Amanda has a great post up about this “Willful Ignorance” article in American Prospect. (Shakes also has a great post up from a different, and important, perspective.)
Talking about gender-stereotyped abstinence-only education (I know, as if abstinence-only wasn’t bad enough, it’s gender-stereotyped abstinence-only ferfuxake), Amanda says:
teaching that men want sex and women want love but don’t want sex means that young men figure there’s no such thing as an enthusiastic “yes” to sex. If men think all women are reluctant to have sex at all points in time, then that means that they think sex is basically always rape. If you think all sex is rape because women never reallly want sex—as this abstinence-only curricula subtly teaches—then you think that rape is socially acceptable.
That’s vitally important, and it’s an essential element of date-rape and of disbelieving rape victims. “No” only means “no” if “yes” means “yes.”
See, let’s walk away from what it teaches men for a moment and look at what it teaches women. My first reaction is that if they teach young women that only men really want sex, then women will feel defeminized when they get horny. Holy shit, I want sex, I must be a man. Or mannish. Butch. Undesireable because of these unnatural feelings. All that.
But there’s a subtler outcome, which is that a woman will not admit to sexual desire. She wouldn’t want a man to find out that she isn’t really “feminine,” that she has these “masculine” desires. So she’ll say no even when she means yes, because no is the only “female” response.
Creating the feedback loop whence comes the rapist’s mantra: “She said ‘no’ with her lips but ‘yes yes yes’ with her eyes.” You know, “She really wanted it.” Women simply cannot be empowered to say “no” and mean it and have it honored unless they can also be empowered to say “yes” and mean it and get happily healthily fucked. And these crazy abstinence conservatives fear women who enjoy fucking SO MUCH that they’re willing to rob women of our “no.” Small price, they think, for robbing us of our “yes.” Well, my “no” can save my life and my “yes” is too much joy to give up, thankyouverymuch.
I believe I was a victim of abstinence only education…we were taught exactly what Mean Girls makes fun of “If you have sex you’ll get an STD and die.” That took up all of our lectures.
We didn’t learn anything about BC or condoms or even anatomy. However, us girls were told horrible things. I consider it abuse now. “If a guy pays for your dinner at prom and you have sex with him that night, he essentially paid you to have sex with him. What does that make you?” We were so young and we all thought that made so much sense..
Mich, that’s very screwed up. It makes you feel bad about yourself when you do have sex.
“empowered to say “yes” and mean it and get happily healthily fucked”.
If women are empowered to say “yes”, think about this, isn’t men robbed of the empowerment “to take”? Conquer? Quest? Charge? Stab? Wound, as in virgin, the quest for blood, as is in war? Yes, it’s a blood sport, taught oh so subtle by fathers and brothers, and in exchanges in locker rooms of the male domain.
I’m transsexual, and trained myself in every way possible how to “get happily healthily fucked” early in my teens, with apparatiuses. I wanted to be ready when “this girl” got it her first time. Not only did I want “get it” good, I wanted to “give it” good too and that did finally happen after several useless riders and the “one” was a master at using a young anxious boy/girl for his wiles and this girls training served her and him well. I used to feel guilty about doing the things I was doing with myself, but I’m now happy I did, as he and I rode together in the throe’s of love on ridges, mountains, and lingered excitedly on the plateaus only “lovers” know. What should be taught to young girls is the art of the interview and how to train a stallion.
I support women’s empowerment to say “yes” or “no”, whenever, wherever, at any point in time, before, midway or after, as in “never again” you selfish bastard, because the persons who don’t want to accept “no” in the first place are always out for self gratification even if given a “yes”. Yes, their rapists. First they “rape” her mind, then emotions, then her body, or the other way around, first they “rape” her body, and the tremors rape her emotions, then her mind and she is left in pieces and she alone must pick up her disheveled bleeding moral and mental self, and attempt to put herself back together as she was before, but I didn’t even know [I was raped, please allow my anger] what was happening until it was all over and then everything was blurred by life’s daily mundane and you stagger back to life as if having been in drunkenness many days, and that feeling will last for years before one is able to stand again as once did. It’s evil and it’s violent, even when no physical force is used. That’s why they teach it, to the confusion of young girls, they get to conquer and divide. I was taught the oppositte of young girls, “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fiighten’, this is for fun.”, “get it any way you can”. Date rape has “always” been hood winked behind the walls of the male fraternity, until, it’s “your” daughter pregnant. Hypocrits and rapists! It’s “cat and mouse”, all theatrical, and by brawn, men set the stage ions ago and the struggle against an ignoble status by males who honor one thing, that which is between her legs and her heaving breasts, must continue, vehemently.
now,
happily living as female,
Phyllis
[smiles]…and, “yes” is too much joy to give up”, and “no” is too powerful to give up lest we forfiet control of our bodies, and it keeps us safe…
phyllis
Glamour magazine in feb issue had a article on Purity Balls the imagery and metaphor these people use and milk, Is sick Emotional incest sick this is the leaders of the abstinence movement unintentionally showing their true color. My husband has always said that fundamentalist christians were extremely jealous of Muslim republics and culture this proves him right. They talk about arranged marriages in passing and isolating daughters from society and culture. Next will be gender based school here in the bible belt they are talking segregating children by sex in classes. The 50’s proved that seperate was not equal and these people blithely porpose it for their daughters.
Yes, separate is not equal, the Supreme Court has already made that determination.