By Chloe B. McAlpin, Staff Writer, Emerson College
So parents don’t want you to have sex. We get that, you’re their baby, you’re innocent in their paternal eyes. They remember teaching you to ride your bike and when you burned you tongue on hot chocolate at Christmas and cried. They’re quick to tell you you’re not ready for sex. But what about government officials? Extremist religious groups? Old white men who you will never meet in your life but still think you’re a slut for asking a question about birth control? A lot of weird and scary things are told to teens to keep them from “doin’ the dirty”, but what are these messages really doing to us? Because (*spoiler alert*) we’re still having sex.
When I was a junior in high school I went to an event called Silver Ring Thing. The purpose of Silver Ring Thing is to promote “the message of purity and abstinence until marriage." I have a very close Christian friend who encouraged me to come with her. I am supportive of her religious beliefs and I was also curious for insider details about how Christians discussing sex so I went. Since I was raised in a very sex positive household, I never saw sex as a bad thing. It was maybe awkward and intimidating at times, but never scary. Silver Ring Thing, on the other hand, was scary. The whole night I was bombarded with hyperbolized facts about STDs and pregnancy and how, with even the slightest consideration of sex, they would be cast down upon you like the seven plagues onto Egypt. There were skits, short stories, songs, and speeches, none of which relayed the message of emotional security by staying abstinent but instead preached about all the horrible things that happen to you once you had sex outside of marriage. I was horrified. They even played a clip called “STDHarmony.com” that mocked people with life threatening illnesses and promoted the idea that if you get an STD, the only people who will want you are other disease infested sex maniacs. I mean really? What would Jesus do?
But my experience with fear as a tactic to keep teens from having sex is not rare. Actually it’s rather common. Abstinence only programs are taught in a surprisingly high amount of schools in the United States. Instead of learning about sexuality students are often taught “facts” about sex that turn out to be nothing more than urban legends or slut shaming in disguise. An anonymous Emerson freshmen said she was taught in her abstinence only high school class that “there is a chemical released in the brain when a girl has sex with a boy that makes her emotionally attached to him for the rest of her life.” Another girl said she was told if she had sex, she would be “violated” even when she consented. And yet another Emerson student told me that ninety-five percent of his sex education class was spent listening to stories about how STDs and pregnancy ruined other teen’s lives after they had sex.
Exaggerated and unscientific claims like these are, unfortunately, very common and they are constantly being bombarded on teens and young adults. Paradoxically, our culture also teaches that sex is amazing. Sex is desirable - it makes you an adult. And what is the result of fear and lying mixed with the media’s sexual fascination? Ironically (and yet so obviously) the result is that teens are having sex. But now, instead of enjoying that sex, they’re getting hurt.
Getting hurt means a lot of things here. The first kind of hurt is obvious. Any human being who isn’t taught how to swim is going to drown when they come in contact with water. A 2012 study from the Guttmacher Institute found that there is a distinct “link between method knowledge and contraceptive behaviors” and sex education is “useful in addressing risky behavior in this population.” This basically just means if you are given knowledge on how to protect yourself chances are you’re going to be safer (Woah!). Teens who have been only taught abstinence are unprepared for their so desired sex and so do it unsafely. They have never been taught how to put a condom on so, naturally, STD rates are higher. They don’t know where to get birth control and as a result, an average of 329,772 American teens get pregnant a year. And while these statistics are eyebrow raising in themselves, they do not account for the emotional damage that “getting hurt” also includes.
After being told all their lives that sex is unsafe and maybe even unholy, how could people help but feel shitty about themselves after doing it. When I asked a particular college student how she felt after the first time she had sex she told me that she felt great until her dad called her. “He told me he was just checking up on me. I felt so guilty, like I’d betrayed him. I started crying instantly”. For this college student and countless others, sex became exactly what they were taught it would be, full of guilt and shame.
The truth is that expecting all students to be ready to get married before they are ready to have sex is preposterous and using fear and lies to achieve this goal is even worse. No one can tell another human when they’re ready to have sex just like they cant tell them what sexual orientation they are or what they’re favorite food is. So here’s a wild idea: if you want to wait for marriage, good for you. If you want to have sex, good for you.
Chloe B. McAlpin is a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. Originally from Florida, Chloe enjoys crunchy orange leaves, used bookstores, and Simon & Garfunkel. If she had to pick a favorite animal it would be a Persian cat, and if she had to pick a favorite person it would be Virginia Woolf. Contact Chloe on her Twitter.
Image: thelmagazine.com
So parents don’t want you to have sex. We get that, you’re their baby, you’re innocent in their paternal eyes. They remember teaching you to ride your bike and when you burned you tongue on hot chocolate at Christmas and cried. They’re quick to tell you you’re not ready for sex. But what about government officials? Extremist religious groups? Old white men who you will never meet in your life but still think you’re a slut for asking a question about birth control? A lot of weird and scary things are told to teens to keep them from “doin’ the dirty”, but what are these messages really doing to us? Because (*spoiler alert*) we’re still having sex.
When I was a junior in high school I went to an event called Silver Ring Thing. The purpose of Silver Ring Thing is to promote “the message of purity and abstinence until marriage." I have a very close Christian friend who encouraged me to come with her. I am supportive of her religious beliefs and I was also curious for insider details about how Christians discussing sex so I went. Since I was raised in a very sex positive household, I never saw sex as a bad thing. It was maybe awkward and intimidating at times, but never scary. Silver Ring Thing, on the other hand, was scary. The whole night I was bombarded with hyperbolized facts about STDs and pregnancy and how, with even the slightest consideration of sex, they would be cast down upon you like the seven plagues onto Egypt. There were skits, short stories, songs, and speeches, none of which relayed the message of emotional security by staying abstinent but instead preached about all the horrible things that happen to you once you had sex outside of marriage. I was horrified. They even played a clip called “STDHarmony.com” that mocked people with life threatening illnesses and promoted the idea that if you get an STD, the only people who will want you are other disease infested sex maniacs. I mean really? What would Jesus do?
But my experience with fear as a tactic to keep teens from having sex is not rare. Actually it’s rather common. Abstinence only programs are taught in a surprisingly high amount of schools in the United States. Instead of learning about sexuality students are often taught “facts” about sex that turn out to be nothing more than urban legends or slut shaming in disguise. An anonymous Emerson freshmen said she was taught in her abstinence only high school class that “there is a chemical released in the brain when a girl has sex with a boy that makes her emotionally attached to him for the rest of her life.” Another girl said she was told if she had sex, she would be “violated” even when she consented. And yet another Emerson student told me that ninety-five percent of his sex education class was spent listening to stories about how STDs and pregnancy ruined other teen’s lives after they had sex.
Exaggerated and unscientific claims like these are, unfortunately, very common and they are constantly being bombarded on teens and young adults. Paradoxically, our culture also teaches that sex is amazing. Sex is desirable - it makes you an adult. And what is the result of fear and lying mixed with the media’s sexual fascination? Ironically (and yet so obviously) the result is that teens are having sex. But now, instead of enjoying that sex, they’re getting hurt.
Getting hurt means a lot of things here. The first kind of hurt is obvious. Any human being who isn’t taught how to swim is going to drown when they come in contact with water. A 2012 study from the Guttmacher Institute found that there is a distinct “link between method knowledge and contraceptive behaviors” and sex education is “useful in addressing risky behavior in this population.” This basically just means if you are given knowledge on how to protect yourself chances are you’re going to be safer (Woah!). Teens who have been only taught abstinence are unprepared for their so desired sex and so do it unsafely. They have never been taught how to put a condom on so, naturally, STD rates are higher. They don’t know where to get birth control and as a result, an average of 329,772 American teens get pregnant a year. And while these statistics are eyebrow raising in themselves, they do not account for the emotional damage that “getting hurt” also includes.
After being told all their lives that sex is unsafe and maybe even unholy, how could people help but feel shitty about themselves after doing it. When I asked a particular college student how she felt after the first time she had sex she told me that she felt great until her dad called her. “He told me he was just checking up on me. I felt so guilty, like I’d betrayed him. I started crying instantly”. For this college student and countless others, sex became exactly what they were taught it would be, full of guilt and shame.
The truth is that expecting all students to be ready to get married before they are ready to have sex is preposterous and using fear and lies to achieve this goal is even worse. No one can tell another human when they’re ready to have sex just like they cant tell them what sexual orientation they are or what they’re favorite food is. So here’s a wild idea: if you want to wait for marriage, good for you. If you want to have sex, good for you.
Chloe B. McAlpin is a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. Originally from Florida, Chloe enjoys crunchy orange leaves, used bookstores, and Simon & Garfunkel. If she had to pick a favorite animal it would be a Persian cat, and if she had to pick a favorite person it would be Virginia Woolf. Contact Chloe on her Twitter.
Image: thelmagazine.com