Blogging for sex ed

June 4th is blogging for sex education day! (It's still June 4th in the U.S., so I'll figure this is close enough to on time.)



When I was a young teenager, I worked for an organization that advocated (among other things) an abstinence-only message. I'm not proud of that part of my life, but it gave me a better understanding of the mentality behind that stuff. I don't really feel comfortable revealing the name of the organization, but it's a not-for-profit corporation, has no religious affiliation, and has existed slightly longer than I have. It's small and regional enough that you have probably not heard of it.

When I asked my boss why we couldn't mention condoms or birth control in our material, I got the canned answer: that would be giving the teenagers mixed messages. You can't tell them both "don't have sex" and "if you have (penetrative) sex, use a condom". They'll hear the second message as a license to go out and have sex. I expressed skepticism, but was met with the same answer repeated in a different way (the usual mode of arguing practically everywhere, I guess).

The thing that strikes me about the canned answer is that teenagers would have to be awfully stupid for it to be right. "Don't... but if you do..." isn't that hard of a concept, and it's one that people need to make good decisions. You shouldn't get drunk, but if you do, don't drive. You should avoid keg parties, but if you decide to attend one, bring a friend and look out for each other. Teenagers become adults, who as adults, are entitled to get drunk, have sex, and go to keg parties (maybe even at the same time!) Those adults will need to know how to keep themselves safe.

But someone of my age wasn't even supposed to talk about sex too much, as this was a prelude to doing it. If we didn't do it, talk about it, or even think about it, then why would we have any questions about it? I guess this is known in common parlance as "letting the best be the enemy of the good". It's an unanswerable position, especially if you're one of the people who's not supposed to be asking questions. But being unanswerable doesn't make you right.

The other weird thing about the abstinence-only message was that I was never quite sure what we were telling people to abstain from, or until when. The occasional vague mention of condoms (and their lack of complete effectiveness) didn't do anything to correct the heteronormative assumptions I had. Since my organization didn't mention marriage (probably atypical), it was also unclear when we were supposed to abstain until. The idea was probably to scare us off sex completely until we had quit being teenagers, but one of my friends wound up doing the guilt-ridden rationalizing thing instead, got an STD, and was pretty traumatized by the whole event. She probably wasn't the only one, but she was the only one who told me.

Sex wound up being a mystery whose rightful owners were the superior people who could handle it (adults), and had to be hidden from the people who were too dumb to think for themselves (teenagers). This also played out in the work situation, where I was told that I should leave the thinking to people who knew what they were doing, and stick to my secretarial-type tasks. Eventually, I got fed up with the whole thing and quit (go me!), having probably made the world a worse place during my stay (ugh; don't go me!).

Last year I had a good experience teaching math to teenagers, and probably making the world a slightly better place (just hoping to keep the balance above zero here). If there was one piece of information that I think was crucial to the experience, it was this: Teenagers might need guidance sometimes, but they are not dumb. Be honest with them.