Guest Post- Love is Not Finite: On Abstinence-Only Education Scare Tactics

This was written by an irl friend of mine at my request for a guest blog post. You can find her here

I highly reccommend following/checking out her blog, as it's absolutely brilliant, and her writing, as you'll see in the following, is pure dynamite.


A teacher stands at the head of a classroom full of fidgety, giggly high schoolers. The sexual education class is well underway, and the teacher has just finished a very scientific-sounding lecture on how the chemicals in the brain that are released during sex can become addictive. The word ‘addictive’ is meant as a metaphor, though she doesn’t say that. Nor does she discuss how the same thing can happen during eating, or singing, or any other pleasurable activity. The class is wound up from repeated use of sex words that are hilarious in their naiveté, and she has to work to get their attention again.

“We are going to play a sort of game!” she says enthusiastically, and the class goes quiet at the word ‘game’. She reaches behind the desk and pulls out a beautiful, tall red rose. “Look how beautiful this rose is! Everyone will pass this around and pull off a petal.” The class obeys, demolishing the rose within a few minutes. The teacher takes it from the last student and holds up the bare stem. “Before, the rose represented a pure, beautiful virgin. Now it’s all used up. It has nothing left to give. It doesn’t have any more value.”

The rose obviously represents a female virgin. I mean, how many flowers are stereotypically used to represent males? This is a standard ‘game’ in the abstinence-only curriculum, and you may have heard of others: Mint for Marriage, the tape game, the spit game. They all have the same purpose: to push the poisonous concept that sex is dirty and wrong and it devalues you a little more every time you have it. Especially if you’re a woman. And there is absolutely nothing positive on homosexual intercourse, or the many different sexualities, or what to do if you’re struggling with your sexuality.

There are so, so many problems with abstinence-only education. Lack of decision-making discussion, zero safety/contraception options, slut-shaming. They stick completely to religion and totally devalue science, saying that birth control pills cause abortions and other even more ridiculous myths. This education—though I have a hard time calling anything that spreads false information ‘education’—is wrong, damaging, and attempts to scare teens away from any kind of sexual contact. Except it doesn’t work.

Areas in which abstinence-only education is predominant have higher abortion rates and higher STD rates. Teenagers are going to have sex, and scaring them about contraception is not the way to go about stopping it. It’s been shown that birth rates are higher and condom use rates are lower. The CDC put out a particularly chilling report: 1 in 4 teenage girls has or has had an STD. Why? Because they don’t have the tools to be safe, but they’re having sex anyway simply because they weren’t taught any better.

Their tactics are basically to cause shame and fear and guilt about anything sexual, that sexual value is finite. If you’re a woman, you quickly become ‘used up.’ You don’t ‘have anything more to give.’ There’s this idea that people—women especially—have a finite amount of love or pleasure to give and that’s just not true. Love cannot be measured. It is too liquid, too changing. My love for my boyfriend is completely different than my love for my friends, which is completely different than my love for my family, which is completely different than my love for my pets, which is completely different than my love for this whole damn planet. All those loves cannot be measured and compared against each other. The idea that love has a limit is insulting and shallow. But hey, these are the people who used to recommend that young people who have had sex should wash their genitals in Lysol to keep from getting dirty. Pretty much nothing they say has much value and their lessons insult intelligence.

My love is not finite. I am not used up because I am sexually active. I am not worth less than the virgin next to me just because I have been with a couple of people and he or she hasn’t. Sex can be fun, intimate, good exercise. It is not dirty. It does not take something from you. You do not “give something up.” You share a close part of yourself in a very intimate way that can be scary sometimes, but if you have the knowledge and the tools to be safe and have a good time, that’s amazing and you go have a good time. If you have the knowledge and the tools to say “I’m just not ready yet”, that’s also amazing and you go have a good time doing whatever the hell you want.

But we need to educate our teens. Like, educate them properly, about STDs and contraception and sexuality and how some things you may want to do might seem a little strange but they’re perfectly okay and definitely about how consent should be enthusiastic and ongoing. Allow them to make an informed, safe choice on their own. It’s their body, and you don’t get to make that choice. Give them the right information. Trust them.