Via Brittney, we learn that Mark Rose refuses to believe that, even when a program is so difficult to follow that there’s almost nobody who can follow it, there’s anything wrong with the program.
Abstinence-Only as Anti-Pleasure
We’ve talked about this before:
I think of this, too, with the abstinence-only crowd, how anti-life that world-view is. How it denies pleasure, denies connection, denies life itself.
It’s this twisted world-view that sees pleasure as inherently evil and children as the proper punishment for sex.
But clearly, the default is pleasure and happiness. The default is pregnancy and children and fucking, fucking, fucking.
None of these things is evil. And yet, of course, those things are not always desired. And so we take active steps to prevent them. We stop the pregnancies; we use birth control; we are careful about when we have sex and with whom; we wait until we are married; we don’t have sex at all.
But that–abstinence–is not the default. It’s the most extreme choice we can make.
Self-discipline we call it, this learning to deny ourselves pleasure and happiness, learning to deny ourselves life.
Really, it’s no wonder that most kids “fail” to abstain completely, even when they want to.
Where Do Teenagers Magically Acquire This Much Self-Discipline?
It goes against that procreant urge we all feel. Yes, a person with incredible self-discipline might be able to completely abstain from sex. People with incredible self-discipline can climb Mount Everest or lower their resting heart rates considerably or swallow swords. We don’t expect seventeen year olds to have that kind of self-discipline, though.
We understand that self-discipline on all other matters takes years of training, of fighting against your body’s natural urges and focusing that on something else. And even with years of training, even with sole focus of purpose and clarity of cause, people still die on Everest. Sword swallowers still get hurt. The most well-trained people fuck up.
Why are we surprised that, with a goal few kids actually want to accomplish, and little training, most kids fail to remain abstinant?
And What Counts as Abstinent?
I know the trend is for men to insert themselves in my business as much as possible. Shoot, right now I have to buy my clothes twice as big as I need them just to make room for the men in my life who want to get in here with me and help me make all my decisions*. Forget what will happen to my clothing budget with lawmakers get their way and I have to turn over the contents of my uterus every month for them to examine to make sure I’m not fucking up the future of America.
The point is that even I remain unsure what constitutes “abstinence.”
Mr. Rose. I throw the floor open to you.
If you could just read through the following activities and let me know if they constitute remaining abstinent or not, so that I may plan my Friday evenings thusly, I would appreciate it.
1. Smooching.
2. Smooching with boob caressing.
3. I stimulate my partner’s (or partners’) genitals with my hands and/or feet.
4. I am thusly stimulated.
5. I stimulate my partner’s penis by rubbing it in my cleavage.
6. A nipple is touched to a clitoris.
7. Clothed genitals are rubbed together.
8. I place my fingers in my partner’s vagina and caress.
9. I place my fingers in my partner’s anus and caress.
10. I describe doing all of these things, even in abstract terms, to a bunch of strangers on the internet.
Ha, I crack myself up. My point, though, is that the farther away from “fucking” we want to draw the line for abstinence, the harder it is for kids to do it. Who doesn’t want to feel the weight of another body on theirs? Who doesn’t love a lover’s hot breath on their skin? Who, when faced with broad shoulders and muscle-roped arms or a round butt and long-soft hair, wants to just sit chastely and talk about homework?
Is one peck on the cheek enough?
Is it fair to ask that it be?
Let’s Hope that Conservative Christians are Right and that Being Gay is a Choice
Folks like Rose would argue that, fair or not, abstinence is the only way to assure that teens don’t get STDs or have to face unwanted pregnancies.
But it’s not. You know who else doesn’t really get STDS and don’t face unwanted pregnancies?
Women who never fuck men, but only fuck women.
Check what the CDC says: “A study of more than 1 million female blood donors found no HIV-infected women whose only risk factor was sex with women.”
Have you ever heard of a chick knocking up another chick? Not until they figure out the whole “sperm from bone marrow” thing. And even when they do, it’s not as if that will just happen by surprise. “Oh, shit, honey, while we were fucking my front door broke and some scientists were able to get in here and take some of my bone marrow, set up a little lab in the bathroom, and transform it into sperm and, without us noticing, put it in your vagina. Damn. Damn. Damn. We need to get us the morning-after pill right away.”
In other words, there is a very safe, pleasurable alternative to both boy-fucking and abstaining, at least for girls.
To Bring Us Full Circle
Which does make you wonder, doesn’t it? If fucking boys is so dangerous that the government feels the need to step in and advise us to never do it, because of the kinds of diseases they carry and the pregnancies they cause, doesn’t it suck to be a boy?
If God really loves you best–Oh masters of the household–why has he made fucking you so fraught with peril?
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*On the plus side, I think that running their arms along the length of my arms, resting their big square hands on top of my delicate fingers, each digit following the motions of the finger below it, like a thick, musky shadow brushing against my skin over and over again, their rough cheeks resting against mine, their chins settling lightling in the crook of my neck so that they can watch as the white of the screen is replaced by ancient symbols standing for sounds that can’t quite capture the noises two people this close usually make, has indeed improved the typing skills of said men–No hunt & peck for me means they get to practice no hunt & peck for them–even as it means my trips to the bathroom have grown more impractical.
Tiny Cat Pants 