Guest guest Posted December 19, 2004 Report Share Posted December 19, 2004 Dear list readers, I am constrained to write after learning that the CEO of Baazee.com has been remanded in Judicial Custody related to the above mentioned clip. Here is yet another example of the misuse of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which is often cited as being necessary yet never used. If it was abolished there would be no case to answer apart from the general policy of the content of Baazee.com and of course its sister organisation E-Bay.com. The high volume of placed advertisements and the reliance of customers to report offensive postings as the most efficient and effective way to censor content has inherrent delays which are unavoidable in such a large consumer driven forum with the potention for a billion postings a day if everyone who lives in India posted just one item. What is even worse is the fact that this matter has now eclipsed in printed media output the much more serious matter of a prisoner being able to access a mobile phone in Bihar and harrass and threaten citizens. What we have here is two consenting responsible young adults recording for fun one of the most popular and safer sexual activities carried out in India and around the world, namely oral sex. Coersion and lack of consent appears not to be apparent in the described content of the film clip that is available in much better quality from non violent erotica already available and in so many households in India and elsewhere. The popular description is " blue movies " but in practice is just recorded versions of every day sexual practices that are so popular around the world. I even read this morning that the Delhi Public School, from which the students who recorded their fun, being incensed enough to ask that the hearings be held in camera citing " the schools reputation in the field of education earned through decades of hard work by its staff, students and parents of its wards. " I have just concluded a summary of the content of schools print material lodged on World AIDS Day and find it to be eroneous in accuracy of content and thereby misleading to newspaper readers to say nothing of the fact that the eroneous quotes in the main are coming from teaching staff and reflected in the students comments. I have flagged with the activists associated with sexual health and safety that the educational institutions need to be urgently targetted, and in the case of the Delhi Public School, it has missed out very badly on the opportunity for a healthy focus on sexual mores of its students in the hope that we can contain the transmission of HIV/AIDS before it is too late. The age groups affected in India start at 14 and continue to about 48 years of age yet we leave all the sexual health and safety material to years 11 and 12 where all we are doing is telling those already infected what they should have known to protect themselves in the earlier instance when they were practicing the sexual behaviours. In India there is a significant lack of strategic planning from churches, temples, schools, and parents so much so that kids often experiment in a peer led field of ignorance with very often tragic mistakes. Of course this is not the only Delhi School that has missed the boat. Another Delhi school was offered a program of sexual health and safety. It was selected because it was a popular school but it also had the reputation of the highest number of unintended pregnancies amngst its female students. When approached the program was rejected by the school staff ostensibly because it would be frowned on by parents. When asked, the parents formed a different opinion, suggesting that it was overdue and when the school was confronted with parent reaction they confessed to being unwilling to teach the content. Very obviously I wouldn't want teachers with that attitude to be teaching my programs because they are clearly unqualified for the job. For the information of readers not only are condoms manufactured in a variety of colours and shapes designed to advance sexual safety in a HIV/AIDS environment, but they are also manufactured in a variety of flavours as well to ensure that those people who might be having unprotected oral sexual experience, which is 99% of the time where sexual experimentation starts, can be better protected. It would appear that the definition of the order of nature needs to be very much more clearly spelled out if Section 377 is to remain on the books particularly in the direction of the Judiciary whose reaction to the willingness of the Baazee.com CEO to facilitate important and direct information as to the community watch potential of the site in question was punished by Judicial custody in what is obviously a knee jerk reaction to a perception of public opinion that I am not finding when I wander about India and speak to affected and infected communities. It is no wonder to me why defendants and witnesses have to be pursued by the Courts in India to get them to offer evidence in cases, and often by the time they get to Court the evidence is either contaminated or forgotten. Surely a very significant opportunity was passed up by the Delhi Public School to actively educate its students on the sexual health and safety risks of sexual behaviour which begins at puberty and so often ends in tragedy or unwanted pregnancies. The Courts and the Police are now contributing to the ignorance and secrecy that makes the work of sexual health and safety so difficult and fraught with legal risks for those like the writer whose age is 61 and who is dedicated to levelling the sexual health and safety playing field for the sake of the next generation, both in India and also in other parts of South Asia. Geoff Heaviside E-mail: <gheaviside@...> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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