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Sexo Sentido Web forums: a virtual agora for loveLike in the ancient Greek city of Athens, the Internet today is a public square where everything human and divine can be discussed. Villa Clara province newspaper Vanguardia sets a precedent for these encounters centered on sexuality, friendship and love. By: Mileyda Menéndez and Journalism student Mayte María Jiménez E-mail: mileyda@jrebelde.cip.cu January 5, 2008 - 00:26:26 GMT The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. Mother Teresa of Calcutta Since time immemorial, we humans have philosophized on the effects on our life of love, friendship, intimacy, and how we interact with either the opposite sex or our own... Whether publicly or hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, people seek to exchange ideas about these topics and give –or ask for– advice on the basis of their experience or what they once read or heard. Hundreds of generations have lived through a very similar debate, although its format has changed depending on society’s technological development, to the point that now we can «deconstruct» love in the privacy of our family, publications like this one, or a web forum visited by thousands of people of different age, cultural level, origin or belief. Dating back to the late 20th. century, these virtual rooms provide a framework where users can improve themselves by sharing personal views –a real art form of itself when it comes to these forums– on a range of subjects almost invariably focused on old-fashioned prejudice, hypocrisy, irrational discrimination and whatever encumbers or mars our culture. Like in ancient Athens, where citizens would gather in public squares to talk about all things human and divine, the virtual Agora that the Internet has become nowadays offers forums of interest to net surfers. In a worldwide search engine like Google, you can find over 800,000 references to the topic of sexuality alone. Incidentally, those who think Cuba is lagging behind in this trend are proved wrong by websites such as that of Villa Clara province’s digital newspaper Vanguardia. By the end of this week, this forum ranked sixth in Google’s long list, and its designers are striving to make it even more attractive. Located at http//www.vanguardia.co.cu/foros and available offline, you can find it in many institutions and schools across Cuba, remarks Vanguardia director and forum moderator Arturo Chang. Thousands of on-line hits, hundreds of them from countries like Spain, Sweden, the United States and Australia testify to the forum’s kick and its universal nature. And judging from so many up-front questions and straightforward descriptions of people’s experiences, a large percentage of users, regular or otherwise, are young Cubans of both sexes, for the most part open-minded and ardent-hearted.
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Adán y Eva, autor Nelson Domínguez, técnica mixta, salón CuidArte. |
Sabías que más de 70 obras plásticas que proponen diferentes miradas al universo erótico actual de la Isla, estarán expuestas hasta mediados de enero en el Centro de Arte de Boyeros, sito en la avenida de igual nombre, como colofón al segundo evento anual del proyecto cultural CuidArte, que promueve ese municipio del oeste capitalino.
Nelson y Liang Domínguez, Montoto, Fabelo, Choco, Isabel Santos, Adigio Benítez, Angel Ramírez, García Peña e Iván Picasso, entre otros artistas reconocidos internacionalmente, así como instructores de arte, pintores y ceramistas del territorio e invitados de Argentina, respondieron a esta convocatoria, cuyo propósito es fundir arte, salud y sexualidad como expresión de la lucha de nuestra sociedad contra la epidemia del VIH/SIDA.
El proyecto CuidArte, coordinado por Ruddy Fernández y auspiciado por las direcciones municipales de Cultura y de Salud en Boyeros, así como por el Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual, CENESEX, extiende su labor comunitaria a centros educacionales e instituciones culturales, para propiciar una reflexión responsable y desprejuiciada sobre la sexualidad a través de la combinación de la plástica, la música, la poesía, los audiovisuales y el teatro con charlas de especialistas, promotores de salud y personas que viven con el VIH.