I find it telling that they rely on sanitized versions of fairy tales. I don't see them looking at Basile's version of Rapunzel, in which the girl flirts with the prince and then rescues him and herself from the witch, or the first version that the Grimms published, in which the witch knew that Rapunzel had been seeing the prince because Rapunzel was pregnant. I don't see them looking at Basile's version of Cinderella, either, which is the earliest recorded European version, and in which Cinderella murders her first stepmother.

Folk- and fairy tales tend to be a lot bawdier than these folks would ever be comfortable with.

I think we just need to change the language people use to talk about virginity. If it's such a bad thing to "lose" one's virginity, why not make the language reflect the negativity, such as "I botched my virginity," or "damnit! I fucked up my virginity! AGAIN!"

For those of us who see no negativity in it, we might say "I kicked my virginity right in the balls."

Ew. This ad makes me want to vomit. This says to girls, "...you can be just like Cinderella! You can be happy, and pretty, and all of the dreams we decided you have will come true!" But what the girls miss is that Cinderella grew up subjugated by her evil stepmother and the out-of-touch aristocratic society she lived in. So, in the end, she gets rescued by a handsome prince with a little help from her fairy godmother and some mice. The part of the story you don't hear is how Cinderella left her abusive home just to go clean somebody else's dirty laundry. What a miracle! Thank God for those magical mice.

Its true that most fairy tales have way more sex in them than the Disney versions. I don't think I have ever heard of Cinderella having sex, so I will give them that.

Oh, its still a stupid campaign. But I think this one fact may be the first true one.

This is both hilarious and really gross. I'm not sure whether to laugh or take a shower.

That's a whole new spin on Cinderella I'd never thought of. . . I love wacked-out abstinence-only ideology! So Cindy leaves behind her slipper/vagina image/virginity, the Prince 'finds' it (shoe fetish anyone?), tries it out on her step-sisters (polygamy? or semi-incestuous lesbianism?), then matches it to the real girl (is she still a virgin after all this action?) and makes her his wealthy, privileged wife.

So the moral of the story is to let a rich man get lucky to entice him into marrying you?

I'm totally getting one of these bookmarks.

Don't forget the part where the stepsisters cut off pieces of their feet to make the shoe fit! There's a message in there we could spin about beauty expectations.

Translation: You silly little wannabe whore, aren't you at least better than a cartoon character?

Another reason I am head over fucking heels for The Onion: they had a headline the other day about how congress ordered a report on abstinence only sex ed and it came back saying it was ineffective. They had fake people weighing in on it, one of whom said:

"I find it astonishing that our public schools were unable to beat out the most basic human instinct that perpetuates our species."

Another fake "American Voice" responded to the report by saying (dark humor alert):

"That's it. From now on my kids will learn about sex the way I did–from a grabby uncle."

I think the latter point (however irreverently presented in The Onion) is often under-talked about, all kidding aside.

In all seriousness, that latter point is poignantly addressed in a couple fairy tales that, surprise, Disney wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, "Donkeyskin," and its variants, and "The Armless Maiden."

Maybe they're saying that the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex ed is a big ol' fairy tale.

As to that latter point, when sexual "purity" is a virtue, women and girls who are victims of rape and incest are made victims all over again by the shame put on them by the society that associates any sexual experience, even forced, as a taint on the so-called purity women are expected to attain. And that also leads to silence around the issues of rape and incest.

It's a culture of sexual freedom that will be part of reducing sexual violence.

Did anyone look at some of the other bookmarks on that page? I particularly liked the one called "My Man": "My man will respect me as much as I respect myself... He will be strong enough to wait... He will love me for life... and he will remain abstinent knowing that the best is worth waiting for". Riiiight. Because how can you possibly respect yourself if you've had sex? Dirty slut. Is it wrong that I get a little giddy reading this shit because I just couldn't make up how funny it is?

I also find it interesting how abstinence-only ads, like Disney movies, target whites, or ignore other races. The white viriginity is, of course, the one that God cares about, not all those minority, pagan-like virginities running around.

I also find it interesting how abstinence-only ads, like Disney movies, target whites, or ignore other races. The white viriginity is, of course, the one that God cares about, not all those minority, pagan-like virginities running around.

Gotta keep the race pure, Tara, puuuuuuuuuuure.

Though I have seen some billboards with latino and black women on them.

They have to resort to fairy tales because they know what they're doing is a lie. They have to use fairy tales in order to appeal to the young kids 'cause lord knows it's hard to appeal to teens, especially when you're trying to be "hip" because one they see you using their language and culture said language and culture ceases to be "hip".

And also because they like to believe that if they clap their hands long and hard enough, people will stop having sex.

"C'mon everybody! If you want to save your (women's) soul (s) from damnation, clap! C'mon, please clap? CLAP GODDAMN YOU!"

Really, the use of fairy tales is just a way of infatalizing adult and adolescent women. They're kids stories, and in the contemporary Disney versions, kids movies. And yet, we see countless adults watching and loving these films and shopping at the Disney store buying merchandise with pictures of the helpless, repressed princesses on them. Disney has begun marketing to adults in this way and it's obviously working. But again, it's all about perpetuating myths of "proper" femininity, which is exactly what abstinence only messages are about-- proper femininity thourgh purity and innocence. And what better way to infantalize women and keep them innocent and pure than through children's movies?

Now I'm all riled up. I'm going to have to blog about this when I get out of work.

my favorite cinderella folk tale is the one where she finds a well and goes down it to find some kind of troll family, and since shes really nice, the mother says to put her fingers in the cracks of the well and look up and when she does diamond rings form on her fingers and something nice but kind of weird falls from the sky...like the ability to cough up jewels and roses...then the sisters make her tell them where she got it and she does but of course there assholes to the family and the mother tells them the same thing, but when they do it worms wrap around there fingers and when they look up a blood sausage falls on there lips that they have to eat off...anyone heard that one? that and the sleeping beauty story where they make the witch dance on hot coals in iron shoes till she dies...man im glad i was brought up on the older tales and not that disney crap!

Red hot iron shoes is the Grimms' Snow White. I love those older versions too!

ah it was snow white! thanks eg, my memory of random childhood fairy tales is a bit shaky haha

Cinderella was inspired by a Chinese story. We all know what horrible things Chinese women had done to them to make their feet small and satisfy mens strange foot sexual fetishes. So, the oppressive analogy is appropriate to those Crispy Christians.

Did anyone else notice that the "r" at the end of the word "slipper" is a different font?

So, without the "r" the line reads, "...lost her slippe" as in she lost her slip. Hmmm...

I think these abstinence-only bookmark folks need a little action. I mean, look at their Freudian Slip...

HA!

Okay, no more bad puns.

Um . . . all I have to say is that that's about the most superficial understanding of a fairy tale I've seen in a really long time. Clearly, this is not someone who has thought very hard about why fairy tales were originally stories for grown ups.

sex before marriage = unconditionally bad.

entering into a life-long marriage with a near-stranger just b/c he seems charming and is powerful and rich = good.

I feel SO ENLIGHTENED

I really don't understand what this means. Seriously. All Cinderella lost was a slipper but you'll be losing....

What is the end of that sentence? You'll be losing the Prince? The fancy dress that turns back into rags? The coach? Is "virginity" supposed to be *all* of that?

Besides, the metaphor doesn't hold because, even sticking to the most basic version, the prince brings the slipper back. So, hey, girls, don't worry, if you lose your "slipper/virginity" the right guy can always make up for it/find it/restore it! Huh? If "secondary virginity" exists what the heck is the big deal about "primary virginity" anyway?

(I suggest Roald Dahl's version in Revolting Rhymes.)

This reminds me of Waxman's report on the content of abstinence-only materials. Page 17, Section 3.E.2.:

"One book in the "Choosing the Best" series presents a story about a knight who saves a princess from a dragon. The next time the dragon arrives, the princess advises the knight to kill the dragon with a noose, and the following time with poison, both of which work but leave the knight feeling "ashamed." The knight eventually decides to marry a village maiden, but did so "only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses or poison." The curriculum concludes: Moral of the story: 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."

Here's the link to the .pdf for the whole report:

http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20041201102153-50247.pdf

Isn't that precious?

Barbara_K

I'm going to take that to mean that a woman, no matter her status in life, can be smarter/better than her husband which, if she is she better keep her mouth shut or else she'll insult his manhood. Men have to have SOMETHING to do in heterosexual relatioships after all, or else there would be no need for them. [/sarcasm]

This goes double for the bedroom, where, as a "virgin" you are to be ignorant of your sexuality so that your husband can jackhammer away and you won't know the damned difference.

All I can say is thank god the princess didn't just kill the damn dragon herself. She OBVIOUSLY knew HOW, I suspect she was throwing him a bone to make him feel like he was doing something. Had she done it herself poor boy might have had to commit suicide.

I HATE all the princess marketing that is going on now. I drove me nuts when girls at my undergrad would be all like "I love Disney Princesses." Even as a kid my least favorite disney movies were Cindarella, sleeping Beauty and Snow White. When I hear girls say they want to find a man who will "treat me like a princess" I think, oh so you want someone who will make all your decisions for you, keep you locked up in a castle and make you entire life's meaning to be how pretty you are and how good you make HIM look. Princess is just another name for trophey wife....

PS: Abstinence only education is fucking moronic....Just trying to stay on topic :)

yep natmusk, I agree. My favorite Disney women growing up were actually Esmeralda and Mulan, for pretty much the inverse of the characteristics you mention above

I bet at least Esmeralda was pretty in-tune with her own sexuality, too. I bet she wasn't even a virgin, sinful gypsies... (I'm part gypsie)

PS: Abstinence only education is fucking moronic....Just trying to stay on topic :)

hey man -I think it /is on topic/. Disney cartoons are also part of the larger culture and the message many people want to send to our young girls

Ah yes, thanks Barbara_K. I hadn't read that in a while - it's unfathomable that this shit is actually part of a current educational program. The sections right around that part are also pretty crazy too (i.e. advising teachers to tell girls that a 'bride price' is an honour to them because it means they are valuable to their future husband). I mean really.

Did anyone notice on the other bookmarks that for men it's about strength and for women it's about being worth something. I mean, the stereotypes are overwhelming.

Cinderella was my absolute favorite growing up, and I pretty much blame that movie for the unreal expectations I grew to have about love and dating.

Only now, through a feminist lens, I can see the real messages they're sending to young girls.

Take the Little Mermaid, for example. She leaves her family, all her friends...her species, for christ's sake, just to be with her prince.

I could go on forever. But now, those horribly patriarchal messages transferring to ab-only brainwashing...ugh.

Culture Warrior,

Try growing up in the Disney time when the closet thing they could get to having a story for black people was the Lion King. And Simba's voice was a white guy. :P

Oh but they're going to have a black princess NOW and while I would love to I can't rip them a new one more than Larry Wilmore did on the Daily Show a while back, if you can find that clip it's SO worth watching:)

Culture, that tongue is meant for Disney, not you:)

I only read as far as Barbara's post before my head exploded.

The REAL moral of the story is to show that you have a brain BEFORE you're married, so that if the bastard has some kind of problem with it, you'll be rid of him in short order with no bawling brats to get stuck with.

Yah, I'm pissed.

I read a really good article once about Disney's marketing of "pop feminism" with their more recent "heroines." But I really liked the part about how many of the heroine's families feature a strong relationship with the father, but a dead mother (or a mother who's a non-entity, such as in Mulan, or a wicked step-mother, which, granted, is a common theme in folk tales). The point is, what kind of trend is that for a company that claims to be trading in family values? Also, Jack Zipes is a really good read if you want to get really mad about what Disney has done to traditional literature. He's got several collections of essays on it.

Culture
I could not agree with you more. That's why I'm anti all these new chick flicks and pop books like "He's just not that into you" drive me nuts. It cultivates an incredible unrealistic expectation of what relationships are like. It encourages impulsive decisions in women and paints relationships as one dimensional.
I have a friend who has no concept about relationships cause she buys into all this crap. She freaks out if she has a fight with her boyfriend and is constantly measuring how he shows his love for her based on what she sees in TV or in other people's relationships.
Our society has developed into one where both men and women do not feel like they need to work at relationships and that if someone does not accept you for who you are it's ridiculous but they must live up to all of YOUR expectations..
ugh..this is a topic I could rant about forever

By the way, has anyone checked out the link to all the other lovely products you can buy? Take a look :). The teenagers I knew growing up would not have been sold on the idea . . . they're trying WAY too hard to be cool.

If "secondary virginity" exists what the heck is the big deal about "primary virginity" anyway?
Hahahahahaha.

Secondary Virginity: Because I'm worth it.

You can find it on the shelves in the pink bottles next to the Loreal skincare products. ;)

"sex before marriage = unconditionally bad.

entering into a life-long marriage with a near-stranger just b/c he seems charming and is powerful and rich = good.

I feel SO ENLIGHTENED"
Fucking AWESOME, thank you!

"Take the Little Mermaid, for example. She leaves her family, all her friends...her species, for christ's sake, just to be with her prince."
Thank you! I just can't ignore shit like that any more *sigh*

This one is my favourite. If you have sex with n people, you're exposed to (2^n)-1 people's diseases. Beautifully bad maths! You see, as you get more slutty, all your previous partners magically get more slutty too, using time machines.

If it went up to fifty, you'd get a thousand trillion people's diseases! And you don't want that!

Those "glass" slippers were originally made of fur, but a mistranslation of the original French "changed" the material.

Supports Human Bean's suggestion that slipper=vagina.

Thanks for posting a link to the report on Government abstinence-only programs, Barbara-K. This one makes me cringe also:

"Just as a woman needs to feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a
primary need to feel a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard
him with wonder, delight, and approval. A man feels admired when his
unique characteristics and talents happily amaze her."

I wonder what a relatively non-sexist abstinence-only curriculum would look like? It still wouldn't win my support, but I'd be curious to see it nonetheless

If it went up to fifty, you'd get a thousand trillion people's diseases!

One of the abstinence-only ideas is that having sex with someone who has been sexually active with other people is exactly the same as if you had sex with all those people yourself. They're scaring people about STDs, of course, but I think it's also a really weird message about personal boundaries. Like, the relationship you have with the person suddenly becomes this public site, in which anyone you or the other person has ever been intimate with, is involved.

I wonder what a relatively non-sexist abstinence-only curriculum would look like?

Ditto. My sense is that it really only makes sense in a sexist framework. Abstinence is taught in most curriculums as generally the best option for teens, but abstinence only is a whole different paradigm.

"One of the abstinence-only ideas is that having sex with someone who has been sexually active with other people is exactly the same as if you had sex with all those people yourself. "

MissPrism's point was that their use of math is a bit bogus. The bookmark has the #s going up exponentially. So like, for instance, if you've had sex with 2 people, the bookmark assumes your partner and each of the people they've had sex with has had sex with 2 people. If you've had sex with 8 people, the bookmark then assumes that each of those numbers becomes 8.

I wish Angela Carter were still alive.

I think it's great they chose Cinderella for this particular message.

I believe that in the original folktale, before it evolved into the story we know now, didn't involve "glass slippers" of any kind. At the end of the ball, when the prince couldn't find Cinderella, he went round the women of the town "trying on their fur slippers". There's a theory that this story developed into the whole "glass slipper" thing when it travelled from France to Britain, since the word for glass in french was "furre" or something (a current translation is "verre").

I can't be certain about this theory since I read it somewhere ages ago and probably don't have all the details right, but still - a prince who goes around having sex/raping every young woman in a town to find the one he likes using best.

Awesome message for the kids there.

Nah. The fur slipper concept is a theory that was disproven. It's not true.

MissPrism's point was that their use of math is a bit bogus.

Yeah, I get that the math is wrong as well (though I'll let her figure out why, since maths isn't my strong point) . . . I was just saying that, in addition to that, there's this added layer of philosophy about what it means to have sex with someone who's had sex with other people. It's not just the diseases you're exposed to, it's having all the ghosts of those other people right there in the room with you. Creepy.

oh yeah definitely

an interesting thing about this is that the whole purpose of fairytales were to teach children what to be and what NOT to be... and the only fairytales remembered are the ones about 'the beautiful girl' who becomes a princess. The stories are about transcendence (so i see how these abstinence only people would see these fit as a way to engage young girls) since at first the girl is under care of her father or mother or some family member which symbolizes childhood dependency on parents, then she is put in a situation that she DOES NOT help herself in but WAITS through the battle, which would be adolescence, then she is whisked away by a prince captivated by her beauty and then she is under a different dependency, toward her Prince Charming. In abstinence only balls... that's what it's like, it's Daddy's vagina until you're married off,then it's your husband's vagina. Also, these girls that are put in abstience balls are kinda aganist their will, or put there helplessly by their parents. That's what the girls in fairytales are...they are put somewhere they don't want to be, and wait to be saved. What stopped Cinderella from walking out on her bitch of a stepmother? NOTHING. Also, what's interesting about using fairytales for this is that some fairytales, even REALLY recognisable ones really deal with sex. In Sleeping Beauty, the story, Sleeping Beauty MOTHERS children WHILE she's a sleep. I guess the Prince couldn't wait till she woke up to fuck her. That's a whole other discussion completely though.

Oh for goodness sakes - they have tattoos! I love that the pink and white "Worth waiting for" tatt is in the same font as "Juicy" typically written in on the bums of those horrible pants.

Do you apply them right above the pubic hair?

I was very impressed that in my son's second grade class they read The Paper Bag Princess and did a whole set of activities with it.

We also need more showings of the Free to be You and Me story of Princess Atalanta. Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda!

Magnus - You're totally right, I never saw that before. But wasn't Mufasa voiced by James Earl Jones? Doesn't Disney get some credit there? Hah.

natmusk - If you haven't already, you should check out the latest issue of Bust magazine. There's an awesome article about a tiny village in China inhabited by the Mosuo people, a society basically run by women who are taught from childhood that their independence is the most important thing.

Pineapplicious - In a 1636 Italian edition of Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes her while she is asleep, and she gives birth to twins, which is what wakes her up. The moral of the story is, "Good things happen to lucky people, even when they're sleeping."

Re. Cinderella's slippers, there was a confusion between "vair" (which is the fur of a kind of squirrel) and "verre" (glass), because both words have the exact same pronounciation in French.

Speaking of Mulan, did anyone else think Maxine Hong Kingston's and William F. Wu's versions of the story were better than Disney's? Theirs didn't change the poem's ending. :)

Cara: I disagree that an interest in fairy tales or kids' movies is buying into infantilism. A hallmark of good children's entertainment is that adults can enjoy it too. Though it's already been noted by a few posters here that most fairy tales were written at a time when there was no separation between child and adult entertainment.

CultureWarrior: "The Little Mermaid" (the original, not the Disney one) can be read as a cautionary tale: if you sacrifice everything for a man, you will gain little but grief.

Mind you, though the Hans Christian Anderson tales have been adopted into the canon of fairy tales, they aren't traditional stories. In many actual folktales, the heroine is more than just a passive prize; she's able to use magic and sometimes trickery to help herself. Even H.C.A. had his brave heroines -- I think Gerda from "The Snow Queen" deserves more attention.

"Take the Little Mermaid, for example. She leaves her family, all her friends...her species, for christ's sake, just to be with her prince."

Not to mention her fucking *voice.* Although, that might put it back into the "cautionary tale" bin, if it weren't for the sweetly-approving and somewhat inexplicable happy ending. But what always sort of bugged me is that she was enamored with the idea of being human far before she ever met her prince, and so it always seemed to me like maybe she was sort of using him as a vehicle, or like somehow it wasn't legitimate for her to go about changing her situation (i.e. become a human) until she had some kind of male caretaker...

"Not to mention her fucking *voice.* Although, that might put it back into the "cautionary tale" bin, if it weren't for the sweetly-approving and somewhat inexplicable happy ending."

Didn't she die in the original?

Meanwhile, the Disney version had a Nintendo sequel.

http://www.gamespot.com/nes/action/littlemermaidthe/player_review.html?id=302688

"...Ariel, concerned with the fate of her people, quickly embraces Eric then jumps into the ocean, immediately turning back into a mermaid, and begins the long perilous journey to Ursula's castle to confront the big baddie of the seas face to face...

"...The Little Mermaid is essentially an underwater side scrolling action game. The fact that it takes place underwater allows for a wonderful amount of freedom when it comes to movement, and the controls are surprisingly smooth. Ariel attacks her enemies by forming bubbles around them, which she can then pick up and throw at other enemies, killing them both, or toss into various nooks in the walls, ceilings, and floors for powerups. Shells can also be used to attack enemies or open up treasure chests that contain orbs, which make her bubbles stronger or give them more distance, depending on the color of the orb. At the start of the game, Ariel is very weak, but she quickly becomes very strong and quite a formidable opponent to Ursula's evil minions by collecting the above mentioned orbs..."

Didn't she die in the original?

Yes. In the original Andersen tale, written in 1836, the prince marries a real girl. The mermaid is told by her mermaid sisters to murder the prince, and use his blood to heal her feet. She can't do it and so, on his wedding day, turns to sea foam.

And even more obnoxious, in my opinion, is that she's told that after 3000 years, she can get a soul and go to heaven, but only if enough small children are good and well behaved, so the whole thing turns into a piece of parental propaganday about how you obey your parents or you make the Little Mermaid cry. Insipid.

Soooo, reverse of the birth of Venus? Wasn't the goddess of love born of sea foam and the blood from her father's castration?

It wouldn't suprise me if that wasn't what Andersen was getting at, somewhere along the line.

"Yes. In the original Andersen tale, written in 1836, the prince marries a real girl. The mermaid is told by her mermaid sisters to murder the prince, and use his blood to heal her feet. She can't do it and so, on his wedding day, turns to sea foam."

omg YES! damn, this thread made me remember all these books i had when i was a kid. i should really find them, those books were great.

See, if I were to write an abstinence-message fairy tale, I'd use a variant of "The Goose Girl". Some changes would have to be made, though... like, her mother gives her a crucifix instead of a bloodied handkerchief, and she fends off the goose boy's advances with prayer instead of magic. Also, the prince couldn't be married to the treacherous maid, rather engaged, and suspicious because she keeps trying to tempt him into bed before the ceremony. I'd probably have to remove the dead talking horse and replace him with something...

Hmm. It's a good thing I'm not part of the abstinence brigade, because I could probably make this convincing.

ShifterCat, maybe you'll still disagree with me, but I just wanted to clarify that I referring to the dumbed-down Disney version of fairy tales, not the original Grimm's Fairy tales (etc) versions, many of which are complex, entertaining stories.

Funny, I was just talking about hymens today when I came across this post. In addition to the abstinence-only educational issue, I'm continuously amazed by the responsibility placed on girls to enforce abstinence in the first place. As if girls are the ones who are encouraged to be freakishly obsessed with sex 24 hours a day. Seems like abstinence is an issue for boys (and the men who encourage them) to me.

Since when was Cinderella a good role model. She did all the cooking and cleaning and got treated like sh!t for it...

"Seems like abstinence is an issue for boys (and the men who encourage them) to me."

Except you're forgetting that according to a lot of these people's beliefs, girls will be the ones harmed most by having premarital sex. And "boys will be boys", or boys' high testosterone levels make it difficult for them to help themselves, or something like that. And a lot of people spin girls being abstinent as "respecting themselves by waiting for someone who's worth it" Because apparently girls are judged primarily according to the quality of the people they sleep with... Or maybe because girls are helpless to handle their own in a relationship, and so have to wait for a particular man who will know how to treat them well even though they're in a submissive role, or something...

To be fair, I think that in abstinence ed boys are expected to be abstinent at well. Masturbation is not really encouraged as an alternative though, so boys are screwed a bit in this ideology as well.

Back to Cara: While it does kind of piss me off that Disney insists on mucking around with original stories, I still have to admit that, with a few exceptions, they're pretty damn good at that "entertainment for all ages" thing.

Ah god...the sexism, the monarchy-worship, the "I'm way better than all of those whores"...it's so gross.

I mean, honestly, does anyone under the age of 57 believe this crap? My favorite is the "Condoms Won't Protect Against a Broken Heart" or something like that. Right. Because the guy you're marrying will never, ever hurt your feelings. And short-term relationships don't hurt when they end unless you spread your legs. Uh-huh.

Oh, that's right, we poor, weak-willed princesses can't handle sex with more than one person in our entire lives. The first time any girl EVER has sex, she cries. No matter who it's with. And after that they're not perfect anymore, and the closest they can come is in crapping out pure little babies to indoctrinate and scare away from their natural and perfectly reasonable desires...

I'm so pissed off about this that I want to go screw someone just to disobey these people. Their propaganda is having the opposite of the intended effect!

To be fair, I think that in abstinence ed boys are expected to be abstinent at well.

If the girls are supposed to abstain, and homosexuality is off-limits . . . I would HOPE boys would also be encouraged to practice abstinence . . . otherwise, I'm having a hard time picturing what options they're left with ;).