The Phwoar & The Glory

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT AWARD
This year’s award goes to the 14-year-old British boy Hayden Taylor who is campaigning to make sex education compulsory in schools. Taylor believes sex education is not being taken seriously and that teachers are often too embarrassed, or even unqualified, to teach the subject. Taylor wants school and the city council to co-ordinate experts in personal, social and health education to prove that sex education is a subject worth investing in. Good for him!

THE KIDS NOT ARE ALRIGHT AWARD
While Hayden Taylor is campaigning for sexual information, young men in Japan really can’t be arsed with sex. That’s according to a Japanese government-commissioned study anyway. The study found that more than a third of young men between 16 and 19 years old had no interest in sex or even actively disliked it! Huh? What’s more 83.7% of 20-year-old men were single and nearly half of them had never had a girlfriend. Young women were similarly disenchanted – nearly 60% of young women were uninterested in sex. What’s wrong with these people? I wish I knew.

THE MOST BIZARRE SEX TOY AWARD
Young Japanese people may be bored with the whole idea of sex, but Japanese inventors are not. Instead researchers are working on a remote kissing machine that will allow separated lovers to engage in simulated tonsil hockey. According to one of the boffins: “Kisses are haptic communications on the mouths that can express deep emotion. We considered that if we mutually present the haptic sensation to each mouth, we can convey the expression of emotion, deepen their relationship.” Hmmm… if that’s how the Japanese describe kissing, then perhaps the lack of interest in sex is a little more understandable.

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION AWARD
This year, the United Nations endorsed the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people. This makes violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation and prejudice based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal and rightly so. It’s a pity that the UN doesn’t send in a defence force to ensure that those rights are upheld because the Russian city of St. Petersburg has passed a bill making it illegal to spread what it calls ‘gay propaganda’. This means that any information on gay sex, lesbianism, bisexuality or transgender issues could be seen as propaganda. This essentially gives St. Petersburg the right to eradicate LGBT culture and criminalise LGBT people. According to the city parliament’s Vitaly Milonov the move was necessary as the city is facing “a wave popularising sexual perversion.” Milonov believes that sex education and popular entertainment is to blame. Our advice? Stay away from St. Petersburg.

THE IDIOT OF THE YEAR AWARD
I am a decent person, so normally I’d be full of empathy for somebody who injured himself in the crotch – accidents, as they say, happen. However, it’s hard to muster up sympathy for this year’s winner, Joseph Seto, who accidentally shot himself in the penis. Seto, thinking he was some kind of big man gangsta sort, stuck a handgun – a pink handgun at that – in his waistband, and oops, it fired. Luckily for him, he didn’t actually blow his penis right off – and the word is that he should recover. But you can’t help but think that some people really shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

THE STUNNINGLY POINTLESS PREJUDICE AWARD
I love Facebook, I do. It keeps me in touch with far-flung family and friends, but the prudishness and prejudice of the social networking site is hard believe. Last year Facebook removed pictures of naked dolls; this year it was a photo of two men kissing. After howls of protest Facebook restored the image and claimed its removal was a mistake. It appears that an employee was responsible and not some kind of coding error. This seems to indicate that prejudice against millions of the sites users may be company policy or at very least that it’s no hindrance to working for Facebook. For shame, Zuckerberg, for shame.

THE DON’T DO IT BOYS AWARD
Genitals are good things. They need to be cleaned and groomed of course, like pets, but there is no need to try and disguise them. They are plenty pretty enough. Now I am not a fan of vajazzling, that’s the decoration of lady parts with crystals. This is firstly because sensitive skin and glue are a bad mix; and secondly because hard slivers of cheap crystal on your vajayjay will result in a painful sexual experience, not a positive one. But pejazzling takes the idea to a whole new and unlovely territory. Do I want to get up close and personal with a crystal-encrusted penis? No I do not. Don’t do it boys, please.

THE WEIRD LAW AWARD
Sex work is illegal across most of America, but those laws weren’t good enough for the righteous men and women of Utah, no sirree! In Utah a law has been passed that makes it illegal to act like you might be in the sex-for-sale business. That means if your skirt is too short and your heels have a whiff of fuck-me about them you could find yourself banged up.

THE UPSTANDING CITIZEN OF THE YEAR AWARD
I like a woman who stands up for herself, so step forward Virginia Tice and collect your gong! Tice, a 65-year-old South Carolinan got into legal trouble for hanging a pair of plastic testicles from the back of her pick-up truck. The local police ticketed her because, according to South Carolina law, any bumper sticker, decal or device, which shows sexual acts or parts of the human body, is regarded as obscene. Tice, rightly believing that the law was ridiculous, refused to pay the fine, and decided to take the case to trial as a freedom of speech issue. Good for her.

THE CATHOLIC OF THE YEAR AWARD
This one was a shoo-in and the worthy winner is Michael Vortis, an American Catholic fundamentalist and “star” of The Vortex, a programme on RealCatholicTV.com. Having visited Holy Catholic Ireland this June, Vortis decided that we weren’t quite up to scratch. Instead he decided that Ireland is in the middle of a “cataclysmic meltdown of the Catholic church.” That’s because we don’t go to mass enough and, worse still, we have a vocal “homosexual rights movement.” Good for us, and at least Mr. Vortis will have a lovely award to keep him and his bigotry warm this winter.

And so we come to the end of the ceremony – ten awards for ten very special people. They made us laugh, cry and pull our hair out in despair. But people will do that to you. Now that the speeches have been spoken, the tears have been shed, and the goodie bags raided, there’s nothing left to do but wave a cheery good-bye to 2011. Here’s to a wonderful 2012!