A fabulous op/ed from my former haunt, the opinion pages of NYU’s Washington Square News. Kudos to writer Lucas Keturi for taking on the tough issue of prostitution, sexual health and international moralizing at the expense of women’s health. Read the whole thing, it’s fantastic. My favorite part:
The anti-prostitution pledge, buried in the Global AIDS Act of 2003, is characteristic of the Bush administration’s approach to any issue broaching the subject of human sexuality, be it sex education, abortion rights or same-sex marriage: intolerant, unrealistic and religiously-charged denunciations of the existence of a sexuality outside of the bounds of marriage, and a feigned innocence in creating conditions that make acts of sexual victimization possible.
More from Lucas, this time about sweatshops in New York City, is here.
A simultaneous yay and nay for NYC.
Yay: Public schools here now have improved sexual health education — before this year, 75 percent of city schools were in violation of basic health ed policies, and all of them were using curriculum that hadn’t been updated since 1991.
Nay: The new curriculum isn’t that great. First, it allows teachers to choose not to teach sex ed to their students. It also cuts out conversation of sexual orientation, abortion and masturbation, all of which were included in the old curriculum (sexual orientation is now only discussed in the context of STIs). Information about contraception is only given to high schoolers, which seems a bit irresponsible considering that 1 in 5 people become sexually active before the age of 15. Further, the curriculum was produced in Tennessee — the pictures of people featured in the books and the stories told therein don’t exactly match up to the lives of students in New York City public schools (Smiling blonde girls exclaiming, “Abstinence is cool!”, narratives about Mom driving us all to the mall after school, etc).
Relatedly, abstinence-only isn’t education. We’ve all heard it before (and before and before and before), but let’s play again. Here’s what young people are “learning” in their anti-sex-ed classes:
* “One in five times condoms will fail for pregnancy.”
* “Nearly 1 in 3 [people] will contract AIDS from [an] infected partner with 100% condom use.”
* “Students who do not exercise self-control to remain abstinent are not likely to exercise self-control in the use of a contraceptive device.”
* “The popular claim that ‘condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,’ is not supported by the data.”
* “In heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31 percent of the time.”
* “Premature birth, a major cause of mental retardation, is increased following the abortion of a first pregnancy.”
* Women need “financial support” while men need “admiration”
* “Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”
* A 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person”
* “No matter how strong a condom is, it won’t protect you from a broken heart.”
* “Infertility, isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, substance abuse, AIDS, pregnancy, cervical cancer, genital herpes, unstable long-term commitments, depression, embarassment, meaningless wedding, sexual violence, personal disappointment, suicide, feelings of being used, loss of honesty, loneliness, loss of personal goals, distrust of others, plevic inflammatory disease, loss of reputation, fear of pregnancy, disappointed parents, loss of self-esteem, leaving high school before graduation… ALL of them can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage.”
Awesome.
Fertility discrimination case to hit a California appeals court. Keep an eye on this one.
Only 18 percent of employers offer paid maternal leave, down from 27 percent in 1998. (PDF)
Who is James Dobson?
UPDATE: William Saleton has more:
-Smokers’ sperm are 75 percent less fertile than non-smokers
-Smoking makes ya dumber
-The FDA approves the transplant of fetal neural cells to human brains, for kids with genetic diseases that will blind, silence, paralyze, and kill them.
-Kansas can’t punish same-sex statutory rape more harshly than the opposite-sex version.
-A global research network will bypass U.S. restrictions on stem-cell funding.
-Scientists can get stem cells without killing embryos. Some right-to-lifers still don’t support it.
-The NIH is creating a male contraceptive. It’s about damn time.
WTF? “One in five times condoms will fail for pregnancy” isn’t even grammatical. What pantload writes this stuff?
Here is effective abstinence education: grown-up pro-abstinence educators standing up and truthfully saying “I waited, and here’s why I’m glad I did.” Wonder why that doesn’t happen much?
Jill – Sort of OT, but I recommend this page from the University of Rhode Island’s Women Studies’ department:
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/factbook.htm
It’s a guidebook to sex trafficking and prostitution as it occurs in countries around the world.
Interestingly, although I suspect most conservatives oppose prostitution on moral grounds, during the John Roberts hearings, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham was fuming about the ACLU’s position on prostitution, but instead framed it as prostitutes have been through hell on earth because their profession is so degrading (can’t remember the exact quote), not that it’s a moral sin.
Personally, my opposition (and, I suspect that of many others) to abortion doesn’t come from being prudish or religious, but I won’t get into that now. Yes, many pro-life people are also very religious and tend to support abstinence education, but correlation doesn’t imply causation.
I’m also sort of tired of liberals and progressives making fun of people who choose not to have sex and treating them like they’re weird or abnormal. Abstinence can be a completely sound decision of a rational, informed being.
Kate-
I completely agree. Hopefully it didn’t come off like I was doing that. Of course abstinence is a valid sexual choice, and of course it should be taught as such as part of any sex ed curriculum (every comprehensive program stresses abstinence). The problem comes when the message to young people is that abstinence is the only option, particularly when that message is coupled with medically inaccurate facts, Bible-based morality, slut-shaming and gender-essentialist theories.
Whoa, and I thought northern UK schools were pretty backward… but who knew that venting natural teenage urges to be sexual prevented all those things?! That’s pretty useful knowledge, that means you can do what the hell else you like as long as you don’t have sex… or… erm…
One day, people are going to learn that a broken hymen doesn’t necessarily mean a broken heart. But they’ll have to accept that not all teenage women are dying for romance and only give sex in exchange for this first.
As long as you have a good vibrator, go for it (or not). Denying a biological function (or denying that that biological function goes into full gear around puberty and not at marriage) seems a bit weird and abnormal to me, though abstaining from intercourse for practical or moral reasons are not.
Abstinence-only education has a definite causational relationship to ignorance.
“Infertility, isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, substance abuse, AIDS, pregnancy, cervical cancer, genital herpes, unstable long-term commitments, depression, embarassment, meaningless wedding, sexual violence, personal disappointment, suicide, feelings of being used, loss of honesty, loneliness, loss of personal goals, distrust of others, plevic inflammatory disease, loss of reputation, fear of pregnancy, disappointed parents, loss of self-esteem, leaving high school before graduation… ALL of them can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage.”
I hope no one’s dumb enough to believe that. But even if they’re not fooled, no doubt getting such tripe in school leads to a general doubt as to the accuracy of school-supplied information.
I have a question — if you experience embarrassment even though you’re a virgin, but your virginity is supposed to eliminate embarrassment — what the fuck?
I wish I had remained abstinent until marriage. The sexual revolution was an emotional disaster for me. My relationships with women, my view of sex, and my spiritual health would all have been a thousand times healthier if I had been able to channel my sexual energy into other outlets until I was with my wife.
Is it my own responsibility that that’s not what happened? Of course. But it would have been a much easier row to hoe if society had been supporting that course of action, instead of tearing it down and mocking it at every possible turn.
That list is a bit over-enthusiastic; sexual activity is not the sole determinant of poverty. But pregnancy worries, STDs, unstable relationships, feelings of being used, loss of honesty, loss of self-esteem – an abstinent lifestyle would have eradicated those problems from my life.
Just my $0.02.
More WTF-ness:
You’d think that telling teens that marriage is a necessary condition for sex would increase the meaningless weddings, if anything. Reminds me of that Onion article:
Fair enough, except possibly for the “loss of honesty” part. I’m not sure what honesty has to do with the amount of sex you have. But I’m not abstinent, and I don’t suffer from dishonesty, self-esteem, pregnancy worries (duh), feelings of being used, or much fear of STDs. Most of the relationships I’ve been in have been very stable, respectful, and loving. Those that weren’t were not unstable because of sexual contact, and I would have suffered almost as much by entering into any kind of platonic relationship with the people involved.
I am so glad I didn’t remain abstinent until marriage. Marriage was an emotional disaster. Had I been abstinent, and had the only sexual relationship I ever had been with the man I married, my relationships with men, my view of sex, and my mental health would have been much less healthy from being formed in an environment of manipulation and disrespect.
Luckily, at an earlier age I educated myself about sexual activity, pregnancy, STDs and self-esteem, and discovered that engaging an active sexual life style based around both my desires and my partner’s – regardless of the received traditional wisdom that I was a slut – was the way to end and subsequently prevent future toxic relationships.
Together we add up to $.04.
too damned funny Binky. I’m shocked and appalled by how much less information kids get than I did in school. Either I had an exceptionally informed health teacher 10 years ago, or the culture war is getting in the way of kid’s education.
Robert, sounds like you had the same premarital experience I did. You took the word’s right out of my mouth… I have three little boys who will be taught that there are consequences to their actions and that abstinence can help avoid some bad ones. It may work, it may not. The only problem I have with abstinence education is that it’s presented in absolutes. There’s no way I can tell my kids that you’ll definitely avoid such problems with abstinence, just that you’re more likely to avoid them. And that energies are better spent elsewhere until you’re older. I believe early sexualization of kids leads to confusion, which in turn leads toward more experimentation.
As if the ones who are taught about birth control aren’t taught about consequences?
Hmm, I think maybe I misinterpreted… and jumped to a conclusion. If that’s the case, sorry.
Even if it’s one of those “Magnums”?
“Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.” -Andy Warhol
I think the varying experiences that we’re seeing here illustrate the problem with abstinence-only sex education. Clearly, some people believe that abstinence until marriage is the right choice (or should have been the right choice) for them, whereas others’ experiences are different.
I’m glad I waited to have sex. Specifically, I waited until I was in college and met some guys I could stand being in the same room with long enough for even an 18 year old to have sex. I’m also glad I didn’t wait until marriage to have sex, since I decided that marriage was not something I felt comfortable doing and if I’d refused to have sex without it I’d never have had my daughter…not to mention the fun I’d have missed out on.
I’ve suffered from loneliness, low self-esteem, depression, loss of personal goals and poor spelling at various times in my life, both before and after my first sexual experience. I’ve probably disappointed my parents a time or two both before and after as well. I can’t say that the first sexual experience was such a big deal that it changed my life radically either for better or for worse.
I think one of the risks of abstinence, especially for a completely inexperienced person, is that it makes sex seem more important than it really is. Sex isn’t the panacea that will save you nor is it the poison that will destroy you. Having your first sexual partner be your husband or wife won’t automatically make your marriage meaningful. It’s just sex: fun, if done correctly, potentially dangerous, if precautions aren’t taken, but neither the ultimate pleasure nor the ultimate danger.
For me, full gear occurred around 30.
This probably best sums up how I feel. I’ve never been married, and I’m not abstinent, though I starting having sex later in life than most people that I know….for a lot of reasons I won’t go into. I’ve enjoyed those encounters and accepted them for what they were worth. Sex was tangential to any relationship problems I had.
Bush is attempting to get the world to adhere to his religious ideology, hopefully it will be seen for what it is, an ideology based on pure myth
the other Ryan – There is actually a movement of people who call themselves “asexual”, many of them have been married or in relationships in the past but just don’t feel sexual at the moment. Plus, I’ve read that for women, the sexual response curve actually peaks in middle age, rather than in youth, like it is for men. There are also people who have psychological/physical disorders that inhibit their sex drive. I don’t think everyone is hypersexual all the time, shares the same sexual behavior and gets excited by the same things – I strongly believe that there’s widespread denial about sexual diversity (not limited to sexual orientation) in this country and that we tend to generalize too much.
Establishing a rigid status quo seems like something that in many ways is “un-liberal” if respect for individual choices and pluralism are central to liberalism.
The reason I asked this is that progressives and liberals constantly have a giggling tone about people whose sexual choice is to not have sex, but woe unto anyone who would have the same giggling tone about people whose sexual choice is to be gay, transsexual or intersexed.
But yeah, I do agree that the misinformation isn’t only ridiculous, it’s scary. I hate to think about teens growing up with no clue about their sexual health at all.
Fair enough…. oh, but wait, it’s not fair, because the two groups do not share equal power in our culture. Gay, lesbian & transgender folks are legally and socially discriminated against. I never heard a word about any glbt issues in the course of sex education, and I would assume that the vast majority of sex ed programs either do not mention these words, or present them as a footnote – if not as sexual dysfunctions.
A person who chose to be abstinent, however, would be comparably inundated with abstinence information. Of course people are going to choose to be abstinent. The problem is that abstinence-only “education” does not provide kids the information they need to make informed decisions. This “education” is intended to keep kids ignorant of the details of sex in order to keep them susceptible to scare tactics, and I assume there is a sincere hope that kids will somehow remain ignorant of their own bodies and therefore abstain. It aims to repress sexuality in kids.
Yes there are asexual people out there – do you have a reason to not educate them about sex? How would abstinence-only education help people suffering from psychological or physiological disorders? I’ve never been a teenage girl, but I hear that they do have a sex drive. Even if women did not enjoy sex until middle age (again, I don’t own the equipment, so someone else will have to clarify if women have a sex drive before middle age) why not educate them?
Perhaps there is room for a “Happy to be Sexually Active” movement. Y’know, one that says if you choose that route it can be a lot of fun and not all doom gloom AIDS and hell….
I’d wear an “Ask Me About The Consequences of Teen Sex” badge, in the hope of re-educating kids who fall under this program.
the other Ryan – I wasn’t talking about abstinence-only education.
I was talking about the dismissive and mocking attitude that liberals tend to have towards people who aren’t sexually active in their teens.
For the record, I oppose abstinence-only education, especially the kind that Jill details in her post, which has unscientific and false information, and I don’t only think it’s wrong, I think it’s dangerous.
First of all, “intersexed” (or “intersex”) refers to a collection of congenital conditions that cause people to have bodies that are ambiguous in some way. Many intersex people were subjected to surgical corrections–basically, the doctor would decide what gender was more appropriate, and surgically modify the patient’s genitalia accordingly. Then the child would be raised in as much ignorance as possible. This resulted in a lot of shame-filled, confused, anorgasmic intersex people who have since become royally pissed-off intersex people.
An intersex condition is absolutely not a choice, although intersex people must choose how to live with their bodies and histories in a starkly dichotomous culture. The reason intersex people suffer is that they are not allowed to choose; they are forced into whatever category was most convenient, whether by surgery or by a culture that has only two options.
Intersex people are frequently included in LGBTQI, because they suffer from the same sexism that damages all of us, and because hateful people tend to see these differences at all. They are distinct from transgendered and gay, however, and should not be elided.
There are also vital distinctions between “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but I get what you’re saying in context. I do have a problem with the idea of transition and same-gender romance as “choices,” since that implies that “cisgendered” and “heterosexually coupled” are viable options for the people in question. They aren’t.
Exactly. There is no pressure on high-schoolers to undergo SRS. Or to develop teh gay. There is also no movement to lie to high-schoolers about how great it is to be gay and/or to transition, or to tell them that either one is the only valid choice, or that being straight and cisgendered will result in illness, despair, and premature death. And I can count on exactly one finger the number of trans-related sex-ed PSAs I’ve seen, and that definitely wasn’t in high school.
In this context, abstinence is not presented as a choice. It’s what you must do. Otherwise, your junk will turn green and rot off and your parents will spend their dotage raising the three grandchildren you managed to father before the tertiary syphilis destroyed your heart and brain.
…Like those gay people you were just talking about?
What piny said. Except I’mnot familiar with the term “cisgendered”. Could you explain? (I’m too lazy to Google it, and I’d like to know your unerstanding of it.)
And Kate, I’m not sure what you mean by “the dismissive and mocking attitude that liberals tend to have towards people who aren’t sexually active in their teens.” If you have any examples, please, by all means, furnish them. But I was sexually inactive in my teens, and I’m 23 and still sexually inactive (partly by choice, partly by circumstance — I’m pretty happy with de facto celibacy, but I’d glady enter into a sexual relatinship with the right woman), and I’ve never had a fellow liberal act dismissively or mockingly towards me. I _have_ had self-important jackasses tell me I’d do the world a favour if I’d go out and get laid, but they weren’t especially liberal.
Frankly, I think the #1 group making fun of people for not getting laid are good old-fashioned heterosexist young men.
“Cisgendered” is a way of referring to non-transgendered (and non-transsexual, non-genderqueer, and (potentially) non-intersex) people without making transgendered people, et al., the marked category. “Cis” means “same,” and “cisgendered” means “people whose assigned gender* matches up with their gender identity.”
Now, some putatively cisgendered people disagree with the use of the term. They feel this implies that, for example, a butch lesbian who does not identify as transgendered does not suffer any disconnect between her mediated gender and her gender as she herself sees it.
Personally, I doubt it will catch on outside of Judith Butler junkies. This is a shame, since it’s a very useful word. It’s also the first word created and used by transpeople to describe non-transpeople, rather than the other way around.
*”Assigned gender” means the gender you were assigned at birth. It’s a more accurate term than “biological gender,” “natural gender,” “pre-transition gender,” and any variation on “real gender.” I am an ftm transsexual, so my assigned gender is female.
piny – Can I say again that I wasn’t defending abstinence-only education and I’ve stated my opposition to it? And I don’t understand the reference to “those gay people” I was talking about.
My point was that liberals typically defend the right of consenting adults to sexual expression, which is why most liberals support gay rights. But if someone chooses to be abstinent (I suppose to *not* express themselves sexually), then their choice is weird, abnormal, unnatural and against biology, since everyone has sex in their teens and afterwards, and they should be made fun of – a lot of feminist sites always make fun of virginity pledges or the apparent modesty movement.
My point was that, within bounds, we shouldn’t declare anything to be weird, abnormal, unnatural or against biology. Some people are gay, some are straight some are bisexual. Fine with me. People who are asexual or choose to abstain should not be ridiculed either.
And as for intersexed – I apologize if I offended anyone, I mostly had in mind an acquaintance who was born biologically male but who wanted to get surgery so he could be intersexed. I should use anecdotal evidence, I’m sorry.
IMHO, sexual orientation is 85% determined at birth, but it is generally a choice to engage in sexual relations, gay or otherwise. Just as most people who are abstinent are oriented gay/straight/bisexual etc. but it is their choice not to engage in sexual relations.
Knife Ghost – And as for those liberals I was talking about, it’s things like this that get under my skin alot:
http://feministing.com/archives/002135.html
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=22156
That should be “I should NOT use anecdotal evidence, I’m sorry.” Damn.
Well, in the first case, I think it’s reasonable to think it’s a bit ridiculous to complain that a play for sex ed had too much talk about sex. But generally, Jessica isn’t in any was mocking people who choose abstinence, but (maybe unreasonably) mocking a club that she sees (maybe inaccurately) as advancing an agenda consistent with abstinence-only education. I don’t see any mockery of the choice to be abstinent in that.
In the second case, I don’t have enough information to understand the intent or agenda of the Screw Abstinence event. The article spends a paragraph half-describing the event, then bashes it for seven. But given that progressives (maybe unwisely) often say “abstinence” when they mean “abstinence-only sex-ed”, the event doesn’t strike me as all that outrageous. The event is designed to appeal to people who haven’t chosen abstinence, or who are supportive o those that haven’t, but other than a sensitive interpretation of the name, I don’t see anything that I would call a mockery of people who choose to be abstinent.
I _will_ grant that liberals tend to mock abstinence movements, but I tihnk that can be done while still respecting and upholding people’s choice to be abstinent. I say that as a de facto abstinent person who has never felt marginalized or mocked for my choices. Other than, as I said before, a select few self-important jackasses who weren’t especially liberal.
If you have any other examples, feel free to send ‘em over, but I didn’t find those especially convincing.
The gay people–who, I assume, get lumped into liberal/progressive–who don’t have sex in their teens. It’s pretty common, and it was much more so even a decade ago. Not all liberal/progressive people have much sex very early. Nor do all liberal/progressive people sleep around.
Since you’ve referred to them several times, I’d love to see some cites mocking people for celibacy or abstinence rather than for either ignorance, sexism, or attempts to force abstinence on others. There is a difference between the Silver Ring Thing, etc., and people choosing to be abstinent for whatever reason. The latter is a perfectly defensible choice. The former, on the other hand, is part and parcel of the philosophy behind abstinence-only education: sex is baaaad for you, people who have sex are sluts, and lying to kids is awesome! That’s why people like Amanda mock them so mercilessly.
You insist that you don’t advocate abstinence-only education, and that you only want the choice to be abstinent to be as respectable as any other. If that’s really how you feel, don’t defend organizations that insist that there’s only one right choice for everyone.
I wasn’t offended. I’m very curious about your friend–it is possible to undergo SRS-related procedures that give you a more ambiguous rather than less ambiguous body (technically, that could be said of my path), but the people who make those changes are, IME, referred to as transgendered.
I waited for someone I wanted to marry and get knocked up by, and I wish I hadn’t. I fell in love with an emotionally abusive jerk and convinced myself that because I had all these oxytocin-fuelled fuzzy feelings about him, he would look after me and any child I produced, and mention if any of his exes might have given him an STD. I didn’t have any children by him, and by the grace of God didn’t get any diseases either. What I did get was some seriously screwed up ways of dealing with oxytocin that I still haven’t managed to work through, nine years later.
Hear, hear Dianne. That is one of the most pithy analyses of sex that I have ever read.
Abstinence is neither wonderful nor dreadful; the fetishizing of abstinence is worthy of mockery. I have never made fun of anyone who, for some reason, felt the need to tell me they were celibate, however, I often, even as a teenager, felt the need to mock abstinence only education, because even as a teen I could see the hypocrisy and stupidity of most of the skits and games and ‘testimony’. I was raised in what would now be called a fundementalist Christian subculture, so I was not brought up to the eeeeeeevillll liburural way of thinking. And I probably would have left the church anyhow, but I can say from personal experience that any pangs I felt about thinking and feeling differently than my community were often soothed by sitting through some stupid youth group meeting where they did this kind of thing (and the old ‘womens is so stupid and the mens have to be very, very strong to take care of the poor wittle things’ bits).
Yes, yes. And don’t forget the moral superiority that goes along with the Silver Ring Thing and the Virgin Ben Shapiro — you know, it’s all very well and good if you’re choosing to be abstinent, but it doesn’t make you holy.
Ok then. I was one of those teenagers who signed a chastity pledge card, I believe it was the True Love Waits campaign. (This was very big at my church). I was determined I would wait until I was married to have sex… and then I met Chris. A wonderful, fantastic and somewhat older man (I was 18, he was 21). He was much more experienced than I, and I wanted to impress him. So there went my commitment to waiting until I was married. And yet? I had only two of the above happen… pregnancy (maybe with decent sex ed, I would’ve realized that the pull out method is not effective) and disappointed parents. Do I regret my decision? Sort of… I am happy with the way my life turned out (I ended up marrying him in a very meaningful wedding and have gone on to have two beautiful children with him) but at the same time, to me the decision to remain abstinent until I was married was a decision I felt strongly about and was disappointed in myself that I didn’t follow through simply to impress my new boyfriend (who later told me that if I had been upfront and honest with him, he would have respected my decision). I in no way feel like it ruined my life or beat myself up over it, however. Sex is really not THAT big of a deal. It’s nice, it’s fun, I like it… that’s about the extent of it. For me, I like the fact that I have been with only one man in my life, but I also realize that’s not ideal for everyone.
Now, my sister on the other hand, has chosen to wait until she is married to have sex. She and her fiancee have a fantastic relationship, this is something they both feel strongly about, and they have been together for over 3 years. People do remain abstinent and for very valid reasons and I think it’s important to emphasize that it is a valid choice. I can’t imagine having been sexually active in high school…. I never had to worry about a missed period, or an STI or my parents finding out (they would have killed me) , I got to just enjoy being a teen and playing sports and hanging out with friends. I saw my friends stress over missed periods, or yearly GYN check ups, teen pregnancy, etc… and knew it wasn’t something I was ready for.