Sex News in Asia – 9/26/11

This article first appeared on Good Vibrations Magazine.

Sex trafficking awareness ads from Singapore too graphic?

Asia

• Asia’s women are catching up. A World Bank report suggests that women are gaining ground very rapidly overall – to the point where men may be feeling their assumed roles seriously threatened. The report does not actually say so but a high proportion of the laggards relative to their income levels are Muslim.
• Asia’s baby shortage. Very little attention has been given to trying to reverse one of the two causes of rapid ageing – low fertility. Exhortation by governments to have more babies has scant impact. The part of the world often believed to be most dedicated to family values and generational continuity is facing twin challenges: extremely low fertility rates and an aversion to marriage.

Singapore

• Sex trafficking awareness ads from Singapore too graphic? How these layouts will do anything to help the cause is a mystery.
• Nanny states don’t make babies, loving couples do. The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports has allocated nearly $860 million – close to half its entire budget – to baby bonus and maternity benefits, childcare and other family development programmes. Since the first Baby Bonus scheme was introduced in 2001, the state has consistently dangled carrots to mint more mothers. And yet the fertility rates have continued their southward march
• Are risque orientation games sexist? They are oriented by the Singapore Institute of Management-University of London’s (SIM-UOL) orientation last month. Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao said some girls were so affected that they burst into tears later.
• We are well into the 21st century and yet we still have remarks, commercials and policies that perpetuate gender stereotypes and sexist attitudes. So AWARE has created the Alamak! Award, an annual search for the most annoying, face palm, gut wrenching, you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me instance of sexism in Singapore.

Indonesia

• Breastfeeding regulations to target formula companie
• Governer tells women to avoid rape by not wearing miniskirts After a woman was raped and kidnapped by several men in a public minivan last week, what did Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo have to say? He asked women not to wear miniskirts. The governor also told women: “If you ride on an ojek wearing short pants or a miniskirt, do not sit like a man. If you sit sidesaddle, there will be no problem.” One of the governor’s duties, of course is to make sure that Jakarta is safe. However, blaming the victim is indeed far easier than offering concrete solutions, which would place more responsibility for action on him.
• Scores of women and children wearing colorful miniskirts and tight leggings gathered in central Jakarta, outraged by his comments that provocatively dressed women are to blame for sexual assaults.

China

• A Chinese man has been arrested on suspicion of killing two nightclub hostesses and keeping another four women as sex slaves in a basement dungeon, according to police.
• An erratic eel wriggled its way up a man’s penis and into his bladder following an accident during an unorthodox beauty spa treatment in China.
• The dizzying laser rays in gay bars and the floodlights of a football pitch seem to be irreconcilably distant. One-Nil, the first gay football team in Hong Kong, attempts to bridge the two.
• Kaohsiung and Hsinchu will hold its second annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride parade and streetside Rainbow Festival respectively
• International martial arts icon and movie star Jackie Chan has shot his first bedroom scene, according to Sina sources.

India

• Following a tip-off, the police raided a gay party held in a bungalow in northern Mumbai early on Sunday and detained 133 people – including several celebrities – on the charge of indecent behaviour, two party organisers for not having the requisite liquor licence, and the DJ for not having the licence to play music beyond permissible hours.