Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the “false, misleading, or distorted information” in the programs’ teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
What a wonderful use of our tax dollars.
” . . . that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,”
This is really in the “educational” pamphlets. Good grief! Abstinence is a good educational tool, but to outright lie like that. . . I find it too unbelievable. Is this what the respondents got from abstinence only education or what they were actually told?
I wouldn’t get too excited.
The gay teenagers thing appears to be a simple misinterpretation of statistics.
A lot of the other “mistakes” are in fact simply disagreements. The congressman whose staff put together the analysis has an axe to grind, as well.
If egregious errors in a text or curriculum disqualify the material for support, then our public schools are going to be mighty empty of content.
The mistakes should be corrected, by the way.
(And you can, in fact, get pregnant from having someone touch your genitals – if that someone is a male who has just masturbated as part of a mutual masturbation session. Which is what the curriculum is talking about.)
To me, this is the most disturbing part of the article:
Some course materials cited in Waxman’s report present as scientific fact notions about a man’s need for “admiration” and “sexual fulfillment” compared with a woman’s need for “financial support.” One book in the “Choosing Best” series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. “Moral of the story,” notes the popular text: “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.”
I don’t even know where to start on how wrong and inappropriate that is. I won’t say too much, though, in case I lessen anyone’s confidence.
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I was taught similiar stuff in high school. They made it sound like if you touch a guy, suddenly you will be coated in a thick layer of sperm that you will not be able to extract yourself from until some of them manage to overcome obstacles like blue jeans and whatnot to find their way into your uterus.
Just feeling sexual, it was implied, makes you pregnant.
Robert, I suggest that you read the whole report before you indulge your dismissive attitude. Kids are lied to about the failure rates of condoms, told that HIV leaks through latex, told that condom use hasn’t reduced the STD transmission rate, are told that intercourse gives women cancer, are told that abortion causes insanity and suicide, and are told that most mental illnesses can be avoided by abstaining from sex. They are told that abortion causes sterility, that women naturally can’t look ahead to the future and need a man, who naturally is forward-thinking to decipher scary future stuff for them, and are told that backwards practices like bride-prices (buying a wife with money) are ways of honoring brides. Sort of how you honor a prostitute by paying her, I guess.
And you can, in fact, get pregnant from having someone touch your genitals – if that someone is a male who has just masturbated as part of a mutual masturbation session.
And you can, in fact, get pregnant from sitting on a park bench, if there is a giant pool of jizz left over from a filming of an outdoor bukakke movie, and you are a fertile female who isn’t wearing any underwear. Therefore, we have no reason to complain if a sex-ed book tells children “You can get pregnant by sitting on a park bench.”
I mean, come ON, Robert. There’s nothing wrong with being a devil’s advocate if you do it intelligently, but have some respect for the craft.
Mythago, teenagers rarely sit in jizz pools on park benches.
They engage in mutual masturbation sessions a lot more frequently.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reminding them that sperm + egg = baby, so wash your hands before you touch her, Galahad.
I heard over and over about these virgins births in high school, but I never have once actually seen solid evidence that a girl has gotten pregnant during mutual masturbation, performing oral sex or using the toilet in the boys’ room (something we were solemnly told not to do).
“…are told that intercourse gives women cancer…”
Does that have something to do with HPV leading to cervical cancer?
” ‘…are told that intercourse gives women cancer…’
Does that have something to do with HPV leading to cervical cancer?”
I don’t know what information is being given out in these classes, but as far as reality, you are correct. HPV (the genital warts virus) can progress to cancerous changes in the cervix.
As a woman ages, the epithelial cells of the vagina and cervix grow stronger and more resistant to HPV. During the teen years, the skin is most vulnerable, so exposure to HPV at a young age is more likely to lead to cancer.
And HPV is something you can pick up without penetration.
What gets me about this stuff is the misinformation coupled with ignorance coupled with agenda leading to fear-mongering (well, the dragon shit, too, but I just can’t go there).
I’m sure that they’re not explaining either the mechanics of how one might become pregnant during mutual masturbation, and I know they’re certainly not giving out any information on how to avoid that risk. A complete education would discuss that.
Similarly, “sex causes cancer” is woefully inadequate and misleading, even if there’s a grain of truth in it. “HPV can be contracted in such-and-such a way, carries such-and-such long-term and short-term risks, and can be prevented or treated such-and-such a way” is far more complete.
But since the whole purpose is to punish those little hussies for having sex, we can’t be having anyone giving them actual information that might let them get away with having sex, now can we?
Robert, I’m wondering what axe you think Rep. Waxman has to grind here. His focus, as always (this is the guy who gives out the Golden Fleece awards for the biggest pork projects), is on waste of funding. And these programs waste money because they don’t work. They don’t work AND they’re giving out dangerous misinformation.
It will be interesting to see if these mistakes are corrected. The report does sound like a lot of them rely heavily on studies that have been dismissed (the whole 31% success rate of condoms, done by Susan somebody in the early 90’s, was rejected by the CDC and the FDA).
Somehow, I doubt it.
If the whole point is “absitnence only” (which hasn’t worked for thousands of years, so I’m not sure why there’s a focus on it now), then why would anyone wanting to support that mindset ever want to present information about condoms or birth-control that doesn’t support their side?
I did read a report at http://abstinenceedu.com/ talking about how wonderfully effective the abstinence only programs have been, but I have yet to see a single other good review… and to be honest, I don’t think these programs have been in effect long enough to pronounce them a “success”… it’s like saying “well, we started the program last month, and since then we haven’t talked to a single teen that’s had sex, it MUST be completely successful!”
Proof by induction isn’t proof.
Abstinence only education is nearly as effective as the D.A.R.E. program.
I read the whole report. The kids are told without much context in one program that cervical cancer is caused by sexual intercourse. It’s hinted outright in other programs. No programs explain that the best way to prevent cervical cancer is to get regular Pap smears. Therefore, the students walk away thinking abstaining from sex is a better way to prevent cancer than get Pap smears.
I recommend reading the whole thing. It’s short and quite compelling. Abstaining until marriage is touted as the best thing since sliced bread, a cure for all ailments. Sexual health inside marriage seems to be non-issue, as if all sexual health issues are cured by slapping the band of gold on your finger.
“Sexual health inside marriage seems to be non-issue, as if all sexual health issues are cured by slapping the band of gold on your finger.”
I had a job once working in a doctor’s office (he turned out to be a horrible, racist, sexist, jerk). He once told a woman that her pelvic inflammatory disease was a result of an infection from a public toilet seat, when her husband had actually confessed to the doctor that he had been cheating.
When the doc told me about it later, he explained that he lied to her in the interest of “preserving the unity of the family.”
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reminding them that sperm + egg = baby, so wash your hands before you touch her, Galahad.
And do you not see the difference between this sentence and with teaching that you can get pregnant if somebody touches your genitals–period, amen, no context needed there, Lancelot?
Teaching kids safe mutual masturbation is not on these people’s agenda.
whoa now, Jake. DARE works.
no really, it scared my stoner little brother off drugs.
by which I mean, he’s a burnout, bass-guitar playing pothead, but he’s mortally afraid of anything harder.
honestly, I think “convincing them to avoid the drugs that can kill you” is a pretty good target to have, so I consider that a success.
And when he finds out that a lot of those D.A.R.E. “facts” are overblown crap, how scared of the hard stuff is he really going to be?
That’s the real issue here: lying, minimizing the good and telling overblown lies about the bad. I doubt anybody here would be in favor of a ‘free love’-style sex ed that pretended all STDs go away with medicine and no-strings sex is easy and normal. Lying to kids by trying to scare them into virginity or abstinence backfires.
Last I checked, kids who go through D.A.R.E. are more, not less, likely to use drugs as adults.
actually, even aware of how overblown and stupid alot of them are, he’s still afraid of meth and heroin.
so hey, credit where credit is due.
DARE, like abstinence only education, will be effective for certain individuals. DARE, like abstinence only education, is ineffective for their target groups as a whole. Communities have been pulling funding for DARE & schools have been opting out of DARE for years – ever since it came to light that it is very expensive & has no overall positive impact.
So, karpad, I’m glad that it worked for your brother. But I’m also going to guess that an actual effective anti-drug education program would have worked for him too.
Yeah, my high school’s drug education program was not DARE, or even very DARE-like, and I’m afraid of heroin and meth (and cocaine). It doesn’t take dishonest scare tactics to get people to be afraid of highly addictive drugs that actually severely mess up most of their users.
I think drug education could be effectively reduced to the scene in Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor is locked in his room for a week in order to get off heroin. That’s done more to keep me off the hard stuff than learning in DARE that one sniff of cocaine could kill you. My favorite was a woman saying “The average age people start marijuana is 16(?), which means for every 20 year old starting marijuana, a 12 year old starts it.” And for every 35 year old who starts using marijuana, an embryo’s gonna get fertilized high.
The last thing kids need to hear is BS that can be contradicted by respected sources. Then they conclude that EVERYONE is talking out of their fundament, and ignore the good info out there.
We teach the kids about tripartite government and the electoral process long before they are allowed to vote. What’s the problem here? (rhetorical)
Well, I have seen more than enough people drift off into heroin use to know that if you tell people that pot’s bad and they find out otherwise, they tend to treat all drugs as equally okay.
Then again, my school taught us *zero* about drugs, except possibly in sophomore health class.
Most kids at that time didn’t do drugs. Then again, many got blotto each weekend – one beer store was known for selling to *high school kids*.
Alcohol was our school’s anti-drug.
Nothing persuaded me to stay away from cocaine more than spending time around people who’d done a lot of it. I like having a brain, thanks.
“Nothing persuaded me to stay away from cocaine more than spending time around people who’d done a lot of it. I like having a brain, thanks.”
Mythago, I still remember my father taking me to the local housing projects in Philly and seeing all the “dad’s” on the corner drinking and all the little mom’s with babies from the popular (albeit, eventual loser) boy from school.
My dad told me “if I have sex with women, they know I am smart and will want to have my baby just to trap me (my sister and I are six months apart — my dad had some issues with getting trapped).
I don’t know why but that trip stuck with me for a long time, I abstained from sex until I was 20 years old. Lying doesn’t work, but good parenting does do wonders.
BTW — It was by choice and not forced abstinence.
Lying doesn’t work, but good parenting does do wonders.
Doesn’t it though?
Yeah, implanting both a fear of sex and hatred of women all in one fell swoop. Good parenting indeed.
Q Grrl: I have no hatred for women. As was said many times on this post, children are not stupid — they know how to process information.
Perhaps he did instill fear of getting a girl pregnant. Isn’t that a good thing at that age?
Jstevenson,
At that age, yes it is a good thing, I believe. We’re talking about children here, who are not stupid but have limited judgment and foresight and still need their parents to help them foresee the consequences of their actions. Rest assured that my own son–and daughter too–will be fully informed about the effects an unplanned pregnancy will have on their futures when they reach that age. I only hope they take it to heart as you did.
“My dad told me “if I have sex with women, they know I am smart and will want to have my baby just to trap me ”
I read this as castration by proxy, rather than concern about pregnancy. My interpretation meter might be off.
Yeah, I got the similiar lies from my dad about how if I had sex with a boy he would immediately lose all feelings for me. Since then, I’ve felt that Dad, for all his good qualities, has a serious stick up his ass.
I abstained of my own free will (I WAS taught all the facts of life by my parents, accurately, and simply did not want to risk pregnancy) until I was about 23. And then a few years after that I found out that I’d been infertile all along. Well, FUCK. In retrospect, I was a stupid little prude who should have enjoyed the rampaging hormones while I had ’em (and while I had a good figure!).
Infertility doesn’t protect you from STDs, though.
Perhaps he did instill fear of getting a girl pregnant.
Along with a very nasty attitude about women and fatherhood. Isn’t that a bad thing at any age?
I’d be pretty horrified to find out that my father thought I was conceived to trap him.
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I am not going to say that my father’s tactic was the best, just that it was effective.
Certainly if I grew up in a white upper/middle class neighborhood there would be different realities to deal and cope with. Such as a view of opportunity other than welfare and the local A&P checkout counter.
Mythago: you can’t possibly believe I have a nasty attitude about women and fatherhood?
“I’d be pretty horrified to find out that my father thought I was conceived to trap him.”
I don’t think I was conceived to trap my father, who was pretty screwed up anyway. But I know I was an unintended consequence of sexual intercourse — I am ok with that.
Hell, I’m an unintended consequence of the Terlingua Chili Cook-Off, and I think that’s downright awesome.
Amanda — you crack me up.
I don’t think I was made to trap my father because my mother was a self-supporting MBA. One of the first women and black women to get her MBA so I don’t think she needed to trap my father who was a reformed gangmember.
I am not going to say that my father’s tactic was the best, just that it was effective.
End justify the means, eh?
You know what’d work even better? If everybody told their kids that if they have sex before marriage, they’ll be killed.
I’m disgusted by the “Don’t have sex because women will trick you into having a baby” advice. What a horrible thing to say. (Although, really, it’s only uneducated, unsuccessful women who are the problem; you can trust women with MBAs.) While we’re at it, why don’t we tell white people to avoid black people because they’ll steal your wallet, and tell Christians to avoid Jews because, well, they’re Jewish?
“End justify the means, eh?”
Not always. Of course like every decision you don’t know if it was a good one until you get to the end.
What I do know is that the fear of getting a girl pregnant was very effective. The only birth control I knew of that I had full and absolute control over, was myself; everything else was a crap shoot. That, I think, is the best lesson to teach children.
You teach men to not to get women pregnant by teaching them to consider the consequences of their actions (bad and good), to wear condoms, and to respect women–not by teaching them that all women are manipulative and cruel. And you teach men to not get women pregnant by promoting safe sex, not by promoting abstinence, especially when the latter doesn’t include any measures to prevent pregnancy if sex happens.
Of course like every decision you don’t know if it was a good one until you get to the end.
This may be true of decisions based on ignorance, but usually you have at least some idea of the consequences of your actions.
You might have been happier if you had had sex before age 20, so maybe abstinence was a bad decision, relatively speaking. Or maybe it would’ve been an equally good one. Which is why you teach kids everything about sex–you tell them about pregnancy, you tell them about all the psychological effects of sex, you tell them about STDs, you tell them about rape, you tell them about pleasure, you tell them about birth control, and then you let them ask questions–so that when the decision comes, they’re prepared to make it.
Knowledge and understanding and having all the facts is the best foundation upon which to build a good decision–not, contrary to popular belief, ignorance or fear or hatred.
I completely agree with you Hestia. But, isn’t the “abstinence only” program only part of a health curriculum which includes instruction on all the other issues (I am just asking not disagreeing with you as you seem to think I always am)? If it is the only part of the program then it is completely wrong. If it is part of the program then the information needs to be corrected, but the initiative is not bad.
“. . . not by teaching them that all women are manipulative and cruel” That is not what I got from what my father said. I did not grow up in white America where our little girls are sent away to camp for a week or nine months — until they get better. I grew up in another place that you may not comprehend. Perhaps if I grew up in white America I would have gotten that women are manipulative and cruel from his statements — that is the impression I was given of all white Americans when I grew up so it would not be a stretch. What I got was that I have to be careful because what is in the best interest of someone else, may not be in my best interest and I have to protect myself from that. I did not grow up with a hatred for women and I do not believe all women are manipulative and cruel.
I will proudly tell my daughters that boys are going to try to have sex with her. They have raging hormones and do not have the mental maturity (read developed superego) to necessarily control them. It is incumbent upon her to protect herself and not rely on anyone else’s word. I will give her the tools to protect herself, but most importantly I will say that the best way is to abstain, until you are older and more able to cope with the consequences of a failure protection less than abstinence.
When she is old enough I will tell her that she came into this world because ortho-tricyclene is only 99.8% effective and condoms don’t always work — even in conjunction with ortho-tricyclene.
I did not grow up in white America where our little girls are sent away to camp for a week or nine months — until they get better. I grew up in another place that you may not comprehend.
Gee, I grew up in white America and the girl across the street had twins at 15 and everybody knew about it. I think I can comprehend a thing or two. There’s no secret decoder ring involved.
Sorry, but when your father tells you “if I have sex with women, they know I am smart and will want to have my baby just to trap me”, he’s communicating to you that women are manipulative man-trappers who aren’t to be trusted.
Abstinence only means just that. Abstinence as part of a comprehensive sex ed class (where the truth is told about how to use contraception and the actual failure rates etc) is fine, but it’s nothing like abstinence-only classes.
I guess I am ignorant to those classes. I know they pass out abstinence only pamphlets, but I did not know it was actually the only curriculum in junior high health ed. Now I see the hub-bub. That is pretty stupid. Where do they actually teach this dribble. I can’t believe they don’t teach the sex in sex education class. That is pretty ridiculous.
I am not going to keep defending what my father said in the 70’s. For crying out loud, it was the 70’s — I don’t know perhaps it was a reaction to the craziness of the times. During that time in our neighborhood the government was giving out money if you had babies and the more babies you had the more money they gave out. It was common knowledge by both the men and the women. My father was not perfect by all meanings, but he was there for me and my half-sister. That is more than I can say for the other father’s in the neighborhood.
Men were told to get outta the house because the government “is gonna stop my check if you are living here and givin’ us money”. The girl across the street in suburban America still had mommy and daddy to help her out with their cute little grandchildren.
yeah, ’cause it’s so much worse to get money from your family than it is from the government. Sure.
Huh?
nevermind
“I am not going to keep defending what my father said in the 70’s.”
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
I’ve gotten a whiff of some of those scare-tactic type of talks that imply anything besides abstinence is dangerous or ineffective (I even saw a book once that tried to claim that the diaphragm might be an abortifacient!). I’ve also seen presentations that mention abstinence in one passing sentence, with an implication that nobody’s really going to try it.
But when I was in midwifery school, I had a textbook on contraceptive technology that was the most comprehensive I’ve ever seen. It devoted a full chapter to every possible method of birth control from abstinence to abortion (it even covered the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding). Every possibility was covered in depth so if someone chooses the Pill or fertility awareness, they understand how those methods work, backward and forward. If they choose condoms and foam, they learn techniques for how to persuade a reluctant partner to use a condom. If they choose abstinence, they learn techniques for how to tell their date calmly and unapologetically that they have decided to be abstinent.
I have personally known a couple of women who got pregnant in their teens, the FIRST time they had sex. I didn’t question them in depth, but I suspect that it was more than mere coincidence. When a woman is ovulating, her hormones and her sex drive are usually at their highest. So if a girl/woman is using the abstinence method, that one time that she gets swept up in the feeling and might decide to throw caution to the wind is the time when she is probably the most fertile.
If women were given that kind of comprehensive information about how their bodies work, they could either use that knowledge to give themselves a little more encouragement to continue using abstinence, or if they decide that they don’t want to abstain any more, to understand how VERY important it is to demand that protection be used and not “take a chance just this once.”
When I was a teenager, I learned about lots of different birth control methods, and had even decided which one I would probably want to use someday. But it didn’t put me in a hurry to go out and start having sex.
I did not grow up in white America where our little girls are sent away to camp for a week or nine months — until they get better.
Wow, is that what white America is like? (You know, they all look alike, too.) In the white America where I grew up, they were quietly sent off to have an abortion, because you know, having a baby might mess up one’s chances of either going to an Ivy League university or snagging a rich hubby.
It isn’t all about you, jstevenson. This isn’t about whether or not your father was a good guy. It’s about whether trying to prevent pregnancy by lying and frightening kids (or trying to) is smart, whether “hey, it worked” is the sole test of whether a lesson is valuable. *Who* made a statement that women use babies to trap you is not the issue here. The question is whether this is a good thing to tell kids and what effects it has later. I think the more appalling men’s-rights groups provide a pretty clear picture of the “women will trap you” attitude in grownups.
QGirl, what you’re missing here is that welfare used to have a “no man in the house” policy, where a woman who had a husband or boyfriend would have her benefits cut off, because of course a MAN was supposed to be the PROVIDER. The idea that the family might still need benefits (or that not every man had a great, family-supporting job) was not on the program. (And in the case of boyfriends, there was more than a little of the idea that you didn’t want them slutting around when they needed to be home chastely raising babies.)
Mythago: I get that part. My point is that jstevenson was painting a picture implying that teenage pregnancy for white or middle/upper class girls is simply another matter that “mommy” or “daddy” will take care of. Does it really matter where support is coming from? Shouldn’t the support be seen as beneficial, rather than a point of social scorn? And why is it that it is still OK to stigmatize teenage pregancy as jstevenson did [that white, middleclass girls just have a nasty little problem that mommy and daddy will cover up — and poor, inner city girls are just going to get pregnant to get the government bucks]?
Mythago and Q Grrl:
My comments were mainly based on a feeling of personal attack against my father, himself — saying he was a woman hating alarmist. So I took it a little personal.
I’m going to defend j here. The practice of sending white middle class girls away to “school” is going strong here in Texas. It’s primarily undertaken by parents who are so mortified that their daughter sullied their reputation by getting pregnant that merely sending her off to get an abortion isn’t punishment enough. That, or the word got out that she was pregnant and they know there will be “talk” if she got an abortion. This practice, j, is much more hurtful than abortion or even getting “trapped” would ever be–one girl I knew who was treated like this had her parents get into a legal fight with the father’s family who wanted to keep the baby while they wanted to give it up for adoption. Her family won. Her wishes? Beats me–after she got pregnant, we never saw her again. They moved away after the baby was born.
I also have to defend j about his dad. My dad fumbled the ball a lot on stuff like this, but I know that he meant well, too. He just wanted to help me avoid pain. The upsetting thing about these abstinence-only programs is if they were only supported by sex-phobic people, they wouldn’t have much support. But proponents sell these programs to parents who mean well but aren’t quite sure to talk to their kids about sex. The abstinence-only proponents tell anxious parents that they have the cure for all problems–tell your kids that sex will kill them and they will delay it until they are old enough to handle it. What they don’t tell the parents is that “old enough” doesn’t come for people who have bad information much of the time.
The practice of sending white middle class girls away to “school” is going strong here in Texas.
That’s far from “white America”, period.
And again, it isn’t whether j’s dad was good or evil. We’re debating the statement (at least, I hope not). I’m sure that many people who lie to their kids about abstinence also think they are doing right by their children.
True, but I can see where that practice could become iconic in people’s minds, especially considering the fact that there were all those novels in the mid-century about girls going away to pregnancy homes. It obscures the fact that most teenage girls who have children, regardless of race, keep their babies and many marry the fathers. Especially mid-century.
but I can see where that practice could become iconic in people’s minds
Sure. Doesn’t mean it’s a sacred icon and not to be contested. I wonder if it’s more tied to geography and class–certainly the idea of spending time being pregnant when you could be studying for the S.A.T.’s was a foreign one where I grew up.
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