The news today reported that many Taiwanese parents are furious and protesting over a text book. The fury is over a Junior High text book which has detailed pictures of the male and female anatomy on adjacent pages. They claim when the book is closed, the two pictures touch. The anatomy lines up perfectly for intercourse.
In a response to that report from netizens to help remedy this dastardly offense, they suggested placing a condom between the two pages.
The article is all in Chinese. I’ll see if I can post it. If anyone else can find the article, please share.
There’s a number of articles. Here’s the one in the China Times:
Other online comments include:
“It’ll give birth to baby textbooks”
“If you open and close the textbook repeatedly, it makes a slapping sound” (my favorite)
“Do the textbooks get pregnant for 10 months too?”
“There’s hope for Taiwan’s birth rate”
Because safe sex is just not practiced here nor is STD checkups regularly for sexually active people.
Almost all of the Taiwanese lady friends I’ve had were perfectly ok with me not wearing a condom. Some even requested it. And the clinic I go to said I was the 2nd person in like the 5 years she opened her open private practice to do a checkup voluntary without symptoms. (Mostly because it’s not covered by NHI to do checkups unless you have symptoms and each test cost money for each STD)
That is a bit of a broad brush you are painting with.
Try not to take your encounters as an example for the entire population on the island. I know plenty of people practicing safe sex.
Perhaps they were hoping to solidify the relationship by putting a bun in the oven.
I know it’s purely anecdotal, but I would say it I notice a big difference compared to women from other places…the only Taiwanese woman i met that ever made a point to wear one was because she confessed she had a long term bf who is in an open relationship and didn’t want to bring stds or babies back.
It may just be more “anecdotal evidence,” but my own experience, and the experience of many people I know, is identical to what Andrew is saying. If they are getting sex ed, let’s just say that it’s not really sinking in.
It is difficult to get good numbers on this, even on something like the number of abortions (many are illegal), but I fear the worst.
After 1987, Taiwan went through a long sexual revolution brought about by some combination of social liberalization and technology changes. In contrast to a country like the USA, where “dating” is traditional and involves well-known stages of intimacy, Taiwanese parents resisted such customs on the grounds that they would interfere with school, inter alia, and so a lot of young people’s experience of relationships has proceeded directly to the gusto, so to speak, often in the form of some stranger from the internet. (Many are reluctant to enter into relationships with their classmates, and in grade school they might not even have opposite-sex classmates.) By now this has been the baseline here for decades. Popular culture (e.g. Hollywood movies) has encouraged the impression that spontaneous sexual behavior and “love at first sight” are not only the norm, but generally lead to lasting happiness, while porn has similarly influenced the perception of sex. More recently, I suspect smartphones of retarding the social interactions of young people–you see more Aspergers-type behavior from the boys, for example. For the sake of comparison, “hooking up” is also known to occur in the USA, but is not the only (or even the main) form of courtship behavior, and young women there are better able to compare notes with and support one another.
Less (non-sexual) intimacy between partners, or with peers, coupled with lingering shame involving all things sexual or romantic, has discouraged frank discussion of things that need to be frankly discussed. The education system is too hidebound to be of much help, and suffers from the same delusions and shame-driven compulsions–hence this “naked people in the textbook! will no one think of the children!” controversy.
