Abstinence Education: Your Tax Dollars at Work.

[featherynscale]

Sunday, during the Gaia class on HIV/AIDS, 8elements handed out some 'swag' from a de-funded county health program of abstinence education. Some of the things purchased for this program were beach balls, calculators, and other cheap plastic crap imprinted with the phrase "Self-Respect: the ultimate contraceptive".

I'm getting a good look at why abstinence education fails.

First off, kids, it doesn't happen to be true that when you screw, you'll only get pregnant if you hate yourself. That would be a lie. Lots of people I know who like themselves very much have children.

Second, what the fuck does that even mean? I mean, I don't know about you lot, but for me, I can't even work it up to get laid if I'm lacking in the self-respect department. For me, there's a minimum threshold of competence that I have to feel like I have, or else, hey, I'm not feeling very sexy. In fact, in those situations, I'm feeling like if I even bothered to have sex, I'd probably do it badly, and it wouldn't be any fun.

Third, I don't know how the kids today do things, but my range of sexual behavior very rarely involves calculators, and has never yet called for beach balls. I'm going to take this moment to wonder bemusedly about the sex lives of the people who designed this program.

On the bright side, the hardworking citizens of 8elements' county don't seem to be paying for this steaming pile of monkey crap anymore. But you have to figure, at some point, basic health services were not being provided because the budget included Abstinence Beach Balls instead of vaccine doses, nursing hours, and suchlike. That bothers me.

Comments

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That does seem a really absurd thing to me. I mean, granted, I may not have had the most normal high-school experience in the world, but I don't know that anybody I knew in high school was having sex because they felt like they had to, or because nobody would love them if they didn't. Everybody I knew who was having sex then seemed to be doing it because it was fun.

Personally, I was much too ugly in high school to have sex with anyone, so it may just be that I totally missed out on that whole aspect of the culture.

Also, lest anybody get the wrong idea, I have every ounce of support in the world for people who choose not to have sex in order to avoid the risks of having sex, or even because they simply don't want to have sex. I just don't think that should be the only option teens get to be aware of.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

That does seem a really absurd thing to me. I mean, granted, I may not have had the most normal high-school experience in the world, but I don't know that anybody I knew in high school was having sex because they felt like they had to, or because nobody would love them if they didn't. Everybody I knew who was having sex then seemed to be doing it because it was fun.

Personally, I was much too ugly in high school to have sex with anyone, so it may just be that I totally missed out on that whole aspect of the culture.

Be that as it may, I assure you it does happen. And it happens often enough to be a problem worthy of addressing.