Development Taboos – Sex and Shit
November 23rd, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Development, Gender, Global Governance, Health, Health Care, Human Rights, Poverty, Social Deviance, Social Discrimination
Yesterday, as part of a post on the need for sanitation in the poorest countries as one of the major development challenges, I mentioned that access to sanitation is often just not discussed because who wants to talk about shit.
I also mentioned that Elizabeth Pisani had found the same problem in trying to design proper prevention policies for HIV/AIDS because who wants to talk about sex, especially gay or transgender sex.
Sex (especially gay sex) and shit are icky. So, they are either not discussed or discussed in such a euphemistic fashion that it’s meaningless.
In the comments, Elizabeth mentioned an earlier post of hers on this very topic:
Ways to be gay part 2: Places to pee | HIV / AIDS, science, sex, drugs via kwout
Personally, I find pouring trillions of dollars on bailing out the global financial system for the greed and recklessness of its major players more obscene than discussing whose penis gets into whose anus or vagina or who shits where. But that’s just me.
Posted in Development, Gender, Global Governance, Health, Health Care, Human Rights, Poverty, Social Deviance, Social Discrimination | No Comments »
