saw this on the wall street journal today. apparently some social conservatives are pretty riled up over grants for their ab-only programs getting denied, which they say is “'weakening' the president’s policy supporting abstinence training as vigorously as contraception efforts, 'with concomitant harm to American youth.'"
now, the point of this article is, as the title reads, "disquiet on the right: a danger for mccain." which is true enough, but is that really an excuse for not pointing out the glaring inaccuracies and flaws in the logic of this group? for example, the article reads, "many social conservatives believe that abstinence training has led to a drop in teen pregnancies and contributed to a decline in abortion rates," which is great and all, but it happens to be false. teen pregs rose between 2005 and 2006 for the first time since 1991. it was big, huge news. cecile richards was on cnn and everything. so, what the fuck?
but the worst part is, that's not even a quote [even though i'm sure a lot of the people who signed this letter are laboring under that misimpression]. that's what the author wrote. and i certainly don't go to the wsj looking for my daily dose of liberal news, but - talk about ignoring the facts. that's sure to convince the collective youth of america to keep it in their pants [i mean, it's worked so well so far, right?].
20 May 2008
19 May 2008
that whole revolution thing.
i didn't manage to catch vh1's sex: the revolution the first time around, early last week - it didn't help that there was pretty much no coverage of it anywhere. my assumption is that it was neither groundbreaking enough nor offensive enough to warrant anyone's attention. i only watched the first half hour, which didn't tell me anything i didn't already know: the 50s and early 60s were sexually repressive, put an inordinate amount of emphasis on female virginity, and scared people into thinking that if they treated sex as anything other than anathema, their children would be nothing more than a bunch of morally corrupt syphilis carriers.
i taped the rest, though - all 3 and a half more glorious hours - so i'll be sure to mention it if i ever make it through. if anyone's seen it [or if anyone reads this...], be sure to let me know.
in other news, if you want to see all the reasons ab-only sex ed sucks in one nicely done letter to the editor, you should check this out.
i taped the rest, though - all 3 and a half more glorious hours - so i'll be sure to mention it if i ever make it through. if anyone's seen it [or if anyone reads this...], be sure to let me know.
in other news, if you want to see all the reasons ab-only sex ed sucks in one nicely done letter to the editor, you should check this out.
16 May 2008
because every 16-year-old girl should know she's worthless without a man.
so when i say that crappy sex ed [or no sex ed] basically amounts to school-sponsored sexism and the perpetuation of traditional gender norms, this is what i'm talking about.
i caught the link on feministing. the gist of the article is that the principal at a catholic all-girls high school in staten island decided that the girls can't attend the junior prom without a date. more specifically, a "male escort". the principal ran reporters off school property and told the students not to say a word. not only is this rule straight out of the 19th century [obvious], it also effectively alienates any students who'd rather take another girl to prom. what could have been a romantic, liberating night for these girls is reduced to nothing more than a depressing sham of heterosexuality.
now, i can't say for sure that this high school has crappy sex ed, but it is a catholic school, so it's pretty safe to say that there's not a lot going on beyond "your virginity is a precious gift," or maybe "you're a dirty toothbrush." i'm certainly not saying a lack of dialogue about sexuality is the only thing driving this, but it certainly makes it that much easier to keep backward policies like this in place.
i caught the link on feministing. the gist of the article is that the principal at a catholic all-girls high school in staten island decided that the girls can't attend the junior prom without a date. more specifically, a "male escort". the principal ran reporters off school property and told the students not to say a word. not only is this rule straight out of the 19th century [obvious], it also effectively alienates any students who'd rather take another girl to prom. what could have been a romantic, liberating night for these girls is reduced to nothing more than a depressing sham of heterosexuality.
now, i can't say for sure that this high school has crappy sex ed, but it is a catholic school, so it's pretty safe to say that there's not a lot going on beyond "your virginity is a precious gift," or maybe "you're a dirty toothbrush." i'm certainly not saying a lack of dialogue about sexuality is the only thing driving this, but it certainly makes it that much easier to keep backward policies like this in place.
13 May 2008
feminists hate moms.
this isn't exactly on the topic of sex education, though i do hope to cover teaching feminism in sex ed in a later post. however, since my feminism informs all of my work in sex ed, this riled me and i thought i'd share. i barely caught this latest argument against feminism when i saw a letter to the editor about it in today's cincinnati enquirer. the letter which was a tepid response at best, responded to a "your voice" column by an ohio university student that ran on mother's day.
for anyone lucky enough to catch it in the sunday paper, i'm sure it provided several great talking points for brunch. i was nearly ready to quit after the first sentence: "in a world of feminism and women's rights, mothers are devalued and underappreciated." that's right, ms. graham, it's certainly not because mechanisms of patriarchy are in place in every aspect of our lives. mothers are devalued and underappreciated because feminism has TOTALLY TAKEN OVER. this must be why women still make less than men for the same kind of work, why we have no paid maternity leave, and why women are abused and raped and then doubted by the justice system that purports to serve us. oh, how this article makes me long for the glory days of the 1950s when everything was simple.
but it gets better. "in a feminist world," writes graham, "you don't get to choose," since "feminism denies the right of a woman to actually have a child and have as many as she wants." i must have missed this somewhere in my 7 or 8 women's studies classes. i guess i'll have to either revise my plan to have three kids or tear up my feminist membership card, since "in America, the ability to prevent pregnancy has overwhelmed society, so much that women who choose to have more than two children become stigmatized and outcast as religious fanatics." though, it's funny, because last i checked, our ability to prevent pregnancy wasn't exactly overwhelming, as half of all pregnancies are unplanned but only half of these end in abortion. teens aren't doing such a hot job of preventing pregnancy, either, but that's another tirade for another time.
i'd go into graham's logic that sexual liberation means "being able to sleep with as many men as they want with as little emotion as possible" and that the "high standard of mothering ... was created by experiencing that kind of motherhood" and not by the long-standing patriarchal tradition of denigrating women by erecting impossible standards, but everything sort of falls apart there. i'm not really sure how she came to her ultimate conclusion - that feminists hate mother's day.
it seems too easy to note that she cites no sources for any of her sweeping generalizations about feminists, contraception, and the mothering capabilities of women's studies professors, but she's a journalism major, so it kind of makes me want to punch her in the face. fitting that such a poorly written, ill thought-out would end up in the enquirer. this is the stuff i come home for - i mean, it's certainly not to see my mom, because, as a feminist, i hate her and would never want to celebrate the way she raised me to effect social change where i see injustice. certainly not.
for anyone lucky enough to catch it in the sunday paper, i'm sure it provided several great talking points for brunch. i was nearly ready to quit after the first sentence: "in a world of feminism and women's rights, mothers are devalued and underappreciated." that's right, ms. graham, it's certainly not because mechanisms of patriarchy are in place in every aspect of our lives. mothers are devalued and underappreciated because feminism has TOTALLY TAKEN OVER. this must be why women still make less than men for the same kind of work, why we have no paid maternity leave, and why women are abused and raped and then doubted by the justice system that purports to serve us. oh, how this article makes me long for the glory days of the 1950s when everything was simple.
but it gets better. "in a feminist world," writes graham, "you don't get to choose," since "feminism denies the right of a woman to actually have a child and have as many as she wants." i must have missed this somewhere in my 7 or 8 women's studies classes. i guess i'll have to either revise my plan to have three kids or tear up my feminist membership card, since "in America, the ability to prevent pregnancy has overwhelmed society, so much that women who choose to have more than two children become stigmatized and outcast as religious fanatics." though, it's funny, because last i checked, our ability to prevent pregnancy wasn't exactly overwhelming, as half of all pregnancies are unplanned but only half of these end in abortion. teens aren't doing such a hot job of preventing pregnancy, either, but that's another tirade for another time.
i'd go into graham's logic that sexual liberation means "being able to sleep with as many men as they want with as little emotion as possible" and that the "high standard of mothering ... was created by experiencing that kind of motherhood" and not by the long-standing patriarchal tradition of denigrating women by erecting impossible standards, but everything sort of falls apart there. i'm not really sure how she came to her ultimate conclusion - that feminists hate mother's day.
it seems too easy to note that she cites no sources for any of her sweeping generalizations about feminists, contraception, and the mothering capabilities of women's studies professors, but she's a journalism major, so it kind of makes me want to punch her in the face. fitting that such a poorly written, ill thought-out would end up in the enquirer. this is the stuff i come home for - i mean, it's certainly not to see my mom, because, as a feminist, i hate her and would never want to celebrate the way she raised me to effect social change where i see injustice. certainly not.
lock up your kids.
it happened while i was working at a christian camp. i've always been a sucker for irony.
hovering between freshman and sophomore years of college, i had absolutely no life plan beyond vague notions of studying french, which was the primary reason i found myself back at the summer job i held down during high school, "doin' it for the kids," as they say. i spent the bulk of my days playing four-square with 7th-graders and thinking about my boyfriend, who was 300 miles away.
it happened by accident. about midway through the summer, one of the girls came up from taking her swim test and i told her to make sure she took her wet bathing suit off so she didn't get a yeast infection. and then -
"what's a yeast infection?"
seriously? these pubescent girls had no idea about the inner workings of their vaginas. obviously they didn't have a mother who constantly walked around the house naked and showed [yes, showed] her how to put a tampon in at age 8. i gathered them up and did them the biggest favor of their young lives: let them know that your vagina has to be able to breathe to do its thing.
they were awestruck. it was time for dinner, so i said, "well, that's your lesson of the day" and thought no more of it.
the next day, one of them came up to me and said, "so what's our lesson of the day today?" getting about 5 hours of sleep a night for a month kind of wreaks havoc on the short-term memory: i had no idea what she was talking about.
"you know, the bathing suit thing, from yesterday?"
they wanted more. and i, being born with a rotten anti-establishment streak, was more than happy to provide it to these girls, the majority of whom went to catholic school. so every night, just before lights-out, i would tell them something else. we talked about periods, tampons, boys - anything i could think of that would be interesting to them but wouldn't get me fired if one of them happened to let slip to their parents. on the last night, i let them ask me questions. "does semen really come out at 60 miles an hour?" one of them asked. the cabin erupted in giggles.
of course i had no idea [in case you're wondering, it's true], but the fact that they were comfortable enough to ask me that remains one of my proudest moments. and the more i thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to me that they didn't know anything about this stuff. there was certainly no lack of curiosity, but these girls lacked basic knowledge about their bodies. most of the girls i know who've started their periods at camp get this constant deer-in-the-headlights look until their mom invariably comes to whisk them away and "clean them up".
i decided at the end of that week that i wanted to be a sex educator, and i haven't looked back. unlike many of our esteemed legislators, i've worked with kids, and they are not the pristine, asexual little angels we so often make them out to be - and that's not necessarily bad. the bad part is the whole "don't ask, don't tell" thing we've got going on, promoting unsafe behaviors by omitting anything resembling empirical information and reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes. it's no fluke that the teen pregnancy rate is up for the first time since '91 or that 1 in 4 teens has an STI.
rant, rant, rant. anyway, that's me.
hovering between freshman and sophomore years of college, i had absolutely no life plan beyond vague notions of studying french, which was the primary reason i found myself back at the summer job i held down during high school, "doin' it for the kids," as they say. i spent the bulk of my days playing four-square with 7th-graders and thinking about my boyfriend, who was 300 miles away.
it happened by accident. about midway through the summer, one of the girls came up from taking her swim test and i told her to make sure she took her wet bathing suit off so she didn't get a yeast infection. and then -
"what's a yeast infection?"
seriously? these pubescent girls had no idea about the inner workings of their vaginas. obviously they didn't have a mother who constantly walked around the house naked and showed [yes, showed] her how to put a tampon in at age 8. i gathered them up and did them the biggest favor of their young lives: let them know that your vagina has to be able to breathe to do its thing.
they were awestruck. it was time for dinner, so i said, "well, that's your lesson of the day" and thought no more of it.
the next day, one of them came up to me and said, "so what's our lesson of the day today?" getting about 5 hours of sleep a night for a month kind of wreaks havoc on the short-term memory: i had no idea what she was talking about.
"you know, the bathing suit thing, from yesterday?"
they wanted more. and i, being born with a rotten anti-establishment streak, was more than happy to provide it to these girls, the majority of whom went to catholic school. so every night, just before lights-out, i would tell them something else. we talked about periods, tampons, boys - anything i could think of that would be interesting to them but wouldn't get me fired if one of them happened to let slip to their parents. on the last night, i let them ask me questions. "does semen really come out at 60 miles an hour?" one of them asked. the cabin erupted in giggles.
of course i had no idea [in case you're wondering, it's true], but the fact that they were comfortable enough to ask me that remains one of my proudest moments. and the more i thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to me that they didn't know anything about this stuff. there was certainly no lack of curiosity, but these girls lacked basic knowledge about their bodies. most of the girls i know who've started their periods at camp get this constant deer-in-the-headlights look until their mom invariably comes to whisk them away and "clean them up".
i decided at the end of that week that i wanted to be a sex educator, and i haven't looked back. unlike many of our esteemed legislators, i've worked with kids, and they are not the pristine, asexual little angels we so often make them out to be - and that's not necessarily bad. the bad part is the whole "don't ask, don't tell" thing we've got going on, promoting unsafe behaviors by omitting anything resembling empirical information and reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes. it's no fluke that the teen pregnancy rate is up for the first time since '91 or that 1 in 4 teens has an STI.
rant, rant, rant. anyway, that's me.
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