When I was a child growing up in British Honduras in the 1950?s, the culture and the ethos with respect to men and women, and their interrelationships, were notably different. Nobody wants to talk about it in respectable circles, but the men who could control more than one woman were considered heroic in those days.

In most African societies, this appears also to have been the traditional culture. The white missionaries who entered Africa (and Asia) 500 plus years ago, called it polygamy. One man could have more than one wife, and not only was that practice not illegal, it was also acceptable, in fact, encouraged. (Of course, we now refer to such societies as ?primitive.?)

Now before we go ahead, let me say this, that it is a very difficult thing to control only one woman, not to mention controlling several of the fairer sex. That is why, I suppose, such men were marveled at. If controlling one is so hard, check out more than one. As a man like me goes along in life, he discovers that women are much more powerful, in real terms, than we ever dared to imagine when we were younger and less prudent.

Part of the ?white man?s burden? and ?manifest destiny? ( those were his terms) involved the enforcement of the European, Christian insistence on monogamy ? one man, one wife. Because it was illegal to have more than one wife, the married male descendants of Africans who had lived in polygamous communities in the motherland, in Belize these married male descendants of Africans kept what became known as ?sweethearts.?

Before I proceed, let me point out another thing. Where I?ve reached in this column, is already an emotional and controversial point where social opinions in Belize are concerned. I therefore proceed at my own peril. There will be women in Belize, mainly wives, who will already have become enraged by this discussion, even though the intention of the discussion is strictly analytical.

There is religion, and then there is reality. In British Honduras when I was a child, monogamy was the religion, but the reality, to a large extent, was not the way the religions preached it. Everybody knew who was going on, except maybe some of the foreign missionaries, but British Honduras, even more so than Belize today, was a place where people ?played the fool.?

We are seeing today in Belize that the chasm between the white religion and the black reality has made the problem of HIV-AIDS worse than it has to be. For sure many of you will disagree vehemently with the ?white religion? reference, but the major religions in Belize were brought to Africa and America by Europe, which is a white continent. There will be some, even, who will take issue with the description of a ?black reality?, because they reject being described as black.

The black reality is that younger Belizeans are having sex without being married, and they are having sex with more than one partner. Real observers of the HIV-AIDS epidemic are trying to influence these younger Belizeans to use condoms as a form of protection. The largest religion in Belize refuses to accept the reality, and has therefore unilaterally and categorically condemned the use of condoms. Their solution to the HIV-AIDS problem is for people who are not married to abstain from sex completely, and for people who are married, to be faithful to their partner. The religion and the reality, you and I know, are at opposite ends of the societal spectrum.

Between my childhood and today, women have become much more assertive and aggressive. In fact, women are organized. I will admit that for much of my life, I have been a male chauvinist. Perhaps I still am, but I don?t waste a lot of time figuring out where I am on this matter and how I am defined. Except for a brief period of seven or eight months, I went to all male schools from the time I was 5 until I was 21. In the coed period of my life (September 1964 to April 1965), I was uncomfortable. I didn?t want young ladies to be my friends. I wanted them to be women, to create excitement. Yes, that is probably a definition of male chauvinism.

I knew when I began this column, that it could not hope to be otherwise than hopelessly controversial. And yet, I have only scratched the matter of boys and girls, and men and women. The matter cannot be discussed in such a genre as this in such a society as ours.

We keep on keeping on. I wish you peace, and love.