Legal Momentum has a huge new report (PDF), Sex, Lies and Stereotypes, on how abstinence-only education is especially harmful to young women and girls. (It's also a great primer on abstinence-only in general.) It makes a strong case for why, even though these programs are bad for both male and female students, there's a disproportionate impact on girls:
Females disproportionately suffer the consequences of unprotected sexual activity, including STIs and unplanned pregnancies. These programs also often contain harmful and outdated gender stereotypes that cast women as the gatekeepers of aggressive male sexuality. [...] For women of color, the absence of accurate sexual health information is particularly damaging given the high rates of HIV infection in their communities, while the gender stereotypes promoted by the programs exacerbate racial as well as sexual inequalities.
Last year, Courtney made a very compelling argument that if we had better sex education, young women and men would be better at articulating their needs and boundaries. One young woman, quoted in the report, echoed that theme:
“Because we didn’t have accurate information about what was healthy and what wasn’t, I endured some awful situations because I didn’t know the difference. We didn’t talk about respect, boundaries, and sexual communication. So the myth of ‘boys push and girls resist’ informed everything. We never talked about consent because with abstinence curriculum you shouldn’t consent.
--Erin - Abstinence-only program participant from Oregon
The report expands on those ideas, and also notes that how reinforcing gender stereotypes in these programs is also reinforcing some really dangerous messages about rape:
Likewise, Heritage Keepers’ curriculum warns:Females need to be careful with what they wear, because males are looking! The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason girls have an added responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn’t invite lustful thoughts.These texts ask girls constantly to monitor their own behavior and to be responsible for dressing in a way
that ensures that male sexuality is kept in check. Their tone is condescending to both girls and boys, and fails to provide real guidance to teens about how they can develop healthy relationships of all kinds, whether sexual or not.Most abstinence-only texts fail to meaningfully discuss rape, sexual assault, or coercion, and even fewer give guidance to victims of sexual violence. Further, when responsibility for male sexual feeling is placed on young women and girls, it removes male responsibility and, in instances of sexual harassment and assault, harmfully blames the victim and excuses the perpetrator. Moreover, there is no acknowledgment that some teens may not
experience any sexual feelings, or may be attracted to members of the same sex.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the whole thing.
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It's amazing how similar this is to the conservative Islamic doctrine Marjane Sartrapi speaks out against in Persepolis.
Thanks! The important piece of information none of these studies have, though, is what percentage of teens are getting, or have/will get at any point in their middle-high school years, what types of sex education, and how that has changed over time. We frequently see comments here, for instance, that most kids are getting only abstinence-only education. But, as this report points out, the most recent data on this question is from 2000--so we really don't know, and we certainly don't know what kids are getting cumulatively. Hell, the federal government can't even tell us how many kids its community-based abstinence grantees work with every year.
We never talked about consent because with abstinence curriculum you shouldn’t consent.
I call this "Just Say No Means No."
For men, it's problematic because not only does it shift moral responsibility to women, but it reinforces the idea that women don't have a sex drive (at least not one that's not "reflective"), which is the source premise for both Nice Guys(TM)' and MRAs' attitudes about sex.
I don't have a problem with the concept of abstinence in general, but misinformation often leads to bad decisions.
One of my friends who received "abstinence only" education from her church believed that condoms were basically ineffective and not worth using.
Another one of my friends got the message that birth control is wrong, but didn't even know that condoms are a form of birth control.
I wonder what it's going to take to get people in this country to actually grow up and discuss sex in a truthful way. We already have the highest rates of STDs and teen pregnancy in the industrialized world and one of the highest abortion rates. How much worse do things have to get before people start to consider actually telling teenagers the truth about sex?
Don't forget that it isn't only straight women who receive a disproportionate share of the negative consequences of unsafe sex. Gay men who are the "receivers" experience this as well... they don't get pregnant obviously, but their risk for receiving an STI during a single sexual encounter is even greater than that of a straight woman.
It's not talked about much, but I'm going to make a wild guess here and presume that queer lifestyles don't get a whole lot of mention in abstinance-only education. Just one more reason to oppose it.
I think a key reason that consent isn't even addressed, with the idea following then that all responsibility for sex goes onto the woman and that they are supposed to have no sex drive, is that abstinence only doesn't give a shit about women (or healthy relationships and especially not gays). It is aimed at controlling women's sexuality, basically a form of keeping women in their place. I really think this is only real reason behind this whole abstinence only approach.
Marissa, that is a very good point. Abstinence-only education sets women up as the "gatekeepers," as many other feminists have pointed out. The only scenario under the abstinence-only program is that of the boy constantly wanting sex and expected to do everything he can to get it, while the girl is responsible for saying no. There's never acknowledgement that the girl might be doing anything other than "giving in" when she has sex.
While this is insulting to boys, it puts an impossible burden on girls and serves to reinforce the virgin/whore dichotomy. In addition, in the "gatekeeper" scenario any girl who has sex has failed in her role as the enforcer of "morals" (and now I see they're starting to call it "sexual integrity.").
This means that girls are taught to expect boys to pressure them for sex. It doesn't allow them to recognize that this is not okay, that they don't have to put up with this. The only choice they are given is to just say no, no, no.
And yes, this keeps girls in their place partially because it doesn't give them any tools for acknowledging their own sexuality or for accepting nothing less than respect from their male peers.
So, do gay people exist in these programs?
Oh that's right, most of them can't get married so "abstinence" is moot. I guess they can't ever have sex.
I find this so upsetting, and I'd really like to get involved with an organization that teaches agenda-free sex-ed. Suggestions?
Webbess,
Well since being gay is obviously a choice (deep sarcasm), it's their fault in the first place, they are sinning, and need to reform themselves straight, or some bullshit.
"I find this so upsetting, and I'd really like to get involved with an organization that teaches agenda-free sex-ed. Suggestions?"
No suggestions. Just wanted to say I am getting quite interested in this also. Only thing I can think of doing is going to a school as asking about the qualifications needed to teach sex-ed there. I would call my province's sex-ed accurate and agenda-free but still not good enough.
If you're interested in teaching sex-ed, two progressive organizations I like are:
Women and Youth Supporting Each Other (www.wyse.org)
and
www.advocatesforyouth.org
Females disproportionately suffer the consequences of unprotected sexual activity, including STIs and unplanned pregnancies.
It's a feature, not a bug.