This article is about sex, sex, and more sex, a totally uncontroversial subject in Colombia we can talk about without touching any taboos.
This article is about sex because the now-former vice-interior minister felt forced to resign this week after a video was published of him talking about all kinds of steamy gay sex with a policeman who was secretly filming him.
Vice-minister Carlos Ferro resigned after journalist Vicky Davila published the video in an attempt to expose alleged grave sexual misconduct within the National Police that she and other journalists have been investigating for months.
The video proved little to nothing about the alleged existence of the “Community of the Ring” and the sexual intimidation taking place within the institution, but did force the immediate resignation of Ferro and, more importantly, National Police director General Rodolfo Palomino who wouldn’t step down in spite of criminal charges over fraud, illegal spying and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Davila succeeded where every other journalist failed. She transcended the complacency of corporate media and did what our job as journalists is; Get rid of corrupt, dishonest or power-abusing politicians, so they can be replaced by competent and honest people.
However, rather than being applauded for forcing the resignation of Palomino, Davila got fired and vilified on social media and by some of her colleagues.
According to her critics, the journalist had crossed the line and had violated the right to privacy of the vice-minister by bursting the bubble that he was a god-fearing husband and father of two, but like so many other men, also loves cock.
And this is where Colombia gets really weird about sex, and privacy.
Secretly cheating on your spouse with your secretary, mistresses and/or prostitutes, fucking your cousin, having sex with minors, bro jobs or even having sex with donkeys is something that’s widespread in Colombia, but never talked about, because as a person told me on Facebook, “you don’t wash your dirty laundry outside.”
I don’t see what’s so dirty about Ferro’s laundry though. I mean, he’s dishonest because apparently he lied to his wife. This makes him an evidently dishonest jerk, but there’s nothing wrong with a guy who likes to get off with another guy. We men don’t admit it, but we do it all the time.
In fact, a lot of us walk around sexually repressed because we are made to think that we all should have exactly the same kind of sex, so allow me to let you in on a secret.
I gave head once because I was curious. I’ve also had sex with prostitutes and I cheated on two of my ten ex-girlfriends. Sue me.
Nine out of ten have had sex that might surprise or even disgust you; some have a foot fetish, some like being urinated on, and others like being called a slut or be submitted to other types of humiliation. Basically, we men have come up with an infinite variety of ways to please ourselves and our partners sexually.
So, let’s wash some of Colombia’s cum-stained laundry and let’s talk about sex instead of whining about the privacy of dishonest PUBLIC officials.
The majority of Colombian men I know use or have used the service of prostitutes, disregarding their marital status. And that’s just the beginning.
A guy from the coast explained to me that fucking a donkey is better when you use a male donkey, tie a rope between the animal’s testicles and your right-foot sandal so that when you tap your foot, the donkey’s anus contracts, which increases the sexual pleasure of the man penetrating the beast. There’s even a word for it: “chancletear,” he told me.
A surprising number of friends have admitted to have had sex with their cousin, some are children of married cousins.
With the exception of the donkey, all the above fall under consensual sex.
While weird, sex with animals the size of donkeys is not illegal because, even though we men like to think otherwise, a human penis is too small to cause even the slightest inconvenience with a donkey that is used to be penetrated by penises a foot and a half long.
If we came to terms with our own sexuality, how different from the norm we may be, we can begin differentiating what would be a sexual preference, a fetish or loose behavior from the criminal and abusive laundry that’s become a stink in too many of Colombia’s households.
Because when it comes to sex, Colombians don’t just not wash their dirty laundry outside, they seem to not wash their dirty laundry at all, it’s taboo. Meanwhile sexual abuse is shockingly rampant, not just in the police.
Again, nine out of ten people are healthy like Ferro or me and will at least once have had sexual experiences that do not fit in the standard norm of banging your spouse missionary-style. And there’s nothing you can do about it because it’s legal and it’s fun.
However, according to the Ombudsman’s Office, more than 120 children are victim of sexual abuse every day in Colombia, but we don’t talk about that. Sex workers are exploited, raped and murdered on a massive scale, but we ignore it.
Two of my friends’ daughters of under 10 have been fondled by adult men. Multiple of my female friends have been raped and all Colombian women, even elderly women, are submitted to sexual harassment by men on a daily basis. In fact, more than a 1,000 Colombian women are victim of sexual violence each and every month, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The National Police says that Colombia has less than 10,000 sex workers, but this likely more than tenfold because a lot of women engaged in the sex industry are highly secretive about their profession, afraid of an almost certain stigma while doing harm to no-one.
So, whether you like it or not, I think it’s urgent we take the dirty laundry outside, come out of our closets and promote a normalized diversity in sexuality, because the current sexual repression that is suffocatingly common in Colombian culture is the root cause of women and children being raped and nobody doing anything about it.
We freak out when we find out a guy likes cock or two gay guys want to adopt a child, but we stay criminally quiet about the thousands of “straight” dads who sexually abuse their own children.
We act like this because none of us fits perfectly within the norm, and we feel insecure about other people’s opinion about our individual sexual experiences.
Consequently, we pretend to be normal and — afraid we’ll be up next for scrutiny — have decided to not talk about a-typical sex at all.
But if we continue to do this, if we deny our sexual diversity in the public debate and pretend to all have uniform sex, we effectively become complicit in horrific and criminal acts like rape and incest.
Colombia’s women and children are in urgent need of us really tackling sexual abuse and discrimination, and we men must reflect on our role in this.
If this means sacrificing the career of a dishonest wife-cheating minister as Davila also deemed appropriate, so be it.