Virgin Territory

The following are excerpts from an article in Ms. Magazine


Your body is a wrapped lollipop

When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it.

It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker.

These words were actually uttered by Darren Washington, an abstinence educator, at the Eighth Annual Abstinence Clearinghouse Conference, an informational three-day trade show for abstinence educators, anti-abortion pregnancy care centers and medical professionals.

Washington was giving examples of how to teach abstinence. He then called up volunteers from the audience and used an actual lollipop to help deliver the metaphor.

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Just this year, President Bush increased funding in his budget for domestic abstinence education to $270 million, in comparison to the $100 million given annually before he took office. The fund includes matching state dollars and must be spent solely for teaching “the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity.”

That matching fund requirement has meant that state dollars previously used to support comprehensive sex education — which teaches birth control options along with abstinence — have been diverted to abstinence-only programs.

Internationally, the administration regularly advocates an abstinence agenda. This spring, for example, the U.S. delegation was the lone nation to reject the Cairo Consensus — an international agreement to promote women’s sexual and reproductive-health needs. The ultraconservative delegates did so because of references in it to “family planning services,” “reproductive health,” “sexual health” and “condoms.”
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The full article can be found here