Our Contradicting Mindset about Sex

Our mindset is polarizing when it comes to sex. I do not mean it is divided, but that our actions are in disagreement with each other. On one end, parents and schools refuse to educate children about sex. On the other end, we hyper-sexualise. That’s right, it’s not only the media’s fault, but it is also our fault. After all, the media caters to its audience — us.

“A tiny crystal ball travels from daddy’s mouth into mommy’s. That is how mommy got pregnant,” that is what I said to my mom when I was 7 years old. Naive, right?

Maybe that is all people take from it, but what I see is a child with millions alike: Kids with no basic knowledge about how a human being is conceived. My mom and I treated this as a joke for years until I came in touch with positive sex education on social media. That is what it took for me to realise my lack of knowledge about sex is alarming. Therefore, I consider myself extremely lucky for stumbling upon positive sex education on the Internet.

Hyper-sexualisation — I learnt about this term from my friend when I shared a post that enraged me on social media. Anson Lo from Mirror, a pop sensation that has swept across Hong Kong lately has become an endorser for the famous underwear brand Calvin Klein. It is no surprise that Mirror fans were unhinged when the posters were up in different locations of Hong Kong. People started taking pictures with these posters they see and posting them, that was when I came in touch with this picture.

It is honestly already unsettling as it is, but seeing the comment section just adds fuels to the flame. I scrolled down to the comments expecting to see someone speaking up about how dehumanising this is. However, instead of that, all I saw were people tagging fellow fans and joking that this is them. It is loathsome how comfortable we are with sexualising and objectifying a human being. One’s attire does not equal consent.

Despite the polarization between the two, they are closely correlated: Essentially, the lack of sex education is exactly why people do not understand the concept of consent, which leads to hyper-sexualisation. People always assume nudity has something to do with being sexy by default when it is just a simple human form. The same way that we should be able to dress how we want without being stared up and down intrusively by creepy pedestrians, the Japanese have a slang for it — “Raping by the Eyes” (視姦).

With proper sex education, people might finally understand how problematic hyper-sexualisation is, especially since with that comes sexual assaults and rape. It is hightime for us to start executing proper sex education for all of Hong Kong’s youth.

I cannot stress how much we need proper sex education to avoid hyper-sexualisation or treating sex as a taboo.