Hi. There’s a sudden jump in my stats, and I see that it is all thanks to Mark Steyn. Love that guy.
He quoted my post on Foster Freiss’ aspirin comment. I know why it’s a big deal to our Liberators, but it still shouldn’t be. Reminding the country that ladies believed in abstinence threatens the Liberators’ hold on a generation that possesses the collective memory of a hamster and thinks Mad Men is an accurate portrayal of American cultural history.
Why else make a fuss about teaching abstinence in schools? Why throw a fit when Uganda added abstinence to its safe sex education programs and saw Aids infection rates take a dive? The Sexual Revolution was designed to destroy something beautiful and it has worked. Devoid of its inherent mystery and meaning, sex becomes empty and joyless, something done to secure a relationship or because it’s expected.
Being reminded of a more chaste era actually makes me kind of sad, because when I was younger, things had already been destroyed. Sex meant little then and today it means nothing.
Thanks for that.
April, you’re “on fire” lately. Absolutely right.
Back in the 1990s when I was an adolescent schoolchild, I experienced the “sex ed” class. The theme was “here’s the anatomy of the reproductive system, here’s how to ‘do it,’ but please don’t: you might get the girl pregnant, she might accuse you of rape, and you might get venereal disease, so if you do ‘do it,’ use a condom; that might help but probably not.” Many students got the “how-to” part and acted on it but ignored the rest of the message, but most (not all) of the religiously observant or academically successful students (and a few others) managed to evade those “temptations.”
Fast-forward to college–in a blue state. My resident assistant at the dormitory enticed me to go to some seminars with generic sounding names like “health and safety in the winter.” They were absolutely revolting, respect for women entirely absent, the details unspeakably gross. Abstinence was dismissed as unrealistic and backward if mentioned at all.
I heard the chastity message at the university only from the Catholic Church, but the clerics knew well the perversity of the environment. Although sexual activity was incredibly pervasive among the student population, I can recall seeing only one obviously or admittedly pregnant student, and in that case, the student was Catholic and married before the pregnancy started.
By contrast, about a third (if not more) of the female student population were “sorostitutes,” girls who had numerous “partners” in series or even in parallel, so-called because of the disproportionate representation of this sub-population of “unpaid prostitutes” in sororities. And these behaviors occurred at a “highly selective” university. And this was a decade ago. Although I have not ventured near that campus in many years, I cannot expect that the situation has improved any.
I mention this environment to illustrate the dissimilarity between the “Catholic Church” view of women and the view of women that commands a majority in our society. The Church considers women as dignified daughters of the Most High, some of whom, with the assistance of and in cooperation with the grace of God, choose to dedicate their lives beautifully to the maternal vocation as wives beloved by their husbands as long as they both shall live. Our “secular humanist” culture of death views women as objects for the pleasure–nay, really, to indulge the deviant temptations–of perverted males, who should engage in unhealthy behaviors to enhance their attractiveness to said perverted males, and who should poison their bodies to avoid motherhood, as slaves to the sexual sin that pervades our age, ready for disposal when they grow too old or sick to play the part.
Which option do women really want? The former, even if they themselves don’t admit it or even recognize it because it is so foreign to them or because their subculture rejects it entirely. Any man who subscribes to the latter view of women is sick, but through the grace of God and by striving constantly in thought, word, and deed to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him, that man can obtain healing from his sickness: God will redeem him.
We once had a president who provides an exemplary model of how men should treat women: William McKinley. Although the current president seems to have a happy, monogamous marriage, he does not expect us–or even perhaps his own daughters–to follow his example. Perhaps the President should think more highly of his subjects. Perhaps he should encourage the rest of us to do objectively better, to treat women with dignity and respect rather than as objects to indulge our sinful desires.
That’s what my sex ed teacher said! She said that the only way to assure that we didn’t become disease-ridden crackwhores is to not have random sex, protected or un. It just makes sense, dammit.
As for Uganda, there have been a lot of attempts to undermine the data, but Uganda added abstinence to its safe sex program and Aids rates fell. It’s amazing what happens when you tell people, “Hey, you don’t *have* to do it. You’ll stay healthy that way.”
“…so if you do ‘do it,’ use a condom; that might help but probably not…”
That’s a terrible sex education. Lying to your kids. Hence the very high US teen birth rate and of course, teen abortion rate.
I’m just dropping by to say hi! Missed the home front here in Ohio. You appear to be holding it down just exactly fine there.
I do what I can, sir, but it wears me down somethin fierce.
Your problem with teaching abstinence is a straw man. Anyone who objects to teaching abstinence as part of a program of comprehensive sex education is an idiot. I have never heard that sentiment from anyone who knows a thing about teaching sex ed, or about public health. The problem is with teaching abstinence-ONLY education. That doesn’t work. Abstinence should be encouraged as a valid sexual choice. In sex education and broader public health education, women and men both should be taught the social and interpersonal skills to resist pressure ANYONE tries to put on them to have any kind of sex they don’t want to have. They should also be taught that pressuring a partner or potential partner to have a kind of sex they don’t want to have is dangerous on many levels (and generally speaking doesn’t result in quality sex by any but the most revolting benchmark). Additionally, they should be given skills to recognize the cues in the media that are based on commerce, manipulation and exploitation, and should not be used as guidelines for a healthy sex life. And perhaps most importantly, they should also be taught to evaluate their own impulses and consider whether they’re doing something they don’t want to do that seems like the right idea at the time, but might be based on a spurious impulse or inaccurate understanding of what their partner wants or needs.
However, students should ALSO be supported in making safe sexual choices if they choose to have sex. Abstinence ONLY education is the problem. It’s only the pro-abstinence-only advocates who claim that sex education advocates WON’T teach abstinence as a valid sexual choice. I’ve been teaching sex ed for more than 15 years, and anyone who teaches sex ed without teaching that abstinence and even celibacy are totally valid sexual choices is a BAD TEACHER.
Referencing Uganda in this context is highly dangerous. Uganda does not generate anything like a reasonable post-industrial model of sexual public health. In Uganda, a Unitarian bishop was forced to leave the country because of death threats after he opposed a bill that would have established the death penalty for being homosexual and HIV positive, in a country where the VAST MAJORITY of HIV cases come from heterosexual transmission (the “AIDS Highway,” remember, runs through Uganda).
Suggesting Uganda is a model of productive sex education is showing a bit of a blind spot to African issues. “Mad Men” and Uganda are apples and oranges.
That’s an interesting response, but she didn’t say what you seem to think. She is critical of the back lash against abstinence education, pointing out that it is poorly considered. I am surprised you have not heard of people opposing abstinance education, or giving only lip service to the idea, or failing to see the multiple problems that stem from the current culture which essentially supports sexual activity at a young age. The current sexual education directives have failed to stem sexually transmitted diseases, failed to stop teenage pregnancy and failed to support young people reaching maturity in position to enter healthy, sustained family relationships. She suggests the reaction to Uganda including abstinence education is an example of the short sighted, idealogically driven, self destructive mindset that argues blindly and with little regard to consequence.
And she is right, of course.
Hey Nick,
I thought about responding to that guy, but then I lost interest. :) The gentleman accuses me of setting up strawmen, and then proceeds to set up enough to populate a small city.
Interesting people one meets on the internet.
The liberal use of all caps is generally a tip off.
Congrats to you and Pundette on the Steyn links. Well deserved, both.
Actually, it is a pretty reasoned response from the “other side,” something that is rarely seen anymore. Additionally, it’s from someone that actually has a job teaching the subject, so there is something to learn on our part–if only how hard we have to work to deconstruct the machine that has been built to destroy our culture. I am assuming that the commenter is acting in good faith and has a genuine desire to do a good job and help the children he teaches.
I have seen “abstinence” used as laugh-getter in school sex-ed classes, starting in the early 1980s or thereabouts. You may not treat it that way, Mr. Roche, but many of your colleagues do. It is thrown out as a silly, unrealistic option–sort of like “Just say No!” to the people you find in a crack house. Our popular culture does the same. I can’t recall a single
positive portrayal of abstinence education (well, one, Highway To Heaven) out of hundreds of TV shows that touched on the subject.
The people pushing the program are shown to be out-of-touch extremists, usually misinformed and intentionally deceptive to boot. And they always have to be shown to be hypocrites–the adults as well as kids. Often they are shown to engage in alternate sexual activity designed to make them look silly as well as hypocritical {ear sex in The Family Guy, for example]. The message being drummed into the kids’ heads is that sex at almost any age is perfectly acceptable, normal, and expected and doing otherwise makes no sense. The cool kids and everyone half-way normal are doing it. Oh, there might be a sub-plot about someone, usually the girl, talking to their friends about doing it with a particular guy and maybe not going through with it when she finds that he is a jerk . But she usually finds the “right guy” by the end of the same episode or the next.
If you present “doing it” and abstinence are two equal perfectly acceptable options for kids of almost any age, which one do you expect them to choose? And I believe that abstinence isn’t getting anywhere near equal billing on that marquee. Do you present “smoking” and “not smoking” as equal, acceptable choices? Of course not. And I assure you that the vast majority of kids in the 1950s and 60s knew the “mechanics” of the act and about the possibility of pregnancy. It’s that they chose to ignore the latter in the heat of the moment–just like kids today do. The rationalization after-the fact is just excuses to hide their irresponsibility. Few people believed the “folklore” about Coke and keeping your socks on being effective birth-control methods. Really. Given that the abortion level has stayed relatively constant at 1-1.5 million per year, and that teenage pregnancy rates have hardly dropped
since the sex-ed programs became mandatory and universal, have we really made any progress?
“The message being drummed into the kids’ heads is that sex at almost any age is perfectly acceptable, normal, and expected and doing otherwise makes no sense. The cool kids and everyone half-way normal are doing it.”
The teen birth rate in the USA is the highest in the developed world: 53 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19, versus 5 in The Netherlands, 7 in Sweden and Denmark and 26 in the UK (the ‘America of Europe’). Perhaps you’re misunderstanding the safe-sex/contraception message? It would seem that the USA has a lot to learn from Europe (or the rest of the developed world)
So, kpo, it (the teen pregnancy rate) has grown higher in the deacdes* the Left have taken over the program, pushing the message that it’s OK to have pre-marital sex. I guess they aren’t giving equal weight to the abstinence alternative after all.
*Yes, decades. The first government mandates of sex ed in Catholic/Christian schools was in the 1980s. In case you are confused, kpo, or want to make a half-assed comment about Reagan being President then, that sort of thing happened first on the State and Local level–areas captured first by the Left/Democrats(if I still have to present those as two separate terms.) Some here, want to go back to the message of abstinence before marriage and general support of marriage and the concept of the family– which for the first time in human history provided men with obligations and a code of conduct demanding they temper their sexual desire and offer guarantees of commitment to women, while at the same time institutionalising respect towards them as persons, both on an individual level and as a gender collectively.
In other words, stuff that you wouldn’t understand and what used to be the hallmark of your grandfather’s (or great grandfather’s)great British civilization.
“Some here, want to go back to the message of abstinence before marriage”
Look, I’m skeptical about this golden age of chastity that you (or others) pine for; I suspect it was less golden, and more syphilitic… But even if it wasn’t that bad, remember we’re living in a world now that is MUCH more sexualised – with the media bombarding teens with sex, and telling them how fun it is. If you don’t give the teens clear and accurate information about safe sex in such a context you’re asking for trouble. So what’s your solution, censor the media?
“How are the low (sub-replacement) birth rates for women in general working out for you “enlightened” Europeans, kpo?”
Haha, before you were talking about how liberal sex education told kids to get involved in sex as early and often as possible! So, what happens when the Darrell mindset runs into contradiction? Let’s watch… :-)
I do know how you handle contradiction, like the fact that teenage pregnancies have increased since the Left–liberals or progressives as you like to fib–took control of the wheelhouse of our culture in the uS. You ignore it. Or lie by pretending that your day hasn’t started yet. Nice.
The Left in Europe is a different matter. People see what you guys have wrought and they don’t want their issue to have any part of that. Pointing that out results in zero cognitive dissonance on my part. Heck, I even gave you a plausible excuse for the horrible numbers the Left has racked up here–babies as the golden ticket for government bennies. Do you expect me to do all your work? Wait. That’s what you do, as the kids say here–without that contraction, of course.
“I do know how you handle contradiction”
Niiiiiice pivot. Ok, we’ll forget your contradiction happened.
You want me to comment on how sex-ed affected pregnancy trends in the 1980s? Well here’s the graph (the yellow line): http://micpohling.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/us-teenage-pregnancy-rate-birth-rate-and-abortion-rate-1972-2005/
Seems to me pregnancy rates were on a long term upwards trend before the 1980s, then they stabilised, and from about 1990 (when sex-ed efforts increased to combat AIDS) started to decline rapidly. Only in the Bush years did the rates start to rise again.
How do you interpret the graph Darrell?
Babies as the ticket to government bennies.
Bush followed Clinton and you might remember what happened with the overhaul of aid programs.
Nice that you cherry-pick what you read.
Bush didn’t do a single thing to stop Sex-Ed programs. If anything, the data collection process was improved. But you’re probably one of those wankers that blame the Pope for AIDS in Africa. I’m sure they all hang on his every word. Especially those that listen to urban legends about baby sex being an AIDS cure.
Don’t worry because theer are two guys in Africa now washing their balls on a regular basis after Obama’s $20 million Stimulus expenditure to convince Africans to wash their balls. I’m surprised that the US economy isn’t red hot with laser-targeted stimulus programs like that.
Err, you didn’t comment on the graph at all there Darrell. You just flew off at random tangents.
Come on, wasn’t this supposed to be your smoking gun argument? That there was a clear trend of teen pregnancy rates increasing with liberal sex-ed policies? Well you should be able to point that out on a graph that has been handily provided for you…
Or you could admit that you eagerly swallowed a right wing talking point, that has no basis in reality.
Sorry, kpo, it’s the Left here that is always crying that the sky is falling and that we need new programs. We’ve already established that European women of any age don’t want to have any part of the future by having children. Understandable. But the US is a different story. Historically, in your neck of the woods, poor diet and common childhood illnesses delayed physical maturity for many. The majority of girls did not reach menarche until sixteen or seventeen years of age. Few men, much less boys, could earn enough to support a family until their early to mid-twenties. But the US experience, with abundance of food and opportunity, started to change all that. Today, the average age of menarche dropped to twelve, with some girls as young as eight experiencing menstruation. As early as 1920 in the US, the health improvements and food and economic opportunities here encouraged a growing number of couples to marry and become parents at younger ages, in their teens and early twenties. Shortly thereafter, another push began, delayed adulthood with labor-law restrictions, growing compulsory education mandates. Now it is common for 35-year olds to live in their parents basement in the Peoples Republic of Portlandia or demand a furnished rent-paid apartment.and a $35,000./yr allowance. But as the mandated, prolonged adolescence started to kick in , many teenagers started to buck the trend. That was not all bad: Studies show that teenage mothers who are done with child rearing by their late twenties fare better than women that wait until their mid-or late twenties to begin and earn more money, pay more taxes, and collect less public assistance. The comment box is acting up and automatically moving the cursor up each time, so this will have to continue.
I hate to keep hammering on about this point of teen pregnancy rates rising with liberal sex education policy but, well, *you* were hammering on about it before I showed you the graph. Are we agreed now that there has been no visible rise in teen pregnancy rates as a result of liberal sex education policy, and that perhaps the opposite could be inferred? This would fit with the data from the rest of the world, of course.
“We’ve already established that European women of any age don’t want to have any part of the future by having children.”
Happiness by country: http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world-happiest-countries-lifestyle-realestate-gallup-table.html
The list of the world’s happiest countries is *dominated* by European countries – and especially the more liberal, welfare states: 1. Denmark, 2. Finland, 3. Norway… etc. Again, something doesn’t quite fit with your worldview.
In addition, in the wonderful world of Government programs set up by the Left, babies are the “golden ticket” that serve as a gateway to a whole range of programs. Teen pregnancies, you see, are not always “accidents” or unintended consequences. We’ve had stories of teenagers here in the US being advised by high school guidance counselors to have a baby in order to get a piece of the independent good life. I remember this caller on a radio talk show saying that she was mentoring a niece that came to America from Mexico a few years before (the caller was a medical doctor) and that the niece had gotten her grades up, scored well on college entrance exams, and even been accepted by a few good colleges. She checked on the niece after not hearing from her for a few weeks to find that she was now pregnant. You see she was complaining to her counselor how she never has nice things–or any privacy at home–given how money is tight and that she had brothers and sisters, and the counselor told her that she could get her own apartment, new clothes, and her own stuff that she wouldn’t have to share. And the best part, with duplicative Gov’t programs, she would still be able to feed and clothe her child. The counselor also said that she wished the girl had talked to her a few years sooner because there were extra benefits that ended at age 18, and she could have gotten more stuff for herself before she hit the age restriction.
How are the low (sub-replacement) birth rates for women in general working out for you “enlightened” Europeans, kpo? I’m not so sure I would want to show up for the future if I lived there either. Perhaps you guys and girls don’t understand how it works? Let me help. Try turning her over.
“Devoid of its inherent mystery and meaning, sex becomes empty and joyless, something done to secure a relationship or because it’s expected.”
Maybe you’re doing it wrong.
That’s not what I’ve been told.