The Problem with Our Youth

It’s been something of a month for people who believe in free expression. It started in Hong Kong, when people took to the streets to protest an extradition bill that would have allowed the Hong Kong Government to extradite Hong Kong citizens to China and then moved onto the world’s most vocal teenager, Ms. Greta Thunberg, dressing down the world’s powers for doing nothing about climate change.

While the pictures coming out of Hong Kong have not been pretty and the usual Tramps have been complaining that Ms. Thunberg is being abused by evil people trying to impose a horrible regime of environmental friendliness and democracy, these have been heartening. It’s good to see Chinese (I stress the Chinese part because I’m living in a Chinese society that claims protest are un-Chinese) people standing up for themselves and its also heartening to see 16-year old kids doing something greater than themselves.

However, I live in a society that does not see youthful activism as anything beneficial. Our media makes it a point to let us see how chaotic Hong Kong has become and I remember one of our talking heads writing a letter to tell our youth that they need to be more “practical.”

To me, this sounds like poppycock or as they say, my people don’t get the point about being young. In most parts of the world, young people are exceedingly idealistic and only become less so when the reality of having to make a living sets in. I think of my history teacher who once said that the most depressing thing about “young conservative” is the fact that young people are not supposed to be conservative.

Many people might say that its all part of the Singapore government’s obsession with control. However, could there be a more sinister fact at play, namely the fact that while young people elsewhere are out trying to save the world, our young people are getting caught doing all sorts of kinky things.

While the Hong Protestors and Ms. Thunberg were out there trying to save the world, the National University of Singapore (NUS) was forced to deal with a spate of “sex” related crimes, where various male students were caught taking upskirt videos or planting cameras in the girl’s showers. The problem was further compounded when one of the guys got let off with a slap on the wrist because the judge didn’t want to ruin the young man’s future (Singapore has a Brock Tylor of its own).

Plenty is being said about all of this so, I’ll leave the legalistic comments to other people. What I will question is the fact that all these guys doing this are all intelligent and from reasonably well to do families. As one a Grab Driver that I was ridding with said, “They’re not ugly – why can’t they just a girl and do what they need to do rather than resorting to these things.”

Let’s put it this way – sexual deviants are always portrayed as being from the lower educated portions of society. Some of them are considered “slow” by “normal” society. Much of the unspoken focus on sexual safety in Singapore remains on the poorer parts of town. Our Red-Light districts are portrayed as being places for foreign workers (read – dark people from Shitholes) to let out sperm rather than planning to rape our pure and chaste women (read – the lighter skinned ones).

Yet, despite all of this, every instance of sexual misbehavior that you read about usually involves someone with a decent job (teacher, engineer etc) or someone with decent world-class education (read – university graduate).

Sure, I can appreciate young men being “silly” when it comes to trying to get laid. I was young and I think I would have been better off in life if I had controlled my small head a bit more.

I also appreciate the fact that everyone has different sexual kicks. I find certain features of women very attractive and I can appreciate that the next guy may not share my appreciation for those said features or the next guy may not appreciate women’s bodies at all. I take the position that one shouldn’t judge a sexual act as long as it is done between two consenting adults and in the privacy of the bedroom.

Apparently, that makes me a little strange in Singapore. We have a brilliant law professor who spends her days trying to keep homosexual sex between two consenting adults in the privacy of the bedroom to be illegal and yet, when you have a couple of boys filming women in intimate moments without consent of the said women, our brilliant law professor is strangely silent.

Something is clearly wrong here and I blame it on the frustrated “moral” conservatives who have taken over our middle class. These are the people who have trained their kids not to masturbate because its immoral or to head down to the red-light district because it is exploitative of women. These are the people who forget that it is not a sign of moral superiority to not act on them.