American Puritanism On Sex Causing STD Infections
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When I was at the right age, I was lucky to have a mom who explained this stuff to me. It wasn’t until I got a little older and talked to some of my friends did I realize that all parents clearly did not do this. You don’t have to be gross and graphic but if we keep holding on to this puritanism and this mythology of the pure as snow teenager, we’re effectively giving kids uzis without any instruction as to how to use it and what kind of damage it can cause.
American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.
‘Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated,’ said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
People have sex. It happens. Explain this to your kids, so they don’t die or kill someone.
34 Responses to “American Puritanism On Sex Causing STD Infections”
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This and more brilliant insight in Oliver’s new book “People Fuck! and 1001 other completely simple facts about daily life puritan’s don’t understand”.
I had an awesome 9th grade biology teacher. And she handled the sex-ed stuff by just teaching it in a very neutral, objective manner.
“Sex is risky with regards to pregnancy and STD’s, but here’s what you can do to limit your risk, etc. And don’t be ashamed to ask to buy condoms at 7-11. And don’t let anyone pressure you into something you aren’t ready for.”
I can’t understand why people would want to make it more complicated than this. Oh wait, yes I can — people still think an asshole with a white hate living in the Vatican has a more valid opinion than anybody else.
“White hate”, indeed.
I was lucky to have a mom who explained this stuff to me.
Indeedy! Good work, Mom!
Hold up. I’m confused. You can get STDs from sharing milkshakes?
Teen pregnancy rates(ages 15-19) in Europe range from about 12 per 1000 in the Netherlands(where they hand out condoms in sex ed class) to about 50 per 1000 in the UK, where they’re historically less extensive wrt sex ed. In the US, the going rate is about 85 per 1000, with non-Hispanic whites having a rate around the UK and Hispanic and African-American teens around 130+ per 1000.
Throw in STI infection rates in the ballpark of 25%, and at some point rational concern has to overtake paternalistic notions. Teach the kids what they need to know to protect themselves, while counseling them to wait and warning about not just the physical risks but the emotional risks as well.
Hold up. I’m confused. You can get STDs from sharing milkshakes?
Depends what you’re doing with them…..
Cons think buying their daughter “true love waits” shirts will stop her from talking to boys
True love waits, hormones don’t.
And, of course, there’s ‘saddlebacking’ (at least according to Dan Savage).
I’m somewhat appalled by the idea of heterosexual teenagers having anal sex – to preserve their ‘virginity’ – while closeted homosexual teenagers have penile/vaginal sex – to prove their ‘straightness’.
And both can wind up with STDs. We (well, mostly my husband) has already explained to our twelve-year-old son that we welcome grandchildren; assuming high school graduation, college graduation, steady employment and marriage precede them. Otherwise, we’ll make him wish he’d cut it off with a rusty tin can lid.
If I remember my human biology correctly, f*cking a person with a disease causes you to get that disease , not failing to learn about it from your parents.
Oh yeah , I forgot — kids like to have intercourse, but of course, it would take effort and money to get them to stop that.And we don’t have the money or the manpower because it’s being spent on getting them not to smoke, or drink sugary soda.
Never let it be said liberals didn’t have their priorities straight!
Actually it has been the right that has resisted time and time again common sense sex ed.
So, Frank, you want America’s children to be fat and on drugs?
If I remember my human biology correctly, f*cking a person with a disease causes you to get that disease , not failing to learn about it from your parents.
Frank, people who don’t know they can get diseases from having sex are less likely to protect themselves from diseases when they’re having sex.
We are not born with this knowledge. Someone has to explain it to us, like a parent or a teacher.
Adding that we arenot also born knowing what the symptoms of these diseases are or that they are completely treatable and nothing to be ashamed about.
Teenagers need parents to explain this to them as well.
Well, at least they won’t have syphilis…when there’s only so much money to go around, you have to make choices. I mean, you can’t expect us to do without an F-22 or two in order to teach kids about safe sex. Priorities.
Profoundly stupid comment as usual, Frank. Seems like you get extra stupid when it comes to the topic of sex and its associated riskiness.
Congratulations on continuing your remarkable run.
Gonna explain to me how I’m an anti-Catholic bigot yet? Does it have anything to do with the fact that I favor teaching sensible birth control methods? Or because I don’t trust the opinions of a bunch of abstinent, self-described holy people on the topic of sex? Or maybe because I consistently condemn you for being an imbecile, and since you’re Catholic, then I must be condemning ALL Catholics as imbeciles?
What is it? Let’s see it, Frank. Let’s see how well you can back up your assertions. My guess: About as well as I can give live birth to a sea otter.
Nah, we should just just condemn them to Hell for eternity instead. That’ll keep ‘em from having sex, amirite? And as everyone knows, people who are brought up in sexually-repressed environments such as this always grow up to lead normal, healthy sexual lives, once they find their husband/wife. Then, so long as it’s not someone of the same sex, you’re GOLDEN. Oh, unless you want to use the pill or condoms to prevent getting pregnant. You go to Hell for that too.
Heh.
Hmm… let’s see. Sugary soda… a relatively recent phenomenon in human history, objectively bad for the human body. Smoking… a relatively recent phenomenon in human history, one of the biggest killers in the country, proven beyond doubt objectively bad for the human body. Sex… as ancient and fundamental a component to humanity as possible, objectively good for the human body (given proper education and self-protective behavior), and tends to not kill people.
Yeah. Good comparison, Frank. Jesus fucking Christ.
(Oh noes! I just let my anti-Catholic bigotry slip out!)
I would like to take this opportunity to say that my support for comprehensive sex education stems not from the studies which have shown it to be best at combating teen pregnancy and the spread of disease, nor due to the intentional disinformation spread by abstinence-only education programs about, for instance, condom failure-rates. Rather, it comes from my seething, frothing, screaming hatred of all my catholic friends and family, who are smelly smelly bo-belly, oh goodness how I despise them.
This reminds me of a great Zach Galifinakis joke:
“I was the only straight kid at an all-gay high school. The guys used to make fun of me and say ‘Hey Zach — Where ya goin? To get some pussy?’”
I love it when you do this — I really do. I wonder if any you have children. I wonder if you know any parents whose children are approaching puberty.
Because what I gather is : the logical progression is that we assume premaritsl sex is beyond the ability of any institution to control. Then our “research” shows that parents are not doing a good job of educating our children in how bees and birds avoid venereal disease, which might lead us back to attempting once again to strongly advise against premarital sex, but then we assume that that is beyond the ability of any institution to control. We could conceivably leave it up to religious institutions, but that would be like tossing a vampire into the Arabian desert at high noon.
Where does that leave us? In the hands of the secular education system. We all know what a wonderful job they have done educating our chidren so far! I was in graduate school taking a human sexuality course with people who knew less about sex and gender than my teenage sons. These people could conceivably be teaching sex education in the near future.
Somehow, you expect me to believe that families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex, but public schools will provide kids with the maturity and discipline to practice safe sex and self – police for venereal disease?
My God! They can’t even stop them from bringing weapons to class!
the logical progression is that we assume premaritsl sex is beyond the ability of any institution to control.
Unless you’re going to put tracking bracelets on everyone and keep the boys wearing bracelets from being around the girls wearing bracelets outside of school, and then you’ll only be keeping heterosexuals from having premarital sex, the gays and lesbians will be able to practice their deviltries undetected, and they don’t count cause they shouldn’t get married anyway.
Then our “research” shows that parents are not doing a good job of educating our children in how bees and birds avoid venereal disease, which might lead us back to attempting once again to strongly advise against premarital sex, but then we assume that that is beyond the ability of any institution to control.
In Saudi Arabia, they seem to think they can control premarital sex, but you’re not going to go there are you?
Somehow, you expect me to believe that families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex, but public schools will provide kids with the maturity and discipline to practice safe sex and self – police for venereal disease?
Frank, please shut up forever.
A: Families, schools and churches can all be wonderful sources to teach discipline and restraint.
B: Hoping that restraint to be perfectly taught instilled and absorbed across the board is utterly ludicrous.
C: Relying on that ludicrous hope of uniformly perfect restraint to prevent pregnancies and the spread of disease is monumentally imbecilic.
D: Boy howdy do I hate me some Catholics. Just felt like putting that in there. You know, cause I totally do.
E: Denying the efficacy of existing comprehensive sexual education programs in disseminating the very knowledge that DOES prevent pregnancies and the spread of diseases in order to maintain that imbecilic reliance on a ludicrous hope of impossibly uniform, absolute chastity is cataclysmically wrongheaded in ways that future lexicologists will struggle forever to invent words to sufficiently describe.
Now, clearly you disagree with all the items in my list (except for D, since I do absolutely despise those oh so nasty smelly Catholics goodness yes) so please, what is your obviously correct alternative plan? The demonstrable failure of Abstinence-Only education? A reliance on Churches to teach “facts” about sexual health? Chastity Belts in order to control teenage libidos, which seems increasingly to be your overriding goal? What?
But why in this picture the emphasize is on milk shakes????
Somehow, you expect me to believe that families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex, but public schools will provide kids with the maturity and discipline to practice safe sex and self – police for venereal disease?
Wait, what?
Incoherence. It’s what Frank does. It’s who he is.
And yet European countries’ secular education systems are able to teach kids about contraception and disease prevention(along with recommending abstinence), and their teen pregnancy and infection rates are dramatically lower than ours. Not everyone has the best parents or best religious institutions in this country, and even those don’t always work–there’s going to be teen sexuality. Frank, there was teen sexuality back in the 1950s, before the sexual revolution and all the dirty hippies–my mom had a kid in her teens–and she had good parents and went to church every weekend. You have to deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it was–kids are having sex, and will keep having sex even if their parents, church and schools tell them not to. Once harm prevention fails, you go on to harm mitigation–preventing pregnancy and disease. That means teaching kids about those risks and making sure they have access to the means of protecting themselves. You’re free to make the argument that this somehow encourages more sex(like hormones and peer pressure aren’t vastly more important as factors), but then we’d have to discuss teen disease and pregnancy rates in the 1950s, which would tend to completely undermine your argument.
fafaroo: Supporting a statement of Zython’s can’t ever end well.
Zython: It’s like this: [The lefties are arguing that] “families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex”, [but then they are proposing that] “public schools (only) will provide kids with the maturity and discipline to practice safe sex and self – police for venereal disease?” Easy, if your an English speaker who is literate.
Rex, as long as people like you exist, the preservation of the human race requires that I never shut up. You are a pimple on the ass of humanity — and an anti-Catholic bigot.
Dark Avenger: That goes for you, too.
I ask you, mike , why do you think there has been an increase in teen pregnancy, as well as STD’s since the 1950′s ?
Are you suggesting that those 1950′s teenagers had better sex education backgrounds than kids today? Better access to contraceptives? How do you explain it ?
Dark Avenger: That goes for you, too.
Frank, I come from a family that used to regularly have princes of the church, not to mention archbishops and other members of the Hierarchy at their table.
My mother was in community theater and doing Sister Mary Ignateus Explains It All To You, which two Roman Catholics( a priest and a laywoman) kept her from performing it in a nearby city, so, yeah, I’m an anti-Catholic bigot.
As for the teen pregnancy rates, they were higher in the 50s, it’s just that the teens tended to get married at a much higher rate than they do now.
Teen pregnancy along with STDs tend to be higher in Southern states than other parts of the country, ever wonder why?
Link
Do some research with Google, if you are capable of learning something that isn’t spoon-fed to you on EWTN.
families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex”
Sure, look how well it worked for the Palin family….
Rex, as long as people like you exist, the preservation of the human race requires that I never shut up. You are a pimple on the ass of humanity — and an anti-Catholic bigot.
Yes, yes, fighting the good fight, aren’t we? It’s important that you rebuff my insane argument with your cogent, well thought “ass-pimple” retorts and utterly reasonable and respectible unfounded accusations of anti-Catholic bigotry. Love ya, Frank. Whole comment I posted, and the only thing you have to say to it is a weak-by-middle-school-standards insult and your repeated insistance that I hate Catholics, which is, of course, the topic under discussion here. Oh, and also a true one, since I do, as I’ve said, utterly despise my catholic friends and family. Going to my Mom’s for Thanksgiving and I can’t wait to really dig into her about how much I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate her over dinner.
Back to my point, though, to which I know you will simply retort that I am ‘teh stoopidd’.
Discipline, it is universally recognized, is a virtue, one that can be instilled easily and used to prevent potentially self-destructive actions, such as the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancies. Do you disagree? No, of course not.
That said, would you not concede that discipline instilled at the hand of intentional misinformation, say, at the hands of Abstinence-Only educators who inflate condom failure rates and probabilities of spreading diseases, is equally virtuous?
Are we expected too to rely on that same discipline, being on such a fractured foundation as it is, to adequately prepare young adults to make real decisions with real consequences? How much likely are they to act against it when they realize how much of it has been misinformation?
Finally, is comprehensive sexual education, where all available information is given so they may make the best possible decisions of their own volition, not simple a better use of taxpayer money than an active campaign of deception that has been proven, repeatedly, only to make worse the very problem it is supposed to address?
Cue Frank’s response in which he completely avoids the issues raised to say I’m stupid and evil and bigoted as though that resembles anything like a valid response in 5…
4…
3…
2…
I ask you, mike , why do you think there has been an increase in teen pregnancy, as well as STD’s since the 1950’s ?
Frank, you live in a fantasy world:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html
Hahaha, fafaroo, you seem to think that facts matter to Frank.
Rex, as long as people like you exist, the preservation of the human race requires that I never shut up.
Delusions of grandeur are a sign of schizophrenia, you know.
It’s like this: [The lefties are arguing that] “families, churches and schools can’t provide kids with discipline to abstain from premarital sex”, [but then they are proposing that] “public schools (only) will provide kids with the maturity and discipline to practice safe sex and self – police for venereal disease?” Easy, if your an English speaker who is literate.
I see what you’re saying now.
Let me ask you something, what makes you think that teenagers can’t make an informed decision on sex? It really bugs me when people assume that anything that is intended or done by anyone over 18 is suddenly more sophisticated and intelligent than under 18.