Trentadue, M. P. (2016, April). Gender prescription in abstinence-only education. Presentation for Boston University Sexual Assault Response & Prevention (SARP) Ambassadors

1. Gender Prescription in
Abstinence-only Education
Presentation by Mia Trentadue

2. Abstinence-only Education vs. Comprehensive Sex Education
Abstinence-only: Comprehensive:
- Stresses abstinence
- Provides medically accurate and age
appropriate information
- Provides information on contraceptives
- Encourages healthy relationships
(communication, boundaries)prochoiceamerica.tumblr.com
- Teaches that a “faithful monogamous
[heterosexual] relationship in the context of
marriage is the expected standard of human
sexual activity” (1)
- Views sex before marriage as hazardous and
destructive

3. Where does the US stand?
- 27 states were still accepting
funding for abstinence-only
education in 2009 (1)
- Only 19 states require that
sex education should be
medically accurate
- The majority of US adults
support comprehensive sex
education (2)
not accepting
funds

4. Is abstinence-only education harmful?
Abstinence-only education…
- is entirely ineffective in delaying sexual intercourse (3)
- does not teach about birth control or barrier methods
- is sex negative
- does not teach about agency, boundaries, or sexual
violence
- is limited to heterosexual relationships in which
procreation is the goal
- is gender prescriptive and propagates rape myths
nwcitizen.com
youngmormonfeminists.org

5. How is abstinence-only
education gender prescriptive?
Male Prescription:
- Boys are in a constant struggle to control their
sexualities and hormones (4)
- Boys are “sexually uncontrollable” and “desire
sexual activity from any and all women”
- Male intimacy is separate from emotion
- Implies that boys cannot experience sexual
violence (5)
Female Prescription:
- Girls fill a temptress role (5) but are chaste,
submissive, and sexually passive
- Girls are supposed to keep male sexual urges
in check, which implies responsibility and
promotes victim-blaming attitudes (2)
“The girl may need to put on the
brakes first in order to help the boy.”
– Reasonable Reasons to Wait (Student Workbook, p.96) (2)
lifeunfold.com

6. “Because girls are usually more talkative, make eye
contact more often than men, and love to dress in
eye-catching ways, they may appear to be coming on
to a guy when in reality they are just being friendly.
To the male, however, he perceives that the girl
wants him sexually. Asking herself what signals she is
sending could save both sexes a lot of heartache.”
- from Why kNOw (4)
“Because we didn’t have accurate information about
what was healthy and what wasn’t, I endured some
awful situations because I didn’t know the difference.
We didn’t talk about respect, boundaries, and sexual
communication. So the myth of ‘boys push and girls
resist’ informed everything. We never talked about
consent because with abstinence curriculum you
shouldn’t consent.”
- Erin (Abstinence-only program participant from
Oregon (4)
Curriculum says / students say:

7. Chewing gum
exercise
See how it doesn’t look the same
anymore?
See how it doesn’t fit in the wrapper
the same way?
Do you see how it’s changed and
damaged?
The chewing gum exercise is used in abstinence-
only curricula to show what happens to females’
worths after they have sex.
Take out a piece of gum and start chewing it.
After a few seconds, take the piece of gum out
of your mouth.
tumblr.com

8. Since when does chewing gum equate to a person’s
worth?
Abstinence-only ed identifies a person’s—a female’s—worth as connected to
her sexuality. This is damaging, and utilizing chewing gum as an analogy for a
sexually active person is destructive (6).

9. Elizabeth Smart on the chewing gum tactic
“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of
gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it
away.’ And that’s how easily it is to feel like you no
longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why
would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it
even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still
has no value.”
- Elizabeth Smart (7)
youtube.com

10. Abstinence-only
teaching tactics
“In exercises, role plays, and class
discussions, girls practice resistance to trite
lines, unwanted hands, opened buttons,
and the surrender of other ‘bases’ they are
not prepared to yield. The discourses of
violence and victimization both portray
males as potential predators and females
as victims” (9).
Other curricula activities:
1) dirty chocolate exercise
2) used tape exercise
3) rose without petals exercise (8)

11. What do these kinds of tactics do?
- perpetuate harmful gender role
prescriptions
- minimize male emotional needs
- disregard female sexual desires
- prevent students from exploring their
own emotions and experiences (4)
- provide a harmful and confusing double
whisper.sh

12. Where do we go from here?
- There is a dearth in statistical research on the correlation between
abstinence-only education and sexual assault
- Currently a lot of quantitative research about abstinence-only education and rates of pregnancy and STI
transmission, but there aren’t a lot of statistics on the strength of the relationship between abstinence-only
education and sexual assault
- Teach medically accurate sex education
- Promote abstinence without limiting curricula to abstinence-only models
- Promote healthy relationships

13. “Young people have a fundamental right to accurate, unbiased information
about their body and sexuality. Sex education changes lives.”
- Laci Green, Sex Education Activist
Abstinence-only education is
cortanas.tumblr.com

14. Questions/Discussion

15. Works Cited
(1)http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/12/1/gpr120106.pdf
(2)http://lsrj.org/documents/factsheets/13_Abstinence_Only_Sex_Ed.pdf
(3)www.womennc.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-WomenNC-ResearchPaper-Effects-ofSexEduc-on-
PreventSexAssault_Dana-Raphael0415.pdf
(4)https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC4QFjACahUKEwiLsr69i8HIAhVIWj
4KHYbnCss&url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalhealth.usc.edu%2FHome%2FResearch%2520And%2520Services%2FPages%2
F~%2Fmedia%2F2CB6B053D52A41E2B14C961F2E708597.ashx&usg=AFQjCNHtdf5o4k3nc0mPWANV9DaTbTtKBA&sig
2=13iWOhpxVC-R3IOSg1mgOA
(5)http://www.aclupa.org/download_file/view_inline/416/351
(6)http://feminismandreligion.com/2013/06/19/rape-culture-and-abstinence-only-education-by-gina-messina-dysert/
(7)http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/06/1967591/elizabeth-smart-abstinence-ed/
(8)http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/04/07/3423582/abstinence-only-dirty-analogies/
(9)http://hepgjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.17763/haer.58.1.u0468k1v2n2n8242