Credit: Trojan/Youth advocates billboard project
Trojan (yeah the condom company) has partnered with Youth Advocates to erect a 20-foot activist billboard covered in chewed-up gum speaking truth to power. “You Are Not Chewed Gum,” it will read. “Information Is the Best Protection.”
The article found here finally says everything that those of us that have worked in public health for years have said. Abstinence-only programs do not work.
One 2011 study funded by the University of Georgia Research Foundation concluded teens in states that prescribe more abstinence education are more likely to become pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report also found that the combined cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis reached an all-time high in 2018—with half of all new STD cases occurring in young people aged 15 to 24.
Comprehensive sex education curriculums could be the solution for rising STI and teen pregnancy rates, yet the Trump administration has chosen instead to employ strategies to police young women’s bodies.
While I am no fan of Trump’s, this has been a consistent push with conservatives as well as evangelicals since the 80s. Congress has spent a buttload (a few pounds less than an ass-ton) of money to promote and fund abstinence-only programs (which shame girls to abstinence), because, we apparently have no idea of prevention in mind, just poorly presented information and shaming (yeah they mostly call any young lady who has sex a slut or even better they compare her to chewed gum). We have been dealing with this since I was in High School and honestly, the truth is in the data that these programs do not work.
I have pushed for comprehensive sex ed in my blog and on the podcast before, and I always will. I worked for a health department in a town that had abstinence-only sex education, and the neighboring town did not. I wasn’t allowed to even be in the schools that taught abstinence-only. It is funny and yet scary to note that when the local school board was going to discuss the effectiveness of the current abstinence program, I was told by the county manager that I was not allowed to go. I was threatened with my job as I was too vocally against abstinence-only education. I was told to stay home, and that one of the other nurses from that office would attend in my place (I was the Infectious disease, STD, HIV nurse for the office). They sent a very religious home health nurse in my place that just was a Karen bobblehead. She was also with patient confidentiality.
I was more disgusted that this nurse had an office and a desk that was positioned so that she could see the reception area. She was a Karen and had two high school-age daughters who were cheerleaders (apparently in small-town USA being a cheerleader means something in my high school they were pretty snobbish as I remember). Her view of reception meant when a High School student came in for any STD, HIV testing, or free condoms she knew. I also know that this was communicated to the child’s parents. When I brought this up, I was told by her and by the office manager that these kids have no right to privacy. They do, as the age of consent for STD testing in most states, is 13. Confidentiality is usually pretty strict, except for in Janet’s mind. The sad part is the office manager agreed with her. These people love abstinence-based sex ed.
So apparently does the current administration.
Last April, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced plans to restructure Title X family planning and teen pregnancy prevention and place it under the control of Valerie Huber, an abstinence-only activist who was appointed by Trump in 2017. U.S. Senator (D-WA) Patty Murray questioned the HSS’ motivation: “It is difficult to understand how this reorganization does anything other than consolidate control at HHS headquarters,” she wrote in a letter, “and prioritize ideology over the needs of the women, teenagers, and children the affected programs serve.”
Sounds familiar. We want to put our “faith” our “ideology” ahead of healthy women and girls.
Some of these programs compare sexually active teens to chewed-up gum; others compare them to cups of spit or used pieces of tape. Some teachers call students who aren’t virgins “tainted” and “impure.” And in most classrooms, the people being shamed for their sexual lives are young women and girls.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, seriously? We have enough issues with esteem in high school-aged kids without this crap being spewed by people who are more interested in promoting an agenda than they are trying to make the child’s life better.
The worst part is that boys don’t face this scrutiny and are expected to have sex before marriage. Except if they have gay sex, and then even then, as long as they aren’t receiving sex, they are good.
We owe it to our kids to present, factual, non-biased (especially religious) sex education. We create adults who do not have a clue. This makes disease burden, as well as prevention more complicated, and these adults have nothing to teach their kids that is based in reality, not some fantasy world.
Be the kind of person your mom and your dog hope you are.