I survived abstinence-only education and all I got was this lousy rhetoric

When I was 16 or 17, my high school organized a "Gender Equity Day" which effectively meant that they herded the boys and girls off to separate classrooms so we could listen to a series of presenters from outside our school. Sitting in a classroom with about 20 other girls, I watched as a friendly-looking young woman introduced herself as a sex educator. I was intrigued: was somebody actually going to do something besides show us those discreet biology textbook drawings of the female reproductive system that we'd seen at least 3 times since the 6th grade? ("It kind of looks like a cow's face!" I recall one boy saying.) But when the lady told us that we were going to talk about why we weren't going to have sex until we were married, I rolled my eyes and braced myself for the usual scare stories about the unreliability of birth control and other half-truths that have long been on the pet peeves lists of comprehensive sexual education's advocates.

But surprisingly, very little of our discussion was spent talking about condom failure or even the horrors of sexually transmitted infections. Instead, our presenter had a different approach. "Do you know how long a boy usually lasts?" she said, looking around at all of us, who were certainly not going to offer either guesses or testimony. "About 30 seconds on average." she told us. "They don't care about your pleasure. Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?"

There was more. "Guys don't see girls as anything more than sex objects, because that's what the media teaches them." "All guys want is sex and once you give it to them, they'll leave you because they won't even respect you anymore." "You may think you're in love but guys are just after sex, they don't care about you, and if anything happens to you, they won't care about that either." Never one to keep my mouth shut, and with my third-wave feminist spirit balking at this indictment of all the nice men in my life, I spoke up several times. "If media images of women are part of the problem then why don't we talk about the media?" "Why don't we actually get the guys in here so we can here them talk about what they think of sex and girls?" "And if guys are all such jerks, why are we eventually marrying them anyway? At what point do guys morph from a bunch of horny players into Perfect Husbands Who Will Never Leave Us?"

I was met with vague non-answers each time. Apparently, talking to us about how to have healthy relationships, including marital relationships , with men was not on the agenda. Just teaching us to be afraid of them.

At the time I thought, or hoped, that that "workshop" was an isolated example of a particularly nasty point-of-view, perhaps a well-meaning but misguided effort to level with us on the basis of our frustrations with our teenage male peers. But in the years since then, I have run across many more examples of this particular brand of cynical fear-mongering. A quick google search of abstinence-promoting websites reveals many. (Curiously, one website refers to premarital sex as a "grizzly act." Either the writer meant "grisly", or perhaps s/he is a wildlife enthusiast who knows something about the mating habits of grizzlies that I do not.) Consider this abstinence pamphlet at usconservatives.about.com which cites "psychological/emotional health" as a reason to stay abstinent until marriage.

"When that [relationship] bond is broken - through a breakup, for instance - both women and men can feel stupid, used, and unloved. The breakup can lead to very strong feelings of betrayal, anger and loss. It can take months or years to recover. Abstinence is a great way to protect your heart."

It continues with "relational health:"

"Abstinence now can help protect your future marriage relationship by keeping out of it all the baggage that can come with a series of broken sexual ties. Not only will you avoid bringing STDs and children into the marriage, but you will be more likely to bring an emotionally healthy you, a you capable of deep bonding, of deep trust - a you that is able to give your entire self to the other person without first requiring years of healing".

And finally "social health"

"Studies show that women who wait until their twenties to start having sex have greater advantages in life than those who start sexual activity at 13 or 14...On the other hand, girls who start having sex young are 3x more likely to attempt suicide."

I'm the last person to judge somebody else's decision to remain abstinent on the grounds of safety or their personal set of moral or religious values, or the their decision to raise their own family with that value. I don't even object to it being taught as part of comprehensive sexual education, as a possible choice. After all, unplanned pregnancy and STIs are legitimate concerns and one perfectly valid way to avoid them is to avoid sex. All I ask is that kids be given all the information so that they can decide their own priorities and be safe, instead of hurting themselves and each other because they were misinformed or underinformed.

But what is going on in these examples of abstinence education is, to me, even more sinister than hiding information from or lying to kids about birth control or STI statistics. There are the obvious problems with portraying marriage as a "safe zone" of perfect happiness and implying that emotional baggage and damage can be totally avoided by avoiding "the grizzly act" (couldn't resist). But then there are the even more disturbing trends of suggesting that the world is full of predators who want only to use you and don't care about causing you pain, and, possibly worse, the idea that emotional pain permanently compromises a person and turns them into "damaged goods". Most adults recognize experiences such as heartache and disappointment to be integral parts of adult life, at worst, normal and necessary evils and, at best, opportunities through which lessons can be learned and wisdom acquired-- lessons which one can then bring into mature relationships, including marriages.

But this strain of abstinence-only rhetoric presents these experiences as nothing more than Evil Society's nasty punishment of lack of self-control. For the virtuous young person, the reward of a perfect, baggage-free marriage awaits but s/he who gives into those bad, bad hormones will be at the mercy of all the malicious people in this heartless world, and end up permanently damaged, unfit for any kind of happy commitment--maybe even commit suicide!

What kind of notions are these to be imparting to kids who, as they go through adolescence and experience the increasing complexity of their emotions and relationships, are at their most vulnerable and unsure, who are already more likely to experience depression and other emotional problems than any other age group? Isn't growing up already a difficult and anxious enough process? Surely this kind of exploitation of kids' natural apprehension about approaching adulthood is against any moral or religious code, and it's certainly not making anybody's child safer.

I believe that adolescence is a vulnerable time and that, as a result, sexual activity can have emotional consequences for adolescents, often more severe ones than for adults. (Although I also believe that nothing short of keeping kids in a cloistered convent is going to prevent them from eventually experiencing hurt, sex or no sex). I believe that societal depictions of sex and gender, including and especially those in the media, contribute to harmful ideas about sex that can lead to such consequences. And I believe--very strongly--that discussion of these issues has a place in comprehensive sexual education, and one which has been neglected all too often by it's advocates.

But the proper way to present these issues is to discuss how they can be either challenged, or duly considered in mature decision-making (which can include the decision to not have sex), not to present them as bogeymen out there to punish the weak. And it's certainly not right to present all people who might be interested in sex as a bunch of selfish predators. (I'd still love to know if my high school sex ed presenter some how believed that all the Potential Husbands were hidden on some kind of enchanted island that we would one day find if we just kept our legs closed and avoided all the dirty, piggish louts after our honor along the way.)

Kids should not be taught that normal and necessary human emotional experience is some kind of debilitating illness--isn't AIDS already scary enough? And they should not be taught that the negative attitudes about sex that could hurt them are insurmountable evils. Heartbreak may be an inevitable fact of life but societal attitudes are not. They can be questioned and changed and we should be teaching kids that they have the power to do that. And we certainly shouldn't be encouraging kids to suspect and fear each other; such attitudes towards others are unhealthy at any stage of life. Instead, we should be encouraging them to communicate with and listen to each other. Adolescents need to be supported and advised by adults as they make the transition into adulthood, not frightened and alienated, and I would hope that this is something on which all adults, regardless of their views on abstinence until marriage, can agree. It is time for concerned adults of all political and religious stripes to work together to keep kids healthy, happy, and safe .