Cute chastity belt image by mark6mauno.
Yeah I know it’s everywhere already but I just had to say I said once or twice HEY read this (Abstinence does not make the heart grow fonder: What a girl needs: Real sex education + Obama’s national sex ed program: Violet Blue lays the groundwork for the candidate to save our kids from the evils of sex ed, once and for all) and HEY watch this talk I gave at Google Inc. and then now link you to this Alternet piece:
Recently it was revealed that the 17-year-old daughter of the Republican vice-presidential nominee is pregnant. This announcement was particularly ironic, as Gov. Sarah Palin is a staunch advocate of abstinence-only sex education.
This high-profile pregnancy is stirring a larger debate about how sex education is taught in the United States. What’s clear is that despite strong messages urging young people to abstain, most teenagers, even those who have been admonished time and time again, are not listening.
Our national surveys confirm doubts about abstinence-only education. Last year, a study commissioned by Congress revealed that students receiving abstinence-only sex education are just as likely to be sexually active as those who do not. This research is consistent with the conclusions reached two years ago by a joint Yale-Columbia study of teenage virginity pledges.
The same is true for the other big concern about teenagers — drug use. Look at abstinence-only drug education and you get the same disappointing results as with sex education.
Over two decades ago, as part of the escalating war on drugs and Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign, Congress implemented the 1986 Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. Federally-funded drug prevention education for teens was mandated to adhere to a strict abstinence-only message.
And so it is today, with information going beyond pure abstention — such as the need for designated driver programs — just as verboten as discussions of condoms in abstinence-only sex education. (…read more.)
Update 09.11: Sex education is now a weapon in the campaign mudslinging — check this out! New York Times: Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy, snip:
Escalating its efforts to portray Senator Barack Obama as a candidate whose values fall outside the mainstream, the campaign of Senator John McCain on Tuesday unveiled a new television advertisement claiming that Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, favors “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarten students.
“Learning about sex before learning to read?” the narrator asks in the 30-second advertisement, which the campaign says will be shown in battleground states and on national cable. The commercial also asserts that a sex-education bill introduced in Illinois, which Mr. Obama did not sponsor and which never became law, is his “one accomplishment” in the field of education.
Both sets of accusations, however, seriously distort the record.
The original controversy dates to 2003, when a bill to modify the teaching of sex education in Illinois was introduced in the Legislature. The proposal was supported by a coalition of education and public health organizations, including the Illinois Parent Teacher Association, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Illinois Public Health Association and the Illinois Education Association.
Mr. Obama voted for the bill in committee, where it passed, but it never came to a full and final vote. The proposal called for “age and developmentally appropriate” sex education and also allowed parents the option of withdrawing their children from such classroom instruction if they felt that it clashed with their beliefs or values.
In referring to the sex-education bill, the McCain campaign is largely recycling old and discredited accusations made against Mr. Obama by Alan Keyes in their 2004 Senate race. At that time, Mr. Obama stated that he understood the main objective of the legislation, as it pertained to kindergarteners, to be to teach them how to defend themselves against sexual predators.
“I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean,” Mr. Obama said in 2004. “And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age.”
It is a misstatement of the bill’s purpose, therefore, to maintain, as the McCain campaign advertisement does, that Mr. Obama favored conventional sex education as a policy for 5-year-olds. Under the Illinois proposal, “medically accurate” education about more complicated topics, including intercourse, contraception and homosexuality, would have been reserved for older students in higher grades. (…read more!)
omg libby, that’s great. who should I interview from the ‘other’ side? also I would, if asked, face off with anyone on TV, too ;)
this is outta the blue (literally), but it would be pretty great to read/see a vb interview with a hardcore abstinence-only spokesperson – not a talking head, but someone who’s up for offering statistics, information and thoughtful arguments that might shed some light on why portions of this country spend a whole lotta time and money on faulty sex-ed.
violet, please please please consider interviewing the other side of this issue, especially on your blog, where you’re mostly preaching to the choir. i live in NORTH CAROLINA, for goddamn’s sake, and most of the young kids i know are getting a healthy dose of useful and non-xtian and very human sex education.
know thine enema :).
Abstinence only programs are a total waste of time, I still find it funny that Sarah Palin fully supports that load of crap despite the fact that her own daughter is now an unwed (at least for the time being) teenage mother-to-be. Seems like that would tip her off. Granted I’m not really one to talk, for a variety of reasons, most of what I know of sex I gleaned from podcasts, blogs like this one, and books.
My parochial school sex ed classes were more factual and practical than the Federal abstinance juggernaut described in the article linked above.
Let me say also, whatever your view on the place or appropriateness of the teaching of abstinance and monogamy in sex ed, can we all agree that whatever effectiveness, real or imaginary, that it might have will simply not exist when taught outside of a religious or ethical system that supports such a choice?
To put it more plainly, teaching Christian, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, or other moral concepts in such a deracinated fashion outside of the ethical systems of which they are a part virtually guarantees they will fail if they weren’t already destined to.
The only kind of sex education that can possibly succeed in a (properly) value-free public educational environment is biological, mechanistic, practical instruction.
Great post and link! Congrats to Wendy on taking charge at such a young age. It’s unfortunate that more teens aren’t as proactive as she was.
I’m a new reader, but I love the blog!
Parents love to use the old line “If someone told you to jump off a cliff – would you do it?”
Well mom & dad… if someone told you to stop having sex – would you do it?
HA! Abstinence only education sucks. I went to schools that taught abstinence only programs, and I have parents who refuse to accept that humans are in anyway sexual beings.
I can’t say that a very small part of that affected who I am now. School and my parents didn’t teach me shit about sex. While my peers turned to experimentation, I turned to the public library, and taught myself some shit. I read more books on human sexuality between the ages of 12-17 than I do now.
I knew what fisting was when I was 16. I knew what sounding was when I was 15. I could explain the male and female reproductive organs, what they did, and where they were by rote.
Thankfully, for me being told I couldn’t or wasn’t supposed to know about something made me run out and go bloody well learn about it. I also was lucky enough to have an awesome aunt who was a nurse to talk to about the technical things. (My parents discomfort extended to ignorance as well – my mother told me a tampon could get lost inside my body, and told me that I didn’t need to see a gynecologist until I got married. (Which, by the way, led me to three or four years of menstrual discomfort while I was dealing with an undiagnosed ovarian disorder. At 12 even *I* knew that I wasn’t supposed to have my first period for FOUR WEEKS. But no, I didn’t need a doctor…) )
As you can see, abstinence education along with parental idiocy has led me to be a little bitter towards the authority and parental figures who I had trusted to help educate me.
And, it didn’t work. Compare the case study of me and one of my sisters. She’s 21, I’m 24, and we both were offered the same sex education growing up.
She lost her virginity uncomfortably and probably not all that willingly at 14.
I lost my virginity at 19, and while the experience wasn’t pleasant, it was because the guy was a douche, not because I wasn’t physically or emotionally prepared, as I was.
I also masturbated in the time I wasn’t having sex so that I got to know my body and what I liked pretty well, and had orgasms.
My sister didn’t even know what an orgasm felt like, had to ask me to explain, and then, finally, I bought her a vibrator. (I also bought ’em for my female cousins.)
She thought blue balls was real, and was talked in to giving quite a bit of unnecessary head. This went on until she was about 18, when a boyfriend clued her in.
I didn’t give any head that I didn’t want to give. When I blew someone, it was because I felt like it, I offered (or they asked) and we both were in on it.
When I became sexually active, I started going to the obgyn for a full STD panel and pap every six months, until I fell into monogamy and bad habits, and went just the once.
I don’t know her obgyn habits, but I’m pretty sure that until recently, they were not as good as they could be for a sexually active girl.
Just sayin’.
End rant.