Do teens buy it when we tell them sex is bad?
Thanks to the fact that more and more public middle and high schools are being overrun by abstinence-only-until-marriage advocates, a generation of youth are emerging from schools with glazed eyes, mindlessly repeating abstinence mantras and wearing cheaply made ribbons, rings and bracelets proclaiming their purity.
Thinking about my own youth, there were lots of times when I said things or agreed with things that I knew were crap. I dressed as the grim reaper and went from class to class with kids from the Just Say No club, talking about the evils of drugs and alcohol even though I myself drank alcohol occasionally and didn’t die. I sat in the bleachers of our pep rallies, chanting that we were going to “Beat the Bulldogs!” even though I knew that our football team sucked and would lose the whole season. I even signed a pledge card once to remain drug and alcohol free until graduation and filed it with the principal’s office.
Adolescence is a time when the pressure to conform is felt most intensely. It’s when reputations matter the most and when the capacity to defend what may make us different from other people is not fully developed.
Take a few minutes to page through some of the abstinence-only-until-marriage campaign posters produced by the Old Orchard Junior High School in Skokie, Illinois. While some of the posters appear heartfelt and reasonable – warning of the consequences of having sex before you are ready, encouraging peers not to have sex just because they feel pressured – most of the posters appear to have been thrown together at the last minute with an abstinence slogan tossed onto it in order to complete the assignment. They are unconvincing at best, some of them seeming silly or ironic.
What you will find, however – and this is what makes me feel saddest – is a handful of passionately conceived posters proclaiming the evils and dangers of sex. Not sex before you’re ready. Not sex outside of marriage. Not sex with multiple drug-addicted, abusive criminals. Just sex.
Look at these four examples:
1) Abstinence Poster #1 This poster implies that having sex (does not specify sex as a teen or sex outside of marriage) is stupid and offers you nothing but diseases. There is also a suggestion that condoms are ineffective and unreliable.2) Abstinence Poster #2
This poster actually takes the message a step further, demonizing not just sex outside of marriage, but pleasure, itself. Accented by a lightning bolt, and a no symbol over a heart with flames (perhaps indicating passion?), the poster seems to imply that feeling good will result in swift punishment.3) Abstinence Poster #3
This poster makes me so sad. The teen contrasts a person who has not had sex (beautiful, virgin, proud, doing well in school, focused on future, healthy and happy) with a person who has had sex (nasty, not pure, ashamed, failing in school, pregnant, with no future, lines under the eyes, unhappy). Again, the message implies that the cause for all of the negative outcomes is simply sex.4) Abstinence Poster #4
This is the poster I find most disturbing. Among the things associated with sex (again, not sex outside of marriage or sex when you’re young) are hate, lies, death, insanity, deafness, rage, suicide threats, murder and torture. Read the list in the background out loud and you can feel the emotion behind it. Think about how this person may feel about her/his own sexuality, her/his own body, her/his own desire. It’s tragic.
In general, I think most teens see through the abstinence-only-until-marriage façade. I think they understand that it’s empty rhetoric and they are more likely to give credence to what they know to be true from other, more reliable sources – that sex can be healthy, that it can feel good, and that you aren’t going to be struck down by lightning for putting your hand in someone’s pants.
Unfortunately, some young people may be more vulnerable to these messages. Whether it is a matter of age or maturity, family life, trauma history or social standing can be debated. What’s important, and why we should be outraged, is that abstinence-only-until-marriage messages aren’t just ridiculous, baseless annoyances. Some of the messaging is getting through to our younger generation and teaching them to hate or fear parts of themselves. They are impacting the capacity of young people to be healthy and happy and to have fulfilling adult relationships.
My partner’s mother jokes that we’re teaching young people that sex is a dirty, perverted, dangerous thing that you save for the one you love. I used to laugh at that.
Posted by Jenn on April 20, 2006 11:27 AM
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