Conservative Myths and the Women Who Love Them
Blogger Jessica Valenti on PassingThrough skewers anti-choice arguments againt comprehensive sex education: Read the post. The latest in anti-women diatribes comes from Wendy Wright, from Concerned Women for America. In a recent Fox News Special Report, Wright said that proponents of comprehensive sex education are encouraging young people to have sex because "they benefit when kids end up having sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies and then they lead them into having abortions…You have to look at the financial motives behind those who are promoting comprehensive sex ed." ... While the idea of sex educators rolling in piles of dough made off the backs of sexually active teens seems laughable to most, Wright is playing on some truly hackneyed, but often-believed, anti-feminist myths: That comprehensive sex education causes teens to have sex; that all young women who have sex end up teen moms; that abortion providers make oodles of money, and--perhaps most dangerous--that sexually active young women are victims. Victims of educators, doctors, men, you name it. Positioning the pro-choice and comprehensive sex ed community as benefiting from young women being sexually active is not only untrue, it also does a huge disservice to young women. (Let's not kid ourselves, when these folks talk about "kids having sex," they're clearly talking about women.) Young women benefit from being well-informed, they don't get knocked up from it. And if women like Wright really cared about kids, they'd be fighting to make sure American youth had accurate, comprehensive information about sex--not lying on television for conservative brownie points.
|
