my parents and i were having lunch and watching tv together. nothing good is ever on in the afternoon so we ended up watching etv (educational tv) for teenagers. unfortunately for us, it was sex ed. and my mother, being the crazier one of the three of us, insisted that we watched it.
they did a little skit about a 15-year-old girl finding out she was pregnant after the boyfriend broke up with her. and in a classroom setting, the students were asked what she should do. the students were quite ignorant, and that was understandable. that's why we need a sex ed program. but the only objective of the program was to promote abstinence through fear.
and i'm not just talking about fear of pregnancy or fear of missing out opportunities to good education. those are legitimate fears that are acceptable and realistic.
i was shocked and irritated when during one part of the skits, the social worker talked to the pregnant girl about abortion and how her future husband would probably dislike her for that.
what the fuck?
...
what the fuck?
and all this time, i couldn't figure out why women here have such low self-esteem! there it was, spoon feeding them fucked up logic through etv!
to make matters worse, they had a discussion on preventive measures without any mention of any contraceptives other than "don't have sex until you are married!". really? we hear cases everyday about teenagers as young as twelve years old getting pregnant, having group sex and giving birth without even realizing that they were pregnant. and we don't even tell them about condoms and morning after pills.
it may have something to do with the conservative culture, but if we can broadcast celebrities having sex on camera and have large spreads about brothels and prostitutes on newspapers and magazines, the least we could do is distribute some condoms. you can't fall behind reality by so much.
oh and stop sabotaging young girls' self-esteem by pushing grown men's insecurity issues onto them. the writer for this program should be ashamed of himself.
Comments (3)
horrible.
usually the people who are making these abstinence films are nothing but big hypocrites.. they're probably sex freaks themselves.. just like how the Catholic priests always talk about abstinence and are always against gay love, but then we find out so many of them are having sex with little boys...
but yeh, kids are going to have sex with each other if they want to anyway.. you can't just scare them out of having sex.. just have to educate them about how to have safe sex..
though i am more conservative in values, i believe education should be based on truth, not lies.
so false perceived future fear is not an effective way of education. Nor is using fear at all, because teenagers will soon forget, and easily overcome those fears. Either that fear is superseded by the fear of being left by their significant other, or the fear of being left out.
The only way is through actual education. Educate these kids on the possible undesirable outcomes of unsafe sex. They already get enough lessons on the advantages of sex through traditional media, but teaching them about STDs, teenage pregnancies, will allow them to make smart (okay most teenagers are not smart in this case), but educated decisions on these things.
The reality is that people will have sex. I encourage abstinence, but understand that many will choose not to. So contraception and safe sex practices are the only option that will appeal to them.
All of those things are much better (imho) than the last resort--abortion. Abortion because you forgot to use a condom is not a valid excuse in my opinion.