It is heartening to note that not all our youngsters have been subjugated by the Ministry of Education (MOE) into mindless automatons to be fed like grist to the mill of the economic machinery. Student Agatha Tan of Hwa Chong Institution attended a school workshop conducted by Focus on the Family (FotF), and discovered to her horror that "bigotry is very much alive". The “It’s Uncomplicated” FotF workshop which the students had to sit through could easily pass off as handiwork of the misogynistic Taliban.
In defence, FotF head of corporate communications Ms Vicky Ho said that the workshop "is designed to be a relationship programme to help young people unravel the world of the opposite sex, uncover the truths of love and dating, and reveal what it takes to have healthy and meaningful relationships."
What is revealed is the booklet distributed to the captive audience - FotF is approved by Minister Heng Swee Keat's MOE to run sexuality education programmes in schools - states as gospel truth that boys are "visual", and that a "guy can't not want to look", and they have a desire to "visually linger on and fantasise about the female body". That has to be a shameless plug for promoting burqa attire.
You have to agree with poor Agatha when she concluded that FotF sends a dangerous message: that you should always assume that a girl means something else (like “yes”) when really she just means “no”. Even "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" author John Gray wouldn't go that far. Michael Kimmel, a professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, in his 2008 lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, titled "Venus, Mars, or Planet Earth? Women and Men in a New Millennium", contends that the perceived differences between men and women are ultimately a social construction, and that socially and politically, men and women want the same things.
A proselytizing group should be the last choice to be tasked the sensitive subject of sexuality education. Especially when some of them actually subscribe to a tenet that women folk are not fit to preach from the pulpit. The dishonourable bit is that they actually went to the schools with a hidden agenda.
Major Mariam al-Mansuri made history as United Arab Emirates’ first female pilot and F-16 team leader in the airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). You can bet this lady means business when she says "yes", she won't be hesitating with the trigger for the bomb load. Thank you, Agatha, for firing your broadside.
In defence, FotF head of corporate communications Ms Vicky Ho said that the workshop "is designed to be a relationship programme to help young people unravel the world of the opposite sex, uncover the truths of love and dating, and reveal what it takes to have healthy and meaningful relationships."
What is revealed is the booklet distributed to the captive audience - FotF is approved by Minister Heng Swee Keat's MOE to run sexuality education programmes in schools - states as gospel truth that boys are "visual", and that a "guy can't not want to look", and they have a desire to "visually linger on and fantasise about the female body". That has to be a shameless plug for promoting burqa attire.
You have to agree with poor Agatha when she concluded that FotF sends a dangerous message: that you should always assume that a girl means something else (like “yes”) when really she just means “no”. Even "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" author John Gray wouldn't go that far. Michael Kimmel, a professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, in his 2008 lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, titled "Venus, Mars, or Planet Earth? Women and Men in a New Millennium", contends that the perceived differences between men and women are ultimately a social construction, and that socially and politically, men and women want the same things.
A proselytizing group should be the last choice to be tasked the sensitive subject of sexuality education. Especially when some of them actually subscribe to a tenet that women folk are not fit to preach from the pulpit. The dishonourable bit is that they actually went to the schools with a hidden agenda.
Major Mariam al-Mansuri made history as United Arab Emirates’ first female pilot and F-16 team leader in the airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). You can bet this lady means business when she says "yes", she won't be hesitating with the trigger for the bomb load. Thank you, Agatha, for firing your broadside.
 |
| there's no mistaking this message |