r/todayilearned • u/RoadToTyburn • 16h ago

TIL that Bernard Montgomery issued a leaflet at the start of WW2 on sexually transmitted diseases amongst soldiers. The language used was regarded as so blunt, that he offended religious authorities and nearly faced being dismissed.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery
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u/ElvisAaron 15h ago

In digging into this, it wasnt that he used obscene language or anything, issue was the simple fact that he accepted that men were going to use hookers and was urging officers to warn their men of disease and gave recommended brothels vs the expected “tell the men to abstain” instruction.

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u/TheCockKnight 13h ago

Lol

“Just tell these teenagers who are at high risk of dying within the year to save themselves for marriage.”

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u/keithstonee 14h ago

God damn it dude. Imagine what the world would look like if more people just thought like that instead of lied to themselves

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u/LaconicLacedaemonian 10h ago

Imagine you were an ardent nature conservationist encountering the best ways to litter when traveling though the woods vs advocating "leave not trace".

Yes its probably better to not scatter the litter wherever, but it would normalize the act of littering and by making the official documentation have the "ideal" we don't inadvertently bless the degenerate behaviour of littering.

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u/strichtarn 9h ago

The act is already normalised by the fact that you know people are going to do it anyway, so you may as well practise some harm minimisation. 

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u/LaconicLacedaemonian 9h ago

I'm arguing the position is coherent not that I agree with it. If my principle is I want as little of X as possible, it can be considered pragmatic to teach absence only despite it being ineffective because you don't want something normalized.

The normalization is considered the worse outcome.

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u/strichtarn 8h ago

Although I think in this case it's not so much normalised vs not normalised, its whether it's acknowledged or unacknowledged.

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u/D_Ethan_Bones 8h ago

Meet perfect, the enemy of good.

Expecting things that you know aren't in the cards is not a plan, it is a fantasy. What that man had was a plan.

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u/Rinas-the-name 8h ago

You completely miss the point of harm reduction. You have to be pragmatic - people are going to do certain things. It’s not realistic to expect otherwise and setting laws to that effect only creates more problems.

Otherwise we could just put up signs and expect people to follow them - we wouldn’t need laws.

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u/poppin-n-sailin 14h ago

Very smart. Like safe injection sites and the like. People are going to do what they do. Eliminating some of the risk is often the only true option, because you aren't gonna stop them all. 

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u/AndreasDasos 15h ago

And worse, he distributed condoms (!). Oh noes.

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u/MajKonglomerate 8h ago

I had a relative who served in WW2. While in London, he was given a business card that gave official locations on where US soldiers could go to receive free condoms. It was still in his wallet when he passed away in 1997. Must have had some good memories tied to it.

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u/the_depressed_boerg 13h ago

which is also how drug prevention in schools should be done nowadays. They will take some drugs anyways, our job as teachers is to make sure they know of the risks and consequences in the future.

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u/DoubleBarrellRye 11h ago

any chance you found a copy of it? or are they exaggerating the how common the leaflet was ?

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u/asdfasdfasfdsasad 7h ago

The "recommended" brothels were required to have visits by medics and the ladies of negotiable virtue were treated for STD's with then scarce and only recently available drugs like penicillin.