“Abstinence education works,” Hatch said in a statement LifeNews.com received. “My amendment restores a vital funding stream so that teens and parents have the option to participate in programs that have demonstrated success in reducing teen sexual activity and, consequently, teen pregnancies.”
“I laud the Senate Finance Committee for its strong bipartisan vote to ensure valuable programs such as these continue to help teach our children about healthy lifestyle choices,” he added.”The absence of an abstinence only education program has negative health consequences for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens,” he explained.
“Teenage pregnancy is a leading contributor to poverty, which in turn leads to poor health outcomes for mothers and children; sexually active teens are more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression or attempted suicide; and sexually active teens are more likely to suffer health consequences such as increased rates of infection with sexually transmitted diseases.”
via Senate Finance Committee Reinstates $50 Million in Abstinence Education Funding.
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I grew up on a farm. Animals having sex, and the myriad consequences of that, was pretty much background by the time I could focus my eyeballs. My parents were naked a lot, everyone else who came by was naked a lot, and the adults I knew all talked about sex all the time. More than that….my mom was a social worker. We had books on sex all over the place. We talked about contraception starting when I was maybe nine. She made it a point of honor to “corrupt” all of my friends who she felt weren’t getting the DL from their own parents. And she was pretty smooth about it. I don’t think there was any mechanical or medical question I had about sex that wasn’t answered before I was an adolescent. So props for them. And yet. I’m a submissive, and nowhere in that explosion of information did that particular alternative sexuality get mentioned. Being gay, yes, but being submissive, no. So I still managed to walk away from this really amazing sex ed background feeling a little shortchanged. Ah well… You know how Cosmo has a different article about sex on the front cover every month? How it’s really the *same* article, over and over again, just with a few different paragraphs here and there? What about those racy “It Happened To Me” stories in the middle of YM magazine? “I had sex with my stepfather,” or “My mom was a prostitute”, etc. Those ridiculous articles were my earliest introduction to a sexual lifestyle. I devoured them, article after article, issue after issue, in a big, quiet library a few towns over. My mother was part of a quilting group that met at this particular library on Wednesday nights and sometimes Saturdays. She’d bring me along so I could do my favorite thing – read. She was sort of in the dark about exactly what I was reading, of course. I would flip the magazines over to the back and stack them so the least salacious advertisement was on the top of the stack. Sex was driven out of my parents’ house. I knew they were having it, they knew I knew they were having it, and they put me on the pill before I started having it. Needless to say, no one wanted to talk about it. When I got my period, I waited a day and a half to tell my mother, convinced she was going to explain in detail how tampons were inserted. If something sexual happened to flit across the TV screen, my mother would change the channel after a few agonizing seconds. Sooner or later I figured out that if I simply left the room, I could listen from the dining room and figure out when it was safe to come back in. I can’t even tell you how much television was ruined for me by Viagra commercials. I know this is supposed to be a story about what my parents told me about sex, but that would be a very short story indeed. The only way to tell my story is to talk about the person who *really* taught me about sex. When I was fifteen I met the guy who would save me from night after night of awkward television watching with my parents. My first boyfriend was a freak, a loner. He wasn’t exactly who I always thought I was going to lose my virginity to, but it was obvious that there was a story waiting to be told between us. People I barely knew laughed at me, said I could do better than Dave. They didn’t understand him and they certainly didn’t understand me. I knew I would do things for him that I wouldn’t do for anyone else. I lost my virginity to him a year later. We spent every day together and had sex nearly every day. I realize now how lucky I was to have such a passionate boyfriend who wanted nothing more than to please me. One day my father opened the door to my room to find me lying on the bed with Dave’s head between my legs. He immediately closed the door and stood out in the hallway. “You don’t have to come out, I just want to know what kind of pizza you wanted me to order for dinner,” he yelled through the door. It still makes me cringe thinking about it. My poor father. The sexual energy that brought us together was the only thing keeping us together after a while. He was a member of my family and I couldn’t imagine losing him, but Dave wasn’t easy to love. He contracted Lyme disease and refused to get treated for it, saying medicine was unnatural and he would heal himself. He started walking with a limp, then started using a cane, before he would admit his ‘treatment’ wasn’t working. He was a person of extremes and his opinion was the only right one. Being his girlfriend was a full time job. I was incapable of leaving him alone. A three week family vacation to Germany, where a phone call to Dave was more expensive than most of the souvenirs I bought, was an unbelievably stressful experience. I didn’t want to be surprised by something that had happened to him in my absence. Not only was Dave a handful on his own, but his father had been known to throw knives at him, among other things. He made me come, but he made me cry too. Years later he told me that he had both a personality disorder and bipolar disorder, and I thought, NOW it all makes sense! I was single when I went to college and it was the right thing to do. I don’t regret what I did in high school and I am learning to look back on my past with laughter rather than embarrassment. Even when my parents found my stash of condoms and a vibrator in my old bedroom. My parents divorced when I was a young child and moved far away from each other. I lived with my mother who, in addition to being a single mom, turned to Christianity for comfort after the divorce. Growing up, not only was no one having sex in my house, no one was talking about it either. Even though I never remember my mother saying anything to me specifically about sex, I just knew I wasn’t supposed to be having it. We visited my father a few times a year and because of my resentment and his distance, our relationship was strained for much of my childhood. However, he tells me that at one point he and my step-mom gave me a copy of Where Did I Come From? (I was around seven). Apparently after I finished reading it, I asked if I could read it again the next night because I liked it so much. Although I don’t remember this specific incident, I do remember finding that book and re-reading it almost every time we visited. They also owned The Joy of Sex, which they clearly left out where it would be easily accessible. When I was in college, I told my dad that I was sexually active (I was asking to have a boy stay at his place). He had a momentary freak out and then immediately went into contraceptive counseling mode. Once he ascertained that I was using protection he said “Well…that’s fine then. We won’t walk around in our bathrobes if you won’t.” And that was that and has been ever since. My mother, on the other hand, kept up her abstinence-only policy. When a boyfriend was going to visit over Christmas break she told me the only thing I ever remember her telling me about sex. Ever. She said “He can stay here but you have to sleep in separate rooms because I don’t want your little sister thinking that I condone that sort of thing.” “That sort of thing.” My mother’s only acknowledgment in the 27 years of my life that I am a sexual being. Sadly, the little sister mentioned above bore the brunt of my mom’s obvious knowledge of my behavior and her guilt at not preventing it. She received lectures, incredibly restrictive curfews and an abstinence ring, handed to her one family Christmas partially for her and partially as a passive aggressive reproach to me. My sister lost her virginity her first weekend at college. I work now at a feminist sex toy store, spending my days writing and talking about sex. I suppose my mom wouldn’t condone “that sort of thing” either, but she doesn’t know about it. I don’t talk about it. I’m just following her example. My 17 year old son had been dating the same girl for several months. This was his first “real” girlfriend. I figured that sooner or later they were going to be having sex. He’d been given many talks about love, sex, disease, pregnancy – the whole ball of wax; so to speak, from the time he was old enough to start asking questions. I felt confident that he would do the right thing especially when it came to protection. Condoms had been discussed and his responsibility. I didn’t think that I had to go into the minute details about condoms. He took his girl to see the fireworks that 4th of July. We live in a coastal state and the display was done by the ocean. Long lonely stretches of beach, night, blankets … you get the picture. The following morning, I was picking up discarded clothing from the bathroom floor when a small black package fell out of his pants pocket. I scooped it up and glanced at it before tossing it away. There was a happy little condom man smiling up at me announcing in day-glo color that inside was a “Glow in the Dark” condom made in China! When my son made his appearance later that morning, I mentioned that I didn’t think using a condom with questionable origins was very smart and in the future he should use better judgment when selecting his protection because it was very important. Unfazed that I had found the wrapper but was also lecturing on the quality of his condom and that I now knew he wasn’t a virgin, his reply was, “Mom, it WAS the 4th of July!” Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and hope for the best. My mum and I had exactly two talks about sex, and the first was only brushing up against it. She had gone to the chiropractor, and we were on our way to wherever. I was old enough to read, so I could have been 6, but I think I was older–maybe 8. I was reading the brochure she’d picked up in the doctor’s office, and one of the things the brochure claimed chiropractors could help with was menstrual cramps. Well, me being the curious child, I asked what that was. My mum explained about periods and how when a man and woman have sex, that blood goes to the baby. I don’t remember much of the exact wording. I just remember being mortified that my little sister was in the backseat hearing all of this. In between the “official” talks, I read voraciously. My mum was always a big reader herself–of romance novels. One day she said, “You have to read this book.” She marked out a couple of paragraphs in the back that I wasn’t allowed to read, and I didn’t read them. The text after didn’t make much sense, as the couple was aglow from lovemaking and I had no idea what was going on. Eventually I decided I needed more context and read the last paragraph between Mum’s lines. Then the whole forbidden passage. I remember the day I announced that I was going to read other books by that author. Mum said, “Okay.” Then I just shifted into reading other romances as well. These books provided a lot of my sex education, though it was a very vague education and it wasn’t till I was in high school–late high school–that I got a clearer picture of what sex really was. The next “official” talk came about 15 years after the first. I was involved with N., and I was telling my mum about a camping trip we took. “And you slept in separate tents, right?” I gave her a look. She said she was just kidding and told me to be careful. By that time I’d had 3 or 4 partners and I knew most of what I needed to in order to protect myself. I was educated about birth control–and I was taking it–and I used condoms with all my partners. I think I got lucky–I didn’t have much sex ed from either parents or school, but didn’t end up like so many women in my family: having a baby before they were ready. I suppose I have to credit my religion at least a little bit; if I hadn’t been uber-Christian, I wouldn’t have been set on waiting for sex. By the time I changed my religion, I was educated and ready for sex. I grew up in a very conservative religious family where the expectation was that we wouldn’t have sex until we were married. Period. End of story. It just wasn’t going to happen, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So maybe sex education was considered unnecessary, or perhaps since it was her first experience having to give “The Talk,” my mom just got shy. Either way, I expected to get some kind of education about sex when I turned twelve, which seemed to be the age at which my friends’ parents gave their kids “The Talk.” It never came. That’s not to say that there was never any education attempt done, just that I missed it when it happened. When I was relatively young (maybe nine or ten, if I had to guess), my mom read me and my younger brother and sister a book. It was some kind of “A Doctor Talks to Kids” book, and I think that was my mom’s version of “The Talk.” It described how animals reproduced, but didn’t really address how humans did it. The way animals did it seemed crude and barbaric to me in my young age, so when my mom asked if we had any questions at the end of the book, I had just one. “So, that’s how animals do it. How do humans do it?” She hesitated, probably blushed, and said “It’s similar.” That was all that was ever said on the subject, at least to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t learn about it other ways. When I had questions, I googled it. Of course, I found more porn and how-tos than actual information, but those worked just as well for me. My parents tried to get me to read a book written by a church leader my senior year of high school, but I refused. I figured if they didn’t want to discuss it with me, I already knew enough about sex that I didn’t need the religious version. Essentially, too little, too late. I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones. I was never educated on contraception or sexually transmitted infections (STIs) until college. But I also never had sex until after college (I left that particular religion after college, too, so sex became “permissible” in my life). I never had problems with pregnancy or disease because of lack of education. When my mom suspected I was sexually active, she wanted to make sure I didn’t get pregnant before I was ready. I told her that my boyfriend and I currently weren’t doing anything that could get me pregnant, and that when we did, we would take precautions to make sure I didn’t. That was too much information for her about my sex life. Just last weekend, however, we opened up a little with each other. Although it wasn’t a full disclosure by any stretch of the imagination, on either of our parts, it was definitely a start. It started out very awkwardly, but by the end, we were both feeling a little more comfortable. I wished I had felt comfortable discussing sex when I had really needed information in my younger years. I am amazed by the controversy about sex education. So much research, as well as common sense, indicates that a comprehensive approach to sex ed is most effective. However, in Utah, where I live (and I know Utah is not unique in this sense), sex education in the schools requires written consent from the parents, and is only allowed to educate about abstinence before marriage and fidelity after marriage to prevent disease and (before marriage) pregnancy. Granted, I believe that parents, and not schools, should be responsible for the sexual education of their children, but too many are too shy, too closed-minded, or too uneducated about it themselves to do a credible job. And many parents, despite sex ed restrictions, feel that it is the school’s job to educate their children on sex. Sex is everywhere in our society, but it’s both so stigmatized and so glamorized that it’s easy to be confused. Open conversation is, in my opinion, the only way to teach the next generation about both the beauty and the consequences of sexual activity. I suspect too many people have experiences just like mine (or worse! – at least my mom read that book to us, and offered a second book), and a lack of information is probably more harmful than any discomfort or awkwardness the subject causes. “Oh,” he says, “you’re one of those liberal moms.” No, I think, I’m one of those realistic moms. My fifteen year old daughter was in a relationship (that lasted another year and a half), and sexually active. Allowing her boyfriend to sleep over at our house seemed pretty much like a no-brainer to me. The alternatives – telling her she was too young, shouting: “Not under my roof!” or just pretending it wasn’t happening – seemed to me not only irresponsible, but hypocritical. Any way you chose to look at it, she and I were statistics, and I never really had the option of pulling any kind of moralistic card. Her father and I split up before she was born, and she has never met him: it’s not as though I could pretend she got here through anything but a contraception blip, and even before that, I was a teen pregnancy statistic. Having an abortion was my choice, and one that continued to haunt me until I got pregnant again six years later. It wasn’t a choice I wanted her to have to make if I could avoid it, and in that respect being Liberal Mom gave me a huge advantage: I could corner them both in the kitchen and lecture them about birth control. Quite apart from the pitfalls of pregnancy, I also wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that a mother saying feebly: “I think you’re too young” would stop a teenager all hyped up on hormones and first love from having sex. If they weren’t having sex in a bed with parental consent, then where would they be having it? Yes, I know everyone looks back with nostalgia remembering half-clothed fumbles in the back of a car, but round about where we live that tends to happen in the woods, with the drug dealers and worse: around the time this conversation was taking place, a woman was murdered and set fire to in her car by her ex-lover, in those same woods. I had to at least learn the lesson my parents learnt the hard way: all you get from ignoring teenage sex is grandchildren (and to their credit, the grandparents did learn their lesson: it was her grandmother who marched her off to be put on the Pill). We live in a small, religious town. Here I wasn’t regarded so much as Liberal Mom as Bad Mom, but I didn’t see that burying my head in the sand was much of an option. I could remember my own wild youth well enough to recognize that when other mothers told me self-righteously that their daughters weren’t smoking, drinking, having sex and skipping school “because she would never do anything like that” they were fooling themselves. My Bad Momness at least meant that I wasn’t spared the reality: you can’t fool someone who knows all the signs, and if you encourage honesty and try your damndest to not be non-judgmental, you at least have the option of bombarding your offspring with facts about risk-control, which is more effective than pretending none of it is happening, because of course you brought your child up better than that. It still astonishes me how many parents are willing to suspend belief. Now, as never before, our children are able to make informed choices about sex. Our culture glorifies it: everywhere is the message that sex is desirable and to be sexy is aspirational. The upside of that is greater access to information: although there will always be the invaluable hands-on (so to speak) learning process of sex, much of the confusing and often misleading mystery is gone. While it is perfectly reasonable to assume that one’s 15 year old is not sexually active, it’s unfeasible to assume that a teenager with internet access won’t have a more informed opinion about it than we probably did. My only quibble with my daughter was that I wanted to be sure she was doing it for the right reasons and wasn’t being coerced, so when she told me cheerfully that she most definitely wanted it, my main aim was to make sure she was properly protected. At this point, I morphed into Embarrassing Mom, bellowing: “Condoms!” down the stairs after her every time she went out. I’d love to say that my policy of openness meant that my daughter’s teenage years were a breeze, but they were pretty much pure unadulterated hell, and it didn’t stop her going off the rails pretty spectacularly. At times I regretted my mantra of keep the channels of communication open, and quite often I’d really rather have not known, but I gritted my teeth and kept at it, mainly because I couldn’t see any other way of doing it. And it did pay off, eventually: at 21 she’s making a pretty decent stab at being a responsible adult, and claims to be grateful for all the unwanted understanding and advice she was offered in her wild youth. As mentioned previously, we didn’t use condoms to start with. They were a little tricky to obtain, or maybe that was just what I was telling myself as an excuse. If I am honest with myself, the action of going out of my way to buy them constituted ‘intent’ and that seemed to me to be worse than telling myself that sex ‘just happened’ on the spur of the moment, hung-up and guilt-ridden as I still was. So it was without protection that I took my first ventures into her luscious fragrant hole. Dipping into it, luxuriating there for just a few seconds of bliss before pulling out and finishing myself off over her full breasts became the routine. It was only when her period first came round I was able to enjoy full-on penetrative sex with her, and it was like an epiphany. I wanted more of this and with time I began to take more and more risks; pulling out later and later, coming inside her for more days of her period. I looked forward to her periods, not knowing the discomfort they were causing her. I became an expert in that game called ”Hunt the little blue string”. And then, one month… She was late. She was never late, never had been, or so she told me. You could set a clock by her monthly cycle. But she was late nonetheless. Just late enough to make us both reflect on the upheaval that a pregnancy would cause for both of us just then. It turned out that the arrival of Auntie Flo had just been delayed by a few days by a bout of ’flu. We breathed a collective sigh of relief and carried on, more carefully than before. I started to experiment with another crude form of contraception: Anal sex. I had discovered early on that a little finger, drenched in her generous juices, was a most welcome occasional visitor in her arse. I had sometimes bitten my fingernails right down so as to be allowed to probe her further. The shackles of my upbringing were already being cast aside one by one. I was convinced I was going to hell anyway so what was another sin to add to the list? Heather was no stranger to anal. She had tried it back home as a teenager. Fortunately, her first experience was at the hands of someone who knew what he was doing. He had been gentle with her and she had not been scared off for good. As a consequence I didn’t have to persuade her to let me try; it was something we explored together. I shall always be grateful to that unnamed person. For the rest of the university year we slept together pretty much every night, sharing a narrow bed, barely wide enough for one, sharing coursework assignments, sharing wet Saturday afternoons, sharing the thrill of mutual masturbation, the illicit joy of anal and, once a month, the treat of full-on penetrative sex. The next academic year would would see us setting up home together in North London, with the freedom which that would bring, not least the freedom which comes with ’proper’ contraception. (To be continued) Author’s disclaimer. This was 1977: Clearly, unprotected anal sex is a bloody silly thing to do unless you are able to trust your partner absolutely, and is in no way recommended as a means of contraception! |
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