Condoms Don’t Kill People…

But they sure do help–by giving them HIV. Or that’s what the Vatican would have you believe.

I understand why they made that (paraphrased) statement a couple days ago, more accurately that condoms are never a good thing and actually do cause AIDS by the indirect means pushing people to have more sex.

They’re the Vatican; they have to come out and set some moral standards because if they condoned condoms, they could potentially be condoning what most people use condoms for: have sex outside of marriage. The Vatican could never condone that. Which is too bad, because in keeping this stance (which in some ways is downright selfish), the Vatican has managed to hurt the very people they want to help.

Let’s role-play here. You’re standing in front of a fancy hotel with a condom in your pocket. An unmarried, young couple runs up the stairs, holding each other and laughing hysterically. One of them asks you, “Excuse me, do you have a condom? We’re gonna have sex and I forgot mine.” Are you going to give them the one in your pocket? Or refuse them on the basis of moral standard?

The above situation by itself is absurd, but take it or leave it, situations tantamount to this example do exist around the world: brothel houses, prostitution rings, and yes, many places in Africa.

We have a choice here. Cling to our standard: never promote condoms because it encourages people to have sex by taking away some of the potential negative consequences. This isn’t a baseless line of reasoning; no would one deny that everyone would eat more junk food if it didn’t make you fat, give you diabetes, hurt your body.

But this isn’t an ideal world, and to cling to ideals when they clearly aren’t applicable or downright fail, is to do a grave injustice to your neighbors and friends. The Vatican has shown that on their list of priorities, idealism and a vocal standard are more important than the lives of people.

People have sex and don’t use condoms and are much more likely to spread HIV–or people have sex and do use condoms and HIV decreases.

Given those two situations, I know what I’d choose.

The Asian Blues

I’m willing to wager that many of my friends imagined this day would never come. I don’t know if I necessarily imagined it either, but I certainly didn’t dismiss it; I don’t think the possibility even occurred to me. But it happened.

I think I’m bored of Asia.

Rewind a bit. I’m bored of Eastern Asia, i.e. China, Japan, Korea, and anything in that area. Call it Asian Fatigue, everything is simply starting to blur together. I don’t know if it’s because most of East Asia has developed within the past century, most cities quite rapidly, which gives each city in Asia the same kind of feeling. Maybe it’s the more simple fact that I’ve just been in Asia for so long.

I don’t mean to be so derogatory and say every country is the same. But it’s hard to deny that there are striking similarities between the countries I’ve been to.The culture, the food, even the scenery, the natural and undeveloped parts of each place bear more similarities to each other than say, Yosemite, or some random place over in Europe. I think my desire for something different, something relatively unknown, has finally backfired on me; I’ve been in Asia long enough where I know there are still levels of culture I haven’t touched, but still feel as if it’s something I know. So coming back here to Taiwan, is like saying I want to try a completely new kind of cuisine, while ordering pasta with a different type of Alfredo sauce.

I feel the number one lesson, the new experience I’ve gained from this trip so far is the 101s of staying at a hostel. Call it sad, but with this new skill under my belt, I am very seriously considering going on a backpacking trip through Europe. No joke. After some pacing back in forth with my brother at the airport in San Francisco and some story telling from a classmate, I really want to go.

I guess Hong Kong will always be a second home to me, and so I have no issue with going back there. Also, Japan is just fun. But after this trip, I doubt I’ll itch to be in this part of the world again. Don’t think this means I don’t like this part of the world. I like Taipei, I like Seoul, I like Shanghai, possibly in that order. I just think I’m done with it.

I feel some sort of dramatic irony unfolding in a few years when I find out some company wants me to work in Asia. I’ll start saving my tears.

Taking Stereotypes to the World

As a greenhorn to the hostel, I must admit a cool thing about them is you meet all sorts of people, from everywhere, either just passing through for a day or have been here for many months. Most of them are cool, though I wouldn’t put it past annoying people to roll around and completely destroy someone else’s vacation.

I met an African American lady who was staying for a day on her way to teach English in South Korea. As newcomers to Taipei, we decided to trek out together seeing some sights, while engaging in lots of discussion, mostly surrounding our traveling experiences and how different countries viewed African Americans.

She had an interesting barometer for measuring her like for different countries: her amount of love for a country was reversely related to how much she was stared at. Apparently Hong Kong*, Japan and Taiwan scored high. Korea didn’t fare so well, and unfortunately China, specifically Shanghai, was the bottom of the barrel. Then again, when people talk about you, stare at you, and take pictures of you, it’s hard to play devil’s advocate. Which surprises me, it’s Shanghai. Then again, it’s China.

I learned two things from spending that day with her: America isn’t done with race, not yet. I knew this, but it brings new meaning to you when you hear even more distressing facts about an already dire situation.*2 African Americans followed in stores? Black women never going missing because they’re never reported? Crash isn’t quite the amazing movie about race that everyone said it was?

The second thing was slightly more revealing. I’ve always known that media portrayal of African Americans, or any race for that matter, was far from fair and true, that it would damage the way all Americans might view their fellow neighbors. It never dawned on me though, that as the number one exporter of all kinds of media, we would also in some seemingly devious fashion also be the number one exporter of cultural stereotypes to the rest of the world.

This lady told me, she spoke with local Koreans about their views on Black people, and to her dismay, they revealed that in many ways, what they believe about all Black people is what they see them do in our movies. Barring any possible exaggeration on her part…how tragic. We’ve done a great disservice to African Americans in our own country. Apparently, we’re also risking ingraining our biases into the minds of everyone else.

While I don’t put it past any other country to be able to differentiate between archetypes in American movies and real people they might meet, Americans can come across real counterparts to media figures everyday and still succumb to media portrayal. I wonder what it’s like for those who cannot interact with those they see on screen; those, who their only exposure to African Americans is the man from the ghetto, looting, killing, and being everything that many African Americans are not.

“It is hard being Black and a woman, Dan.”

I told her I would never deny that.

* – Though she did relay an unfortunate story about being followed in a shop by an employee, who she proceeded to yell at because she couldn’t believe that Hong Kongers, suffering from equal Black hysteria, would be like Americans and believe all Black-skinned humans are prone to theft. I kindly told her this happens to everyone in Hong Kong. She felt better after that.

*2 – I’ve spoken with African Americans before, but never anyone from the South.