I don't get how there is still such a push for abstinence programs. I'm firstly disregarding religious purposes, seeking to contend the positive claims made by programs such as Not Me, Not Now and all these other ridiculous parties, not to mention some of their more
high profile supporters.
Some "facts" about abstinence:
1) It is 100% effective in preventing STD's
Well that would be true, it abstinence meant the same thing to everyone.
Many students of abstinence believe as long as the man part doesn't go into the female part it's all good. Of course since most of these programs don't actually give STD facts and numbers, the kids don't know that you can still contract STDs with all the other touching/rubbing of each other.
2) It lowers depression in adolescence. (Some things like they're not worried about having sex and not constantly concerned about STDs)
Among the ridiculously long list of
positive effects of sex are the well known facts that, basically, sex makes you feel better (fill in chemical reactions here)
3) It's effective in lowering sexual promiscuity among teens
No. Just
No. It's been proven as
effective as the DARE program.
A good majority of our own government
recognizes the uselessness of these programs.
I'm even going to go so far as to challenge the whole sanctity/unity/waiting for marriage thing. To all those who remember their first time, would you really want that disaster to be your very first experience with your blushing new bride? (To those who haven't had your first time yet, it's going to be a disaster. We all went through it, we all got better.)
These programs teach you so much about not doing it that they fail to include the bit on what you should do when you actually go to do it. You've just been married to the love of your life, you go back and get ready to consecrate your marriage for the first time, waiting for each other for all your lives...and you don't even know how to put the condom on.
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However, sex does exist, I guess, and so we should probably know about it? I guess.
Case and point..
Jesus.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that teens who have promised not to have sex (one of the all time greatest things about being alive) until they are married break that promise.
Second thing. The reason I don't do drugs isn't because I have DARE'd to not do them?
My world is crumbling, I need hookers and smack stat!
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I think you need a few more 9s there.
I feel the opposite way. People who do it for religious purposes are completely useless to argue against since their only point is "I'm doing it for religious purposes." There are no facts to throw at them. At that point you just have to go down the "there is no God" route.
What these programs push, and what I'm arguing against, is all the misinformation and stigmatizing of sex. Like these idiot parents who keep their kids home on the day that they teach that little sex-ed lite class in school. If they don't want their precious little girl learning about sex in a casual, classroom setting lead by people with actual sex information, then she's going to find out about it by idiots on the playground or porn.
I just don't understand how people WHO HAVE HAD SEX THEMSELVES can be pro abstinence. Like, ok maybe your first time was some harrowing experience and your worried it will happen to your child. Denial ain't gunna do it.
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Abstinence-only sex "education" leads to an increase in teen pregnancies and STD transmission because it does not teach people how to have safe sex if they decide that abstinence is not for them, or come up with ways to "stay abstinent" by having their genitals get stuck together in ways other than penis-into-vagina.
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Christ.
Don't half ass it son, go full bore as my great grandpappy used to say.
God damned young kids and their bellachin. Back in my day.......
But..but, if I did her in the poop shoot, we're still technically Virgins...right?
I mean, thats the rationale of a few young couples who do that "promise-ring, 100% abstain until after marriage come to.
I don't agree with the whole 'sanctity' thing, and I'm not sure what you mean by 'unity', but I do have something to say on the waiting part.
This is purely anecdotal, but my first time was fine (I credit this to comprehensive sex ed programs from both 7th grade and 10th grade, along with lots of research and making out prior). Not fantastic but not a disaster. After a couple seconds of pain it even felt good.
That in mind, I still wish I'd waited for my now husband because the guy I was with then, while still a good friend, just wasn't worth that kind of intimacy. Of course, I'm one of those weirdos who places emotional emphasis on sex (I even call it "lovemaking" sometimes), so that may have some effect on my opinion. I appreciate that not everyone is like this, but for those people who are, waiting for marriage can be a good thing - if you've learned enough and are comfortable with talking about those kinds of things with your partner. It really depends on your situation though. I suppose learning about basic relationship dynamics are something they should include with all the biology/statistics/this-is-how-to-use-a-condom stuff in high school.
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Abstinence folks are strange, because sex is a pretty important part of a relationship, and I highly doubt I would go as far as marriage without at least some idea of how compatible we were.
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Never got a reply to that one.
My point is that it can be a good thing, depending on your personality (so basically don't do a blanket discount on it). For some people sex isn't a big thing, losing their virginity isn't a big thing, for others (even those who aren't religious) it is a big thing. For those people, waiting can be a good thing.
And no, I didn't wait 'til I married Dyr to have sex with him. Though, if I'd been a virgin still, I probably would have.
Face Twit Rav Gram
As was explained to me, sex ed in America teaches everything there is to know about sex except the sex part.
If we're going to talk about facts and be objective then there isn't much argument against a more comprehensive sex ed than even the liberal classes that American youngsters get.
I'm just going to ask here, since this seems like a good thread for it.
I am always astounded by the poor state of things in terms of continental US sex ed programs. Even in so-called liberal areas they tend to pussy-foot (no pun intended) around things, as if talking about everything in abstracts really helps horny teenagers. I grew up in Hawaii and, as I mentioned before, my sex ed program was two fold and comprehensive. I don't just mean we learned all the STDs and how to put a condom on, what the vas deferens is, all that - we were also encouraged to ask anything. Literally, no matter how silly it seemed. I remember my seventh grade teacher especially informatively answering questions like 'What's a G-spot? How do you reach it?', 'What do you do about an ovarian cyst?', 'How do I tell he/she is aroused?', etc., with a completely serious and straight face.
My question is, how is it that Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific ocean with a fairly sizable Christian population, has managed such good sex ed programs, while places like Seattle and San Francisco seem to be lagging behind? Maybe one of you knows the history behind this.
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Losing your virginity can be a big thing even for those who don't believe in waiting for marriage. It's more about waiting until you're ready to handle it and in the right relationship to make it great. This can be before marriage as well as in marriage.
For example: I lost my virginity at the age of 17 to someone I loved very much. It was uncomfortable and awkward but also very sweet and romantic. Even though things didn't work out in the end, I wouldn't have changed a thing. It was a significant event for both of us, no less so than for those who choose to wait longer. How long one waits to have sex does not directly correlate to how one views sex. You can choose to lose your virginity at a relatively young age and still place emotional emphasis on sex.
When you frame it the way you have Passer it feels like trying to rewrite history - well, because that's what it is. And when you do it like that, well then any first time is likely to end up being the wrong time retroactively if you don't spend the rest of your life with that person.
My first time was not with my current girlfriend, yet I don't feel in any way that it was the wrong time or a bad thing to do even though that relationship didn't work out.
We don't even have sex education, it's more 'don't have sex' education. (ba dum tisss)
They think if they teach us how to use condoms, we will be encouraged to have sex.
'tis very silly.
edit, perhaps I was a little harsh.
Must've been a leftover from a local Town Hall meeting.
Did she also scream "YOUR HEATHEN SCHOOL IS RAN BY SOCIALIST!!" and yelled out a "Heil Hitler!!!" for added measure?
Ah Shit, fuckin just Godwined this thread.
Yep. The abstainers win. Sex is EVIL! Touching condoms is an eternal sin, and God will not forgive you! Vaginal intercourse will turn you gay, and we all know the gays have HIV.
That should be the new Slogan on the newest King Whatever Version of the Bible.
And it could end with an "After all..its God's Will anyway...fuckers!"
I'll freely admit that I'm still a virgin, and am looking forward to to the wedding night. :winky:
That being said, back in grade... 5 I think it was, we started having sex ed classes in school that were pretty informative and not "abstinence-only". It didn't go to the level of "putting a condom on a banana", but I suppose it was something.
All that being said, I'd still agree with the "abstinence-only" naysayers... Clearly it doesn't work, clearly most teens (I freely admit I'm an aberration) will have sex before their married, and so you may as well inform them of all their options because when an opportunity *ahem* "rises", they can be prepared.
The proponents of abstinence-only education don't argue for it because it works, but because they think sex is foul. And that's infuriating and tragic. No wonder Bristol Palin is a spokesman for abstinence, really. Sex ruined her life. Sex got her pregnant, publicly humiliated, and married to a jerk -- I can only imagine how her mother treated her -- so is it any wonder that she views sex in that Victorian sense, as the road to ruin? I don't blame her so much. But I do get violently angry at those who want to return us to a world where a young woman must pay a terrible price if she is sexually adventurous.
Of course, sex ed has never been very useful even if it isn't abstinence-only. Sure, I learned all the details, but even in high school I assumed none of it would apply to me since it would be at least a decade until I had sex. And I knew it all from home anyhow.
One thing I like is Dan Savage's point about sex that's not intercourse -- oral, mutual masturbation, and so on. That makes sense. You can't get pregnant if you don't attach the baby-making apparatuses. But I grew up being taught that "men are pigs" so if you so much as make out, or even go to the wrong party, a boy will physically force you to go "all the way". One of the most pernicious ideas ever, imo. If schools could add one more thing to the curriculum, it should be this: all guys are not rapists. Not only the "Guys, get consent" angle, but also "Girls, don't be cowed and terrified of everything with a penis."
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Yeah I don't know what's more insulting, the insinuation that ALL men are sex-crazed maniacs who want nothing but to get in a woman's pants, or the fact that ALL women aren't smart enough to recognize the men who are like that and can be duped into falling for it.
What, a six month delay in sexual debut isn't what the abstinence people were going for?
I was never encouraged to wait until marriage by my parents. I was encouraged to wait until I was ready. Of course when I was actually ready I was at a point in my life where I wasn't interested in a relationship. So I had sex with a good friend of mine. It isn't something I would change and I do attach emotional importance to some sex (but not all, it can just be a good time).
I really don't see the point of abstinence but it was never presented to me in a positive light so that might be part of it. Abstinence can be effective pregnancy prevention but depending on what you are doing instead (dry humping in only underwear?) it isn't perfect. It definitely isn't good STD prevention unless you are not having any skin to skin contact with each other's genitals (even with hands). Oral and anal fall into my definition of sex, but obviously not everyone's and I don't think we actually need to discuss the transmission of STDs through those routes.
And guess what. She never got pregnant and we never got any STDs from each other. And now we're having a baby because we planned it.
I'm a poster child for sex education!
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The two years after we got married we just used the pill. We figured during the college years we better double up on the protection.
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In any case I don't really see much to debate here. Ab-only has been pretty widely debunked as ineffective for years and seems to be on its way out.
Teaching girls to say no when they want to say yes is why there's such a fucked up situation with consent in the first place.
The message should be: do you want to fuck? Go for it! Here's a condom. Here are the risks of STDs, and the reliability of birth control methods.
The pill's reliability depends entirely on the compliance of the woman to a regular schedule of pill-popping. A hormone-treated IUD is the most reliable method out there, with 99.99% or so success rate.
And married intercourse cures your HIV and gives you antioxidants.