Ladies, gentlemen, and gender-free persons, I'd like for you to meet Hillary, a veritable champion of the virtues that are inherent in abstaining from sex until marriage.
I felt the need to share this with everyone because Hillary has truly enlightened me. Now that I've seen the importance of abstinence, I can give up my whoring ways and stop doing gay things, like having Teh Sex.
OK, so hopefully we all realise that never having sex will not in any way make you a better person. I mean, sexual fulfillment is a basic physiological human need-- Maslow's Hierarchy has it right at the base! While I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with sex, I'm the first to say it's probably best that kids not have sex-- it can complicate their fragile socio-psychological existences even before you factor in the risks of pregnancy and STIs. Judgments aside, stats show that 20% of kids are having sex by 6th and 7th grade. 34% of high school freshmen are sexually active. When they go to sex ed, they should be learning how to have sex without killing themselves or contracting the baby virus, right? I mean, one can't pretend that abstinence is the only available/acceptable option for adolescents. Or wait, you can? And you can get the Bush Administration to fund these efforts with $170 million a year? Oh, snap.
It's been over a year and a half since Representative Waxman (D-CA) released The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Programs [pdf], revealing all kinds of unholy information about said programs. Like, oh, more than 80% of the most commonly used curricula contain false or misleading information and scientific errors-- gems like touching another person’s genitals can result in pregnancy. They totally ignore the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning students (LGBTQ), they ignore the fact that a lot of the kids they're teaching are already sexually active. Not to mention that they're teaching from a 'moral' perspective rather than a health perspective, encouraging kids to keep chaste, maintain purity, and protect their virginity, none of which have even the faintest relation to one's health, aside from what I think is a fairly obvious threat to mental health, what with telling youth that one of their most basic human needs is filthy and shameful. In this thinly veiled promulgation of religious ideology, masturbation, contraception, homosexuality, and abortion are all condemned. Did I mention that this is all funded by federal dollars?
Study after study after study after study after study after study after study after study [ad infinitum, you get the point] have proven that these programs don't work. Kids are still having sex, they're just not using protection, now.
Let's examine some of the claims made by these abstinence-only curricula which, for the record, are under federal requirements stating that they can't teach ways of preventing pregnancy other than abstinence until marriage. The only time they're allowed to mention contraceptives is in relation to their failure rates, which are often exaggerated and totally blown out of proportion. Like this: the popular claim that 'condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,' is not supported by the data. FTW?! Exactly at what data are they looking? Oh, look! They're citing an erroneous and faulty study of condom effectiveness from 1993, which has since been discredited by the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Health and Human Services. This bogus study concluded that condoms reduce HIV transmission by 69%, which data is interpreted by the Why kNOw curriculum thusly: In heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time. FYI, an unchallenged and statistically significant study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994 found that consistent condom use resulted in zero HIV transmission.
Another delightful slew of errors and finger-wagging at us baby-killing sluts can found on the way these curricula address abortion. There's some erroneous, unfounded statements about how safe, legal abortion leads to infertility problems and/or future birth defects [Do you suppose we should tell them that carrying a pregnancy to term bears far more severe health risks than terminating?]. And what condemnation of baby-killing sluts would be complete without anthropomorphizing globs of cells? Please note the following emetic paragraph from the FACTS curriculum about a 150± cell blastocyst:
After conception, the tiny baby moves down the fallopian tubes toward the mother’s uterus. About the sixth to tenth day after conception, when the baby is no bigger than this dot (.), baby snuggles into the soft nest in the lining of the mother’s uterus.
Godbags love attributing more spiritual significance to globs of cells infesting women's uteri than to Iraqi civilians.
And how could any curricula wishing to promulgate patriarchal conservative ideals be complete without perpetuating negative gender stereotypes? Wait, did I say stereotypes? I meant biological facts! Everyone knows that men are emotionless, sexual aggressors and women are weak, emotional victims. Where would we be without curricula like Choosing the Best and WAIT Training who divulge to us The 5 Major Needs of Men and The 5 Major Needs of Women? Evidently, among the most vital things required by men are domestic support, physical attractiveness, and sexual fulfillment. The 5 Major Needs of Women naturally include affection, conversation, family commitment, and financial support. Girls don’t care about success, careers, or other forms of achievement. Choosing the Best tells an anecdote about a princess who advises her knight as to how he can successfully kill the dragons keeping him from her. While her methods work, the knight is ashamed and instead decides to marry an uneducated village maiden who knows nothing of dragons. The moral is stated thus: Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess. Better keep those opinions to yourselves, ladies, or you'll never catch yourself an emotionless rapist.
So let's review: not only do we have a 31% chance of dying of AIDS if we have sex with a condom, if we ladies get pregnant, we have to carry that glob of cells to term or else we'll be killing our children. How could Teh Sex be any worse? Wait, you mean sex has psychological side effects?! The curricula that address mental health issues address them only as consequences that can be eliminated by staying abstinent. Just look at all of the problems that we can avoid by not having Teh Sex!!1
jealousy
poverty
substance abuse
unstable long-term commitments
sexual violence
loneliness
embarrassment
depression
isolation
feelings of being used
loss of honesty
suicide
How odd. Scientific data have never suggested that consensual sex between adolescents is inherently deleterious. What it has found is that early sexual activity has been associated with negative childhood experiences, sexual abuse, and unsupportive social environments. Perhaps it would be more accurate to conclude that sexual activity is a consequence of pre-existing mental health problems?
And what incarnation of patriarchal conservative ideals would be complete without ignoring and subjugating queers? The abstinence-only curricula are of course presenting marriage as the only acceptable context for sexual activity. And guess what! Unless you're lucky enough to live in Massachusetts, marriage is only for married heterosexuals [but really, everyone knows that sex is only for married heterosexuals who don't really like each other's nekkid-ness, but they do it anyway because they want to make babies for Jeezus]. An estimated 2.5% of adolescents already identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while as many as one in ten are still unsure. Unsure + these kinds of messages = closet case. Just look what it's done to this poor young man!
As for the kids that already identify as queer, federally funded 'education' programs are telling them kids that there is no socially acceptable context for the kind of sex that they want. Queer kids are being told that they're deviants-- or worse: that they don't even exist. Unlike pre-marital sex, homophobia has been definitively linked to substance abuse, violence, and suicide in LGBTQ kids.
In January 2006, a year after The Waxman Report was released, Santelli et al published in the Journal of Adolescent Health:
We believe that current federal abstinence-only-until- marriage policy is ethically problematic, as it excludes accurate information about contraception, misinforms by overemphasizing or misstating the risks of contraception, and fails to require the use of scientifically accurate information while promoting approaches of questionable value. Abstinence-only programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life.
Santelli knows what time it is.
Click here if you think abstinence-only education should be stopped before it shatters the fragile minds of even more kids.
Extra credit: Infiltrator goes to a teen abstinence educators' conference -- and gets laid!
Süper-düper extra special credit: Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque
It's half an hour long, but totally worth it to see white, heterosexual Christian women teaching young, often poor persons of colour from single parent homes about what constitutes acceptable sexual practises and what constitutes a family.
I felt the need to share this with everyone because Hillary has truly enlightened me. Now that I've seen the importance of abstinence, I can give up my whoring ways and stop doing gay things, like having Teh Sex.
OK, so hopefully we all realise that never having sex will not in any way make you a better person. I mean, sexual fulfillment is a basic physiological human need-- Maslow's Hierarchy has it right at the base! While I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with sex, I'm the first to say it's probably best that kids not have sex-- it can complicate their fragile socio-psychological existences even before you factor in the risks of pregnancy and STIs. Judgments aside, stats show that 20% of kids are having sex by 6th and 7th grade. 34% of high school freshmen are sexually active. When they go to sex ed, they should be learning how to have sex without killing themselves or contracting the baby virus, right? I mean, one can't pretend that abstinence is the only available/acceptable option for adolescents. Or wait, you can? And you can get the Bush Administration to fund these efforts with $170 million a year? Oh, snap.
It's been over a year and a half since Representative Waxman (D-CA) released The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Programs [pdf], revealing all kinds of unholy information about said programs. Like, oh, more than 80% of the most commonly used curricula contain false or misleading information and scientific errors-- gems like touching another person’s genitals can result in pregnancy. They totally ignore the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning students (LGBTQ), they ignore the fact that a lot of the kids they're teaching are already sexually active. Not to mention that they're teaching from a 'moral' perspective rather than a health perspective, encouraging kids to keep chaste, maintain purity, and protect their virginity, none of which have even the faintest relation to one's health, aside from what I think is a fairly obvious threat to mental health, what with telling youth that one of their most basic human needs is filthy and shameful. In this thinly veiled promulgation of religious ideology, masturbation, contraception, homosexuality, and abortion are all condemned. Did I mention that this is all funded by federal dollars?
Study after study after study after study after study after study after study after study [ad infinitum, you get the point] have proven that these programs don't work. Kids are still having sex, they're just not using protection, now.
Let's examine some of the claims made by these abstinence-only curricula which, for the record, are under federal requirements stating that they can't teach ways of preventing pregnancy other than abstinence until marriage. The only time they're allowed to mention contraceptives is in relation to their failure rates, which are often exaggerated and totally blown out of proportion. Like this: the popular claim that 'condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,' is not supported by the data. FTW?! Exactly at what data are they looking? Oh, look! They're citing an erroneous and faulty study of condom effectiveness from 1993, which has since been discredited by the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Health and Human Services. This bogus study concluded that condoms reduce HIV transmission by 69%, which data is interpreted by the Why kNOw curriculum thusly: In heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time. FYI, an unchallenged and statistically significant study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994 found that consistent condom use resulted in zero HIV transmission.
Another delightful slew of errors and finger-wagging at us baby-killing sluts can found on the way these curricula address abortion. There's some erroneous, unfounded statements about how safe, legal abortion leads to infertility problems and/or future birth defects [Do you suppose we should tell them that carrying a pregnancy to term bears far more severe health risks than terminating?]. And what condemnation of baby-killing sluts would be complete without anthropomorphizing globs of cells? Please note the following emetic paragraph from the FACTS curriculum about a 150± cell blastocyst:
After conception, the tiny baby moves down the fallopian tubes toward the mother’s uterus. About the sixth to tenth day after conception, when the baby is no bigger than this dot (.), baby snuggles into the soft nest in the lining of the mother’s uterus.
Godbags love attributing more spiritual significance to globs of cells infesting women's uteri than to Iraqi civilians.
And how could any curricula wishing to promulgate patriarchal conservative ideals be complete without perpetuating negative gender stereotypes? Wait, did I say stereotypes? I meant biological facts! Everyone knows that men are emotionless, sexual aggressors and women are weak, emotional victims. Where would we be without curricula like Choosing the Best and WAIT Training who divulge to us The 5 Major Needs of Men and The 5 Major Needs of Women? Evidently, among the most vital things required by men are domestic support, physical attractiveness, and sexual fulfillment. The 5 Major Needs of Women naturally include affection, conversation, family commitment, and financial support. Girls don’t care about success, careers, or other forms of achievement. Choosing the Best tells an anecdote about a princess who advises her knight as to how he can successfully kill the dragons keeping him from her. While her methods work, the knight is ashamed and instead decides to marry an uneducated village maiden who knows nothing of dragons. The moral is stated thus: Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess. Better keep those opinions to yourselves, ladies, or you'll never catch yourself an emotionless rapist.
So let's review: not only do we have a 31% chance of dying of AIDS if we have sex with a condom, if we ladies get pregnant, we have to carry that glob of cells to term or else we'll be killing our children. How could Teh Sex be any worse? Wait, you mean sex has psychological side effects?! The curricula that address mental health issues address them only as consequences that can be eliminated by staying abstinent. Just look at all of the problems that we can avoid by not having Teh Sex!!1
jealousy
poverty
substance abuse
unstable long-term commitments
sexual violence
loneliness
embarrassment
depression
isolation
feelings of being used
loss of honesty
suicide
How odd. Scientific data have never suggested that consensual sex between adolescents is inherently deleterious. What it has found is that early sexual activity has been associated with negative childhood experiences, sexual abuse, and unsupportive social environments. Perhaps it would be more accurate to conclude that sexual activity is a consequence of pre-existing mental health problems?
And what incarnation of patriarchal conservative ideals would be complete without ignoring and subjugating queers? The abstinence-only curricula are of course presenting marriage as the only acceptable context for sexual activity. And guess what! Unless you're lucky enough to live in Massachusetts, marriage is only for married heterosexuals [but really, everyone knows that sex is only for married heterosexuals who don't really like each other's nekkid-ness, but they do it anyway because they want to make babies for Jeezus]. An estimated 2.5% of adolescents already identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while as many as one in ten are still unsure. Unsure + these kinds of messages = closet case. Just look what it's done to this poor young man!
As for the kids that already identify as queer, federally funded 'education' programs are telling them kids that there is no socially acceptable context for the kind of sex that they want. Queer kids are being told that they're deviants-- or worse: that they don't even exist. Unlike pre-marital sex, homophobia has been definitively linked to substance abuse, violence, and suicide in LGBTQ kids.
In January 2006, a year after The Waxman Report was released, Santelli et al published in the Journal of Adolescent Health:
We believe that current federal abstinence-only-until- marriage policy is ethically problematic, as it excludes accurate information about contraception, misinforms by overemphasizing or misstating the risks of contraception, and fails to require the use of scientifically accurate information while promoting approaches of questionable value. Abstinence-only programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life.
Santelli knows what time it is.
Click here if you think abstinence-only education should be stopped before it shatters the fragile minds of even more kids.
Extra credit: Infiltrator goes to a teen abstinence educators' conference -- and gets laid!
Süper-düper extra special credit: Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque
It's half an hour long, but totally worth it to see white, heterosexual Christian women teaching young, often poor persons of colour from single parent homes about what constitutes acceptable sexual practises and what constitutes a family.
posted by Dykonoclast at 6:19 PM
1 comments
