Hot Topics Volume 1, Issue 8: December 2002

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In This Issue:

Have a Safe and Relaxing Holiday Season
Featured Topic: Having Sex For Columbine
Humour
Quote of the Month

Have a Safe and Relaxing Holiday Season

Dear Hot Topics Subscribers,

December is Drunk Driving month as well as Safe Toys and Gifts month. In these upcoming days of caloric and alcoholic temptation, let's remember to take care of ourselves and others. If you want to drink while you are out celebrating, treat a designated driver to a night out with you in exchange for driving you home. When you are shopping for gifts for little ones, pay attention to how the toys are constructed and look for approval ratings on the boxes.

To find out how you can help stop drinking and driving, or to make a holiday donation, visit the MADD (Mothers Against Drinking and Driving) site.

The holiday season is full of hype. We are encouraged to spend more, eat more, drink more, revel more. Our expectations for just how much fun we are supposed to have rise to dangerously unattainable levels and we are often disappointed and depressed. In fact, this has become our normal response to the Christmas season.

Let's remember to slow down a bit this year. Let's try to make realistic goals for ourselves and truly enjoy the extra treats so copiously available.

Speaking of goals, the end of December marks the time when many of us make resolutions. I think this is a wonderful idea... each year at the same time, we recall our past year and decide what we would like to accomplish during the new one. It is an ideal opportunity to set one year goals. Again, a healthy dose of reality makes good sense here. List those tasks you've been putting off, keep your resolutions concrete and reasonable (“I'll exercise twice a week” rather than “I'll become tall, thin, rich, and famous”), and refer to your list during the new year
(I keep mine in my daybook and check it once a month). It feels good to plan improvements for ourselves and even better to watch them getting checked off as we accomplish our goals. This simple idea helps us stay focused on what we want to achieve and provides us with a roadmap for reaching our goal destinations. If we look at resolutions as personal promises rather than a list of unpleasant expectations, this annual ritual can become part of the celebration that marks our winter months.

I wish you, each and every one, a joyous and relaxed holiday season.

- Pega Ren

Featured Topic: Having Sex For Columbine

As Michael Moore's sensational new movie Bowling for Columbine wows theatre-goers and reminds Canadians how wise and lucky we are to be on this side of the border, we can easily translate the movie's topic of America's love affair with guns to our own attitudes about sex. Moore suggests that fear keeps our southerly
neighbours in a constant state of insecurity and over-reaction. Does fear similarly cause us to resist pleasure and demonize sexual expression? Can we link our conservative censorship (both governmental and personal) to historical factors that we've long forgotten?

Canada, much like the United States, was settled by religious pilgrims and adventurers seeking their fortunes. Churches formed the hubs of settlements and informed the lives of those brave colonizers of our vast and often inhospitable land. Dissenters were discouraged and banished. Safety and security were of paramount importance in getting through harsh winter months, not to mention the need for camaraderie and group identification in forming a new country. Early Canadian settlers had much to fear. There was little time or opportunity for expansive thinking or innovative views.

The default position for Canadians has historically been pacifism. Perhaps this is why we avoided the fervour with which Americans took up arms in the vain attempt to feel safe. Thousands of ex-patriot Americans who flooded across our border during the Viet Nam War remained here even after being 'pardoned'. Most credit Canada's gentle disposition with their decision to stay and become loyal citizens.

Though we get full marks for our reasoned approach to guns and violence, we must look at the ways we deal with sexual issues. We certainly have our own sexual Columbines. There was the Montreal Massacre, which resonated with fear and hatred of the female gender. We have the Pig Farm murders. We have continuing gay bashings in Vancouver's West End which seem to go curiously under-investigated and rarely resolved.

Are we witnessing an expression of the confusion between sex and violence? The United States is victim to the insanity of violence as an end as well as a means to capturing a sense of security. Is Canada swept away with the same kind of blinkered adherence to an unexamined social more of denial of pleasure?

Is it this fear that causes our attempts to silence information about sex? Why does pleasure frighten us so? What are we afraid will happen if we revel in sensual delight, if we talk openly and approvingly of loving connections, if we educate our population (young and old alike) to the joys (as well as the consequences) of sex? Michael Moore discovered no solutions, but his perceptive view of the problem may encourage critical and creative thinking regarding what seems to be a silly obsession with violence. If we look at sex and sensuality with that same kind of clear perspective, might we see better and kinder solutions ourselves?

As an example, look to the Netherlands. When they decriminalized sexually explicit material, the rate of all sex crimes dropped dramatically. When we educate our children openly about sexual responsibility and pleasure, studies show that our youth begin to have sex at a later age, are more likely to practice safer sex, and form more solid and longer lasting relationships than those children who are taught abstinence-only, consequence-based sex education. Fear constricts our boundaries while pleasure expands them. The change begins one person at a time. Make it a point to connect lovingly with someone whenever possible. Tell people how you appreciate them, how they matter to you, how your life is enriched because of them. And don't forget to revel in your own pleasures, be they creature comforts or interpersonal intimacies. We all benefit from it.

- Pega Ren

Humour

An old farmer had owned a large farm for decades. He had put in a pond in the back forty, properly shaped and fixed up for swimming.
One evening the farmer decided to go down to the pond. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny dipping in his pond. When the women became aware of his presence, they all went to the deepest part of the pond.

One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out until you leave!"

The old man replied, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim or make you get out of the pond naked. I only came to feed the alligators."

Quote of the Month

"Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand."
~ Anonymous

Copyright 2002. Dr. Pega Ren. All Rights Reserved.