Life is Healthy

RT, 14 February, 2011

It was on a terrace between two paddy fields like this that Balinese teenager Ngurah Alit was caught having sex with a cow, who he claimed had flirted with him. (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

Denpasar. A Balinese teenager captured stark naked in the act of sexually penetrating a domestic cow claims he believed the animal was a young and beautiful girl.

The young man has been identified as Ngurah Alit, 18, an unemployed youth from the seaside village of Yeh Embang in Jembrana.

Village head Ida Bagus Legawa told the Jakarta Globe that a villager, identified as Gusti Ngurah Dinar, caught Alit committing bestiality “when he was standing naked and holding the cow’s ass.” He was standing on a mud terrace between two rice paddy fields.

A shocked Dinar escorted Alit to the village office for questioning, where he stated that he believed the cow, owned by Wayan Yasa, was a young and beautiful girl.

“She was calling to me, making flattering comments, then I had sex with her,” Alit told local officials.

As is usual in such situations — this is the second recorded instance of cow rape in Bali in about two years — the animal will be drowned at sea in a Pecaruan cleansing ceremony intended to rid the village of what Legawa described as “dirty behaviour.”

Alit will be cleansed in the ocean and must pay a fine of 2,000 traditional Balinese coins.

Wayan will be compensated Rp 5 million ($540) for the loss of his cow.

In 2008, elderly grandfather Nengah Sutarya, 70, was caught in the act of having sex with a cow that he also said had tempted him by claiming to be a virgin girl.

That cow was drowned because villagers believed the 70-year old had impregnated the unlucky animal.

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Students in Surabaya getting a lesson on the female reproductive system. Sex itself is a taboo subject in class.  (Antara Photo/Eric Ireng)

For Jakarta housewife Rika Henria Ardanesworo, sex is one of the most difficult topics to discuss with her two daughters, and she wishes schools would play a bigger role in teaching students about the subject.

Rika said her daughters, Khesia and Archie, now both in their early 20s, learned the basics of sex from their peers. All she can do now is try to convince them to stay away from it.

“Communication is the key,” she said, adding that she had never formally prohibited her daughters from engaging in sex.

Instead, she tells them horror stories that could result from premarital sex, such as unwanted pregnancies, failed marriages and diseases.

“That is how I teach my kids and hopefully, they can learn from it,” Rika said.

The issue of teenagers engaging in sexual activity again became a hot topic recently after a survey conducted by the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection (KPAI) was leaked to the media.

The survey, which KPAI chairman Hadi Supeno said constituted preliminary research and was not meant to be published, showed that 32 of 100 teenagers claimed they had had full sexual intercourse.

Hadi quoted the teenagers, aged 14 to 18, who came from middle-upper-class families, as saying that they did not receive adequate attention from their parents, thus they were left at home with little supervision over what they accessed on the Internet or watched on television.

“Those teenagers had become curious, and without tight monitoring they could easily satisfy this [curiosity],” he said.

In response to the survey, Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring called for more stringent controls over the Inter net.

However, Hadi said that would not solve the problem.

“Let’s not be naive and just blame technology,” he said. “Like it or not, there is greater access to information these days.”

To address the issue, the KPAI is pushing for a program that would teach parents how to educate their children at home.

“We have been recommending this program to the government and now it is being discussed together with the BKKBN,” Hadi said, referring to the national agency for family planning and population control.

The program, he said, would see health institutions from the city level down to those in villages providing lessons for parents in how to talk to their children about sex, a subject that is still widely seen as taboo.

So should schools also be involved? Wahyu Hartomo, an official at the State Ministry for Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, said that ideally, sex education would be given to students as early as elementary school. “[Sex] education should start from about 12 years of age, ideally,” he said, adding that children should know how to protect themselves against sexual abuse.

The tricky part in the classroom, however, is to provide education without promoting sexual activity. Suparman, chairman of the Indonesian Independent Teachers Association, said teachers should know the boundaries when talking about sex in the classroom.

“Bearing in mind the culture here, it would be difficult not to feel awkward when talking about this,” he said. “If they don’t deliver the message in the right way, it will be seen as too vulgar.”

Suparman said that since we now live in the information age, teachers must find new ways to handle the topic.

“With globalization, teachers must find new methods of giving sex education,” he said.

Suparman added that teachers themselves should receive more lessons before broaching the subject, because sex education “cannot be regarded in the same way as other subjects.”

Religion also complicates the topic of sex education. Amidhan, the chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), said that the lessons must be restricted to the scientific aspects of sex.

“It is permissible to teach children about the dangers of casual sex,” he said, “but do not give them ideas on how to have casual sex.”

He said the most important lesson to be taught in sex education classes was the matter of faith, since the stronger a child’s faith, the more aware he or she will be that premarital sex is a sin. “Faith is the basic lesson,” he said.

In Gorontalo, legislator Adnan Entengo said he felt there should be thorough research before introducing sex education classes in schools.

“We don’t want to steer children to sex instead of teaching them about it,” he told state news agency Antara.

Experts agreed there should not be a dedicated class for sex education because of the sensitivity of the subject. Suparman said sex education could instead be integrated into other subjects such as biology or religion.

“For example, there should be a greater focus on anatomy during biology,” he said.

Hadi said sex education could be incorporated into many subjects, including Indonesian and English lessons.

“Make the students read informative articles and books about sex,” he said.

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 04/22/2010 11:24 AM

The lack of information and knowledge about contraceptives has contributed to the common practice of unsafe sex among sexually active youth who live in poverty in Jakarta.

Many people who live in poverty have been said to believe that condom use decreases the experience of sexual activity.

Iqbal, 30, of Kampung Sepatan in Rorotan subdistrict, Cilincing, North Jakarta, said recently that many of the youth in the neighborhood had been in sexual relations and thought condom use could reduce a couple’s intimacy.

Kampung Sepatan is one of the urban slums in Jakarta and home to around 1,400 lower-income residents, many whose livelihood’s depend on trash picking, farming and fishing.

“Using a condom while having sex is not enjoyable,” Iqbal stated.

It was said that while young people there were aware of the dangers of practicing unsafe sex, there was a social propensity among them that championed unsafe sex as a way to cement a relationship.

“My ex-girlfriend insisted that we did not use condoms to hold me responsible if she became preg-nant,” Iqbal’s friend told the The Jakarta Post on condition of anonymity, adding that using condoms in a relationship also symbolized a lack of trust.

Sex education among the youth in the neighborhood appears to lack.

Reportedly many NGOs visiting the area are focused on providing young residents with more assistance with food, clothing and vocational training.

“No NGOs that have visited have provided sex education,” Adi, 20, said.

He said they received sex education from their schools in biology class, which consisted of information about their reproductive organs and function.

Similar to their counterparts in Kampung Sepatan, the young people living along Ciliwung riverbank of Bukit Duri and Kampung Pulo subdistricts, South Jakarta, also agreed that unprotected sex was a strategy to find love.

A young woman said, “I’d rather have sex without using condoms because it’s a symbol of intimacy and trust”.

Unprotected sex is a way in which a woman can ensure her boyfriend remains loyal, she said.

Zaky, 19, told the Post that they had better more informed and became aware of the dangers of unprotected sex after several NGOs recently visited their area to educate them about sex.

However, NGOs did not discuss the importance of using condoms, despite the fact that many young people there were sexually active.

“The NGOs explained the dangers of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections [STIs], but not about contraception in detail,” Zaky said.

The Lamp Science Foundation (YPI), a grassroot organization active in promoting the awareness on HIV/AIDS, confirmed that its approaches to young people in lower-income urban areas had been proactive in educating them about reproductive health, STIs and HIV/AIDS prevention.

“We highlighted condom use as one way to reduce the risk of HIV infection,” YPI secretary Srisulistyurini said.

She said that premarital and unsafe sex was prevalent among the youth in shanty areas, and that sex education was the key to curbing the rapid spread of STIs and HIV/AIDS.

The YPI suggested that communities of slum areas in Jakarta should initiate workshops on sex education by requesting NGOs such as the YPI to visit their areas.

“It needs comprehensive participation from society because many NGOs don’t have the resources to map all the slum areas in the city whose young residents need sex education,” Srisulistyurini said.

According to the health agency, 3,863 AIDS cases were reported in 2009, with women and young people being the most prone to infection. (tsy)

Sex education among the youth in the neighborhood appears to lack.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 3 April 2010 - 9:00am, by Zainab Hammoud

More than half of all girls and women do not bleed when they lose their virginity. However, this loss of blood is still important in cultures where women are supposed to preserve their virginity until marriage. So women have found ways of meeting their environment's expectations.

Karima, a Dutch/Moroccan woman in her early twenties, has a secret: she had hymenoplasty, or hymen reconstruction surgery, shortly before her marriage. The hymen is the membrane which encloses the vaginal area.

"In my culture you cannot tell your parents or your family that you were not a virgin when you married. My mother would not survive it," she says. She only allows herself to be interviewed with a distorted face and voice so that she cannot be recognised.

Gynaecologist Ineke van Seumeren has doubts about the procedure. "I have always found it a problem to do something that really isn't necessary. It is not a disease." A few years ago she thought up a different solution. She wants to inform people that the correlation between an intact hymen and virginity is a myth.

Jakarta Globe, March 24, 2010

A man in Klaten, Central Java says he sold an underage girl as a prostitute in order to pay for his hair treatments.

Mardi, 21, was detained on Wednesday. Police said he had acted as a pimp for a 15-year-old girl named WE. The police were tipped off by local residents who grew suspicious after noticing that the girl often went to a hotel with different men.

According to police, Mardi confessed that he had sold WE to four men. Each of them paid him between Rp 70 thousand ($7.67) and Rp 100 thousand. The men were later detained and named as suspects in human trafficking.

Mardi told Metro TV he needed money to pay for his hair smoothing treatment.

“We are investigating the possibility that WE is not the only girl he sold. Our investigators from the women and children's protection unit are questioning the victim,” said Klaten Police head detective Edy Sitepu.

JG