Thinking Like a Fundy
Sep. 11th, 2008 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqExamining the whole Sarah Palin fiasco (got a big post cooking in the back of my brain about that) got me thinking about sex ed. Namely the whole debate about abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex ed. Obviously I'm for the latter - the less fucked up we are about fucking the better humanity will be. God knows I've got some issues that a healthy discussion about sex as a child might have alleviated.
Abstinence-only is promoted as the only 100% effective form of birth control. On the black and white face of it, this is true. If you don't have sex you won't get pregnant (barring some fantasy scenario involving abduction by mad scientist or deity-intervention). Of course as a liberal I know that that's not true - statistics of people who use "abstinence" vs. some other birth control indicate that abstinence is a terrible method of birth control. So many of it's practitioners end up pregnant compared to actual chemical or barrier-based birth control.
I'm not really here to debate the numbers. I'm actually here because I finally put the last piece of the puzzle together. Why would fundies think that abstinence is 100% effective when it so clearly is not? It's back to that black and white thinking. Namely, when abstinence fails it's not a failure of the concept of abstinence - it's a moral failure of the person attempting it. Once you've stated it that way you can throw out all the negative results!
So from now on, when I hear people talk about how condoms are not 100% effective, I'll just point out that it is 100% effective. It's just that some individual condoms had a moral failure.
Abstinence-only is promoted as the only 100% effective form of birth control. On the black and white face of it, this is true. If you don't have sex you won't get pregnant (barring some fantasy scenario involving abduction by mad scientist or deity-intervention). Of course as a liberal I know that that's not true - statistics of people who use "abstinence" vs. some other birth control indicate that abstinence is a terrible method of birth control. So many of it's practitioners end up pregnant compared to actual chemical or barrier-based birth control.
I'm not really here to debate the numbers. I'm actually here because I finally put the last piece of the puzzle together. Why would fundies think that abstinence is 100% effective when it so clearly is not? It's back to that black and white thinking. Namely, when abstinence fails it's not a failure of the concept of abstinence - it's a moral failure of the person attempting it. Once you've stated it that way you can throw out all the negative results!
So from now on, when I hear people talk about how condoms are not 100% effective, I'll just point out that it is 100% effective. It's just that some individual condoms had a moral failure.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-12 05:00 am (UTC)Snerk.
Sue Johanson is getting pretty old.... maybe I aught to change careers.
hehehehehe
:)
(sorry - old joke)
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Date: 2008-09-12 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-12 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-12 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 12:40 am (UTC):P