Given the comic failure of abstinence-only - 95% of Americans have
premarital sex - isn't it time the US got over its hangup?
Daniel Denvir
Wednesday November 2 2011
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/02/america-problem-sex-education
Though most American youth continue to learn about sex most everywhere
but in school, there is some good news: according to a recent report
from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United
States [http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?
fuseaction=page.viewPage&pageID=1339&nodeID=1] (SIECUS), the
Obama administration and Congress in 2010 eliminated two thirds of
federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage education, and, in
a historic shift, allocated close to $190m for comprehensive sex
education.
At the local level, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced [http://
www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/nyregion/in-new-york-city-a-new-mandate-on-sex-education.html]
the implementation of a comprehensive citywide sex ed program this
spring. Previously, whether a child received science-based sex ed or
nothing at all was an enrollment roll of the dice: some principals ran
good programs; others did not.
The proposed curriculum has sparked a rightwing backlash [http://
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/go-ask-alice-sex-ed-site-deemed-too-graphic/2011/10/25/gIQAHuiyFM_blog.html]
(flames fanned, in part, by the New York Post). Some parents are
apparently angry that one approved website discusses pornography,
swinger clubs and (dear Jesus) foot fetishes.
Bloomberg, for good policy and for ill, is a steamroller. But other
cities lag far behind, including school districts that don't preach
abstinence-only.
Last month, I reported that Philadelphia public schools utterly fail
[http://www.citypaper.net/news/2011-10-20-philadelphia-schools-sex-
education.html?viewAll=y] to provide comprehensive sex education. When
students are taught what little they are about condoms, it rarely
happens before high school. And by then, it's often too late: 15% of
Philly teens lose their virginity before age 13. Pennsylvania state
law includes only a vague requirement that students be educated about
HIV/Aids prevention.
The Republican presidential candidates would like to keep it that way.
They are stalwart critics of science-based and medically accurate sex
education, and frequently demonstrate that they never received it.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, when asked by a reporter to cite research
supporting his position (he presides over a state with the nation's
fifth highest rate of teen pregnancy), would say only that [http://
www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-10-28/just-say-no/)] "from my own
personal life, abstinence works".
Governor George W Bush implemented abstinence-only in Texas, and after
he moved to the White House, his successor, Perry, benefited from a
big increase in federal abstinence-only funding. Texas, according to a
recent story in the Austin Chronicle, has taken in $23.3m in federal
abstinence-only funds in the past four years alone.
And it's not just Christian wishful thinking translated into public
policy. Governor Perry's position on sex education is rather more
cynical: he supported a vaccine for HPV touted by his former chief of
staff, then working as a lobbyist for vaccine-maker Merck. The move
prompted fierce accusations from evangelical Christians [http://
www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/politics/republican-candidates-battle-over-hpv-vaccine.html],
including from GOP presidential rivals Michele Bachmann and Rick
Santorum, that the vaccine encourages promiscuity.
The Republican need for remedial sex ed is widely apparent. Michele's
husband, Marcus Bachmann, runs a clinic that has been accused of
offering "cures" for homosexuality [http://gawker.com/5820437/marcus-
bachmanns-big-gay-mess">has been accused of offering "cures] (a charge
Bachmann denies); Newt Gingrich, searching for a clean slate like some
inverted Henry VIII, philandered his way from Protestantism to the
Catholic Church; Mitt Romney, in his role as bishop to Boston-area
Mormons, tried to stop a woman [http://jezebel.com/5851050/the-curious-
case-of-mitt-romney-an-abortion-and-eliza-dushkus-mom] from getting a
life-saving abortion; Herman Cain now confronts sexual harassment
charges; and poor Rick Santorum, a man who does not understand the
difference between being gay and bestiality, has earned a comeuppance
from columnist Dan Savage who rebranded his surname to mean [http://
spreadingsantorum.com/] "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter
that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex".
Ignorance is no excuse. Neither is it blissful: Choosing the Best, a
popular abstinence-only curriculum, compares people who have sex
before marriage to chewed-up gum: it "isn't as appealing as when it is
unwrapped and new". The South, beacon of Christian virtue, has,
according to SIECUS, the highest concentration of abstinence-only
education and also the riskiest teen sexual behavior.
Not that sexual illiteracy is limited to the political right: take
Anthony Weiner [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/
2011/jun/10/anthony-weiner-sexting]. It's an American epidemic: a self-
enforced Victorian morality play amid ubiquitous and crassly
commercialised mass eroticism. The stakes of sexual ignorance extend
far beyond preventing pregnancy and disease. Young people now
frequently text ("sext" [http://articles.philly.com/2010-06-24/news/
24962245_1_sexting-nude-photos-naked-pictures">"sext]) intimate self-
portraits to romantic interests with very little understanding of the
psychic and social damage that a sexually explicit photo gone viral
can inflict. Instead of school districts teaching about the brave new
world of sex and technology, however, prosecutors have threatened to
charge the unfortunate and underage models under child pornography
laws.
And this is about more than sex. As Dana Goldstein writes at the
Nation, "a person's position on sex ed is a proxy for a deeper set of
questions":
"whether or not one supports the changes in gender and economic norms
that have brought women into the workplace, delayed the average age at
marriage and allowed couples to experience sex without the burden of
pregnancy, through the use of hormonal birth control."
And yet there's less and less time for such critical thinking in the
classroom: health concerns are squeezed by religious fanaticism at one
end, and corporate productivity measures at the other. As I reported
in Salon [http://www.salon.com/life/education/index.html?story=/news/
feature/2011/09/14/denvir_school], the high-stakes standardised
testing regime has decreased time for everything from history to
recess. Forget about sex. Though, to be sure, Americans haven't. While
abstinence-only classes encourage students to take a "virginity
pledge" [http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?
fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=1202">"virginity pledge], an
estimated 95% of Americans end up having premarital sex [http://
www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/12/19/index.html]. It's time to make
sure that sex is safe - and, perhaps, even fun.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment