The Red Knob

Should we be prepared to settle for a one size fits all society? Of course not – life isn’t like that. When I walk into M&S, Next, New Look, or Tesco’s, I’m constantly made aware that the clothes I want to purchase fit an individual style, but not necessarily me. When I buy jeans I know I won’t find the illusive 31 inch leg and 31 inch waist I’m looking for, because our society only sells in increments of 2 inches. Meaning if I want them, then I have to adapt them to fit – or I can go short, or walk around in second best baggies.

Should I be prepared to compromise? Or remain happy in ignorance? Should we accept things the way they are? Or should we challenge the providers? What if the next time I go shopping for jeans I exclaim, ‘wait a minute… This doesn’t fit my requirements!’ What would the shop owner do? Try to persuade me that they were the correct fit? Initially, the shop owner would probably do nothing; but if more people started challenging, asking the same question, then the shop owner fearing loss of profit would stock more jeans in increments of 1 inch, therefore making more profit and gaining more custom. Perhaps. After all there’s a world of choice out there. What’s this got to do with the price of strawberries? Or sexual health? Well, quite a lot really, because guidance on sexual health in this county is a bit like that, a package which comes with instructions stating ‘No you cannot be too explicit. No you cannot step beyond the boundaries of a defined humour because that might offend people. Do not challenge our wisdom. Our policy is to profess that we’re doing something. But in reality we’re maintaining a comfortable status quo, because we’re all doing our job and getting paid good money for it too’. Etc. Below the belt? Confrontational? Or just challenging?

Let’s not dispute that good SRE work is being carried out – there are some inspiring pieces of work. However, I have a problem with the instructions on the packaging. Let’s look at our current track record – a teenage pregnancy rate the highest in Europe and STI’s, well our figures could be better…We’ve all seen the headlines.

If I was Hannibal (the real bloke who marched his elephants across the Alps and not the fictitious cannibal serial killer) and STIs were a large boulder in the road I’d pour a simple solution of vinegar over it to reduce it. In Hannibal’s case he wanted to remove boulders of chalk, in order that his army could advance. We can envisage that when he came up with the idea of using vinegar, there were a shed load of his officers and soldiers who thought, “what the photon”, is he on. Now if you are following this you might glean the sense behind The Red Knob; in order to remove our particular chalk boulder we used one solution adapted to that particular circumstance. There are lots of ways of removing boulders – it depends on the type of boulder, the circumstances, the environment. This solution is a bit vinegary. Oh and The Red Knob – it’s about considering different solutions, e.g. one resource, The Red Knob fanzine has pictures of STIs and it has humour and irony in it. One can imagine that when Hannibal proved his theory, he laughed all the way to the other side of the hill…

Filed under: Blog, Op Ed, Red Knob