One version of a den of liberal iniquity.
This is a great boon to the pro-comprehensive sex education forces: A group of 10 prominent scientists and researchers in adolescent health and sexuality have written an extensive letter to the Democrats in Congress, requesting that they cut funding for abstinence-only education immediately. It’s a long letter, but well worth reading the whole thing. It’s important to publicize this, because the Democrats need to be in a position where they can’t ignore the issue, and can’t keep trying to save face on this. Right now Democrats are in a political bind, because abstinence-only proponents are super eager to label anyone who advocates for effective programs (i.e., comprehensive sex education) as advocates for teenagers fucking in the streets. And we’re not, and some of us would point out that even if teenagers are fucking in your streets, it’s probably over so quickly you won’t even notice.
What needs to happen is basic reframing. This isn’t about who wants who to have sex with who when, but about who wants kids to be healthy, and who is resigned to letting them get sick. Which is all you’re going to get with abstinence-only. But it’s more than just what “works” better in terms of reducing STDs and pregnancy rates (though comprehensive sex education does), but it’s a philosophical question, too. The very idea that schools should be in the business of reinforcing ignorance instead of improving knowledge is a violation of basic American ideals. Abstinence-only is part of a larger right wing strategy of defining the mission of public education as propagandistic—who cares if you teach them things that are enriching or even fucking correct? The schools are there to preach conservative, white, Christian cultural superiority to a captive audience, in this view. After all, it’s not just abstinence-only that’s part of the agenda. It’s also teaching creationism in schools, and teaching a propagandistic view of history that whitewashes issues like slavery (and that the South seceded over it) and the Indian genocide. Which is turn is about producing another generation of idiots who get boners at the idea of more imperialistic war-mongering, well up until they’re a few years in and realize it’s stupid, you know, after it’s too late to do anything short of damage control. (See: Iraq War)
The more liberal view of education is that it’s about getting educated, not indoctrinated. And comprehensive sex education really epitomizes this philosophy in a way that’s easy to understand. You teach the kids all the various ways to protect themselves, and encourage them to think critically about these methods, instead of giving them as “Do as I say (and not as I do, since I and pretty much everyone will fuck before marriage)” message. The right wing fear that kids won’t do the “right” thing if you give them information and coax them to use their noggins is ill-founded; it’s just setting kids up to learn all the lessons the hard way. Ah, yes, you do get the clap when you fuck around without a condom. Wouldn’t it have been nice if someone had told you that, so you could know beforehand what to do? Having a narrow set of knowledge only works if you live a structured existence, like a child in school, but in the real world, the environment and your life is more open-ended and that’s when those critical thinking skills kick in.
59 Responses to “Abstinence-only and the push against critical thinking skills”
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You know way back before Dewey and Cutter and the LoC, people really did arrange books like that, with all the same colored ones together (and by size, male v. female author, et cetera). Thank goodness for modern cataloging.
This is what I learn in grad school.
(and by size, male v. female author, et cetera)
IIRC, the Victorians supposedly considered it indecent to shelve books by male authors and female authors on the same shelf, I guess in case the books started humping each other in the middle of the night. If said authors were married to each other, you could put the books next to each other on the shelf.
I can’t find the reference, so it may be one of those jokes that free-wheeling Edwardian kids made about their straight-laced Victorian parents, but it still cracked me up.
Books pretty.
And getting many parents to accept that if your teen wants to Do It, they will find a way, so you better teach them to think sensibly early, is mighty hard. They prefer the sweet, poisonous denial the Right feeds them, at least up until a baby or an STD shows up. And even then, they won’t blame the people who told them that ignorance was an effective sex-repellent.
I’m hopeful for the next generation being better parents in this regard, but folks my age…there’s still an awful lot of heads up an awful lot of asses out there.
What we need are Democrats who aren’t cowards when it comes to the fuckwit attack machine. Governor Patrick refused federal abstinence only funds here in MA. The right wing lying sacks of shit were all out screaming,”Governor Patrick wants 11-year-olds to have sex!”
Of course, we know this is garbage. And, of course, we know that large majorities of Americans favor comprehensive sexuality education including the use of condoms for disease prevention. And, we know that Democrats don’t want to touch anything to do with sex, unless it’s in order to suck Daddy Dobson’s cock.
Get a grip Dems. Comprehensive sex ed is good policy and good politics. Attack the fuckwits, don’t roll over or them.
Mnemosyne, I heard if from a professor in cataloging class, so I suspect there is a kernel of truth in there, but I think it was one or a few crazies, rather than a wide-spread practice.
This is the same country where nearly everyone has used / uses / will use some kind of illegal drug. Typically this is something as common and innocuous as marijuana.
However, our drug laws are hopelessly victorian (for lack of a better term), and some us are so afraid of “sending the wrong message” that we are completely unable to arrive at any reasonable compromise which might differentiate between classes of drugs, legalize many, penalize the worst, and ratchet down “the war on drugs”.
So year after year, billions are spent prosecuting stupid aspects of “the drug war”, while real problems go un-addressed. Prisons continue to be built to hold the people we’ve condemned for medicating themselves, the prison guard union grows larger and more influential, the DEA runs out of control, etc., with no hope in sight for the foreseeable future.
And you expect people like us to arrive at some acceptable consensus regarding something as volatile as sex education philosophy and implementation? What have you been smoking?…
The way my fellow librarians tell it, t’was Thomas Bowdler who came up with the “married authors only” deal. So…how do I shelve my Will Shetterly and Emma Bull novels? They’re married, but their names belong on different shelves. I usually just alphabetize them, and pray that their novels have the moral fiber to resist standing beside other people’s books all night.
IIRC, the Victorians supposedly considered it indecent to shelve books by male authors and female authors on the same shelf, I guess in case the books started humping each other in the middle of the night.
You may laugh, but how else would you explain the dramatic growth in the 300s?
Don’t laugh: the New England School of Law Library Search by Color option, aka “well, it’s red”. Anyone who’s ever worked in a reserve room knows how useful this can be.
I am personally in favor of teenagers fucking in the streets. They’re going to do it somewhere, and if they do it in the streets, us old fucks can enjoy it vicariously.
Totally. There’s now a search function by color? That’s great. When I worked in the Reserve Room, the function was [call Phoenix at home and find out what the reserve for Psych 230 that’s in a blue binder was].
As to Jeff’s point, i saw the most amazing example during the legislative session last winter. Our 60 year old, 98 pound spitfire of a lawmaker, who is referred to among the cognoscenti as ‘[Catholic stereotype nickname] [Different Catholic stereotype Lastname], who is a badass’ because it goes so not-at-all with her visual presentation, explained it all to the committee hearing a bill to require comprehensive sex ed:
“Well, you all have children. And you know, someday they grow up. My daughter has about as many children as I want to buy presents for, which is about as many as she wanted to have. The key to this thing is understanding that they grow up! Unless all of you want to explain how life is created, and how to prevent it, to your own kids the night before their weddings, I suggest you get behind this bill. Better the high school gym teacher than me to tell my son how to prevent pregnancy, that’s what I say!”
She brought down the house, and we passed the damn bill. Reality therapy: Sex ed is useful throughout the human life cycle, not just before marriage.
I’ve been teaching my kids critical thinking skills - well, to be honest, I’ve merely encouraged them to use the ones that they came with.
Consequently, they tossed God out with Santa Claus!
I think this is what the wingnuts fear - kids who think about things, well, live according to reason. Never mind that kids who think about things and live according to reason are far more likely to postpone sexual activity and drug use than DARE graduates and abstinence-only trainees, we can’t have them dumping our our favored cultural superstitions in the process!
p.s. I have told my kids that as of Feb 2009, there will be a box of condoms available at all times, and restocked without question. I don’t care if I end up supplying all their friends, if it is worth doing it is worth doing right!
Abstinence-only is part of a larger right wing strategy of defining the mission of public education as propagandistic
…and decades of relentless nonsense about public schools being fountains of decadent secular leftism have convinced people that injecting right-wing ideology is justified in order to balance the scales. Note that right-wingers don’t object to schools spewing propaganda to a captive audience of children as long as it’s theirs that’s being spewed.
Oh, and amen to MAJeff. But you know as well as I do they’ll lay down and play dead when the Krazy Kristians say Boo.
Ms. Kate, my condom drawer won’t go live until 2012 or so (my oldest is 5), but I’ll be doing the same thing. And if all the neighborhood kids are also getting condoms, well they need to get the from somewhere and at least I’ll know mine are all new-ish and functional.
Right on!But it goes beyond that I think. It isn’t that the pro-absitnence-ed crowd is resigned to letting them get sick. I think they view it as punishment. So the question is who wants kids to be healthy, and who wants to punish kids for biblical sins with debilitating stds.
Second MAJeff, and Bravo Ms Kate! I think that’s dead on, there is a fear of losing religious control that needs to be addressed. Our public resources shouldn’t be in the hands of religious conservatives so they can overcompensate for vulnerable belief systems at the expense of our educational future.
If Republicans taught skiing the way they teach sex:
“You’re not going to ski. Skiiing is evil ad sinful. We’re not going to give you the equipment you need, it’s all bad anyways. So if you go skiing without lessons and without safety equipment and you break your leg, you’ll just have to live with it, cause we won’t let doctors fix it.”
“And by the way boys, if you don’t ski, you’re a faggot. Girls, you should go skiing as often as possible once you’re safely married.”
“And by the way boys, if you don’t ski, you’re a faggot. Girls, you should go skiing as often as possible once you’re safely married.”
Come now - wives should only ski if they have to carry the family groceries back from the store, or if their husband insists on skiing for his own recreational needs..
Sex Ed is one of those areas where I’ve spent more than a little bit of my life. My MA thesis was on the MN Family Council’s framing of sex ed.
Basically, they changed their message from “no sex ed” to “abstinence only sex ed” in the early 1990s. They were able to institutionalize that at the federal level during the “welfare reform” bills of 1996, and since then we’ve had a boondoggle for people lying to teenagers. The reason for the change, I argued, was that sex ed had become so popular, particularly because of HIV, that to argue for no sex ed was to argue a losing position. Moving to abstinence only taught the same nonsense, but was more easily framable for a frightened public.
The advocates of abstinence only are liars. Period. Their programs have failure rates that are through the ceiling. These are not good people, and they have worse ideas.
What it’s going to take is people saying to Democrats, “Hey! Idiots! We want kids taught the facts, not these religious lies! We want our kids safe.” They won’t lead, so we’ve got to pull them by the nose-ring. And we’ve got to call out the liars for what they are, whenever and whereever we can.
aw shit…apparently the ether ate my post
Sex ed is useful throughout the human life cycle, not just before marriage.
YES YES YES!
We don’t teach driver’s ed with the expectation they’ll forget everything once they get a license. Why is there the assumption that sex education is only for the moment and will be jettisoned upon graduation. Sexual skills and knowledge, negotiation skills, care for one’s body and the pleasure of a partner–these are lifelong issues, not just confined to jr. prom.
I lit up MAJeff! Does this mean I win the intertubes for tonight?
Hope so because I just saw Mike Huckabee put on a show that all my Ohio and WV relatives would like to see more of…and me without grain alcohol in the house.
Have fun kids, I’ll be over here drinking myself into a stupor. Someday I am going to have to teach my own child which herbs cause early miscarriage if this man is the Republican nominee.
I lit up MAJeff! Does this mean I win the intertubes for tonight?
Well, technically, I lit up MAJeff for the evening…but you win whatever the hell you want, girl. Cold in Mpls this evening? BWAHAHAHAHA!
MAJeff, something you mentioned earlier today has me wanting to ask you your opinion. It’s wildly off-topic, though and might be considered rude if it were taken in that “you are the spokesperson for all gay men” kind of way.
Could I ask you?
um ok
*thinking back over what i’ve said all day*
Well, earlier you mentioned being at gay bars and basically being invaded by hen parties and it being annoying.
In the last town I lived it, my favorite bar to go to was considered traditionally a gay bar type place (and unless there was a special event like a drag show the crowd was pretty much a majority of gays and lesbians). I loved it there because the conversation was great and I could just hang out without feeling like a slab of meat, but now I’m wondering how such places are viewed in gay culture and if us straight folk are an annoyance when we show up in a general sense.
Feel free to tell me to go google and find out for myself, too
I was just wondering your own personal opinion about it.
Depends on the bar and the clientelle, to be honest. There’s a place in Mpls. It used to be gay. All the gawkers took it over, and the only gay thing about it any more is the drag show.
What’s annoying is when bachelorette parties come in (because it’s a safe space) and think they can just take it over, don’t realize they’re coming into someone else’s social space, in which there are established norms of behavior, and basically saying, “We’ve got the rest of the world but we want your space too.”
Yeah, that’s annoying.
Straight folks who just blend in, become part of the crowd, hang out. I got no problem. Just don’t take over, or I’m finding a new bar.
And, if the club is a particularly sexual one, well, women and straight folks can get in the way sometimes……
Okay, thanks for your answer!
But, my comment was also part of a broader discussion. There are some gay men who want women nowhere in their world. We;ve got our share of misogynists. I was reacting to that.
It’s a balance, no doubt. Local conditions….local conditions.
I want sex ed asap in children’s lives, and I want it as detailed as possible, and I want refresher courses with increasing detail every year, and I want it taught by the oldest human beings available, with all the vital statistics on each STD elucidated alongside the most comfortable positions for copulation.
Abstinence will be a side-effect of such a thorough teaching regimen.
If they screw anyway, hell, nothing was going to stop them. And at least now they’re properly scared shitless about chlamydia.
I’m only being partially faceatious. Sexual activity can drop as a result of sex ed. Teen pregnancy definately drops, but that’s a function of birth control use, undoubtedly.
It may even lead to better romance and more stable marriages. (There’s some possible evidence here — the divorce rate in the red states is higher than in blue, iirc — but I don’t really have the criteria to link this to my point and make it evidence.) If teens know the risks of sex, they can make mature decisions about it, and may seek out marriage (after appropriate dating) as a way of ameliorating such risks. They won’t fling themselves into relationships fingers crossed; they’ll know what they want.
It just suddenly hit me (despite having heard the ‘you want 10 years olds fucking argument a lot) that this might put things into perspective:
Saying I support comprehensive sex education because I want (or don’t care about) kids screwing is like saying I support the Second Amendment because I want people to gun each other down in broad daylight.
YMMV, but as a kid, while I was very grateful that my parents were reasonable sorts (mom took me to the groino, no questions asked, when I told her I thought I should go on the Pill), I would have been TOTALLY grossed out if my parents had actually GIVEN me anything sex-related, like a condom stash. Just sayin’.
What’s extra-stupid, yet revealing, about the abstinence-only paranoids is that it doesn’t occur to them that comprehensive sex education and “sex is for marriage” teachings are not mutually exclusive. Parents can teach their kids that contraceptives are very useful for a married couple to plan when, and whether, and how many children they want; they can make sure their kids are knowledgeable about their bodies so that they’ll have a healthy and happy married sex life.
But I guess a person who is absolutely terrified of their own lack of ability to resist temptation wouldn’t give their kids the benefit of the doubt, either.
“It’s also teaching creationism in schools, and teaching a propagandistic view of history that whitewashes issues like slavery (and that the South seceded over it) and the Indian genocide. Which is turn is about producing another generation of idiots who get boners at the idea of more imperialistic war-mongering, well up until they’re a few years in and realize it’s stupid, you know, after it’s too late to do anything short of damage control.”
So, people who have a full liberal education are resistant to imperialistic wars? But don’t lots of the Democrats in Congress have full liberal educations? And didn’t they go along with Bush regarding the Iraq War? And wasn’t it the Democratic party that got us into WWI and WWII and the Korean War and Vietnam, not to mention a few dozen small invasions, like our take over of the Dominican Republic when LBJ was President?
“Note that right-wingers don’t object to schools spewing propaganda to a captive audience of children as long as it’s theirs that’s being spewed.”
That’s not a right-wing trait. That’s a universal human condition.
What’s extra-stupid, yet revealing, about the abstinence-only paranoids is that it doesn’t occur to them that comprehensive sex education and “sex is for marriage” teachings are not mutually exclusive.
That’s the problem. Most of them don’t like comprehensive sex ed because it deals with things like contraception and getting to know one’s own body. One of their leading proponents actually called contraception “disgusting,” and evinced the opinion that anyone who uses it was “using someone for pleasure,” which they find repellent even within marriage. They’re quite adamant that sex is only about having babies with the person to whom you’re married, and if you don’t like that, you deserve whatever happens to you (you filthy whore).
As near as I can tell, their ideal sexual experience involves not knowing much about it until it’s over, and having as many children as possible, or else walking around with a painful pinched expression all the time. (Which may, in fact, explain why so many abstinence gurus look as though they haven’t taken a decent crap in about two and a half decades…)
That’s the problem. Most of them don’t like comprehensive sex ed because it deals with things like contraception and getting to know one’s own body.
Conversely, I’m pretty sure they don’t care at all whether abstinence-only is effective as sex ed or preventing STDs or whatever. The point is just to teach a moral view. I somewhat doubt they even care whether the moral view they’re teaching is being followed by any of the teenagers in these classes– most likely they’re satisfied just so long their morals are taught, and therefore established as “correct”.
The parade of sexual scandals featuring priests, pastors and pandering congressmen should be enough to demonstrate that they, personally, are not averse to sexual adventuring, and depend on the availability of other sexual enthusiasts.
However, the society whose preservation is their entire raison d’etre is directly threatened by female sexual choice. The rule is chastity before marriage and being faithful afterwards, but also that boys will be boys.
That girls will be girls is utterly unthinkable.
As to the books: I’ve sorted them whimsically before, but by title, not by color. Eager as the paperbacks are to flaunt their spines, the hardbacks are agressively territorial and insist on staying put wherever they were first planted, which is why we have Steinbeck shelved next to Lampedusa: the library expanded while the books stayed put. At least that’s what I tell my mother.
Blue Jean: And where do you put “Freedom & Necessity”?
BTW, sorting books by colour would work well for me. When I’m looking for a book I can always visualize its colour, even if I have forgotten the author. Unfortunately, book design is working against this.
I don’t know if the programs are around any more, but when I was in 4th grade, my father took me to a sex ed course offered by the YMCA. It was comprehensive (at the time. Pre-AIDS, so not so much with the safer sex) and it encouraged dads to be there with their sons to help answer questions and have discussions afterwards. I learned things at 10 that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I give my father all sorts of credit for being in on a discussion he may have been too self-conscious about delivering himself.
I have a friend who has young teenage kids now and I can’t quite get through to him that comprehensive sex ed IS abstinence ed, that knowing the facts gives kids the ability to make decisions for themselves. Which to me (I know call me crazy) is what I want my school system to be teaching kids!
Finally, way off topic. Amanda, you use the CAPTCHA graphic to help cut down on spam. Have you seen this? http://recaptcha.net/
You know it’s sad that the sex education you got in the 1970s in Denver was more complete that the sex education class you gave permission for your eldest son to attend in the 21st century in Massachusette.
I say this because since my son has been in college (which started about the same time as Deval’s (Patrick) govenorship he’s had a girlfriend pregnancy scare during this short time.
The condom (which thank god he knew enough to use) broke. I asked if he and she had used any back up measures (he did take her right away to get the morning after pill). He said “no, what back up measures.”
“You mean no one has told you about foams and gels along with condoms?” I asked
“What are foams?” he responded.
So we go for an internet tour of foams and jellys to be used in conjunction with condoms. “This is what my generation used for some time of back up in case the condom broke. We didn’t have the morning after pill.” I reported
I then immediately ordered the new “Our Bodies, Our Selves” for my daughter to cover anything and everything I may have missed telling her. And made sure my 14 year old knew about “back up anti pregnancy measures.”
I also blogged a few weeks ago, “1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year”
Sorting by color only goes so far, I learned self-control working at a college bookstore. Dozens of students would wander in and ask for the blue book. You would query to get more details- teacher’s name- no go, class- accounting, year- no go. ALL the accounting books were blue. We would lay out the choices- all 12 of them. Which blue book? They would come back later with the class handout. The urge to throw the accounting 401 (nearly $200 dollars and a solid 7 pounds) book at their heads was pretty strong. Technical books are often all the same colour.
That’s the problem. Most of them don’t like comprehensive sex ed because it deals with things like contraception and getting to know one’s own body. One of their leading proponents actually called contraception “disgusting,” and evinced the opinion that anyone who uses it was “using someone for pleasure,” which they find repellent even within marriage. They’re quite adamant that sex is only about having babies with the person to whom you’re married, and if you don’t like that, you deserve whatever happens to you (you filthy whore).
On you forgot that the even tell their children other than for washing “down there” that they are wrong and sinful to even touch their genitalia.
And that masturbation, even if you single with no prospects, it’s extra martial sex and you are guilty of adultery.
“On you forgot that the even tell their children other than for washing “down there” that they are wrong and sinful to even touch their genitalia.”
…and that’s the way god wants it to be. If people were meant to touch their genitals, their arms would be made long enough to reach “down there”. Oh wait…
And that “using someone for pleasure” thing - if sex was meant to pleasurable, we’d be made with a whole bunch of sensitive nerve endings in our genitals, such that manipulation of them would send strong signals to our brains encouraging further manipulation. Likewise, we would be strongly programmed, or “have a drive”, to seek out other people with which to share genital manipulation.
In fact that “drive” might be so strong that it would overcome all kinds of other “drives” people have - at least for short periods of time. People might even be compelled to alter their life plans on behalf of pursuing some sort of physical and emotional “relationship” with another person in order to share these strong feelings.
But that’s just crazy talk…
I believe that de-mystifying sex in general would probably lead to better romance and more stable marriages.
Sex is an important part of a relationship, but it is only one part of the relationship. The couple has to be able to get along with each other. Yet people make romantic decisions based on their hormones all the time. Add the certain cultural norms and mores and you have a recipe for bad decision making that leads to inappropriate decision making and divorce.
Better to screw around when you’re young and marry someone who is good for you than to “save yourself” and marry the first person you sleep with. That is the real dirty little secret of the “abstinence only/true love waits” idea: when it does “work”, most of the time it’s only because the horny teenagers in question were able to make it to the altar before tearing their clothes off. The couple marries young after a short courtship, which makes divorce more likely. Furthermore, if these young people haven’t been educated on birth control or are discouraged from using it, these relationships will also quickly lead to pregnancy, which is another strain on a marriage.
That being said, while sex isn’t the only important part of a relationship, sex IS an important part of a relationship. A couple should expect a good sexual relationship. Wanting good, mutually orgasmic, mutually pleasurable, sex is something that couples should want and should not be ashamed to admit they want. Often times problems can show up in the bedroom long before they surface outside of it. Knowledge about sex would allow a couple to either fix the problems or to realize that the relationship is not worth pursuing.
In conclusion, knowledge about sex, like knowledge about anything, helps people make better decisions. Ignorance about sex, like ignorance about anything, causes people to make worse decisions.
Hence the point of the entire thread - that it is past time to demand that the Democratic elected officials actually do something about this.
Seems to me that (probably to play a lame bit of “gotcha”) that you are confusing or conflating personal beliefs with politcal and electoral game-playing.
It is not the party policy of the Democratic Party to support abstinence-only. Nor, do I imagine, that there are a significant number of elected Democrats who believe in it personally or support it as a campaign talking point. (Unlike, say, Republicans).
What is true is that they are politically spineless - which translate directly into the fact that they obviously believe that going along with the Republicans on this is far less politically costly than supporting comprehensive sex ed.
In a world where everyone who supports comprehensive sex ed is going to vote Democratic anyway regardless of the individual candidate’s stance, and a shitstorm will ensue (shifting voters to the opponent, whether another Democrat or all the way to the Republicans) if they speak up for sex-ed, then they are going to do exactly what they are doing.
What the thread is about, and what the letter it’s about is about, is changing that, so that their support of sex ed matters politically. Proving that people care, and that enough people care so that supporting it won’t cost their jobs.
As Freud put it, the first knowledge is sexual knowledge.
For the recod, I am against teenagers fucking in the streets. But then, I’m in Texas, and molten tar + exposed bits and pieces add up to a very specialized kink.
To the extent that the important thing is to answer the attacks, I think the “elevator pitch” is this:
1) Sex ed is healthcare, and we don’t do faith-based healthcare. We do fact-based healthcare. Abstinence-only doesn’t work, and that’s the fact.
2) Parents teach values. Schools teach information and thinking skills, parents tell you how to live your life.
I know this could never be part of the political debate, but for the record, I don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong, intrinsically, with teenagers having consensual sex. I started having sex at 15 with my boyfriend, with whom I stayed together nearly 5 years and then split amicably as we grew up and moved in different directions. It was a wonderful, healthy experience, in large part because I didn’t believe that it was wrong or dirty and I was on the pill. No disastrous consequences, either physical, emotional, or criminal.
We’re both well-adjusted adults in strong relationships now, over a decade later. Ditto for friends of mine whose relationships didn’t last as long, as long as they didn’t feel guilty or dirty about the sex.
What can be wrong with teens having sex is when they’re emotionally unprepared or ambivalent about it; when there’s force involved; and when they don’t have the tools or maturity to protect themselves from disease or unwanted pregnancy. Schools can’t do much about maturity, but they can do a lot of about the physical consequences. And the only bad consequences I saw were with girls who thought they were REALLY, REALLY SLUTTY for doing it. Not their fault at all, but it led to serious issues for them. (Including the tendency to think that they were, like, totally going to marry the guy they first had sex with during their sophomore year. When that didn’t work out, it tended to be crushing, because that had been what made them feel like they weren’t *actually* slutty.)
(Sorry if this shows up twice; it disappeared for some reason when I tried to post a second ago.)
I know this could never be part of the political debate, but for the record, I don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong, intrinsically, with teenagers having consensual sex. I started having sex at 15 with my boyfriend, with whom I stayed together nearly 5 years and then split amicably as we grew up and moved in different directions. It was a wonderful, healthy experience, in large part because I didn’t believe that it was wrong or dirty and I was on the pill. No disastrous consequences, either physical, emotional, or criminal.
We’re both well-adjusted adults in strong relationships now, over a decade later. Ditto for friends of mine whose relationships didn’t last as long, as long as they didn’t feel guilty or dirty about the sex.
What can be wrong with teens having sex is when they’re emotionally unprepared or ambivalent about it; when there’s force involved; and when they don’t have the tools or maturity to protect themselves from disease or unwanted pregnancy. Schools can’t do much about maturity, but they can do a lot of about the physical consequences. And the only bad consequences I saw were with girls who thought they were REALLY, REALLY SLUTTY for doing it. Not their fault at all, but it led to serious issues for them. (Including the tendency to think that they were, like, totally going to marry the guy they first had sex with during their sophomore year. When that didn’t work out, it tended to be crushing, because that had been what made them feel like they weren’t *actually* slutty.)
YMMV, but as a kid, while I was very grateful that my parents were reasonable sorts (mom took me to the groino, no questions asked, when I told her I thought I should go on the Pill), I would have been TOTALLY grossed out if my parents had actually GIVEN me anything sex-related, like a condom stash. Just sayin’.
It may be the repressed Midwesterner in me but, yeah. Of course, since I was raised by repressed Midwesterners, that may have something to do with it.
On the other hand, leaving an open box of condoms that magically replenishes itself in a drawer of the most public of the family’s bathrooms is probably something I could handle. That, and leaving interesting books (not just “Our Bodies, Our Selves,” but stuff like “The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex”) on easy to reach shelves.
I just put the kabash on allowing an abstinence only group to come in and teach a program at a charter school where I am on the board. Power is a good thing. If you can volunteer to be on a local school board or charter school board do it. Your voice is needed.
On Tuesday, I had to explain to my Sex and Gender class not only how Emergency Contraception works, but that antibiotics interfere with oral contraceptives. These are kids at an elite private school and they don’t know shit….even the one’s who’ve had “abstinence-plus” (I’d say 3 or 4 actually had comprehensive).
It’s just sad. But, I’m glad I’ve got the knowledge base to be able to do such teaching..
Here we come to one of the great abyssal gulfs between the rightie way of looking at things and the leftie way of looking at things. According to the leftie way of looking at things, the purpose of education, sexual or otherwise, is to impart knowledge. But according to the rightie way of looking at things, the purpose of an education, sexual or otherwise, is to hand down the lore of the tribe. And accuracy qua accuracy is of no importance in terms of tribal lore: tribal lore can be accurate but it does not have to be. All tribal lore has to do to rate validity as tribal lore is be suitably characteristic of the group that generates it.
Hence the tense desperation with which righties and lefties address one another on questions like these. The leftie rhetorical plea tends to be: “But if you don’t teach them any facts, how do you expect them to know what to do when presented with a problem?” To which the countervailing rightie rhetorical rejoinder usually is: “But if you don’t teach them any appropriate attitudes (’if you don’t teach them what’s right’), how do you expect them to act in a way that befits their ancestry or upbringing? How do you expect them to know what’s suitable to their people?”
Each of these two questions, unfortunately, is unanswerable in terms of the other. The real problem, I am convinced, is that, notwithstanding the propaganda to the contrary, lefties prize individual life whereas righties more or less don’t. In terms of individual life, it’s important to be able to dodge an unplanned pregnancy, an STD, an ill-judged youthful marriage. But groups only survive as groups if they retain those characteristics which distinguish them from other groups. Consequently, in terms of the tribe, the group, the superorganism, it may be expedient that the young marry early and that many children be produced, and it may not be too great a tragedy if a few experimenters contract diseases. All these things may be desireable in order to mold a greater group cohesiveness, if for no other reason.
Exactly. The favored tribal lore is deployed so as to produce a favored tribal type. Which is why the Spartans brought their boys up in barracks but the Athenians didn’t let their sons out of school until they were 20.
OT - bekabot, may I inquire your state of residence?
/OT
teac, I live in the western Washington State sticks, FWIW
Ah, thanks. Your writing style reminds me of someone with whom I attended college. She’s now in Poughkeepsie NY. Thanks.