Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has en­tered the sex toys dis­tri­b­u­tion de­bate with a wise word of en­cour­age­ment and com­mon sense: “My ad­vice to Car­ni­val rev­ellers is to en­joy your­selves, but don’t do any­thing to em­bar­rass your­selves or de­mean your loved one’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

To take the ed­i­to­r­i­al com­ment in yes­ter­day’s T&T Guardian one step fur­ther, the PM’s ad­vice tar­gets the is­sue which has not yet been raised at the writ­ing of this ed­i­to­r­i­al: “What are the fe­male mas­quer­aders to do with the sex toys? When, where and how is this “toy” to be used; and this is go­ing on the ba­sis of it be­ing as prac­ti­cal an item as the biki­ni tops and bot­toms of the typ­i­cal fe­male cos­tume.

Is it that the band will pro­vide fa­cil­i­ties for the us­age; or will the women, in the heat of the ex­cite­ment of on-stage win­ing, and we must ad­dress such mat­ters in the re­al­i­ty of lan­guage, re­sort to the toys to fa­cil­i­tate a stim­u­lat­ed need?

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment, in ad­di­tion to be­ing con­cerned with the in­di­vid­ual’s rep­u­ta­tion, is al­so fo­cused on the fam­i­ly of the mas­quer­ad­er, and they are to be per­ceived in cir­cum­stances gone awry.

Right­ly so, voic­es of con­cern have been raised over Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don’s call for Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene to pro­tect what may be con­sid­ered in­di­vid­ual moral­i­ty dis­played in pub­lic.

To be cer­tain, this ed­i­to­r­i­al is not about invit­ing Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment to en­ter leg­isla­tive­ly in­to this mat­ter of the sex toys. But it must be ac­knowl­edged, though, that a gov­ern­ment, any gov­ern­ment, has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pub­lic be­hav­iours which af­fect the whole com­mu­ni­ty. And there are laws on the books which pro­tect against pub­lic im­moral­i­ty. Fact is that large por­tions of the pop­u­la­tion have been com­plain­ing for decades about what has been re­ferred to as lewd be­hav­iour in Car­ni­val.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has un­der­stood her Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty very well by mak­ing the state­ment she has, with­out threat­en­ing any­one with a dic­ta­to­r­i­al pos­si­bil­i­ty and right­ly cen­tred the con­tem­pla­tion on the in­di­vid­ual and his/her fam­i­ly mem­bers and, by ex­ten­sion, on how the in­di­vid­ual mas­quer­ad­er must per­ceive of her/his self with re­spect to in­ter­nal pride and fam­i­ly self-re­spect.

And while one view cen­tres on the free­dom of the in­di­vid­ual and it not be­ing the Gov­ern­ment to set moral stan­dards, an­oth­er ques­tion must be: is it the right for the leader of a mas­quer­ade band to set stan­dards of prac­tices for in­di­vid­u­als?

The fact is that there are many is­sues to be dis­cussed re­gard­ing the of­fer of sex toys to fe­male mas­quer­aders and the im­pli­ca­tions of where this will take the Car­ni­val and the in­di­vid­ual mas­quer­aders. To be sure, leav­ing the sex toys in the bag with a “ste­ups” from the mas­quer­ad­er is not like­ly to be the on­ly op­tion tak­en. As we know quite well, Tri­nis are a ge­nius breed of in­di­vid­u­als at ex­tem­po­ra­ne­ous be­hav­iours.

One ex­pec­ta­tion may very well be that the mas­quer­aders may them­selves see the of­fer as a bridge too far and leave the toys at home. How­ev­er, cos­tum­ing and be­hav­iours which have now be­come the norm were not con­ceived of a cou­ple decades ago. As such, it is im­pos­si­ble to pre­dict where such be­hav­iours will go from here with­out con­cern be­ing ex­pressed.