As Erie natives know, there’s a specific sex ed program that comes to high schools from the Women’s Care Center that’s less about sexual education than it is about learning to avoid ever even thinking about sex unless one is absolutely, one hundred and ten percent sure that he or she has found The One.  

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Specifically, at the county public school that I attended, a middle-aged woman would come in every year from seventh grade to eleventh grade and urge us to consider the importance of abstinence.  She told us stories about individuals who had lost their virginities early and “regretted it for the rest of their lives.” She showed us horrifying images of STDs.  She gave us chewy candy for questions answered correctly (because the decisions you make NOW will affect you LATER). Most importantly, she played games with us that taught us some pretty damaging lessons.

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For example, typically, whoever is presenting brings two students up to the front of the room, one boy and one girl.  She then asks them to press their arms to each other and tapes their arms together.  This tape signifies a sexual encounter between the two of them, and, as she points out, the tape at this point holds strong.  After unwrapping the tape, she asks another boy to come up and press his arm to the girl’s.  Using this same tape, she attempts to wrap it around their adjoined arm, but, because the tape is covered with skin flakes and hair, it does not bind their arms together at all.

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This tape, she tells the class, reflects the reality of sexual encounters, and, though she never says so explicitly, we know that the tape is used and dirty, essentially useless and unable to ever bind to anything ever again.

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This game, as you may have figured out by this point, is pretty much complete bullshit, though I didn’t realize this at the time.

The number of people someone has sex with does not determine a person’s worth.  Having sex does not make someone dirty, or used or unlovable, just as being a virgin doesn’t make someone pure or worthy of any more love than those around him or her.

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Virginity, and the idea of anyone--specifically women, in almost every culture,--remaining untouched and pure for her husband indicate patriarchal ideals that come from a long, long history of oppression and a lack of ownership of one’s own being.  Women in the old days would inevitably be transferred from father to husband like property at some point in their lives. If they were raped, or simply had premarital sex, they would be viewed as “damaged goods.”  After all, no husband wants a woman who has been touched by another man.  Her body, after all, belongs to him.  

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As a culture, we should be beyond these old fashioned ideals, and we should teach our children to be positive about their sexuality.  We should teach them about safe sexual practices, about birth control, about visiting the OB/GYN and about not only how to avoid STDs, but the importance of getting tested frequently.  Most prominently, we should teach them to love themselves and their bodies and to not fear the Depths of Hell should they step out of the bounds of our longtime traditional oppressions.  

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Deciding to wait until marriage is a perfectly great choice.  Choosing to have lots of sex is also perfectly great. Overall, sexuality and virginity are personal decisions that should remain as such.