Okay, yes, I’m a little late in ranting about this (it’s been a hard week), but GODDAMMIT!! Can we now PLEASE stop pretending that abstinence only education works? Can we stop with the ridiculous assertions that we just don’t start teaching abstinence early enough? That the threat of a squicky disease will be enough to stop kids in their tracks? It obviously will fucking well not. This stupid, colossal waste of time and money is now causing physical harm.
Every time I see numbers like this I get so pissed off I could scream. It’s preventable. Idiotic parents who think that teaching their pwecious to learn to use a condom correctly = telling them it’s alright to go out and screw like rabbits need to get over one simple misconception; namely that kids GIVE A DAMN whether you think sex is okay or not. They are going to do it anyway, do you get that now? Do I need to put it in 25 point flashing purple neon font? They. Don’t. Care. They are going to have sex. We can either teach them to protect themselves and by extension EVERYONE THEY EVER FUCK (and so on), or we can just keep spreading around those gifts that keep on giving.
SYPHILIS, for fuck’s sake! Syphilis!! Did you know that in 1999, we had that stupid archaic disease beat back to just 2.5 cases per 100,000 people? It just jumped yet again, for the seventh damn year in a row, up in just one year for 10% among women and 14% among men. Do those numbers not pound it into your brain that the message “just say no” ain’t working?
Condoms are not the devil, people. Time to get over our national phobia and embarrassment. Kids have sex, that’s just the way it is. It doesn’t make them bad. They’re little hormones with feet. And if you tell them they can’t, they’re still going to. They just won’t tell you. Not only will they not tell you, they won’t ask you about how to be safe, either. You know. Safety. That thing you say you want for them. So quit making my fucking job so fucking hard. It’s bad enough we have to deal with a 10% cut in funding courtesy of the Governator. Let me just do my job and tell the kids (who, whether you know it or not, are probably already fucking their brains out without benefit of condom or birth control) how to be safe, since you’re too goddamn terrified to do it yourself. Okay?
Remember, you are dealing with people who don’t want their daughters vaccinated for HPV because they would rather have the threat of lingering death from cancer hanging over their daughters’ heads than risk their having sex. (Of course, they have sex anyhow–and get HPV.) You can’t reason with people like that.
It’s sad. Even kids who obviously consider themselves knowledgeable regarding sex are what I’d rate as borderline educated. One thought that masturbating at least three times before intercourse would render him sterile for 24 hours, because that’s what his friend told him, and his friend had never gotten anyone pregnant.
The people preaching for abstinence only education would probably be fine with all those dirty teenagers that have sex getting STDs as punishment for their wicked sinful ways. This isn’t failure for them unless theres some study that says virgins are getting STDs somewhere.
I’m hard pressed to believe that American teens aren’t aware that if you have unprotected sex that you’re subject to getting an STD. Teens take risks and you can talk to them till you’re blue in the face, but I’ll bet that fucking is just a little better without a condom. And the girls are embarrassed to ask for them. The nurse at my 16 year old daughter’s school hands a wack of condoms to her every so often so my daughter can distrubute them to her friends. She’s bold enough because anyone who knows her knows she’s not using them. But the girls who do use them are too embarrassed to get them from an adult.
I’ve never heard of “abstinence only” as an education policy here in Canada and I don’t like it , because it clearly doesn’t work. However, I do believe we need along with availability of condoms to send a clear message that promiscuity is dangerous , isn’t cool, and that it is advisable to wait as long as possible.
I can’t believe that 25% of our teen girls had VD before the sexual revolution.
A quarter of teenage girls may have STDs, but more than a quarter of teenage girls are having sex. Obviously, there’s more work to be done in this area.
While nations like Sweden and the Netherlands have excellent sex education programs in their schools, and offer counseling without being judgemental, we in the USA have this idiotic abstinence policy. Family values? yep-the kids oughtta get a good case of the clap-that’ll larn em!
Before demonising the kids, how about comparing the prevalance of HPV (which clearly is the dominant factor in the headline statistic) with that among the general population?
Reasonable sex education programs say exactly that - don’t do it, but if you do, then here is how to protect yourself. The right wing religious fanatics think that providing information about protection is enabling promiscuity.
This is just one more thing the Chimp and his buddies have screwed up. Iraq, our reputation, the economy and now the health of teenage girls.
(Not my two. They’ve both made it out of teenagerdom disease. free. My wife did her MS in reproductive physiology, so they got the right education at home.)
The fact that a quarter are infected is the proof that many women ARE having sex and simply don’t know enough to protect themselves. No one is saying ‘if you have sex you will become infected’, what the OP is saying is, ‘young women have sex regardless and the massive increase in infection is due to the stressing of abstinence over protection’.
