggled to learn a back somersault at the gymnastics club? Well, young people encountering their first sexual experience probably have the same problems - they simply don't know what to do, they are very nervous, there's no one there to instruct them and they don't have the confidence to perform.  So under such circumstances, sex is hardly an enjoyable experience: it is stressful, awkward and at best underwhelming and disappointing, at worst, very unpleasant and something they regret doing. So, need I state the obvious here? Like gymnastics, sex is something that does require a certain level of skill to perform well and some people are able to perform it extremely well whilst others simply don't. I have this memory from my childhood: back in the 1990s, the national gymnastics team used to train at the gym at the College of Physical Education in Bukit Timah. At that time, this was also used by trainee teachers as well who had to learn various sports in order to teach PE. (I think that's still the case today but I can't confirm.) One day, we walked into the gym and we saw a bunch of trainee teachers trying to put together a gymnastics display - it was evident that none of them have had much gymnastics training before and their skills were very basic. If I may be blunt, these trainee teachers were clumsy, they really struggled with these simple gymnastics skills and those of us on the national team were struggling to contain ourselves and not burst out laughing at their performance as it was so bad, there was an element of slapstick humour to it. I could sense that these trainee teachers knew exactly how we felt about their performance as we stood there, the uninvited audience scrutinizing their every move and judging them with our disapproving stares. I didn't say a word but there was definitely an uneasy tension building in the room. Finally, one of the trainee teachers said, "let's take a break, we'll come back later." But no, they never returned that day, they probably wanted to wait for the national team to finish training before they came back to rehearse as they felt way too embarrassed to try to perform gymnastics in front of the very best gymnasts in the country. My point is simple: people who are not good at performing are acutely aware of the situation and really do not enjoy being put in that situation so if given the choice, they would walk away and not continue. 

In fact, just like the way Henry got professional help to learn how to do a back somersault, one can get help from sex therapist to learn how to perform better. The reason why this industry isn't more well known is because a lot of people are just too embarrassed to even talk about sex, never mind seek any kind of professional help to perform better. Help is available but many people simply choose to accept that they will simply have to find something else that will bring them joy and pleasure n in life. For those who don't seek help but still somehow get married and start a family, I can only imagine how much they hated every moment of what they had to do to conceive the baby. It must have been akin to those trainee teachers rehearsing their gymnastics display in front of the national team in the story above - whether you're talking about gymnastics, sex or any other activity that requires a certain level of skill and expertise, amateurs can always try doing it but they will end up doing it badly, they will feel very self-conscious as they are acutely aware of how poorly they are performing and they certainly will not enjoy participating in the activity. I can only imagine a prim and proper conservative Christian wife on her wedding night filled with trepidation and horror, as she has to finally confront the one thing that she has been taught was immoral and sinful her entire life - how is she supposed to reconcile that in her head before even thinking about participating in the act? She would probably just shut her eyes as she lay still on the bed and wait for it to be over; or better still, she would claim, "sorry honey, not tonight, I have a bad headache now, I just want to get some rest." Sex would simply not be an important component of that kind of marriage. However, given the way the conservatives have demonized CSE, there's just no way they would contemplate seeking professional help, so even for the married, monogamous couples who are trying for a baby, they would not even think about getting any kind of help because they are just resigned to the fact that sex is most unpleasant and best avoided. Some would even go as far as to demonize those who have healthy sex lives by condemning them as immoral and perverted for daring to enjoy sex.

There are two different categories of activities that can bring us joy, pleasure and satisfaction. The first would be activities that require a lot of effort, skill and technical ability such as gymnastics. It is not easy to perform these complex skills but we derive a great sense of satisfaction and experience such pure joy when we do well in our training, especially when we learn a new skill. In contrast, we can also derive the same kind of joy and pleasure from activities that require very little or no skill/effort on our part. For example, I stumbled upon a new Japanese restaurant in town the other day and decided to have lunch there - I had the tempura bento box and it was excellent. Yes, I really enjoyed that lunch, even if that activity really didn't require any real effort on my part to eat that Japanese meal. I didn't even look that new Japanese restaurant up, I literally just chanced upon it when I was walking down the street and didn't even know it existed before. The kind of joy I derived from that Japanese lunch is quite different from what I get from a great training session at the gym, but nonetheless, I still experience a lot of joy in both cases, albeit different kinds of joy. If you don't have a lot of time or you lack the motivation to put in a lot of effort into a pursuit, then you can always pick the latter to maximize your happiness and enjoyment. This is a choice we have to face from an early age: so a child could be faced with a choice like, I can go to gymnastics practice after school or I can relax and watch some cartoons. The gymnastics training session will only be fun if the child has invested enough time, energy and effort into it to become reasonably good at it for it to become fun, whilst it takes no effort for children to enjoy their favourite cartoons. Perhaps I need to point out the obvious here as it doesn't seem obvious to some people who place sex in the wrong category as it definitely in the category of activities which require a certain level of skill and expertise to perform well. Without that requisite skill and expertise, you would be fumbling around like those trainee teachers I encountered years ago in my gym - the experience would not bring you any joy, it would be awkward, frustrating and unpleasant, even embarrassing. That's why so many people will simply end up asexual and for them, sex might only ever be a spectator sport but never ever something they will actually participate in.

So here's the irony: if the conservatives in Singapore wanted the younger generation to stop having sex, then guess what? They don't need to lift a finger, they have already won that battle. It's like if I wanted the sun to rise tomorrow morning - I don't need to do a thing, I already have what I want. This then begs the question: why are the conservatives up in arms when they have already won this battle - what more do they want? Well, they're not satisfied with the current situation: the younger generation in Singapore are not having sex but are consuming it as a spectator sport on the internet. They don't even want them to do that, they want to stop the younger generation from even viewing any adult entertainment online altogether. Thus the conservatives don't just want to control our bodies, they want to control our minds as well. So remember what I told you about me being tempted by KFC when I was in Poland earlier? I didn't actually give in to temptation, I am trying to keep to a healthy weight and reduce my blood sugar levels - so whilst I still would love to binge on fried chicken, I have refrained from doing so. Imagine if I had a dietician who told me, "no Alex, that's not good enough, I know you didn't eat any KFC whilst you were in Poland but I need you to really hate fried chicken if you're truly committed to losing weight permanently and embrace a healthier lifestyle." Therein lies the difference between controlling my body and my mind. I will always love fried chicken and believe that it is delicious whether I allow myself to eat it or not. A dietician can convince me to abstain from fried chicken in order to lose weight but they can never persuade me to change how I feel about fried chicken. This is why I find it puzzling that the conservatives in Singapore have effectively set themselves up to fail by picking a target that they will never achieve. One theory that I have is that they need to constantly feel like they have a fight on their hands, that they have a mission to accomplish so the religious leaders within the conservative right-wingers in Singapore will continue to have the attention of their followers. If they admitted, hey we have already achieved everything we wanted, the young people of Singapore are practically asexual and many of them will remain virgins till the day they die. Then their followers will react by saying, okay our job is done, now I can do something else. No they will never declare 'mission accomplished' or 'our job is done'. 

Let's talk about whom the conservative right wingers in Singapore are: recently a British friend asked me just how religious Singaporeans are and I had to explain the situation to him. You see, traditionally in Europe being conservative and right wing is associated with being religious. The more religious you are, the more conservative your views will be. However, Singapore is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society with many different religions and thus the conservatism in Singapore isn't based on any of the religions there but is a more secular version of it. The purpose of this is to achieve a wide enough support base for those who are very religious and right wing to gather around a conservative doctrine regardless of their cultural or ethnic background. Thus they have used the banner of "family values" to avoid any reference to religion, in order to create this secular brand of Singaporean conservatism and in true Singaporean manner, they have chosen to focus on what matters most to many Singaporeans. A common theme would be the link between young people becoming so addicted to porn that they would neglect their studies, causing them to fail their exams and ruining their futures. Thus in this narrative, there is no mention or reference to any concept of morality or sin when talking about porn, but rather the addictive nature of it that can have detrimental effects. However, the same thing could be said about computer games for example and we don't see the same conservatives demonizing computer games. Nonetheless it is still convenient for them to have one thing to demonize and treat as the enemy so they can convince their followers that there are in crisis. This is really not such a new tactic - when Vladimir Putin was facing dissatisfaction amongst his own people in Russia, he started a war in Ukraine in order to create such a massive distraction for his people to focus on. A crisis is always a good rallying call for the troops and thus a war or crisis type situation (say a natural disaster like an earthquake) usually would make the people become a lot more loyal and support the government in power. Thus for the conservatives in Singapore, they have decided to make a crisis out of the whole CSE issue despite the fact that it really doesn't matter you tell the youths of Singapore these days through the means of sex education at school, they're unlikely to become sexually active any time soon. Singaporean porn star Titus Low is a rare exception, he isn't the norm. 

So that's it from me on this issue, what do you think? What is your take on CSE and why do you think the conservatives are so against it? Is this a case of them wanting to control not just our bodies but our minds as well? Or are they simply picking a fight that they can't ever win deliberately, just so to have their troops constantly in battle mode? Furthermore, how do you feel about the state of sex education in Singapore today? Leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.