Safety First

I wanted to write a comparison between safe sex and airport security checks three years ago and postponed it for some reason. It may have been because I didn't go through Heathrow Airport security during those years. Now that I had to take off my shoes and belt and walk along the dirty floor through the metal detector while bearing witness to several travelers being manually searched, I felt compelled to go back to this blog draft.

It is true that Heathrow is not one of the heaviest airports when it comes to security checks, although the rule that states that "any liquids under 100 ml must be placed in "a single, transparent, re-sealable plastic bag, which itself must not exceed 1 litre in capacity (approximately 20cm x 20cm)" caught me off guard, and made me realize that no one at Geneva Airport paid attention to the amount of liquid I was taking with me (oops).

But, back to my old comparison, two things that by themselves are perfectly enjoyable could come to be, according to my perception, product of a similar mutation generated by human race and its madness: traveling on a plane and sex. Security is obviously important in both cases: we don't want a bomb or weapons on a plane as we don't want STDs or sometimes babies in our beings. But to what extent can we take measures too far?

It is increasingly tedious to clear security in many airports of the world, while security officials look for every possible object that "may cause trouble on the plane". We have to take off garments, open our bags for strangers to inspect what we decided to take with us, get pulled apart if we look "like a terrorist". With the development of new technology, both on the side of those who want to blow up planes and those who want to avoid said explosions, the list of forbidden elements on planes and screening procedures gets longer.

With the spread of STDs and knowledge on them, precautions needed for sex have become similar to clearing security at the airport. I don't believe that condoms enter the list of new measures. It is the "metal detector of sex" (the first thing to be there, and will be on the menu in most cases). My point is rather that we have found new measures in order to feel protected. Many require STDs tests from their partners before having intercourse for the first time (or on various ocassions), many don't allow direct genital contact to avoid HPV, many have other strange procedures and techniques that I still have to learn. But I am positive that with new discoveries, paranoia has grown.

I am not saying that it is wrong to use protection or to avoid air terrorism; my aim is rather to appeal to common sense. New discoveries are wonderful, but we need to pick and choose healthy alternatives that dont't change the nature of our activities.

If we allow things to go too far, the day will come when the metal detector will effectively see through our clothes and we will test our partners for an overwhelming amount of diseases right before "getting it on" and we will forget about the basic reason of why we go to the airport and take our clothes off.