"Don't feel bad if someone doesn’t listen to you because you don’t always listen to what the Buddha said either."
That's what I sometimes tell myself.
I need to live and strive as if I will never die, in order to stand on my own feet for as long as I am alive. But at the same time, I need to remember the impermanence of everything on the other side.
On a different note, I’ve been thinking about a lecture on cultural relativism I attended over a decade ago. The guest lecturer used female circumcision as an example. Since the practice cannot be easily changed in certain areas, providing clean instruments was seen as a solution. It was the first time I had encountered this concept, and I felt angry. I couldn’t accept female circumcision, and simply accepting it as a custom while mitigating risks felt wrong to me.
My professor and classmates were surprised because they hadn’t seen me so angry and argumentative before. I was usually quiet in class, but that day, I couldn’t stop questioning the speaker.
Later, I read the article she referred to, and I began to see her point. Sometimes, we can’t change customs, and the best we can do is reduce the harm.
I realized I had been working with harm reduction for some time before that lecture, but I hadn’t made the connection back then. I was training and educating sex workers on condom use and involved in a needle exchange program in another region. I remember following health educators as they collected used needles and syringes from the areas where they had been distributed. The village was small, yet the number of needles they gathered was significant. Drug use was widespread but mostly hidden, and the needle exchange program brought it to light, which didn’t sit well with some people.
Similarly, it was easier to provide condoms and talk about sexually transmitted diseases with sex workers than to engage with ordinary youths. People assumed young people were innocent and questioned why we would “spoil their purity” by discussing these topics. Openly talking about sex is still taboo in our culture, even as issues like single motherhood and abandoned children are making the problem more visible. Many people are still in denial.
When I get deeply involved in an issue, I tend to forget how others perceive me. In my first job, I used to wear T-shirts with educational messages like, “Use one condom to protect two people.” I remember a magazine editor, who knew me from my writing, ignored me when I greeted her at a teashop while wearing one of those T-shirts. I always had a condom demonstration stick and condoms in my backpack, ready to educate someone if the need arose.
Spending so much time with sex workers led some people to think I was one of them. It was early days, around 2005-2006, and public awareness about HIV and AIDS was limited. During an exchange trip, I was the only non-sex worker in the group, but the organizer introduced us as “a group of sex workers,” and I didn’t correct him. If I could truly contribute to the issue, I was fine with the assumptions people made about me.
When the first curriculum for men who have sex with men was being developed, I volunteered to help the organization behind it. I wasn’t employed there, but I was interested in the issue and involved throughout the process. During a workshop, I overheard the hotel waiters saying they thought I was transgender. I was the only physically female person at the workshop, and everyone there teased me about it. They joked that I was physically female but mentally one of them, and I went along with it.
It’s funny—I didn’t mind being mistaken for a sex worker or a transgender person, but sometimes I care about things that are much less significant. I ask myself why. It’s about the reason behind it. I felt that I could make a difference by sacrificing my reputation, and I was willing to live with that. But without a purpose, I find it harder to tolerate even minor things.
Just recording some memories and thoughts from this morning.
 |
| Image generated with AI |
