The times are grim for abstinence organizations in America. Under George W. Bush organizations that promoted abstinence in sex-education received more than $175 million a year. When the Obama administration submits the first draft of its budget to Congress later this year, chances are high that spending on abstinence-only sex education will disappear.
I'm not sure what the main thrust of my sex education was in high school. I only have two memories from the class, which wasn't available until I was a senior. There was the expected bevy of STD slides blown up to cataclysmic proportions on the overhead projector. I've sat through this presentation at least ten times in my adult life and I still can't remember which disease is supposed to burn and which one causes lesions. Is The Clap gonorrhea or syphilis? I still have to look it up.
My other memory is of an assignment where each student had to make a graphic lifeline for themselves, starting with the important events of their childhood and continuing on through a speculative adult lifespan. I remember only one kid in the class of thirty included sex in his timeline. Everyone else was busy reflecting on poignant family trips, big games, or memories of close friends. D left all of that out of his timeline and instead told us all about how he lost his virginity when he was fourteen, and how it was one of the most important experiences in his life.
He didn't go into any more detail and he didn't anoint the topic with undue nostalgia or verbal wisteria. But he admitted to sex being an important and cherished part of his life in front of a room of his peers without any irony, self-deprecation, or cheap punchlines.
I was still a virgin at seventeen, and mostly convinced I would remain so until marriage. I had no idea what sex was beyond the whispered rumors in hallways and the lusty pantomimes on television. I understood the mechanics. The diagram of how sex happened was perfectly clear, but I didn't ever stop to think that it might actually mean something beyond the elliptical unicorn fantasy I had about it.
The problem with abstinence-only education isn't anything inherent to the idea of celibacy. It's more that it seeks to limit a person's understanding of sex outside of their own chosen practices. There's no great trick to protecting yourself from STD's nor to understanding how the reproductive system works. The pervading mystery is why, in spite of all that simple and easily available knowledge, our instincts still push us towards irrational choices in the throws of sex.
I've made a lot of irresponsible decisions with sex. I have been lucky to have avoided any life-altering consequences, but every time I've had unprotected sex with a one night stand or someone I should have thought more carefully about protecting, I knew what I was doing. I realized my behavior was illogical and carried the possibility for unintended circumstances. But my feelings were so strong in the moment that my logic was overruled.
The tragedy of sex education has been a fixation on the facts in a vacuum. Sex ed is an hour spent looking at penile chancres on a big screen, or a week spent caring for a symbolic baby doll. We describe everything that surrounds sex, but we still don't talk about the act itself and what it means to us; why it matters. Everyone has different answers to that question, and there isn't any final truth to arrive at, but shouldn't that spectrum be a part of the education offered to children?
What is sex to begin with? At the end of his life Akira Kurosawa said he understood less about what makes a film then when he first began half a century earlier. Growing is a process of discovering the extent of your own ignorance. The more sex I have, the less certain I am about what it is. It's good. It's bad. It's thrilling. It's exhausting. It's scary. It's surprising. It's beautiful. It's slow. It's fast. It's happy. It's sad. It's lonely. It's transcendent. It's an obligation. It's a delight. It's a new discovery.
But it's not something that fits on an overhead projector, regardless of whether science or religion has had the last say in drafting the facts.
*Second picture taken from the Slice Blog by Jessica Yatrofsky.
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Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?
Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses
Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile
Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds
Love Machine: Making A Scene
Hooksexup Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant
Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate
Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On
Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry
Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner
Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night