Personal Experiences with Rape Culture

chezamanda:

kittykatstark:

liquidiousfleshbag:

scarygodmother:

A Boulder mother says she’s concerned that a Boulder Valley School District abstinence presenter is sending girls the wrong message, equating sexual activity with being dirty.

Laura Binegar said she became concerned after her daughter detailed a recent presentation on abstinence given in her health education class at Southern Hills Middle School. Her daughter described an activity where students spit food into water glasses, then were asked if they would rather drink from a clean glass or a dirty one.

“I trusted the school,” Binegar said. “They’re telling teenage girls that they’re dirty and bad. It sounds like it was just awful. I don’t understand what the message was.”

The presenter, Brad Seng, said the student appears to have misconstrued the talk.

“One of the first things I say is that it’s not that sex is bad or is a dirty activity to be engaging in,” he said. “That’s not it at all. It’s about encouraging young people to make healthy lifestyle decisions. Our method is grounded in truth and non-judgmental.”

He said he provides information on sexually transmitted diseases from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as information on “the emotional strife when children choose to be sexually active.”

The water glass activity, he said, is a way to engage students. He said students drink the water while eating a snack and mixing some of their snack in the water. Then they exchange glasses. He asks them to drink the water, prompting students to say, “No, it looks nasty.”

“It’s a way to show them that, if they decide to be sexually active outside of a long-term committed relationship, they’re putting themselves at risk,” he said.

Seng is the abstinence educator for Boulder’s Real Choices Pregnancy Care Center. The center describes itself as “a Christian, nonprofit, non-political organization that helps clients find constructive alternatives to abortion.”

Jesus tittyfucking Christ. If you don’t have some kind of medical background you have got no goddamn business speaking to a health education class. 

And last time I checked, instructing kids that there is only one path to take is not education. That’s indoctrination. 

Educational bullshit like this is why I felt like, once I’d slept with one person, it didn’t matter if I used protection or worried about who I slept with OR ANYTHING because it didn’t matter, I was already gross and dirty.

Fuck you, you disgusting excuses for educators. Teach kids real shit or get the fuck out of the classroom.

oh hi, I lived this.

except it was SLIGHTLY less horrible because it was in a church. slightly. maybe a tenth of a degree less horrible.

teaching the lesson of “being sexual=being a worse person” is a terrible, terrible lesson to teach anywhere.

but doing this IN OUR SCHOOLS?

unacceptable. not okay. not at all.

what the fuck.

what the fuck.

You know how “actions speak louder than words”?  When you say that your approach begins isn’t about sex being bad or dirty and then one of your examples is a demonstration in which something gross, nasty, dirty is compared with having sex it’s NOT this kid that doesn’t understand the message.  The kid obviously understood the lesson and so did the mother that complained.  You, dear spokesperson, are either a liar or incompetent since it is clearly you that does not understand a) what you’re actually teaching and b) what sort of serious damage you’re causing.