There is a long-stand­ing, some­what overused cliché that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val is a mir­ror of so­ci­ety.

If that is so, then the im­age re­flect­ing back at us this week is one that should give every cit­i­zen pause.

The de­ci­sion by Tribe, ar­guably the coun­try’s most in­flu­en­tial mas band, to in­clude a “Rose” sex toy in its fe­male mas­quer­aders’ good­ie bags is not just a lapse in judge­ment; it is a sig­nal that the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of our fes­ti­val has un­teth­ered it­self from any sense of cul­tur­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don’s con­dem­na­tion of this move as “he­do­nism” was swift and point­ed, and one that brought moral clar­i­ty to a de­bate many were al­ready hav­ing qui­et­ly.

He did not call for bans, boy­cotts or cen­sor­ship.

In­stead, he ques­tioned the sym­bol­ism and the mes­sage be­ing nor­malised when sex­u­al de­vices are de­lib­er­ate­ly wo­ven in­to a na­tion­al street fes­ti­val mar­ket­ed glob­al­ly as an ex­pres­sion of cul­ture.

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters.

This is not a pu­ri­tan­i­cal cru­sade against pri­vate plea­sure.

No one is ar­gu­ing that women should not own or use sex toys; what hap­pens in the pri­va­cy of the bed­room is, and should re­main, per­son­al busi­ness.

How­ev­er, the “bed­room” is the op­er­a­tive word.

By el­e­vat­ing an in­ti­mate adult de­vice to a na­tion­al mar­ket­ing tool for a mas band, Tribe has ef­fec­tive­ly blurred the line be­tween pri­vate lib­er­a­tion and pub­lic ex­hi­bi­tion­ism.

When you put a sex toy in a “good­ie bag” along­side sun­block and a sou­venir cup, you are not just giv­ing a gift; you are mak­ing a state­ment. You are telling the world that the “street jump” - a rit­u­al root­ed in cre­ativ­i­ty and com­mu­nal joy - is now in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to a spe­cif­ic, nar­row brand of sex­u­al con­sump­tion.

Was this a mar­ket­ing gim­mick de­signed to feed the beast of so­cial me­dia en­gage­ment?

The dan­ger here is the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the ex­plic­it in our most sa­cred pub­lic spaces.

When we es­ca­late the sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of the fes­ti­val to this lev­el, we re­in­force the most re­duc­tive stereo­types about Caribbean women - that they are hy­per-sex­u­alised ob­jects to be mar­ket­ed to and for.

To those who ar­gue that “adults are play­ing mas” and can han­dle it, we must counter with the con­cept of the moral com­pass.

A so­ci­ety with­out bound­aries is not a free so­ci­ety; it is a chaot­ic one.

If our pre­mier cul­tur­al ex­port is now be­ing mar­ket­ed through the lens of adult sex toys, what are we telling the next gen­er­a­tion about the val­ue of our tra­di­tions?

The “Rose” may be mar­ket­ed as a gift of em­pow­er­ment.

There are al­so those who have ar­tic­u­lat­ed the view that it may pro­mote safe/re­spon­si­ble sex dur­ing Car­ni­val, in much the same way as con­doms have been dis­trib­uted for many years with­out any out­rage.

How­ev­er, in the con­text of the na­tion­al road, it be­comes a thorn in the side of our cul­tur­al in­tegri­ty.

We do not need the Gov­ern­ment to reg­u­late our fun, but we do need our cul­tur­al lead­ers - in­clud­ing band­lead­ers - to recog­nise that they have a du­ty to the pub­lic space.

Let the bed­room re­main the bed­room, and let the road be­long to the mas.