Taking a Third Option on Abstinence

When I was around thirteen, I had my first encounter with an abstinence advocate.  Her name, I believe, was Casey, and she was a revelation.

Sitting among the other middle schoolers, I was convinced I knew all the answers.  I was one of those kids who took what was said in health class to heart, and I was already sure that I would “save myself” for marriage.  Casey, a dark haired young woman in a t-shirt and jeans, reinforced that belief — but she also made me start to think about sex as something that was special, not dirty.

“What can happen when you have sex?”  she asked the gathered students.  We dutifully sounded off:  AIDs, pregnancy, etc. Casey wrote them down on one side of her whiteboard.

“Okay,” she said, “but those are all bad things.  What about the good things?  What about orgasm, for example?”  On the other side of her whiteboard, she wrote down “ORGASM” in large letters.  There may have been exclamation points.   I don’t recall for certain.  That’s how my one encounter with an abstinence speaker started.

Casey talked about her own history and its consequences:  she’d had several STDs, and was now unable to have children.  She talked about the importance of knowing the facts about sex, sharing a story about a girl who had emailed her after having anal sex to ask if she was going to “have a baby in her butt.”  She never talked about people who were sexually active being dirty.  She never said anything that applied specifically to girls.  Her reason for waiting to have sex until marriage was so you and your partner could have the best sex possible.

At the end of the presentation, she handed out abstinence promise cards we could sign if we wanted to.  I did.  Since then, my views have changed.  I’ll have sex for the first time when I’m ready, and with a partner I care about deeply, but I won’t necessarily wait until marriage.  I think I would have come to those conclusions without Casey, because that’s just the sort of person I am, but I don’t think I would have had the same positive expectations about sex without her, at least not for a long time.

I guess my point, other than to share the butt-baby story, is that abstinence education isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it’s done right.  If the context is sex-positive, there’s no reason you can’t tell kids that abstinence is the most effective protection against STDs and unwanted pregnancy, and encourage it as a personal choice.  It’s also a reminder that niether-nor-ism is a dangerous way of thinking.  We get lulled into believing that the views of our opponents and our own perspective are the only ways of thinking we need to consider.  Casey took a third option in the abstinence debate, and while my views no longer match up with hers, I deeply respect that.