(crossposted at Amplify )
One of the common themes that you’ll find in abstinence-only sex education curricula (besides factual errors, conservative ideology and demonization of condoms) is the constant shaming or judgmental statements towards young women who don’t uphold certain visual standards of chaste and purity.
Young women are taught to not show skin or flirt, lest they invite dirty lustful thoughts in the boys, who are rendered helpless beasts when tempted by the girls of ill-repute. Not only does such “education” insult the intelligence of young people, but it reinforces harmful gender stereotypes.
Let’s take a tour through the states to look at some of the most egregious examples:
In South Carolina, Heritage Community Services (currently receives a CBAE grant of $600,000 per year from 2006-2011) teaches girls that conservative attire is necessary, or those poor boys will virtually attack you. Here is an excerpt from their classroom curriculum:
“Males and females are aroused at different levels of intimacy. Males are more sight oriented, whereas females are more touch oriented. This is why girls need to be careful with what they wear, because males are looking! The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason, girls have a responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn’t invite lustful thoughts. ”
Yes indeed, girls. It is your duty to the country. More from HCS’s website :
“a good minimum guideline is to declare everything covered by a bathing suit as off limits. Everyone needs to know his or her boundaries before getting in a risky situation. Once someone is excited physically, it can be difficult to stop.”
Teen Awareness, Inc. , out of California (received $3.2 million in CBAE grants) agrees:
“be careful about how you dress (are you sending the wrong message?)”
As do Abstinence Education Consultants in Kansas (has received $3.1 million in CBAE grants). From their website:
“Dress modestly. Sometimes the way you dress can send unintended messages to others, especially men because they are sexually aroused by what they see”
The theme being expressed, with our tax dollars’ subsidization, is not only that girls have a responsibility to dress like puritans or whatever it is that these groups are advocating, but that if they don't, young men are uncontrollable dolts who will, presumably, “force” sex upon them. LifeGuard Youth Development in Missouri (has received $3 million in CBAE grants) reinforces this insult:
"Guys can be compared to a microwave. They see something enticing and like 30 seconds later, they are ready to go! Because we know they are using only one side of their brain at a time (logic and not emotion) and their testosterone causes their sex drive to always be “ON”, generally they may not connect feelings with the act of having sex . Girls can be compared to a slow cooker. Usually, for a girl to be turned on, a whole lot of time, attention, words, affection, and touch needs to be slowly added before she is aroused. These actions engage her emotions and for her, sex does equal a personal relationship."
Yes, this is the “science” that our government subsidizes.
But a quick glance around at other abstinence-only programs shows that not all girls are “slow cookers”. Oh no, some of them are pure trouble . You know, those girls who show skin and flirt, tempting your poor son into a sex-crazed madness.
In Indiana, A Positive Approach to Teen Health, Inc. (receiving a $600,000 CBAE grant each year from 2007-2011) asks why these troublesome girls have the audacity to flirt with boys:
"Sometimes girls flirt to get attention. They may want to feel they are attractive to guys. Looking for this attention may be cover for underlying insecurities, and having this attention lets them think they are at least good at one thing."
Yes, that makes sense. Because flirting with the opposite sex is certainly not normal, biological behavior. There has to be something psychologically wrong with these deviants, this being the “only thing they are good at”, obviously. Colorado’s Friends First (receiving a $414,800 AFLA grant each year from 2007-2011) agrees, saying these troublesome girls who flirt must lack “parental communication and boundary settings” in their own home.
These programs gleefully promote and teach others to point fingers at girls in their school that have “gone all the way”. “Slut-shaming” is par for the course, as Missouri’s LifeGuard Youth Development lets everyone know what to call these young women :
“Being able to have sex does not make you any different from a rat in a warehouse. They have sex too. Is that what you want to compare yourself to ?”
(i.e., hint, hint, “slutty” girls are rats, spread the word!)
South Dakota’s Alpha Center (received $1.2 million in CBAE grants) elaborates:
“Nobody wants to marry someone who has been the loving, meaningful relationship of 17 other guys.”
The worst combination of these themes of “slutty girls” and “uncontrollable sex beast guys” came from Ohio’s ATM Education website (receiving $600,000 CBAE grant each year from 2006-2011). Before we shamed them into changing their site, you could enter the “Party Room”, where you learn the story of Rochelle, Jason, Monica and Tanner. Each person tells their perspective about what happens during and after a party one night.
Rochelle tells how she drove her drunken friend Jason home after the party, and then is raped by him. Jason denies that the rape happened, saying their sex was consensual. Monica and Tanner observe that Jason was being a drunken idiot the entire night, with Monica (Jason’s ex) adding her opinion that Rochelle has a reputation for “putting out” and being a “slut”.
The site then asks the question: “Based on all accounts, whose story sounds the least credible?”
Guess who the “correct” answer was? Rochelle .
Why? Because she had a supposed reputation as a “slut”. Therefore she is not to be believed.
Jason, on the other hand, is given a pass, because he was drunk, “vulnerable”, and with a “hot” girl in a car.
Boys will be boys, right? They can’t help it if they get tempted by one of “those” girls.
Fortunately, ATM Education was shamed into changing the language on their site , but if you look at the language of these abstinence-only until marriage programs all over the country, it’s not difficult to believe that one of these programs would make such statements.
Currently, the Obama administration is finalizing the details on their 2010 fiscal budget, and they will have to make a decision: (A) continue to fund these abstinence-only sex education programs that have already wasted $1.5 billion in tax dollars and endangered the sexual health of countless youth over the past decade? Or (B) zero out funding for these ab-only programs, instead bringing real, age-appropriate comprehensive sex education to our schools that gives youth all of the information they need to stay safe and avoid pregnancy.
What can you do?
WRITE OBAMA AND TELL HIM TO ZERO OUT ABSTINENCE-ONLY FUNDING!
And tell your Congressperson too!
We’re going to send $94 million more to these ab-only programs in the 2009 Omnibus Bill that is about to be passed, so let’s not make the same mistake in the 2010 budget. For the sake of our youth’s sexual health for an entire generation, it is time to end abstinence-only funding.
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One of the things that creeps me out the most about abstinence-only ed is the way that it pathologizes female sexuality.
Girls can be compared to a slow cooker. Usually, for a girl to be turned on, a whole lot of time, attention, words, affection, and touch needs to be slowly added before she is aroused. These actions engage her emotions and for her, sex does equal a personal relationship.
Males and females are aroused at different levels of intimacy. Males are more sight oriented, whereas females are more touch oriented.
Dress modestly. Sometimes the way you dress can send unintended messages to others, especially men because they are sexually aroused by what they see
They make it sound as if female sexuality simply doesn't exist outside of the most trite, romance-novel cliche imaginable. Do they really believe this, or do they just want to make sure that girls believe this? I'm pretty sure that almost every girl is going to experience sexual desire outside of this context at some point - perhaps even (gasp) in reponse to something that she sees - and the abstinence only crowd are doing their best to make sure that when that happens she will feel suitably aberrant and ashamed.
“a good minimum guideline is to declare everything covered by a bathing suit as off limits. Everyone needs to know his or her boundaries before getting in a risky situation. Once someone is excited physically, it can be difficult to stop.”
I'm sure they're talking about touching, but when I read it I thought, "Are they still talking about dress here? Who wears lingerie to school? Or are we talking turn of the century bathing suits?"
I hate all the presumptions made by these types of organizations. Girls are not sexual at all (they just want the attention) and boys are brainless boner machines.
The worst part of this stuff, is that all throughout abstinence only education these young women are taught that they are not sexual beings, that sex is bad, that they cannot enjoy sex for the pleasure (only for the emotional connection). But once all these young girls, if they manage to stay abstinent until they're married, are expected to do a 180 and be these perfect lovers for their husbands. It's an unbelievable amount of pressure to live up to - not to mention that they are never taught to think of their OWN sexuality, holding them back from a satisfying sex life.
I agree with you 100% and also love the phrase "brainless boner machines." It's perfect.
Maybe the correct approach would be to tell teens never to touch someone else without their consent. That's what my school always did.
Now that's a radical concept.
The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason, girls have a responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn't invite lustful thoughts.” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 46) (about halfway down the page)
so girls MUST be responsible (lest we "invite" sexy time thoughts) but the boys just can't help themselves! of course.
abstinence only mystifies me. this is so incredibly stupid. thank god i already did sex-ed.
You know, I commonly hear the "boys are more sight oriented than girls" meme quite often. And I hear it used to justify a whole host of ridiculous things (like boys just can't "help" attacking a woman when she is wearing, say, a short skirt and halter top...because "boys are more visual"...that's just how they are, so women should just realize this and change their appearance more accordingly...i.e. conservative dress)
I've heard this "boys are more visual" meme from many of my friends too. If they are liberals they will say something along the lines of "well that's why men buy porn" (not even considering some of the reasons why women might be big consumers of porn, i.e. that most porn is not made with women's arousal in mind, that much of it is degrading to women, that much of it sexualizes violence against women, etc. etc.)
Anyway, does anyone know where this meme came from. I have a hard time believing it's actually true. Especially as a visual artist and as someone who always prefers to see something presented in pictures in order to aid learning (I'm a visual learner). So why do I have, literally every single male I have ever had this conversation with telling me that they are more visual than me, despite the fact that I can beat 90% of them in any video game I am challenged to? (not that that is a very scientific measurement)...but I just have a hard time believing that just because I have a vagina, that I don't, think with, learn better with, and prefer visual representations.
And obviously it bothers me that the "boys are more visual" myth is used to justify organizations like this one getting $600,000 a year in order to tell women that because men are just "too damn visual and can't help themselves" that all us women must dress conservatively and cover up so as not to appear "tempting".
Does anyone know anything about where this meme came from and if it's true, and if not how to debunk it?
Well, I read a study once in my university womens sexuality class that women are actually just as aroused, if not more so, while watching porn than men are. If memory serves me correctly, they did strictly body response tests - i.e. heart rate, penile engorgement, vaginal lubrication, etc (I don't believe they actually surveyed the participants on how aroused they thought they were). So long story short, the study suggested in the end that the myth that men are turned on visually more than women was false. However, I still hear the same myth over and over as well - and although the study looked at actual physical responses, it didn't actually study how aroused the person felt aside from the physical response(if they felt mentally or emotionally "turned on").
I don't remember if the study had been replicated, however, I would like to think if we were studying it at university than hopefully it was a valid study.
I point you to Susan Bordo's essay: "Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body". She points out that perhaps women would be more turned on by the sight of men if we were bombarded by as many sexualized depictions of men as men are with women. Women aren't less sight oriented as these abstinence-only campaigns claim, we just have fewer opportunities to be turned on by sight.
I agree. A lot of types of porn turn me on. These abstinence-only programs should maybe ask some women who weren't taught to be ashamed of sexuality.
While the language in the reporting of these studies can be problematic to say the least, here are a few relevant studies about sexual arousal in women:
Women are not "slow-cookers": http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/678152/study_no_sexual_arousal_gender_gap/index.html
Women can be visually aroused, and the range of what images arouse them is broader than it is for men:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/6009/womens_sexual_arousal_is_allencompassing/index.html
I just LOVE the whole, "when girls flirt it's for attention and they're insecure" crap. I always that I was flirting because I like the person but I guess all this time I was covering up my insecurity.
Plus it doesn't take me that long to be ready to go. So yeah I'm more like the microwave. lol
And the whole dressing thing is stupid. One day I was dressed up in skinny jeans, had a low cut shirt, and a tie on and I got hit on a lot. Maybe I was showing too much skin who knows. But then the next day I was wearing a turtlneck sweater and jeans that weren't as tight as the skinny jeans and yet I still got hit on. Wow a shocker there. It just rules out the factor that it's not the clothes at all. It's not a woman's job to decide what to wear in order for men not to lust after her (which some of them might do regardless). I can't believe money is wasted on that crap.
And the whole Rochelle thing is sad to me that we still are pushing victim-blaming. Say this happened to one of the girl's in that classroom. How crappy would she feel when you just outright said the rape was her fault.
All I know is if I was in that class, I would have gotten the answer wrong and then I probably would have debated with the teacher.
It's things like this that makes me glad I don't go to a normal public school.
This echoes the crap they spout in Saudi Arabia and other conservative middle eastern countries, where women are forced to be covered from head to toe because the poor males just "can't control themselves."
“Being able to have sex does not make you any different from a rat in a warehouse. They have sex too. Is that what you want to compare yourself to ?”
Yeah, hear that? SEX. Warehouse rats have SEX TOO. Gross. You know who also has gross sex? Your parents. Yeah, I said it. Your teachers. Your aunts, your uncles, your cousins. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Your role models, too. Your loved ones. Tina Fey. Simone de Beauvoir. Laura Bush. President Obama. Ohhhhh SNAPS! That's right, sluts! Is that really what you want to compare yourself to?