Sex Ed Without the Sex

September 19, 2016 9:43 AM

In West Texas, a Christian pregnancy center has grown increasingly involved in reproductive life—including teaching sex ed in public schools.
posted by poffin boffin (30 comments total)

I should be able to move on from this sentence but I can't: "What’s going on with her spiritually, in her inner man?"

For a fictional morality tale about a teen girl, is it just that the terms "inner self" or "inner voice" are too outta-hand PC for West Texas, or whu...??
posted by Ornate Rocksnail at 10:08 AM on September 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

This sums up everything about small towns and sex in one paragraph:

a complicated attitude toward teen parenthood that prevails here. If you’re a teen in Midland, premarital sex is wrong. If you mess up and do it anyway, you may very well get pregnant. In that case, you should definitely have the baby, because, as almost all of the teens and adults I interviewed assured me, abortion is an even greater sin. Once you've had the baby, redemption begins. Other adults should respect and help you. You can even become an example to other single parents—except that there shouldn't be any, because again, premarital sex is wrong.

I mean, it's good that at least they don't run the girls out of town on a rail, but it would still be better to help them not get pregnant.
posted by emjaybee at 10:18 AM on September 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

the thing about how this area has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire state is so telling but i'm sure the blame is put solely on the kids and not the abject horrifying criminal neglect of their education.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:36 AM on September 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

i'm sure the blame is put solely on the kids

Well, roughly half the kids, anyway.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:37 AM on September 19, 2016 [87 favorites]

"What’s going on with her spiritually, in her inner man?"

I am from East Texas, not West, but I am almost certain the word spoken there was "mind" and this is a transcription/translation error.

Anyway I couldn't finish this article. We need to stop gaslighting children as a means of control.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:41 AM on September 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

Still, contraceptives are never discussed in MARY. Instead, the women learn about identity and “sexual healing.”

Just thought I'd throw in this quote for you Marvin Gaye fans, because it shows up 75% of the way through this article, which, like a lot of Atlantic articles, is five times as long as it needs to be, so I'm guessing you didn't make it that far.
posted by kozad at 10:46 AM on September 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

“The chemicals in your brain learn what it feels like to have sex, and they want to have sex again,” Misty says. “So it's best to not have it at all.”

I'd say WTFT, but sex ed sucks almost everywhere. That same message is given to girls in all sorts of different ways--you'll get diseased, you'll get pregnant, girls won't like you, guys will use you. It's disgusting.

We need to teach our girls that sexual pleasure is a powerful and important part of their lives, and that they are normal for feeling that way. (and of course, that everyone has the right to decide how and when they are touched and how and when they touch.)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:56 AM on September 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

the thing about how this area has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire state is so telling but i'm sure the blame is put solely on the kids girls and not the abject horrifying criminal neglect of their education.

Fixed.
posted by Gelatin at 11:00 AM on September 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

childbearing is not gender specific, it is uterus specific.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:06 AM on September 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

"What’s going on with her spiritually, in her inner man?"

I am from East Texas, not West, but I am almost certain the word spoken there was "mind" and this is a transcription/translation error.

Well, I'm from central Texas, but I guarantee you "inner man" is accurate. It's typical fundy-speak for spirit or conscience, based on certain translations of Paul's epistles. See, for example: What is the inner man?
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:10 AM on September 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

CPCs are basically breeding grounds for the most evil anti-choice and anti-woman policies that children and young adults can be exposed to. Here's a sampling from someone who went undercover as a potential "patient" to see what their advice is:

Right as I began to relax, the Q&A took a turn for the personal and invasive. “What is your relationship with your parents like?” “How is your financial situation?” “Have you told the father?” “What is his religion?” “Are his parents religious?” “How many people have you slept with?” “Would your parents be excited about a grandchild?”
[...]
The woman stopped between questions to comment on my answers and lie. “Oh, you’ve taken birth control. Let me tell you how that causes cancer and is the same a medication abortion.” I was told abortion would scar me for the rest of my life — would damage all of my future relationships and leave me “haunted.” I was told the pill could cause breast cancer, that condoms are “naturally porous” and don’t protect against STIs, and that IUDs could kill me. She lectured and lied to me for over an hour before I even received the results of my pregnancy test.

Also interspersed in the deception were subtle judgments of my life decisions. “So you do have some scruples about you,” she said at one point, referring to my low number of sexual partners. One of the most disturbing comments came when I was pressed about the sexual experience leading to my visit, the reason I supposedly needed a pregnancy test in the first place. I told her an all too common story of acquaintance rape. I had been at a party, I said, severely intoxicated and unable to consent, “I didn’t remember anything... I just wished it hadn’t happened.” Her response made it clear that the situation was my fault, “Oh so he took advantage of you. Well just don’t do it again sweetie; just don’t do it again.” It made me sick.

It only got worse after a positive pregnancy test. At another CPC (the deceptively named “A Woman’s Choice” in Falls Church, Virginia) I could hear two employees whispering before entering my room, plotting strategies to reveal the test results and best manipulate my reaction. When they did finally clue me in, my concerns were casually brushed aside and used as ammunition for their agenda: I could care for a baby with no job, my parents would certainly help, and I could absolutely handle the stress. They even argued that I could be a law student while pregnant: “It will probably be good for the baby,” the woman said, “because you will be sitting down all of the time.”

At this center and elsewhere, the conversations were always the same. It didn’t matter how many times I said that l didn’t want to be pregnant or be a mother the CPC staffer would continue to bully me.

posted by zombieflanders at 11:11 AM on September 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

But Midland is the kind of place where a father-daughter Purity Ball draws hundreds of participants.

I wish the article would give some idea how well attended the mother-son Purity Ball is so we could determine whether this is simply a matter of conservative sexual ethics which is equally concerned with restraining the choices of daughters and sons or some kind of misogynistic double-standard. I guess we'll never know.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:13 AM on September 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Mod note: Couple of comments deleted; not sure if you were serious fraxil, but you need to stay well away from this thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:20 AM on September 19, 2016

I sometimes fantasize about getting in a plane and dropping leaflets over towns like this. Leaflets with actual informative information about sex, birth control, abortion, and the legal rights people with uteruses have (currently, at least).
posted by lovecrafty at 12:01 PM on September 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Pater Aletheias, those statistics would be interesting if Mother-Son purity balls even existed.

Count me as one of the disgusted. And wishing there was some way for them to be sued into oblivion.
posted by Hactar at 12:02 PM on September 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd say WTFT, but sex ed sucks almost everywhere.

I bet math ed would suck, too, if it were about how not to do math.

I guess the best we can hope for is topics like pregnancy, contraception and avoiding STDs get taught as part of health and biology classes, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live in a society that valued sexuality enough to have actual sex-ed classes. Like, classes that taught high school kids how to have better sex.
posted by layceepee at 12:26 PM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's no agency given to women, or even to married couples, in this system. Unintended pregnancy isn't actually a negative, as long as you're married. It's not as if, as soon as you get married, they give you a packet explaining all the ins and outs of reproductive health they were withholding before you got married.

It's not just that they view kids as incapable of making decisions given information, it's that they disbelieve the reality or are incredibly disingenuous. How many children do the instructors and facilitators of these classes have? What choices have they made?
posted by mikeh at 12:29 PM on September 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mean, it's good that at least they don't run the girls out of town on a rail, but it would still be better to help them not get pregnant.

Well, there's that thing conservative white evangelicals have about populating the world with soldiers for Christ and stuff, so...
posted by Thorzdad at 12:52 PM on September 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

those statistics would be interesting if Mother-Son purity balls even existed.

Nobody break the news to Buster.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:11 PM on September 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

My son had sex ed last year, from a program run by Baylor, which is a Baptist healthcare company and university. It wasn't quite as bad as this, but it wasn't far off. Needless to say, my complaints to the school board were ignored and they've signed the same group to do classes this year.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 4:55 PM on September 19, 2016

Part of my pre-Cana (Catholic pre-marriage) counseling was in this vein, and they told us that "sex is like ice cream, you enjoy it more if you have it less" and I was like, "I THINK YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ICE CREAM."

The part from the priest was actually lovely and affirming of sexuality and love; the part from the CPC couple was full of lies about cancer and metaphors to ice cream from people who have apparently never eaten ice cream.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:28 PM on September 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

I'm glad I grew up in a good school district that didn't use government money for faith based education at the time.

Our priest let us skip the pre Cana stuff entirely because we already had two kids and a civil marriage at that point. Great guy.
posted by mattamatic at 6:21 PM on September 19, 2016

Secret Agent Sock Puppet, if you would like him to get actual good teaching that's not from you, find a UU church (or some Christian churches) that offers the Our Whole Lives program (OWL) in your area. It's age-appropriate, consent- and science-based, and provides lots and lots of information and support--it doesn't just go over the facts, but over the emotional aspects of sex and growing up and relationships, which tends to get neglected by both religious abstinence and purely-technical classes on sex.

(I might be a little obnoxious in pushing this because I got to get trained in the middle/high-school teaching and was just blown away by how good the curriculum was. It's not perfect, but still, a room full of middle-aged parent types, well-educated, and there was stuff we did not know that was in there. I weep a little for how much I missed out because there was nothing like this for me as a kid).
posted by emjaybee at 9:33 PM on September 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

someone who went undercover as a potential "patient" to see what their advice is

There's a crisis pregnancy center in the same strip mall as the Planned Parenthood I patronize for routine reproductive healthcare. I am now DYING to go in there and troll them if/when I find myself pregnant.
posted by Sara C. at 11:41 PM on September 19, 2016

I went through the predecessor program to OWL as a junior high student. It was tremendously great, and something I struggle with is how to make sure my kids get a similar level of sex Ed given they are being raised Catholic.
posted by JPD at 1:20 AM on September 20, 2016

JPD, if you have a local Unitarian/Universalist church that offers the OWL program, I doubt they'd object to your kids attending.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 6:58 AM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Both my boys have gone through the 5th grade OWL program. My oldest just went through the 20 week program in the 7th grade last year. Yes, 20 weeks. If it wasn't so damned sad, the "class" in this article would have made me laugh out loud. What a disservice to those youth. I'm so glad my wife and I decided to leave Texas and return to New Hampshire to raise our family.
JPD - Yes, check out your local UU congregation. I know my church, South Church UU in Portsmouth, NH, accepts children of non-members into the OWL program.
posted by AJScease at 7:27 AM on September 20, 2016

I guess the best we can hope for is topics like pregnancy, contraception and avoiding STDs get taught as part of health and biology classes

You'd hope that but even that isn't always a given. My wife teaches prenatal classes in Canada. She gets a very wide range of people in her classes - new Canadians who's English is poor trying to navigate our health system, Old Order Mennonites, people of various genders, rich people, poor people. Generally the knowledge of the class is acceptable but every so often she'll get a couple who literally have no idea how anything about their biology works. Just this past weekend she had to explain, very kindly, to a university educated middle class woman in her early 30s that her baby would not be coming out her anus. This was not someone from a parochial culture but a young professional woman who literally had no idea how her body worked. My wife has also had grown women tell her not to use the word vagina in the class but to use the word "va jay jay" instead. Better sex education not just in developing countries but worldwide would improve the health of women tremendously.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:32 AM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

You know, they're not called menstruation centers. Whatever they happen to say, pregnancy centers want more babies, they know the policies that create more babies, and they're implementing those policies quite successfully. You can't call something a failure if you don't know its metrics.

Go to Europe, where they literally have billboards begging people to increase the birth rate, and a lot more things make sense.
posted by effugas at 4:47 AM on September 21, 2016

It should be noted that these places don't provide prenatal care or, in a lot of cases, medical services of any kind.
posted by Sara C. at 10:19 AM on September 21, 2016