Tieng's toys

The Star has just reported that another bill has been filed by a lawmaker in Congress, and this time, the target is sex toys. Yes, you heard it right: sex toys. Party-list congressman Irwin Tieng believes the proliferation of these gadgets is a menace that should be immediately eradicated, and has introduced House Bill 4509 to outlaw them henceforth.

Tieng denounces the influx of imported vibrators, noting these are openly sold in some stores, ready to shock the eyes of innocent children. He calls this public display “insensitive,” since minors who see them could “suffer disturbing effects.” (He is not too clear about what these disturbing effects, however, and we are not sure whether this is just the raging sexual desire teenagers normally have to grapple with, or something else). 

He does say, however, that seeing sex toys could “trigger sexually impure ideas and acts that could give rise to sex-related offenses.” (Again, we’re not sure what he means, since that statement could be interpreted to mean that men seeing artificial penises will be so aroused they will start raping entire villages. Or, perhaps, he is implying that the perpetrators of these sex-related offenses are from that sector of society normally aroused by penises, which is an affront to the law-abiding nature of ninety-nine percent of heterosexual women and gay men.)

As with any criminal bill, however, Tieng now has the unenviable task of defining what a sex toy is. It’s all about the definition, you know, since anything too broad could capture objects that are perfectly innocuous, and anything too narrow will let flagrantly violative items escape from his clutches. How he defines what is a sex toy is therefore very important, especially since we lawyers will have to apply it later on. 

To help him along, I thought today’s exercise would be to strip down what he offers for a definition, so there’s no possibility of misunderstanding. According to the Honourable Tieng, a sex toy is “any device for the physical stimulation of human genitals for anything of pecuniary value.”

Right off the bat, we can already tell that if it’s a device that only mentally, not physically, stimulates the genitals, it won’t fit within the category of a sex toy. For example, even though an I-pad feeds your popping eyeballs a gajillion pornographic messages, it will never really physically stimulate you. The same goes for your Kindle, regardless of how many erotic passages are found your e-copy of Marquis de Sade’s exploits.

We next go to the requirement that the genitals be human. That eliminates, very helpfully, sex toys that cater to animals. So if anything physically stimulates your dog, like your week-old unwashed jeans, that won’t qualify as a sex toy. Neither will anything you might employ to stimulate the studs you keep at home, ready to breed random mares looking for pedigreed sires.

And of course, according to the definition, it must be used to stimulate the genitals. No stimulation, no foul. Into this category will fall condoms, a product subject of most customer complaints, since they protest that these rubber shields deaden sensation. They don’t stimulate, they retard. (At least, that’s what I’m told). There is no danger therefore that drug stores selling rubbers will be prosecuted for violating Tieng’s pet bill.

But wait, what about lubes? Will the liberal application of lubricants, with or without condoms, which result in stimulating myriad sensations of various human genitals, lead to a conviction under the bill? Gosh, it’s actually possible! We may have hit a snag here, as without lube, less people will use rubbers, and with the decreased use of condoms, more people will catch sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and therefore there will be a greater increase of HIV deaths. So would it be a fair statement to say that Congressman Tieng, who ironically enough, represents “Buhay” (life) party list, will kill many Filipinos as a direct result of depriving them of sex toys?

Ah, the law of unintended consequences. Perhaps, the good Congressman should review his definition, and redesign his sex toys. We await, with anticipation.