Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences

6 Abstinence

Abstinence The student workbook for Sex Respect, one of the most widely used sex education curricula in the United States, gives pride of place to a teenwritten “rap” declaring: Love and sex Sex and love Both are gifts from up above One is good The other is great They would both be greater If you WAIT.1 In addition to learning that virginity is a gift, students are given the impression that the only alternative—adopted by foolish youth—is to think of virginity as a stigma. For example, the SR-produced videotape, “Dating : Predator or Partner,” promises to demonstrate that on dates there are only two types of people . . . predators or partners. . . . Derek Wiersma grew up as a sexual predator who began having premarital sex at 13. Derek was interested in “the hunt” and “getting as much out of a girl as he could.” . . . After college, Derek realized that preying on women was wrong and he stopped.2 Traditional beliefs about gender differences in sexuality permeate Sex Respect and other similar curricula that share its only-abstinence-untilmarriage perspective, as does the assumption that “normal” people are heterosexual.3 Claiming that “many things about the male and female gender . . . are opposite,” the SR student workbook suggests that, “because they generally become physically aroused less easily, girls are still in 6 178 a good position to slow down the young man.”4 Yet, at the same time, Sex Respect insists on a single, chaste standard for both genders: “It is equally important for both young men and women to abstain from sex outside of marriage. The time of the double standard is over.”5 The Debate over Sex Education in America The proportion of U.S. public school districts providing formal sex education increased substantially over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, such that more American youth are schooled in sex-related matters today than ever before.6 But the ideals and advice imparted in sex education programs varies dramatically from one school district to another depending on the curricula they adopt. Sex education programs fall into three broad types: comprehensive, which present abstinence and contraception as similarly effective and morally equivalent options for preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs); abstinence-plus, which portray abstinence as the best option for adolescents, but also discuss birth control/safer sex as an effective alternative; and abstinenceonly , which depict sexual chastity as the only moral and effective option outside of marriage, either omitting information about contraception or emphasizing its limitations.7 Over the course of the 1990s, the proportion of U.S. public schools offering comprehensive sex education programs shrank significantly, while the proportion teaching abstinence-only and abstinence-plus curricula increased .8 In 1998, of public school districts requiring sex education, 14 percent mandated comprehensive programs, 51 percent offered abstinence -plus curricula, and 35 percent provided abstinence-only education .9 Sex Respect alone grew from a several-school pilot program in 1985 to a slick multimedia curriculum used by 1,600 school districts in 1991 and over 3,000 in 2001.10 The expansion of abstinence-focused sex education has dramatically altered what information students learn about methods for preventing pregnancy and STIs. In 1988, only 2 percent of secondary school sex education teachers presented abstinence until marriage as the only means of protecting against pregnancy and STIs; by 1999, this figure had increased tenfold, to 23 percent.11 Conversely, the proportion of teachers depicting condoms as effective against HIV fell from 87 percent in 1988 to 59 percent in 1999.12 But official changes in policy don’t tell the whole story. In Abstinence | 179 many school districts, self-censorship has left comprehensive sex education programs closely resembling their abstinence-only counterparts.13 Tellingly, over one-third of students in nominally comprehensive programs report receiving little if any information about how and where to use and obtain contraception.14 One might assume that abstinence-only sex education came to the fore so rapidly because of scientific evidence demonstrating its superior effectiveness in preventing unintended pregnancies and STIs—but virtually no reliable evidence suggests that this is the case. Nor is abstinence-only education ’s success due to widespread opposition to comprehensive programs on the part of the American public. Indeed, the vast majority of U.S. parents are in favor of teaching children about contraception and safer sex in addition to abstinence.15 Rather...