50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives by National Council Of Women's Organizations

Author:National Council Of Women's Organizations
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781577317012
Publisher: New World Library

Teach Honest Sex Education

Martha E. Kempner, Director of Public Information, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

Since 1996, the federal government has sunk over $900 million into programs that tell young people that sexual relationships outside of marriage are likely to have harmful physical and psychological consequences. Although referred to as “abstinence-until-marriage programs,” they teach a lot more than “just say no” – especially on the topic of gender.

You might be surprised at the extent to which the curricula for these programs refer to outdated social norms and reinforce sexist stereotypes. The student workbook Sex Respect, for example, suggests that young people ask for their parents’ opinions on whether it is appropriate for girls to ask guys out.1 Reasonable Reasons to Wait asks young people to consider this question: “Will the wife work after marriage or will the husband be the sole breadwinner?”2 And Art of Loving Well asks them to “think of the enormous wisdom contained in the fact that in a wedding ceremony the father ‘gives away’ his daughter.”3

Sex Respect anticipates that students will ask the bizarre question: Are boys who abstain really considered ‘virgins’?” The answer the book provides: “Although the term more commonly is used in reference to girls, it applies to boys too.”4 While at some distant point in our cultural history, the word “virgin” might have only referred to women, this is no longer the case. By including this as a likely question, the curriculum is subtly reinforcing a model of gender inequality that requires chastity and purity in women but not men.

Gender inequality is further reinforced in discussions of sexual relationships, in which the curricula promote the age-old stereotype that men use love to get sex and women only have sex to feel loved. Sex Respect explains that “a young man’s natural desire for sex is already strong due to testosterone, the powerful male growth hormone. Females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasize about sex as well.”5

By promoting such ideas, these curricula ultimately put the responsibility for controlling sexual behavior on young women. Reasonable Reasons to Wait explains, “Girls need to be aware they may be able to tell when a kiss is leading to something else. The girl may need to put the brakes on first to help the boy.”6 Presenting these stereotypes and myths as universal truths can limit the options of young women, influence their behavior, and color the expectations of both girls and boys for future relationships.

Perhaps even more alarming, however, is that these programs present equally biased information about pregnancy- and disease-prevention methods. Young people are told that condoms break, tear, and have large holes; that birth control is difficult to use; and that sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are simply the inevitable consequence of premarital sexual activity.

It is important for us to remember that by their senior year, 62 percent of high school students in the United States have had sexual intercourse.7 Telling these students that condoms and contraception do not work will not prevent them from engaging in sexual behavior.

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