Child Sex Tourism - WHAT is being done?!?!

I wrote on the issue of child sex tourism (CST) a while back (CST in Sri Lanka) and was reminded of that again by a comment left there by Brandix a few days ago...which got me thinking. Before I returned to Sri Lanka, I was under the impression that CST had suddenly, at last, become a “problem”. There was some kind of child empowerment ad released, etc to not only empower kids to say no, but also to create more awareness of the issue within society. Yet, since I’ve been back, I find that nothing seems to have changed. People are still, on the whole, unaware of the problem or are happy to look sad to 2 seconds when the topic comes up before moving on to “let’s talk how to resolve the national problem”. A problem that continues to traumatize and destroy whole future generations is not an issue that is national enough?

What bothers me is the fact that I can’t see anything that’s being done – by anybody. I’ve not even seen so much as an ad – to empower or just simply to create awareness/ eliminate its ‘taboo’ tag. WHY IS THAT?? Where is the NCPA? Whose children do they protect? Do people really not care? Have we stopped caring and have started to rationalize so much to the extreme extent that we’re afraid of at least trying to do something today for fear of it not achieving all that we expected tomorrow?

When I talk of CST, even in passing reference, the reactions I’ve seen makes me think people are generally divided into 3 categories on the issue:

1. Those that just don’t care - the kind who think “it’s not my problem”. These types of people are not worth anyone’s time or space so I’ll not waste my blog space on them.

2. Those that care. They say “oh yes, sad thing, no?” and/ or “something must be done about this”, but think they themselves are not capable of “doing anything” and so they don’t. Or they find it sad, etc, but the subject is still kind of too “taboo” to be really talked about. These people are the most important from an activists' perspective simply because they can be used to the advantage of the issue just the way a floating vote is used (exploited?) by a politician. If they are shown/ told how to make a change, if they are made aware that taboo-ing it and sweeping it under the carpet helps no one, there is always hope for change.

3. Those that reason and rationalize, sitting on cushioned arm chairs – literally or metaphorically. Those who belong to this group are generally “high up” types who carry some clout socially or politically, etc. There are two types within this group, those who listen patiently and then (very logically) reason “they are all good ideas, but where’s the money for all this?” The second type who rationalizes “…but I don’t think ‘solution x’ will work” before moving on to ponder ideas which will work such as a military solution/ peace talks to the conflict.These type of people actually have the contacts and experience to at least try to implement mechanisms to make a change...so why don't they?

And for me, being the tiny individual that I am right now, it’s doubly frustrating that not only do I have to put up with such shocking reactions, but there doesn't seem to be anything to get involved in to at least try to make a change..and it makes me feel like I, too, can’t to do anything about this at all..except for ranting about it every once in a while :(

Frozen Tear

I picked an Araliya off the mounds
That lay at my feet scattered around
The soft yellow white violently creased
You turned away scowling, quite displeased
For in that bloom you only saw
Its “fall from grace” to sands below

You don't see the defenselessness
Of crushed petals in that browning mess
You point only to the disapproved
Ignoring lost moments, almost unmoved
By the childish fragrance openly stripped
By the smiling face of a nondescript

You tell me not to overreact
But were not the blooms cruelly hacked?
And while the sun chooses to turn away
Will not the bud forced to flower early today
Be judged tomorrow eons before birth
Like an illegitimate child by the mother’s girth?

You see no debris; but only taboo;
Proffering reason to think things through
You crush the helpless, unaware,
You advise blindness of their despair
If your reasoning is what you don’t feel;
Is my frozen tear, their sole appeal?

Perverted or Repressed or Plain Psycho?

If you've lived in Sri Lanka long enough, there's a very likely chance that you/ a girl you know has been "eve-teased" - either groped on the bus/ in a crowd, or at the very least have had a few well-chosen words/ remarks aimed at you/ her as you/ she walked past a group of men. (This though is not just in Sri Lanka, but common in the sub-continent.)

Anyway, sometimes you get told by adults to "dress properly" (=conservatively) to avoid such harassment. This has no real grounds though since even older sari-clad women complain of being masturbated on/ rubbed against on the bus. Why is this? Because men here are generally perverts who get a kick out of harrssing women/ girls? Or are men here so repressed that this is their only "outlet" so to speak (no pun intended!)??

Ravana kept asking in this post, are men here really so repressed cos "why are all these men so excited by the tame sight of [the] dancer’s cleavage?" No one really gave a very satisfactory answer to that. And I continue to wonder, these kind of men - are they perverts? Or "the repressed"? Which category does this guy (that I'll tell you about in a sec) slide in to since he wasn't bothering a girl dressed "provocatively"? Was he neither your general pervert or repressed but simply a random psycho?

Last evening, a friend and I went for a play - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet directed by William Scott Richards. It was held at the Hilton Garden - a very nice setting had it not been for the terrible (and cold) winds, the blast of vehicles on the road outside and the at least 10-minute long ringing of the temple bell from the Gangaramaya (I assume?) in the middle of the performance. Nevertheless, the performance was fantastic - I really loved the alternative uses of symbolism, clothes and lighting. Ironically, before I left home, as usual, the dad threw a mini-fit about "it's not safe to go all alone" for which I retorted "it's at a 5-star hotel for God's sake!". He replied, the hotel bit he was fine with, it's the getting there he worried about. He finally drove me there. I collected my ticket at the counter and they asked for my ID to verify that I am indeed the manshark (as the ticket said)..before I proceeded to join my friend who was already sitting inside.

What happened during the performance was shocking - and that is a gross understatement. In the ball scene, the actors broke out in dance to a fast song. The cast was very young and the dancing very “modern” - what you'd find at a club. Within these youngsters, there was a man dancing - extremely vulgar moves, thrusting his pelvis forward, gyrating. He stood out (even if it were not for his disgusting dancing) cos he was in a white t-shirt emblazoned "Oregon" in red and brown pants with brown (very, very shiny) dress shoes - and, without meaning to sound elitist, he just didn't seem to be part of the audience and looked more like a 'helper' - with the equipment, etc). The cast was in jeans, runners and white t-shirts which had quotes from the play written on them, unlike the oregon dude. Anyhow, the dancing over, the play continued. The Oregon dude sat at the edge of a stage (there were 3 positioned at 45 degree angles to each other) very near a 14 /15 year old foreign boy (British, I think) who was sitting in the row in front of me. He then proceeded to slip his arm around the back of the chair, lean in towards the boy and mutter things to him, staring intently at the boy’s face the whole time. He honestly looked scary - his eyes wild, his head bent, chin tucked into his neck, the eyes rolling around "peeking" at other people every few minutes. Perveted or freaky? The boy mostly ignored him, except to swallow hard a couple of times and move his neck forward when the hand touched him . There was a Chinese mother and son (a 3/4 year old) sitting beside me, and at one point, when the mom sat the boy down next to me and went off for a few minutes, the kid promptly jumped up and was running about. When he accidently knocked into this psycho’s knee, he grabbed the boy by the neck of his t-shirt, brought his face close to the boy’s face, his mouth in a kind of leer and for a second I seriously thought he was going to take a bite, I swear. I grabbed the kid's hand and pulled till he landed in the chair next to me again and I whispered "sit here till your mother comes back" as fiercely as I knew how and held on to him till the mother came back. More perverted or freakier?

The play ended half hour or so later, and the last scene was (an alternative addition after the death scene) was once again of the cast dancing to a fast tempo. Psycho dude jumped up and began the gyrating, staring at the British boy, 3 feet away from him. And as the music started tapering off, he walked up to the boy, lifted his Oregon t-shirt, thrust his pelvis in the boy’s face and gyrated, leering. The boy looked terrified till his mother (sitting beside him) punched the psycho in the stomach, to which he leered at her before joining the cast to watch them (the cast) hug each other, etc off stage. The boy's mother was almost in tears. And the worst thing was, no one seemed to have noticed, not even my friend (sitting beside me!) till that last dance. Perhaps cos the play involved the audience quite a bit (they pulled a few front-row-seaters into dance with the cast as well, etc), perhaps they thought this was part of the play? But seriously? And who could that boy complain to? The play director? The cast? The hotel? I honestly had no idea and it was frustrating that it seemed there was nothing to do. The mother turned around, her face red and teary and said "that man was bothering my son all night! Who can I talk to?!?". I asked her to try both the cast and the hotel management. The only thing I did was leave my name and number with her in case they got treated with the usual "but it's your word against his" quip if they did choose to complain, and needed a witness.

And this made me realize that, in reality, maybe not even 5-star hotels are actually safe since this psycho made it in. And I wondered, was this a stalker/ hotel employee who'd had that boy in his sights for some reason (far-fetched but possible)? Although if that was the case, wouldn't the mom/ boy have "known" him at least by sight? And why did they not complain in the middle of the play? I suspect they didn't want to make a scene and figured if they ignored him long enough, he'd go away.

Or was this a random pervert who made it in with a valid ticket, or otherwise? Was this “a repressed” whose only outlet for his gay tendencies (but perverted anyway since normal gay guys don't gyrate at random people) was to show up here? Or a random paedophile? What was going on and more importantly, what could that boy have done? Hit him? Have complained in the middle of the play? If so, then to whom since there weren't any hotel employees around and it seemed there were only the cast (who did the lighting and the moving of equipment themselves) and the audience? Or ignored him (as was done till the last scene) and endured the groping and muttering? My own behaviour disgusted me then and continues to disgust me now since all I did was to observe this whole fiasco and only get angrier and scared-er and ended up only offering to be "a witness" for them, before choosing to walk away. Couldn't I have done more? Complained myself (after or in the middle of the play)?

I guess these will only be abstract questions now that it's all over and done with. But I must say, selfishly I guess, next time I go out - no matter where - I'll take my dad's advice and have a safety net. Perhaps lots of friends around in case there are more of these perverts/ repressed/ psychos around and next time, the crime goes further and the victim turns out to be me.

Update

Apparently this psycho is a part of neither the crew nor the cast of the play as assured by Benvoleo ( a member of the cast) who had left a comment here and also by another cast member which Sach very kindly shared with me thru e-mail.

Top 5ive things I hate...

...about living in the land down under. I’m only writing this to give you poor souls a break from all the politics, mayhem and what not. At least that’s all you need to know. (Note to Manshark: this is for reminding you things you might forget if Sri Lanka were to start driving you mad someday in the near future).

So, the Top 5ive things I hate about living in the land down under:

1. When the sky goes all blue and rains down blinding sunshine and I, like the fool that I am, run out (and still miss the damned bus!) without a jacket and freeze my butt off since the cold wind won the contest over the sun

2. People who have no respect for running mansharks and beep their horns and scare the living day lights out of me

3. Crazy tram drivers who ding-ding-ding! at running mansharks and scare whatever remains of the living day lights (what are living day lights? The number of ‘light’ of days one lives? So does that mean manshark shall now only live at night?)

4. Vicious, lunatic magpies

5. People who run over possums and leave their carcasses (the possum's, not suicide-ed people's) in the middle of the road (okay, I'm not asking for a sob-fest burial here, but at least leave 'em on the road side so the rest of the possum-brood won't possibly get run over looking for mum)

6. (Hyper) footy crowd at Richmond station on Sat arvo – no, the stink of beer is just not attractive

7. People who say ‘she’ll be right mate’ instead of giving me a hug when I tell them I have failed my exams

8. Big, neat roads with polite drivers that make driving such a bore. Now, in Sri Lanka, it’s a bit different, y’see. First, when you manage to nudge your way on to the main road from the itty bitty lane you were on, there’s the exhilaration of your first triumph of the journey. Then comes the mad go, stop, go, STOP!! (fucking three-wheeler full of grinning dimwits), go, stop, shit that dimwit-full three wheeler is after me, go, go, GO!!, stop, apologize to the biker you almost ran over (yes, it’s always the non-bikes that are at fault), go, stop, etc. Then comes the best feeling of all when you reach your destination: knowing you achieved, albeit verging on near insanity now, all that you set out to achieve and have gone the full distance of the journey you set out to travel. THAT feeling is just not there in the land down under.

9. People who find tiny people mansharks cute for they not only selfishly withhold (much deserved) hugs, they also selfishly don’t understand how much time it takes to try to get a good foothold just so I can at least see the bloody exam paper that’s on that abnormally high desk from the abnormally low chair

10. Lack of humidity – when my hair doesn’t go crazy people mistake me for a normal sane person manshark and tell me normal sane things about their normal sane lives which are just too normally, sanely boring. Well, except maybe "Bob" who lives on swanston street and once told me he knew I was one of ‘em the minute I stopped to listen to his crazy li’l songs (I actually stopped to pet the lab who lives with him, but why burst his bubble?) Besides, "Bob" hates chocolate so I don’t need to share my choc waffle with him while I listen to the stories 'bout people he’d met who have fires in their head ("Bob"'s been places you've never dreamed nightmared of!)

I know I said “5ive” above, but once I got started, there were just so darn many…Why did I not get my one-way ticket outta here earlier??

Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god

My thesis is due in five days! 5! Five! FIVE!!!!!!

Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god

OH MY GOD

I can either

1. Sit dow and Just Do It

OR

2. Find a thick rope and hang myself

Option 2 is tempting, but I must resist. I mean, what would everyone do without moi?? (ie, once the celebrations die down)

(Don't you dare answer that!!)

To rant a blog or to blog a rant? That is the title.

A 30C day was forecast, hence off I went about my chores in a skirt and rubber slippers. BUT I forgot that winter had made my feet dry and soft and used-to-socks. Hence 15 minutes into the walk there was a blister on each foot.

Having limped the last 20 minutes to my destination tragic realization hit me- I needed to walk back all that way home again! No can do.

So I walk into a pharmacy to buy bandaids.The lady behind the counter very politely tells me that bandaids don't come in ones or twos but in 25 bandaid packs. Err..excuse me, lady, I have two blisters, not twenty-five. And apparently the pharmacy also doesn't take Eftpos for purchases under $10 and there was no ATM in sight. I pray and hope tmrw's newspapers will report that a lady pharmacist was found dead from having mysteriously acquired 25 on blisters on each foot.

And for all of you who saw me limping home (a green-skirted manshark, that is) thank you very much for offering me a ride. I hope you die of blisters someday soon too.

For all of you who stopped me to ask if I had a blister, and cluck your

tongue in sympathy - that did not help. A bandaid might have.

And to the Russian-accented dude who sympathised with my limping around the dvd store just before proceeding to tell me 'I think you are gorgeous' (as if there was such a thing as an ugly manshark!) - go fuck yourself. Next time you so much as look at me, I'll have you shot (mafia links are easy to acquire around here).

And while I'm on this rant, let me also tell you all the things I found annoying during my (slow) walk home: every fucking song on my i-pod (it'd now be at the bottom of a river had I found one), the sound of housekeys jiggling around in my bag (why do I have so many keys when there's only one door to my house?), people who don't pick up their dogs' shit off the pavements (have you tried manoeuvring - how the fuck do you spell that word?!? - around such piles with blistered-feet?), Magpies protecting their young in trees who swoop down at you for walking under (well, excuse me for living!), supermarkets that run out of chocolate wafers (no, vanilla will not fucking do), and finally when I find a million e-mails waiting for me at home from people who send millions of friend requests/ messages to my Hi 5 (one of these days, I'm gonna shut down that site and all you losers are gonna have to find yourselves a job!).

Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh.