Thursday,
January 9, 2003
ARRRGGGHHH!!!!!
I just watched the most recent Donahue show, and I am fucking apoplectic over this whole "Let's forget about sex education and focus on abstinence" movement.
I'm sorry, but I have little to no patience with any movement that tries to brand sex, one of the greatest pleasures in life, as "dirty" or "inappropriate" unless approved by a governmental or religious ceremony. Do these people not remember what it was like when you were a teenager and your hormones were carbonating? Or do they just not care? Or were they just so fucking terrified that God was going to punish them that they stayed "pure," grew bitter on some level because they missed out on all the fun, and decided that since they couldn't enjoy sex the next generation damn well wasn't going to, either?
That, by the way, is called a "cycle of abuse." Wonder if any of these people realize that they're using the same rationale as child molesters who were abused as children?
Now, let's review some basic biology, shall we?
- Sex is a normal human drive, just like eating and sleeping.
- When people reach the age of puberty, their sex drive becomes an extremely active force in their lives. In other words, they wanna do it.
Now, there are multiple ways to handle a teenager's newly born sex drive. Suggest that they might want to wait on sex until they were older and more mature to handle it emotionally? Excellent idea. Tell them, "Okay, but if you ARE going to do it, use barrier protection and birth control, and here's why. . ."? Most definitely.
Tell them that they should wait until they're in a monogamous marriage to shag, and lay a moralistic guilt trip on them in order to reinforce it? Oh, please. Do you hear all those kids out there saying, "Yeah, you got your jollies back in the 70's and 80's, but we're not supposed to? Fuck that noise."
We had this whole "no sex before marriage" attitude back in the 1950's, remember? And we still had unwed pregnancies and teen VD. These rates have gone down in the last 20 years, thanks to sex education. Not abstinence -- sexual education. Abstinence does work for some kids, bless their hearts, but it sure as hell isn't going to work for the entire teenage population because it never HAS. If they're gonna, they're gonna, and the absolute best thing you can do is give them the appropriate education and protection, instead of trying to push sex ed back in the closet and make them feel guilty for wanting to engage in (or actually engaging) a normal part of human existence. Someone of my acquaintence called this movement "criminal and immoral," and he's absolutely right.
Oh, and in case anyone wants to jump on my case for my views, I was a virgin until 26 and my only sexual partner has been my husband. And I still think this is a bullshit policy.
Arrgh. . .