Because it is for us! [click to enlarge]
Vagenda reader Lucy writes:
'I was brought up in a
Christian family and would have been less surprised if something like
this had been given to me in church, but it was actually given to me at
the GP, when I went for my tetanus booster at 15 (I'm now 21). As I
remember, it was part of
a 'teenage girls' pack, nestled in amongst other more useful literature
about puberty, the importance of checking your boobs regularly, etc.
What worries me most is that at the time, having been brought up to
believe that sex before marriage was wrong, I actually
thought it too was giving perfectly normal and reasonable advice. It's
only now, having been away from home at university for a few years,
being able to think and read more freely and having exposure to all
kinds of people and opinions, that I realise how
awful it is.'
She continues:
'Of course, I respect anyone's decisions and beliefs about sex; in fact, I
personally still want to wait until marriage (but for personal reasons
rather than 'anyone who doesn't is a sinner' reasons). I am even glad in
a way that I was able to know that not
having sex was an acceptable option from the beginning. But what I am
not ok with is presenting it as the ONLY 'right' option, and in an
advice leaflet that pretends to be factual, objective and positive! It
makes me really angry that something so one-sided
and shaming was thought of as ok for a GP to give to impressionable
young girls. It's taken me a long time to break free from the
prescriptive ideology and morals my parents instilled in me (and they
weren't even particularly pushy), to realise that it's ok
to have my own thoughts and opinions and make my own decisions. What
teenagers need is to be given is a) objective facts, b) the awareness
that there are a lot of different opinions surrounding issues like this
and c) the knowledge that you are free to make
up your own mind. Instead, the fact that leaflets like these are
produced and given to teenage girls (or were being 6ish years ago)
really worries me. And not only is it pushing the idea of no sex before
marriage (and presenting statistics in a very biased
way to 'prove' that premarital sex is a bad idea), but also reinforcing
misogynistic crap like sex being about your partner's enjoyment and
women who get pregnant (or even have sex) as a teenager being shameful
and having nothing 'to offer a fella'.
