Where Do You Draw the Line when it comes to Basic Needs?

I’ve just blocked a former girlfriend from texting me. We had gotten along well enough and then Singapore’s Covid-19 circuit breaker measures came in. I could not keep in touch and then for reasons best known to her, she thought it was appropriate to send my daughter inappropriate messages. The kid told her to stop and after running into her, I told her to stop harassing the kid. Despite that, she persisted in sending me messages about how she would invite my daughter to her office for drinks and would come to the house to meet the kid. At that point, both the kid and I thought enough was enough and so she was blocked.

I’m made to think of this incident because of the recent arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell on the charge of providing underage sex-slaves to the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein. As well as being excessively rich and having a preference for young girls, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell (I’m old enough to remember the yacht that was named after her) counted the rich and influential, including the current Occupant of the White House and the Duke of York, as part of their social circle.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/07/21/heres-every-time-donald-trump-and-ghislaine-maxwell-have-been-photographed-together/#66f4691a183d 

The case of Mr. Epstein and his associates raises one of the oldest and most common issues faced by people all over the world – namely the issues of sex, power and money and in the pursuit of sex, power and money, are there any issues of where we draw the line.

As I’ve confessed in previous postings, I’m a self-professed cad. I hate the idea of being exclusive to anyone (a case of why stick to one when there are so many) and I can’t help to look at the nubile things that walk past me when I’m in the office area (Singapore’s financial district). Looking at a woman’s body and being able to enjoy a woman’s body is like getting to look at a piece of art and enjoying a tasty meal at the same time

My only defense to saying everything that I’ve just said is that I’m probably no different from most heterosexual men. The need to get laid is one of the few recognized human needs that transcends race, religion and so on (as a Jewish architect said – “My dick isn’t racist”).

However, human nature is such that the simple male need to release sperm is complicated. While the male brain is wired to release sperm, the female brain is wired to ensure that any offspring she produces are well taken care of. Hence, while men look for nubile young things, women tend to look for signs of strength and stability or as my mother would argue – you want the guy who will be hanging around once the kid comes out. Hence, the history of the human sexual experience has been about women trading their bodies in return for men providing for the well being of them and their families. In prehistoric times, this meant the guys who got laid were inevitably those who could bring home the biggest share of the kill.  These days, it inevitably means the guys who earn big bucks.

It is socially acceptable and many cases a status symbol for an older man to have a much younger companion. Say what you like about Donald Trump but having Melania by his side has not harmed his social standing. By comparison, Emanuel Marcon gets a few funny looks for the fact that he married a much older woman and has stepchildren who are his age. My Uncle Richard, who was a cad of the highest order, used to tell me, “No such thing as a good-looking woman over 25 and make sure your next wife is half your age.”

It’s even more acceptable in Asia, where levels of poverty are high. Asia’s red-light districts are filled with young girls hopping to escape poverty and a girl who marries a much older (and often Western) man is considered a hero for finding a route out of poverty for her family.
I get the attraction trade off here. Which man doesn’t want to wake up next to a hot bod? Which woman wants to reject the guy who can provide a good home for her? As an old friend used to say of Prince Charles, “What man kicks out a beautiful blonde for an old hag?”

Yes, I get the attraction and the trade-off. Yet, despite that I also believe that there have to be limits. There needs to be mutual respect and both parties need to be able to able to understand what they’re getting into.  Hence, I get repulsed when I hear of a “trade in children.”

I take myself as an example. As I get older, I notice physical attraction more and the issue of “age-appropriate” seems to matter less. My main defense is usually, I’m not the first 40 plus something to look at young nubile things with a certain amount of lust.

Yet, I remind myself that I am first and foremost a father of a young woman and my initial thoughts always go back to the question of who do I want her to find in life. If she’s meant to find love and happiness with an older man, then I won’t stop it but do I want her to be the plaything of an old man? The answer is clearly no and that always brings me back to normalcy. I become conscious that my behavior might affect her perceptions on what a man should be. Hence, while I might find a younger girl attractive at a glance, I remember that I’m dad before anything else.

Mr. Epstein, the Occupant and the Duke crossed a line in their pursuit of young, underage girls. There’s something not quite right about people with power, money and influence using children for their own needs. I understand the need to get laid, I’ve been guilty of succumbing to that need on too many occasions. However, a line has to be drawn and people who have said no and are unable to give consent should be protected with the full extent of the law.

You Know something is Overrated when…..

I used to have a dream that I would one day be able to place the letters MBA behind my name. The idea was sweet. I would get my first degree in the UK, work for a huge multinational for about three-years and then head towards Kellogg School of Management in Northwestern University to do my MBA. In short, I thought it would have been cool to be part of the great corporate network.

Well, things didn’t work out that way. I never got into a “big” corporation – I think the closest I’ve been to a multinational was two weeks at Rapp Collins. Didn’t have the credentials and earning enough for my next meal became a bigger priority to getting my MBA. However, as I continued to pound the streets looking for work, I still harboured the dream of calling myself “Tang Li, MBA”

That was until I meet “Chutiya Bhai.” My dreams of ever becoming an MBA went to the shit. Thanks to Chutiya Bhai, I realised that having an MBA was not everything it was cracked up to be – I lie – I realised that having an MBA might become detrimental to my state of mind. It was like fantasising over a hot chick for ten-years and then one day, you go on a date with her and you realise that she’s so rotten on the inside that shooting yourself before the date is over looks like a viable option.

Chutiya Bhai has an MBA amongst a host of other qualifications. He’s a very clever person. However, he is also unpleasant. Give him two minutes of your time and he’ll take two days telling you how rich and successful he is and how he managed to get to that stage by jacking over his professional colleagues. The man’s idea of saving money is to avoid paying his local coffee shop for food he’s eaten.

He did admit to me that he had a few personal issues to resolve with his family. However, you would imagine that someone with an MBA would have the education and
character to rise above it and succeed brilliantly. He didn’t – his only friends were the Old Rogue and myself – that was of course until Joyce decided she would rather be with me than with him (despite the fact that he makes loads more money than I do). If Chutiya Bhai was not bugging the Old Rogue about his issues in the office, he would bug me. We were meant to solve the world’s issues for him. Much as I did spend a lot of time in his company – I felt that, “If this is what an MBA does to you – thanks but no thanks.”

Ever since I’ve lost the ambition to get an MBA, I’ve been able to see things more clearly. I realise that MBAs do not make the best business people. Two of the best people I know are a Vietnamese girl and a Chinese egg seller. Both have debateable qualifications. Yet both have risen up from nowhere by having the right people-smarts. Both have helped bring prosperity to others and so have been rewarded in turn.

To be fair to Chutiya Bhai, he’s not the only person to shatter my dreams. One of the most prominent people to shatter my dreams was Professor Thio Lee-Ann, a former Nominated Member of Parliament and a Professor of Law.

Like the MBA, I had a dream of going to Oxford. Unfortunately, I was coming out of a bad love relationship and a drunken spree during my A-level year and so I didn’t get the grades required for Oxbridge. However, that didn’t stop me from admiring Oxbridge and holding up the place as an ideal of what a university should be. I suspect I didn’t make much of a student career at the University of London because I felt like a poor relation to the Oxbridge Universities.

The Professor Thio Lee-Ann came along and shattered my dreams about Oxbridge. I read her arguments during the debate on the repeal of 377A (the section in the Singapore Penal Code that criminalises anal sex between men) and was stunned.

This supposedly clever woman who had a professorship in law proceeded to produce pages and pages of drivel about how letting two consenting adults have sex in the privacy of their own bedroom would be bad for society. Her argument went along the lines of – if you let consenting gay adults have sex in the privacy of the bedroom, you will ruin society because everyone might turn gay. The clincher of her argument was – Anal Sex is like sticking a straw up your nose.

Not sure how she worked that one out? Throughout her ranting, she failed to provide a single, logical and legally sound argument as to why a private act between two consenting adults should be a criminal act. Her arguments were befitting a trash collector than a professor of law.

What was most shocking to me was finding out that the good professor had been to Oxford. I mean, I guess you could say that our local varsities have a way of passing certain people, but one would surely expect better from Oxford! How the hell did a woman with such an inability to think rationally and critically graduate from a University that is renowned for producing some of the greatest minds of our time.

Furthermore, my respect for the Oxbridge institutions were shattered when our Prime Minister, a Cambridge Graduate, and his cabinet (filled with Oxbridge graduates with MBAs) refused to recognise the drivel that Professor Thio was sprouting for what it is and proceeded to agree with her – they decided to keep 377a in the penal code but promised not to enforce it – which is a beautiful contradiction in terms.

I suppose I should be grateful to the likes of Professor Thio and Chutiya Bhai. These are people who help you to realise that sometimes the lost dreams that you had were lost for a reason. When you meet them, you suddenly become grateful for the things that you did not get and you bless your fortune for giving you the things that you had. When it comes to institutions, I think it’s always best to meet the products as well as reading the brochures.