It’s easy and tempting to look at the figures, released yesterday, showing 10,000 home STI kits being ordered in Ireland every month, and just write it off as another sign of civilisational decline. Your correspondent knows this because, in truth, that was my own initial reaction: What kind of society do we live in where there are tens of thousands of people every month living in the fear that they’ve caught something from a sexual partner?
The answer, sadly, is “modern society”. And while any conservative vision for the culture should, I’d argue, include as a priority making a strong and compelling case against so-called “hookup culture” and modern dating trends, letting STI’s run rampant in the meantime probably isn’t good for anybody.
It’s probably a certainty in life that each of us will, at some stage, have to make a visit to the doctor that we find highly embarrassing, whether that’s because of a urinary tract infection, prostate issues, piles, or something else. It’s not a certainty, but it’s true in many cases that we’ll put that visit to the doctor off for a while in the hope that whatever’s plaguing us will just go away on its own. That’s true for the men amongst us, anyway, and is reputedly a leading cause of male cancers like testicular cancer often being detected later – and with more severe consequences – than is necessary.
Giving people the opportunity to check their sexual health in the privacy – and relative anonymity – of their own homes therefore, I’d argue, amounts to that relatively rare thing: A progressive policy that both makes sense and likely achieves some good. It is likely to both reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted disease, and the cost to the state of treating those diseases both in terms of man hours and expenditure, especially if it cuts down on doctor visits. And it all comes in for the relatively low projected cost of just over four million euros in 2024, or about 0.01% of total health spending for the year.
Of course, the human brain – including my own – does not always react to things like this entirely logically. There were some yesterday whose reaction to the figures released by the Government was to associate the STI testing with the spread of STIs, and to therefore conclude without much thought that the STI testing as a policy is linked to the spread of STIs. Combine that with the fact that it is a policy enacted by a Government whose highest moral value often appears to be the enactment of progressive cultural supremacy on all matters, and there were more than one or two people whose immediate instinct was that such testing is a disgraceful and more than vaguely immoral waste of taxpayer money.
The reality, by contrast, is more complicated: STI tests are not causing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. At the risk of sounding like the worst thing someone can sound in Ireland – someone with moral values that would have been considered sound in 1984 – promiscuity is. Sexually transmitted infections are transmitted through sexual contact, hence the dramatic increase in STIs is linked inextricably to the number of people in the country with multiple sexual partners over a short period of time.
We then get into the vexed question of whether that is a) a bad thing and b) any of the Government’s business even if it is a bad thing. I’d argue that the answers to those questions are a) yes and b) not really. Not every cultural ailment can be fixed by the wielding of political power.
That said, there are obvious differences between how the Government treats sex as a risky behaviour and how it treats almost everything else as a risky behaviour: If you’re a smoker, you’ll be reminded constantly by state agencies that smoking is bad for you, and there are active policy measures in place to discourage you from smoking for your own good. If, by contrast, you’re a sex addict – or even just somebody who sees obtaining a fresh sexual partner as the cherry on top of your Saturday night out – then the state has nothing to say to you beyond “here’s a free test, free contraception, and remember: Consent is paramount”.
Part of the explanation for this is ideological, and part of it is political. The political element is the easiest to explain, in that Irish cabinet ministers are fearful – above almost anything else – of appearing prudish or square. Thus all sexual health campaigns must as a matter of political necessity promote sex as a fun recreational activity which you should enjoy safely, wherein the only potential risks are physical or legal. There can never be any talk of emotional risks, or long term self worth, associated with licentious sexual behaviour.
The ideological element is, I’d argue, primarily capitalistic: Almost all marketing of consumer brands, aside from maybe those relating to children or homeware, have sexual appeal at the centre of them. Cars, perfumes, clothes, hair products: All of them are marketed in some way that makes enhancing one’s sexual appeal central to the reason for making a purchase. Our entire society is centered around the idea that self-worth and value in the sexual marketplace are deeply connected.
Only one of these issues can be tackled politically – and even then at more social risk than it’s probably worth. The bigger problem is the wider cultural shift in the west over the past half century which has linked sexual prowess to social standing, which often pressurises people to engage in encounters or relationships out of expectation more than commitment or enthusiasm.
What we lack is a cultural force telling young people (and indeed many not so young people) that they don’t have to live like that, if it’s not producing emotional satisfaction and contentment. That’s what the Christian Church used to, in an imperfect and too often censorious way, provide. STI testing isn’t the issue – it’s the cultural shift that’s made it so commonly necessary that we should worry about.
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It says that the people have been successfully indoctrinated into the globalist hedonistic agenda and they have been successful at destroying peoples, dignity, self respect and have erased morality.
It exposes a massive hypocrisy of a culture that, just two short years ago, excluded Irish citizens from participation in society due to their refusal to take an ineffective and arguably dangerous, experimental injection, whilst for the two years since, forcing foreign “asylum seekers” from regions rife with STIs into Irish communities without pause to consider their health status and/or infectiousness.
Your comment is a bit naive.
Countries generally do not check people for STIs before allowing people into their country.
Ireland is the same.
That’s true but you’ve missed the point.
The fact remains that most refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the past two years (at least) come from regions with far higher prevalence of STIs. It naturally follows that this will negatively impact the STI statistics here.
Additionally, as pointed out by Mary below, immigrants from these same regions are disproportionately represented in the sex trade.
There is no moral advice given to young people in schools now, it is all subject teaching. Sexual morality will never be mentioned. We had the nuns before this, who gave moral guidance and advice to their students all the time, well the mercy did anyway. They repeatedly told of the dangers of alcohol, that one loses one’s inhibitions and therefore the ability to protect oneself, with drink on board. A loud and brash culture is promoted by the ultra radical feminists now, whose NGOs influence government decisions. They lambast the religious morality of old that protected young people before. They equate sexual morality with Catholic religious suppression, while the ultimate in their lives is promiscuity, which for them, is freedom. A secular culture dominates the schools, with consent being the new moral carte blanche, that has replaced the respectable sexual morality of old. This is ardently promoted by ministers and all those in power, with teachers as the agents in classrooms. Schools under religious control protect their students much better in a caring way, but sexual morality guidance will only happen in a designated class, it is not an integrated approach, like in my day. Priests never address sexual morality or alcohol use in their sermons, so no protection from that source. They could save some young people if they wanted to there, but they don’t even try. It is only subject teaching too, plus some extra curricular activity, none of which includes sexual morality. Indeed the opposite is encouraged by the state. They are told the LC is a landmark in their lives with the celebration of it encouraged, the reason being to promote consumerism, nothing else, with the welfare of the student excluded. An influx of immigrants from countries where sexual disease is rampant, many of them in the sex trade, makes for a deteriorating situation. Bad government has our society poxed. We badly need to get rid of this government fast.
They’re free, right? — some people will order anything as long as it’s free — so I’m not sure how much it says — maybe some are planning to try to sell them.
There are no free rides in sexual encounters.There is always a price to pay.
Whether this is an STI in a females case ,with the possible danger of infertility of a woman, unwanted pregnancy ,with its associated emotional see-saw decisions and the unfulfiiling emotional after effects, all have consequences.
The most satisfying sex requires an emotional attachment ,found in a caring, intimate committed relationship.
Casual sex encounters are similar to what dogs do in the street and resolved with a cold bucket of water.
The testing kits are free — offer something for free and see how many people call or show up to claim it.
I’m aware of the risks of sexual activity.
But here’s something about that the media won’t tell you: in the US, and I imagine it is similar in Ireland, a rather large majority of new annual STI cases are among homosexual men — they are also the group most responsible for the development of antibiotic resistant strains of STI pathogens.