Actually, some of us won’t bite even if you do ask.  Really not into it.

Picking on k-lo for her bizarre attitudes about sex is really too easy.  She’s a freak.  Even amongst her god squad compatriots, many of whom have some semblance of a decent sex life, k-lo is the queen of abstinence.  She has to be, right?  By her own rules she can’t do herself.  Ever wonder why she’s such a complete loon?  I think the answer is obvious.  She’s either torn up with created guilt over violating her own impossible standards or she’s actually living what she preaches (something I find highly unlikely).  Either way, she’s a wreck.  k-lo is probably one of the most pathetically transparent and wretched creatures the right has to offer.

“Squirreling away in her dildorium” is now officially my phrase of the week!

I’m STILL amazed that people get paid to write this kind of handwringing, sloppy, ill thought out trash but I imagine I’m going to lose that ability any day now.
It’s all the same kind of crap- I’m sure they all got one sheet of talking points back in 1989 or so and are still working off of it.

What could you possibly do to have a successful, happy life if it doesn’t involve going through a condom a day?
====

Bumpin’ uglies ONCE A DAY—the veriest height of Sexual Depravity. And, like, Lust.

Abstinence…without masturbation?  Are you fucking kidding me?

Silly Jesse… boys are still expected to masturbate, they own themselves and hey, boys will be boys right? The shocking thing (to these ignoramuses at least) is that a girl would turn down a party where she might meet her very own Mr. Right and is instead at home alone getting herself off. Girls are property and (to use an analogy I first heard here that’s spot on) your car doesn’t decide to go for a drive without you. It certainly doesn’t decide that it’s more fulfilling to go for a drive without a man in the driver’s seat.

I agree with Danica Lefse Queen.  Between “because hey look ocelots” and “dildorium,” I think we have no choice but to nominate Jesse for Wordsmith-in-Chief.

What do you even do if you’re abstinent and don’t masturbate?  Go watch videos of oil derricks way too intently?  Sit on top of the dryer and just “think”?

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse.  You just don’t understand the fundamentalist way of thinking.  Touching your naughty parts in a naughty way is EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS SATAN-STAINED PRE-MARITAL SEX!  They gave out fliers in my CCE class over this.  Every sperm is sacred and twaddling your twat causes you to have impure thoughts that lead you away from Christ Lord Jesus Your Savior Who Will Keep You In Heaven And Out Of Hell God Bless Him.

If you are having trouble controlling your urges, you need to consult the Bible and its various passages that offer proper anti-sex guidance.  Then give yourself a light mental flogging, followed by a heavy physical flogging, and remind yourself that the only way to achieve eternal happiness is to deny yourself all earthly pleasure.  Finally, if all else fails, report to your local priest or pastor.  After a healthy round of abusive molestation, they’ll give you the tools necessary to turn into a repressed pedophile or abusive maniac as the Lord intended.

Frankly, the fact that K-Lo seems stunned that people (gasp!) masturbate says all one really needs to know about her. Jeepers creepers, but I have long believed that our youth should be encouraged, nay, required to learn to masturbate. I can state with absolute certainty that if in ten years, my daughter is spending a given Friday night masturbating instead of going to a party, that there’s a lower chance she’ll be pregnant the following week.

More to the point, I love how K-Lo suggests that it’s impossible for a person to both masturbate and see a movie with friends in the same night. It’s not like it’s an eight-hour marathon event (well, usually), and many, many men and women have managed to both masturbate and do other things with human beings in the same night! Crazy, I know.

Bumpin’ uglies ONCE A DAY—the veriest height of Sexual Depravity. And, like, Lust.

Unless <href=“http://www.amazon.com/365-Nights-Intimacy-Charla-Muller/dp/0425222578/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218466660&sr=1-2”>you’re married</a>, in which case it’s the least you should be doing.

I really don’t mean to bash the book, since it’s all about how having sex every day improved their relationship, but K-Lo’s gotta make up her mind.  Is having sex every day so pervy that even married people should be prevented from doing it?  Or is everything and anything allowed once you’re married so you can go ahead and have an orgy at your house as long as everyone is safely wed?

How’d I mess up that link?

365 Nights

These guides on the internet on how to stop masturbating are often hilarious:

I’m so glad you’ve confessed this and accepted God’s grace. And I hope you will keep asking for God’s help in moving away from masturbation. It will probably take some time, so don’t give up. If you find yourself tempted, well, you are far from alone. It doesn’t mean you’re an awful person or God isn’t listening to you. It means you’re human and you need the self-control that only comes from God. Also, find an accountability partner or older mentor you trust. Be honest and let this person help you deal with this issue. Identify what tempts you and try to avoid those situations. Maybe it’s being online when no one is home. Maybe it’s watching R-rated movies. One girl once wrote in saying she realized she couldn’t watch guys play basketball with their shirts off—and so she stopped. That’s the right idea.

I really do hate these people.

It’s less that they’re going to have sex than that they by and large do have sex.

I’m reading this the day after my local paper carried a very sad story about a 14-year-old boy who was arrested for child abuse. His seven-week-old child has multiple skull fractures, brain hemorrhage, broken ribs and on the list goes. The family of the girl told the paper the two had a very sweet relationship. They met in middle school, and he would walk her home every day. They spent a lot of time with each other’s families. It was everything you would think a first relationship would be. They say they never say him be rough with the baby and he loved the baby and the mother (also 14 - meaning likely 13 when she got pregnant). They said he was a husky boy who may not have known his own strength. The photo the girl put on her My Space page shows two children - not teenagers even - children, the girl with a huge belly, the boy with his hand lovingly resting on that belly.

I’ll back some realistic sex ed (in, god forbid, elementary school even) any day over seven-week-old babies with multiple fractures and 14-year-old boys possibly facing time in the adult prison system. That probably seems terribly overdramatic. Even most teenagers that end up pregnant don’t end up this badly. But these people are the collateral damage in this cultural war, and it’s appalling that folks like K-Lo would rather sit on their high horse than do something that might make a difference.

Of course K-lo doesn’t want girls to know about safe sex practices, or even that Planned Parenthood exists. Of COURSE she wants to declare that abstinence should be without masturbation. Of COURSE they want to shame young girls who have sex by calling them slutmobiles. The whole point is that they want teenagers, particularly white teenagers, to get pregnant so that they will give up their bastard children to good christian folk. If you take anything out of the equation, the plan falls apart. If girls know about safe sex, they’re more likely to use condoms, which prevent pregnancy, which reduce the number of babies available to middle aged Christians. If they know about Planned Parenthood, they’ll know where they can go to get condoms, information on how to use them safely, and have responsible resources in case the condoms fail. If they know that masturbation is a perfectly safe way to remain abstinent, they won’t sit in a pressure cooker of hormones, fearing their horrible dirty ladyparts until they can’t control their urges any longer and make a stupid mistake they weren’t planning for (less likely to use protection). If you don’t shame the dirty teenage sluts, they might think they’re good enough to keep their child and not hand them over to the more deserving middle-aged Christians.

People like K-Lo creep me out. She shouldn’t be allowed near playgrounds, lest she snatch children away.

“Planned Parenthood treats young people like they’re capable of making reasoned, intelligent decisions about sex ” 
But the problem is that they are not capable of making reasonned, intelligent decisions about anything.  They’re kids.  The argument that they are is simply untrue.  They are not developmentally mature enough to understand the gravity of their actions or truly get the consequences.  It’s the same reason why God-scaring abstinence only doesn’t work either.  They’re not scared of God.  Judgement would be a long term consequence as well, and realistically they can’t see past today.  Both approaches, targetting information to young teens in a manner that one would deliver information to adults, is flawed from the get go.  There has to be some 3rd option that communicates developmentally appropriately so it will be effective.

She shouldn’t be allowed near playgrounds lest she SCARE children away.

“Dildorium Squirrels” goes in the “BAND NAMES” file.

Yanno, Dr. T, that “3rd option” used to be *gasp* parents.

However most people have given up on actually parenting their “pweshuses”- as anyone who works in retail or in a mall, movie theatre or restaurant will tell you.
Just like their parents gave up on parenting them and etc. ON and on it goes and nary a “please” or “thank you” in sight these days.

Dr. T. how is it that kids are made aware of other safety concerns, and are known to practice preventative measures without prompting? I’m thinking specifically of seatbelts here. I know absolutely no one who has been in a horrific accident where wearing a seatbelt is the only thing that saved their life. I know hundreds and hundreds of people who diligently put their seatbelts on every time they get in a car. Those people did not learn from personal experience that it was unsafe to drive without wearing a seatbelt, they were warned and followed the ‘best practices’ as given to them by their parents.

(side note: I think that the thread last week where people were talking about “doubling up” on contraception has echoes of this mentality. Kids are taught that it’s safer to wear a seatbelt than not, and can be quite militant about reminding anyone who forgets, even when you’re only going 10mph to the corner store, and a rational person can weigh the risks and realize they aren’t very great, and teh consequnces at 10mph aren’t very dangerous*. Kids are taught that ‘doubling up’ contraception is the safest method for preventing pregnancy and disease when you haven’t built a large amount of trust with someone and carry that idea into their grown-up lives too. Which I think shows that sex-ed is miles beyond abstinence only… at least for those kids who can follow reasonable rules and guidelines)

So ya, the question is in what other areas of health and safety do you feel the need to oversee children 24-7 because they are incapable of making a reasoned decision? Swimming? Climbing trees? Riding bikes? Talking to strangers? not drinking Draino?

*I had appendicitus when I was in grade 2 and, despite being in ridiculous amounts of pain, threw a fit when told to lay down on the back-seat of the car on our way to the hospital… not until they had extended the middle seatbelt to fit around me when I was laying down did I calm down.

Wikipedia says Lopez was probably born in 1976, and appears never to have been married. Since she’s clearly holding out for no less than matrimony, that makes her a 32-year-old virgin.

Which brings up two questions: (1) What on earth makes even she think she’s in any way qualified to advise on sex, or child-rearing? and:  (2) What’s with her?  She’s (a) a closet case, or (b) she’s hoping to meet someone who thinks keeping her legs crossed for Mr. Right at her age is charming rather than creepy, or (c) she’s the female version of those guys you see running the Catholic hierarchy who believe their abject inability to deal with sex in the slightest form is a sign of special grace. (There may be other possibilities, but note that these three are not mutually exclusive.)

She reminds me very much of Ann Coulter—another one doomed to die alone.

“If a 16-year-old is entirely incapable of making reasoned, intelligent decisions about any area of their lives, then we have failed miserably as a society”

Then prepare for failure my friend.  Child experts will tell you (here’s a link) that the brains of teens are not developed enough to correctly assess risk.
http://www.adtsea.iup.edu/adtsea/articles/Article.aspx?ArticleID=2273bb8c-b15f-46ff-87be-3b6e236f856b

They die in accidents more often because they 1. Don’t wear seatbelts, 2. Drive like they are immortal.  The same lack of judgement is apparent in sexual conduct.  They are not reckless because they are rebels, they are reckless because they can’t understand the consequences.  Messages aimed at sharing risk factors with a population unable to process them is a stupid way to try and prevent injury to that population - wherether the scare tactic is the fires of hell, an itchy pubic area, or death.  They can’t grasp it.  Pretending they can is just a sign of your ignorance.

I’d rather trust a 16 year old with their own body and feelings, than a multi-ton hunk of metal that could just as easily take out several other people, as well as themselves.

And shit like this makes me so, so glad that I have a mother who’s sane about sex. The number of times I’ve had to talk friends through thinking that they are sluts because they kissed on the third date, or (gasp!) liked second base, is not even funny.

The same lack of judgement is apparent in sexual conduct.  They are not reckless because they are rebels, they are reckless because they can’t understand the consequences.

So when you gave your children bicycles, you made sure to not give them helmets because, hey, they’re kids, and they think they’re immortal, so giving them the tools to make sure they don’t get injured is pointless, right?

Keeping information about contraception from kids and teenagers is about as practical as disabling the seat belts in your car before you let your child drive it in the hope that they’ll drive more carefully.  Giving kids information about contraception and disease prevention and encouraging them to use that information doesn’t mean that they’ll always be 100 percent protected from each and every thing that might hurt them, but it does mean that they will be protected from the worst consequences of their decisions. 

Otherwise, it’s like taking your kid’s bicycle helmet away when you see him/her riding with no hands—all you’re doing is making sure they get hurt even more badly than they would have if you’d provided them with the proper tools to reduce their risk of getting hurt.

(sorry if this shows up twice)

Danica Lefse Queen: I’m sure they all got one sheet of talking points back in 1989 or so and are still working off of it.

1969. They’ve been at it all my life.

Dr. T: There has to be some 3rd option that communicates developmentally appropriately so it will be effective.

The third option is to tell them the technical aspects of not getting what you not want, plus some scripts on how to deal with situations that you might not have the time to think through and not the experience to have learned through trial-and-error. Make the scripts and the technical information reality-based, functional and easily understood, and they’ll buy people the twenty or thirty years’ time it takes before age and (hopefully) wisdom overtake youth and enthusiasm. In other words, what PP seems to be doing.

Of course some won’t follow instructions. How many people who have taken a first aid course are actually capable of giving effective first aid? Doesn’t mean that no courses should be provided.

Molly: Wikipedia says Lopez was probably born in 1976, and appears never to have been married. Since she’s clearly holding out for no less than matrimony, that makes her a 32-year-old virgin.

She’s giving asexuals a bad name.

Dr T, in my experience, teenagers don’t have a concept of risk, except when it comes to pregnancy. They’ll drink and drive, they’ll have tractor chicken fights, they’ll get involved in tragic sledding accidents, they’ll engage in binge drinking, they’ll start smoking, whatever.

But if a teenager has an analog to “I could die,” it’s “I could get pregnant.” Fear of pregnancy is an overwhelming force for a teenager, because they know what that would entail: slut-shaming, parents flipping out, getting thrown out of school, not being able to go to college, and not being able to go out on a Saturday night. As far as the teenage girl’s mind is concerned, she could be ovulating at any time.

But they’ve still got these hormones going. And in the absence of real information, they’re going to look for folklore remedies so that they can have sex without taking a risk.  That’s why you hear stuff like “douche with bleach” or “first time’s a freebie” or “you can’t get pregnant if the girl’s on top” or “you can’t get pregnant if you have sex within 7 days after you period.”  None of these things involve going into stores and being embarrassed by buying condoms. None of these things involve getting your mom’s permission to go on the pill.

Good sex ed says: “Here are the ONLY ways to avoid pregnancy, here are the risks if you decide to do otherwise, and anything else is going to get you pregnant sooner or later,” and let the teenager figure it out for themselves. If we lie to teenagers, if we withhold information, then they won’t be able to make an informed decision about one of the biggest risks that they are able to comprehend at the time, or they’ll go looking for information that sounds easier.

Dr T.: Child experts will tell you (here’s a link) that the brains of teens are not developed enough to correctly assess risk.

Yet 14 to 21 yo have been expected at some time or other to be able to handle heavy machinery, to handle weapons, to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives, to marry, to learn a trade, to care for the sick, young, aged or infirm, to manage their own finances, not to break the law, and to behave like civilized human beings.

Time doesn’t wait for our species’ brains to finish their very slow development. The brain will just have to keep up as well as it can with the duties, possibilities and responsibilities getting thrown at it instead of waiting for some switch to gets magically switched to “mature and responsible” on some numerologically relevant birthday.

Amanda - This is the problem with taking a political stance on a medical/educaitonal topic.  All you can do it argue a position, not look for the best solution.  In your world there are 2 positions - abstinence only and free flowing condomization.  But the reality is that neither of these are very effective.  Approach 2 is more successful than approach 1 - but as a whole they are both doing a pretty crappy job overall.  And then you spend time arguing over poor being better than truly poor.  How about ideas that match the biology of the intended targets?  With sex education pretty widespread in schools the democratically controlled school districts of the inner cities of this country, why is the AIDS rate soaring in the black community?  Because telling kids things like this doesn’t work very well.  Why are we focussing on ineffctive methods - both rights and left wing supported - instead of pushing an agenda of teaching better suited to the group being taught.

K-Lo is just filled with envy because the only sex she’s ever had in her life were behind closed doors with her fingers…she focuses so much on sex because it’s such foreign territory to her…a world of delights that she’s never savored!

Who would want to go to bed with a face and body like hers?

Dr T, you are right that many teens are somewhat less capable of making informed decisions than many adults. But what should we do about it? Seems to me that getting teens good information early and often is the best way to deal with this problem. Get the message out repetedly in a catchy and easily understood way as PP has done in “Take Care Down There” seems like a good plan to me.

WTF, wagonjak?  that’s not cool.

With sex education pretty widespread in schools the democratically controlled school districts of the inner cities of this country, why is the AIDS rate soaring in the black community?

Because sex ed is not nearly as widespread in public schools as you seem to think.  It’s been under attack for two decades, and the comprehensive sex ed that I got from my public high school in the early 1980s is nowhere to be found in this country.

Also, if your argument is that 16-year-olds don’t have the mental capacity to rationally decide whether or not to have sex, you also think that 16-year-olds shouldn’t be tried as adults for murder, right?  After all, studies show that adolescents don’t think as rationally as adults, and it’s easy to get a false reading on sociopathy from a teenager, so children should no longer be tried as adults in the courts, right?

free flowing condomization

Your bias is showing.

One girl once wrote in saying she realized she couldn’t watch guys play basketball with their shirts off—and so she stopped. That’s the right idea.

Well, that is the right idea, IMO. I will strongly discourage my daughter from watching the basketball team do “shirts and skins” skrimmages.

Now the soccer team…well, that’s OK. But the swim team would be better…gymnastics teams are the best.

And yet, Dr. T, when those same teenagers are people of color who come from economically underdeveloped neighborhoods, and they get in trouble with the law for whatever reasons, they are tried as adults.  Seems they’re perfectly capable of having understood the consequences of driving recklessly or selling weed.

Paradox much, or just hypocrisy from the right?

Amanda? How to masturbate safely? Now I’m trying to think up unsafe ways to masturbate.

JPlum, there are plenty of unsafe ways, especially if you’re inclined to the use of accessories…

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve had a theory that some people have this terrible age-induced amnesia about how it is to actually be a teenager. My other theory is that they were just irresponsible asses as teenagers and assume everyone else is just like them as people are wont to do. My dad has this affliction, and so does Dr. T, apparently.

Being only 5 years removed from being 16, I can recall that I was pretty responsible and had an ability to reason and conceive of consequences for my actions, as well as assess the risks and benefits for things. I knew other people like me. There were other people that were not like me, but a lot of the most stupid stupidity that I saw as a kid came not from individuals’ inability to think, but from pressure coming from a group. I definitely also remember a lot of people telling me that I was not all of those aforementioned things and that if I thought I was, I was simply deluded, what with my tiny teenager-brain unable to reason and all. I still remember the frustration, and not in a “how silly I was” kinda way, but in a “those people were definitely mistaken and treated me unfairly” kinda way. So on behalf of my 16-year-old self and other teenagers: stop insulting their intelligence.

Certainly I’ve had a lot of mental and emotional development up to this point, and I’m sure I’ll have more throughout my life. It’s been a continuous process, and I didn’t have all of the reasoning capabilities that I do now when I was a teenager, as I imagine is true for aging young people in general. But teenagers still have a substantial amount of ability to understand consequences even if they don’t possess the same amount as adults. This is just a snark-free way of repeating what others said above: responsibility doesn’t magically appear when we’re adults.

In fact, I think my ability to understand the physical consequences of sex came way before my ability to emotionally handle sex. I definitely had a handle on condoms and birth control and STDs before I had a healthy way to emotionally approach sex and relate to my partners, because finding feminism is what finally gave me that ability (thanks feminism!). I think talking to kids about waiting until they’re ready will only be effective when it’s without any of the typical condescending “we know when you’re ready and you don’t actually know when you’re ready so don’t even try to say premarital sex isn’t traumatizing” bullshit that most abstinence educators give you. Especially if it’s accompanied by ways to discuss sex, like how to be assertive about your own desires and on the flipside, how not to pressure your own desires onto people, as well as how to relieve the sexual frustration yourself (masturbation!) or enjoy mutual pleasure without intercourse (outercourse! who else really hates that name???). How many “mistakes” do you think are made in terms of sexual health because the parties involved couldn’t communicate effectively? I bet this is more of the missing link between theory and practice than anything abstinence-pushers could come up with.

Dr. T, you’re treating “less good at assessing risk” as synonymous with “unable to assess risk.” Yes, teenagers don’t assess risks as well as adults do. That doesn’t mean that they can’t at all, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you don’t even attempt risk abatement (which is basically what sex education is—the point is to accurately describe the risks of sexual activity, and explaining how to abate those risks as much as possible).

As you say, teenagers aren’t on average as good at driving as adults, either. Thus, we do risk abatement—we force them to take lessons and try to drill in basic precautions (signaling, seatbelts, and defensive driving) to the point that they’re second nature.

Isn’t that roughly equivalent to comprehensive sex ed? If you drill in “condoms and spermicidal lubricant or jelly” over and over again, they again become second nature, the way seatbelts are to everyone under (say) 40.

We certainly don’t just say “driving is BAD BAD BAD EVIL BAD BAD awesome BAD BAD BAD EVIL!!!! Here are your keys.”

Heather Mae: My other theory is that they were just irresponsible asses as teenagers and assume everyone else is just like them as people are wont to do.

I can’t help but be slightly envious of the wild teenage years that many of the more, eh, cautionary posters on these topics seem to have had. I was a nerd at 16 and hung out with nerds, and our idea of a wild party was…, well, too lame to mention here.

The most dangerous situations I found myself in were created by adults in authority who didn’t trust a young teenager’s evaluation of a situation, and me being more willing to face physical danger than to make a row. So the old “you are mature when you do as you are told” line doesn’t impress me much.

inge—I’m going to cast charm person. You have to roll a save v. will to resist talking about what your nerdy teenage years’ wild parties were like.

Heh. As I recall, about the coolest things that happened during my teenage years were the times that a kitten acted as a nuclear exchange in a game of Axis & Allies by pouncing on the board.

Good times…

Oddly enough, though, I was grateful for my (very, very comprehensive) high school sex ed class when I got to college.

When I was 16 I was using dangerous power tools like table saws and radial-arm saws, completely unsupervised. I still have all my fingers, because my dad was responsible and showed me how to use those tools safely and responsibly.

If I could be trusted with a bandsaw I have to believe that other teens can be trusted with their genitals, provided that they’re appraised of the risks, physical (and legal. Let’s have some courses on not raping girls, while we’re at it.)

Now I’m trying to think up unsafe ways to masturbate.

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/10/09/falwell-colleague-dies-getting-his-autoerotic-rubber-kink-on/

Great post.  And I like “strumming the banjo” as a euphamism.

I can just see all the teenagers in the world going, ” I know there’s SOMETHING appealing about sex….but WHAT?”

It’s all so confusing.

This person is pretty hilarious but the fact that they are really serious kinda ruins it.

(Can I just say that after watching this video, it puts a whole different spin on the song, “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dina/Someone’s in the kitchen I kno-o-o-ow/Someone’s in the kitchen with Dina/Strummin’ on the ol’ banjo”)

And on the topic at hand:  yes, teens are immature, and some frequently take stupid risks.  So does that mean that we let them drive without driver’s ed and learner’s permits?  Does that mean we let them go hunting without taking gun safety classes?  Give me a break.  Hammer the message early and often about how to have safe sex and consensual sex, and teens will absorb it.  They might not act on it every time, but that’s certainly better than a girl who thinks that douching with Mountain Dew right after will prevent pregnancy.

STFU.  Not everyone has an idyllic childhood; some of us experienced close family members’ deaths starting at early ages and knew damn good and well what death was and how permanent it was by age 16.

Yes. Thank you. And in case some of us thought it was limited to people over 30, some of us had a classmate die each of the four years we were in high school. So fuck off with your patronizing crap.

And yes, we had decently comprehensive sex ed, and all of us understood “this works in preventing pregnancy/STDs and this doesn’t” perfectly well.  I remember all of five pregnancies in my four years, and two of those were late in the year to seniors who were engaged and not planning to go to college.  Anecdata and all, but still, teens aren’t total morons.

Count me as another person who was not so much dumber as a teenager than I am now (at a ripe old married 24).  In fact I STILL feel that anger rising when people talk about teenagers like they don’t know their ass from their elbow or that they could die get pregnant based on certain decisions.  Used to make me freaking blow my top.

Teenagers that act totally reckless are a minority and there were more factors at play than just biological development.  Most of us were pretty level-headed.

And furthermore, I think that talking down to teenagers like they are incapabe of making good decisions is a pretty blank permission slip for bad behavior.  Part of my responsibility as a youth was probably because that is what my parents expected.

Well I live in Britain where comprehensive sex education seems to be failing rather badly.  Now honestly, I’m not coming from any partisan position here it just happen to be true. The fact is there has been no impartial research into the effects of sex education on those who receive it. Its supporters claim that it prevents disease and unwanted pregnancy. Yet there is no evidence for it and the more sex-ed there is, the more of these things we seem to have.

If it is doing harm, then it is time it was stopped. If things would be even worse without it, then every logical person should stop opposing it. One or the other. So we need to know.

And it seems to me that at those supporting comprehensive sex education are determined to abolish another form of sexual education supported by the other half of the country and vice versa, even though neither method appears to be doing much to lessen the problem of under-age sex, pregnancy and disease which remains very high both in the US, Britain and all the countries of Northern Europe . I’ve always thought that the great thing about America is that individual states have autonomy over public affairs and can act as an incubator for new diretions in social policy. If you think that the sex-education program is too liberal or too conservative for your children then why don’t you move to a more liberal/more conservative state if it means that much. People in Britain don’t really have that luxury.

Both camps seem very intolerant, thinking that they have all the solutions, when actually the problem will never be solved to a satisfactory extent because we do live in a hyper-sexualised age. The comp-ed people seem to believe in a consequentialist approach (which may be more sensible in the short term) while the abstinence people seem to be trying for a change in culture (which may indeed be neccessary in the long term) But I suspect that behind a lot of this argument is an attempt to silence those who disagree with one’s own moral conscience.

Colin,

I am from the UK too and I think yours was the most thoughful post on this thread. Why is it always up to us to rescue the argument?

Just one very telling quote:

“Until i met my fiance at 25 and became monogmamous i was a ginormous slut. seriously. it was a fantastic time.”

And this is what it comes down to really. Come on let’s be frank: The supporters of comprehensive sexual education are mainly the slappers and the cads who don’t like to be made to feel guilty about their lose morals. And unless your a christian and you object to pre-marital relations on religious grounds, the proponents of abstinence-based education are those who privately feel as though they ought to have indulged in more youthful indiscretions and would now like to stop others from doing so even if it means they are more exposed to the risks etc ., I personally don’t think sex-education should be a political issue and I don’t think it should be taught in any form in schools. We have reproduced ourselves without much fuss for centuries without sex-education while teenage promiscuity and pregnancy has only become an issue over the last 50 years. The problem is one for parents and families; not for a left or right wing state to impose one form of moral ethics on everybody.

while teenage promiscuity and pregnancy has only become an issue over the last 50 years

Wow…that’s….I mean, that shows SO much ignorance of hsitory, of anthropology, of…anything except your back porch I don’t even know where to begin.

Teenage pregnenancy has been an issue forever. Usually the result was either a marriage (shotgun or not), or the girl’s disgrace and abandonment. Or an abortion, performed using herbal remedies, physical trauma, or numerous other solutions that women have been using since time immemorial. Perhaps an honor-killing, in places where such are comming. Perhaps just a murder by the impregnator or his family, who didn’t want the problems a pregnant girl presented.  And, of course, becoming single mothers, despised, poor, and alone, for daring to be “sluts.”

It’s been “a problem in the past 50 years” only in that we’re slowly (sorta, maybe) moving beyond the “it’s the slut’s fault, let her suffer to it,” to a more nuanced understanding that promoting the wellbeing of all is better for the common weal, and thinking of comprehensive social policies to bring that about.

Mighty Ponygirl, as a high-level mentalism semi-spell user I have saving throws like whoa. But I’m open to persuasion, bribery, flattery and trade.

Colin, Booty,

For people who claim that sex ed shouldn’t be a political issue, you sure manage to sound indistinguishable from most right-wing moral scolds.

The supporters of comprehensive sexual education are mainly the slappers and the cads who don’t like to be made to feel guilty about their lose morals.

This is so stupid on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start. You’ve basically just called anyone who had sex as a teenager (or, presumably without marriage) a slut. You also seem to think that educating teens about sex will make them immediately set off on lives that would make Anais Nin blush. Not to mention whatever twisted logic it requires to think that wanting to teach kids how to have sex safely and responsibly somehow has fuck-all to do with “guilt” about our own sexual lives. Because there’s no better way properly express your contempt for women than by taking the necessary precautions to keep from passing on diseases or getting her pregnant? WTF?

We have reproduced ourselves without much fuss for centuries without sex-education

You think the purpose of sex-ed is o teach people how to get pregnant?

The fact is there has been no impartial research into the effects of sex education on those who receive it.

O RLY?

But a little bit of intelligence goes a long way towards upsetting the applecart…

Why next thing you know, uppity women will demand the right to vote, wear pants, have safe birth control, work out of the home, have ORGASMS and demand that men treat them nice…

The crowd that opposes education in all forms chooses ignorance for themselves. There is no one more ignorant than the person that chooses to be ignorant…

luzzleanne, more anecdata: Comprehensive sex education; age where no one not involved did not raise an eyebrow about a girl being on the pill and having sex, fifteen; number of teenage pregnancies seen in my last four years in school (with about 60 girls per year), two; age of the girls, nineteen and twenty, one planning marriage and quitting school after grade 12, the other having done her finals before the birth.

But then, both the area and the school were striclty middle-class, (working class didn’t go to that school, upper class didn’t live in that district) with everyone finishing it having prospects as good as anyone could in the 80s, and most of the less ambitous, studious or well-organized kids had quit or switched to other schools after 10th grade. So there probably wasn’t a single girl in that school who felt that motherhood was the best she could aspire for.

Bootyboomboom: The supporters of comprehensive sexual education are mainly the slappers and the cads who don’t like to be made to feel guilty about their lose morals.

OMFG, now I have to imagine all of our small town dignitaries from the school board to the parson and the mayor as slappers and cads of lose morals. Dressed up in full regency splendour. I’ll give you that a lot of them had lose morals when it came to small-town cronyism, but they weren’t exactly supporting ethics classes in school.

We have reproduced ourselves without much fuss for centuries without sex-education while teenage promiscuity and pregnancy has only become an issue over the last 50 years.

Yeah, sure. (giggles.) Read some period drama when you feel up to it.

I think the reaon there are so many British on this site is becuase “Liberal conspiracy” has provided a link to this page.

Tefnut,

What you call a more “nuanced understanding” is actually just a ‘causalist’ view of society. Causalists are consequentialists and utilitarians but of a specific kind. They are not concerned with the promotion of happiness or pleasure but the minimizing of pain and harm. They are also only concerned with the short-term and with the immediate effects of legislation in removing individuals from the threat of harm and not with the long-term or indirect consequences.

This contrasts with a ‘moralist’ view of your opponents which assumes that individuals are autonomous agents responsible for their own behaviour, that the innocent ought to be protected, the virtuous rewarded and the guilty punished.

You are perfectly entitled to your own view and I sympathise them but as an anthropologist myself I cannot recgnise your claims to have a more ‘nuanced’ understanding because the causalist view has not be altogether successful. When the moralist view of society was dominant in Britain (from about the 1850s to the mid 1950s)  It was a time in which homosexuals were persecuted but it was also time of a low and declining incidence of crime and illegitimacy and falling drug and alcohol abuse.

We have to appriciate the losses and gains that society has made. We cannot not seek to hide them or ignore them. The return of fatherlessness, of drug abuse and public drunkeness in Britain (problems that had all but dissapeared in Britain by 1925) shows that a society that permits its members to damage one another in any of these ways can actually cause far more harm than a ‘respectable’ and judgemental society that represses these forms of deviance through forms of informal social dissaproval that might sometimes include stigma and social exclusion. So I would be cautious before claiming that your side holds all the truths because the evidence contradicts it in many ways.

Just for the record: I am a product of and supporter of comprehensive sex ed.  I didn’t start having sex until well into college and I am now married to the person I became sexually active with.

It is not so much that I have guilt over my past life (why would I?) that causes my support of sex ed, but the general philosophy of compassion that I don’t want to see those “slappers and cads” suffer unnecessarily just because they chose a different path than I did.  They should have all the information about protecting themselves. 

And let me also offer myself as exhibit A that just ‘cause someone knows what a condom is, that does not automatically turn them into a total slutmobile (not that there is anything wrong with that!).  I knew where to get and how to use contraception from age 13 (or before, i don’t really remember) and yet I didn’t actually choose to use it for several more years.  Imagine!

Jaleks: This contrasts with a ‘moralist’ view of your opponents which assumes that individuals are autonomous agents responsible for their own behaviour, that the innocent ought to be protected, the virtuous rewarded and the guilty punished.

Read the original post. It’s about giving information vs. withholding information. Your moralistic pov comes down on the side of withholding information, while in the same breath you wax poetic about the responsible autonomous individual.

I have to admit that the term “slutmobile” is not of my own invention.  I am pretty sure I read it on a comment thread somewhere a couple of days ago.  Sorry I can’t properly credit the source!