RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: The sex ed class that should never have happened  Wed Apr 09, 2014 2:36 am | |
| Your vagina is not a car
What if we redefined consent with yes means yes?
Q. If you were to take a small piece of chocolate, unwrap it and pass it around between a few dozen hands, what would the sloppy, sticky, unsavoury mess most resemble after it had made its way around the room?
A. Why, a used vagina of course!
Yes, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a conservative religious agenda with access to the minds of young children MUST be in want of a degrading sexual analogy about how women’s bodies literally melt away into repulsive sludge once their vaginas have been exposed to the touch of another human being. And so what better comparison for a Mississippi school district to use in their (legislatively enforced) sex education curricula than one which “called on students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it became”?
Public health worker Marie Barnard made the revelations to the LA Times after she discovered her son had been exposed to this rot. According to Barnard, she believed it was designed “to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she’s had sex - that she’s been used.” After all, who wants to touch a girl who’s gone and left herself smeared all over the hands of other men? Women…are...dirty.
Since Barnard’s accusations went public, representatives from the school district have sought to clarify that these methods were part of an initial trial of the ‘abstinence-plus’ program. Superintendant Brian Harvey says the past two years have focused on an entirely different curriculum, one which focuses more on making good decisions that demonstrate respect for themselves and each other. Unfortunately, no examples were provided by the district as to what this education now entails so one has to wonder - if these methods were considered useful enough to be included in initial trials, just how much have the attitudes changed?
But it wouldn’t be the first time such ridiculous comparisons have been made in the name of preventing girls from becoming fallen women. Just last year in Australia, Access Ministries were accused of distributing ‘Biblezines’ to Year 6 students which asked readers to consider “how far can you go before you are no longer pure?” In keeping with Mississippi’s dirty chocolate analogy, they responded with, “Let’s put it this way: How much dog poop stirred into your cookie batter does it take to ruin the whole batter?
Let’s put it this way girls. If you have sex, you may as well be asking a boy to take a giant sh-t right inside you and then whenever you touch someone after that you’ll just be leaving your dirty, sh-t stained hands all over them because you’re a dirty girl covered in sh-t.
Just as despicable were the pamphlet’s implied teachings about sexual assault; girls were advised never to go bra-less or to wear low slung jeans and tube tops, because they may be responsible for “putting sexual thoughts about [their bodies] into guys’ heads.”
Aside from the fact that no one in a position of authority should be speaking to Year 6 girls about their nipples, the preoccupation with pubescent girls’ bodies and what they choose to do with them signifies an unhealthy obsession that ought to be questioned regularly and thoroughly.
A documentary exploring the increasing popularity of ‘Purity Balls’ in the United States recently aired in Australia on the ABC, to the understandable repulsion of many of its viewers. ‘Purity Balls’ now take place in 48 out of 50 American states. They involve young girls on the cusp of puberty ‘pledging’ their virginity to their daddies to look after until it can be passed along to their husbands as ‘a gift’.
It’s worth noting that no such equivalent exists for boys. Despite the founder of the Purity Ball movement arguing that it’s really more about ‘being a whole person’, there’s no doubt that the focus remains fixated on girls. The practice is deeply patriarchal and intensely disturbing - participants are given mock wedding rings to wear on the fourth finger of their left hands while their daddies pledge ‘before God’ to act as their protectors and authority until they can be passed along to another man to do the same thing.
Could one argue that there’s something more than vaguely incestuous in an activity that literally asks young girls to charge the protection of their vaginas to their fathers? Absolutely. In a Nightline report on the ceremonies, the head pastor of the Living Stones Church, Ron Johnson, is seen offering a ring to his 12 year old daughter while saying, “This is just a reminder that keeping yourself pure is important. So you keep this on your finger and from this point you are married to the Lord and your father is your boyfriend.”
Why are people so concerned with protecting young girls from the kind of education that will enable them to make informed decisions about when, where and with whom THEY choose to have any form of sexual interaction? Well might we roll our eyes or laugh in outrage at the idea of Purity Balls, chocolate analogies and abstinence only education programs, but when it comes to girls and sexual expression, Australia isn’t exactly a zenith of progressive attitudes either.
Across all manner of platforms, Australian women continue to be reminded of our responsibility to dress modestly in order to avoid assault; to behave modestly in order to avoid sluttery; to live modestly in order to avoid unhappiness; and to maintain modest expectations in order to avoid selfishness. Young girls are slut shamed regularly, while young boys enjoy the same luxuries of double standards that their fathers enjoyed a generation before them. We might not believe that sex makes girls dirty in quite the same way and we might not have men around the country lining up to ‘marry’ their daughters, but we are a long way from truly respecting the sexual agency of girls and women in this country.
Sex doesn’t harm women, young or old. What harms them are the patriarchal notions of purity that keep them sexually uneducated, afraid and oppressed. When it comes to understanding how to approach female sexuality, we could all stand to learn a few lessons - starting with the one that refuses to position women as objects that instantly begin to depreciate with value the moment you open up the box.
http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/love,-sex-and-relationships/the-sex-ed-class-that-should-never-have-happened-20140407-368eg.html |
|
