RubySoho
Winston
No Sex Please...We're American
April 28th 2008 05:31
Safer than Fort Knox...
Finally, common sense prevails- US Congress has announced it will review its funding of high school sex education programs which promote abstinence has the most viable method of birth control. This announcement comes hot on the heels of a report released by that countries leading health agency The Center For Disease Control and Prevention, which found that one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease.
Schools in the US can follow either a comprehensive sex education curriculum covering birth control and abstinence or abstinence only. Whilst 58% of US schools say they have a comprehensive sex education program, some 35% say that they teach abstinence only. As in, if you are not married, then you shouldn’t have sex. No mention of birth control or how to prevent STD’s. More than 50% of schools in the South teach abstinence only sex education compared with 20% in the Northeast. The States with the highest rate of teen pregnancy include Missouri, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas. There is a clear and distinct co-relation- where abstinence is pushed as the only or most viable form of birth control the pregnancy rates are higher. The United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the western world. Four times as much as England, which has the highest, rate in Europe and almost five times as much as Australia. Of the approx 750 000 teen pregnancies that occur in the US each year, 82% are unintended. More than 25% end in abortion. Whilst US teens are not more sexually active, they are less likely than their European counterparts to use contraception. 4 in 10 American girls will fall pregnant before they reach the age of 20 years.
Clearly the school system is failing its students. 1.5 billion dollars spent on abstinence sex education is not having the desired effect.
Support for abstinence-only sex education comes largely from the so-called Religious Right. Wonderful Days is a Texas organization that teaches abstinence in local schools. It is run by Roger Norman, a lawyer who says "I am convinced that abstinence is the only way for kids…you begin by teaching the consequences of bad behaviour and the benefits of proper behaviour and you do that in a way that a child can grasp”.
In other words, sex is bad behaviour and pretty much all of society’s ills derive from engaging in it. Norman goes on to say, "Self control leads to a happy, joyful life. If we can learn to control the most basic of drives - the sex drive - for good, then we can control drugs, gangs, alcohol and abusive anger."
Norman and his organization promote marriage and virginity and stress that disease is a consequence of sex before marriage. In other words, they use fear mongering and scare tactics. Rather then equip impressionable students with the knowledge they need in order to have healthy fulfilling sex lives, they scare them into trying to suppress their own sexual urges. Because these teenagers are not educated about the different methods of birth control, they are vulnerable to pregnancy as well as STD’s when they do act on the natural desire to have sex.
Apart from the obvious effects of pregnancy and STD’s, another harmful effect of this abstinence only approach appears to be the stigma with which young women are held when they do engage in sexual activity. By declaring sex “bad” behaviour and emphasising disease as a result, teenagers are being encouraged to view any one who engages in sex as morally reprehensible and more often than not, it is women who suffer the verbal abuse. Is there a male word for “slut?”
I am always aghast at some of the comments I read when I engage in or simply follow any debate about sex, pregnancy and abortion. These are some comments from various such debates right here on Orble:
“It’s not 'your body' and you cant 'do what you want with it'
Its about time women (& men) started taking responsibility. If you want go around town sleeping with anyone you want, then you have to deal with the consequences.”
“Babies can not help it if their mom is a slut…and they shouldn't be put to death because of it”.
“She admitted that her young niece was sexually active which may qualify 'whoremongering' behavior”
“So you don't believe in being "judgmental" with her and whatever she does is perfectly acceptable to you, right? Is that what you'll tell her when she comes to you and confesses that she has AIDS? Will you mourn with her for the life she might have had if she'd kept her pants on?
Will you give any thought to the children she might have (generously) allowed to live if she hadn't caught a fatal disease from her promiscuity? Will you tell her it's O.K. to wither away and die from a hideous disease, because after all, she didn't have to obey those ridiculous and strident Christian rules? Well, you go right ahead…and pretend that your own set of values is right and you can't ask your niece to do anything that isn't "free and fun" and deadly in the long run”.
“You'd consider it a crime, I suppose, to take your niece to an AIDS ward so she can get a good look at what awaits her”.
“As for abortion...if they don’t want kids they should simply keep their organs zipped up and legs closed”.
If this is what 1.5 billion dollars in sex education buys us, then I fear it is money down the drain.
How do such attitudes still prevail today? Where has the feminist movement got us if women who have sex are still called ‘hoes’ and ‘sluts’ and told to keep their legs closed? When is society going to move on from this damaging notion that sex is dirty, that people who have sex are bad, that desire should be controlled and denied and suppressed?
The fact is the sexual urge is unstoppable. The survival of our species depends on it. Teenagers are curious, their hormones are rampant and they going to have sex whether we like it or not. The least we can do is equip them with the education they need to make informed choices regarding their sex lives. Education that just may save them from an unwanted pregnancy or something far, far worse.
References:
Kaiser Family Foundation
Guttmacher Institute: Facts on Sex Education in The United States
BBC News: Has US Abstinence Policy failed?
Image: Washington Post
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Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
ahh entertaining post as always ruby haha
its always surprising to me when women attack and repress other women . . . i think we are all entitled to information, choice, options . . . freedom? isnt that the whole idea?
im sure HIV wouldnt have spread the way it did if people were more educated about safe sex, instead everyone sat back in denial and thought well that will only affect the gays and the blacks so whats the harm . . . well while your heads are buried in the sand your teenage daughters have contracted it . . . WAKE UP!
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
i used to wonder how people could have these attitudes and then found out about this 'abstinence only' malarky and wouldn't you know it? They learn it at school. And call it education.
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
Simple and effective!
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
I thought about looking for a pic of a chastity belt but didn't think I would find one. Silly me, what can't you get on gogel?
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Comment by Jeff Musall
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
Comment by samaritan
Samaritan's Stories
I don't think it's healthy for teenagers to be told they can just have sex when they feel like, because - particularly for women - there's usually emotional repurcussions. But the abstinence approach doesn't work. Teenagers will want to have sex and they will do it. It's best that they have all the right information so that they can make it safe.
But I think sex education should be about really informing kids about the good and the bad of sex. Telling them that they can make the choice to wait - I found your comments about how people viewed sexually active females as interesting. In my days at high school, if you didn't have sex you were called names. And that's wrong too. I'm sure there were a lot of girls who lost their virginity just so they could be part of the in crowd.
People should be able to make their own decisions as to when it's the right time to have sex for them. They need to be informed about what they need to do for it to be safe. But they also need to be informed about the kind of emotional repurcussions that can result. In a perfect world, where everybody had great self-esteem, I imagine we would all be making the right choices about our own sexual behaviours - and they would all be different, but they would all be right for us.
Samaritan
www.fringefaith.com
Comment by dQuarters
Parents.
Comment by D. Armenta
The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.
In my opinion, the primary responsibility for educating children about sex lies with the parents.
Schools have no business teaching abstinence or anything else that falls under the category of "personal belief or opinion"; too many variations there. If one set of parents wants their kid to be abstinent and another wants their kid to use condoms, so be it. That's supposed to be taught at home.
The schools' responsibility should be just what it was before: teaching kids about the reproductive system and showing them nasty slides and movies of what happens when they have unprotected sex. Facts only!
There were probably hundreds of thousands of my generation who used condoms or abstained altogether after seeing gross pictures of diseased organs and a civil defense film with an actual natural childbirth--screaming, afterbirth, uncontrollable shitting and all.
Yipes!! Made you think twice.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Can I politely disagree? i grew up in a pretty religious muslim family and i can tell you from experience that sometimes children need to be saved from their own parents. had it not been for school sex ed i would have recieved no info about sex. none. not because my parents were bad parents but because as recent immigrants, they had come from a culture where you just didn't talk about such things.
sex ed saved me from certain ignorance.
Comment by D. Armenta
The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.
Oh, I think schools should teach sex ed (see above) I just don't think they should teach preferences about birth control; schools are for children to learn the facts about sex, not opinions of whatever agenda the school or the teacher(s) subscribe to.
I've also seen a disturbing trend in the U.S.; parents expecting schools to teach their children things that parents should be taking responsibility to teach their kids themselves.
Some areas are way too subjective to be taught to large and diverse groups of children.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
I don't understand how some school districts can actually decide that they won't discuss sex at all with their students, except to tell them it's dirty out of wedlock and sure to lead to AIDS and other diseases. What kind of an education is that?