Column

There was a time, not long ago, when Christmas was for teenagers in Hong Kong what the Navratri was for hormonally driven youngsters in Gujarat: a time for sneaky sex.

Just like in Gujarat, where the incidence of teenage pregnancies — and abortions — spikes in the weeks after those nights of Dandiya and debauchery, Hong Kong used to witness an uptick in “emergency contraception” in the week after Christmas. But not any more, say counsellors at the Family Planning Association in Hong Kong.

It’s not that Hong Kong’s teenagers are so overcome by the festive spirit at this time of the year that their animal spirits have been well and truly tamed. It’s just that sex at Christmas time is oh-so-twentieth-century…

Instead, say counsellors, teenagers are having more sex at other times of the year that are not normally associated with traditional holidays. For instance, sex is increasingly the gift of choice among teenagers for birthdays — or anniversaries of their first date or their first kiss!

The gush of hormones may mean that teens in Hong Kong are up to speed in carnal matters, but these young adults are practically babes in the woods when it comes to knowledge about contraception, say counsellors. Some of them believe that you can avoid pregnancies by having a post-sex bath with Coca-Cola, or by skipping a rope, or — I kid you not — by standing on their hands!

Hong Kong’s Christian leaders are emphasising the theme of “family values”, and the head of the Catholic Church in fact calls for increasing sex education for youngsters as a way of addressing social problems.

Citing a recent instance of a case where a 14-year-old girl was arrested in connection with the death of her newborn son (who fell from a high-rise), Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said he would soon lead experts, including marriage and family counsellors, in initiating a programme of sex education through the church’s teachings.

More illustrations of the kind of social problems that Cardinal Zen speaks of were offered when a 37-year-old man was arrested recently for filming up the skirts of women on trains using a miniature camera embedded in the handle of a tennis racquet.

In other such instances, it was recently made known that some taxi-drivers have installed mirrors at strategic places in their cabs, the better to look up the skirts of their female passengers.