A Message for Sex Educators: Sex Is Not Dirty

By Lorraine Kenny, RH Reality Check. Posted December 4, 2008.

Pop quiz. No looking at your notes. In which organization's educational materials did the following sentence appear? 

"Almost everyone can agree that abstinence is the only way to 100 percent protect against unintended pregnancy and STDs." 

1. The Abstinence Clearinghouse
2. The National Abstinence Education Association
3. The Heritage Foundation
4. None of the above

If you answered "none of the above," go to the head of the class. The sentence appeared in advocacy materials that we here at the ACLU developed for the purpose of ending government funding of ineffective, ideologically driven abstinence-only-until-marriage programming.  

The above exercise should give you pause; it stopped us in our tracks. What is the likelihood we're going to win this battle to get real information about sexual health into teenagers' hands if we continue to mimic our opponents' language?  

I'd like to say that we got to this epiphany on our own, but we didn't. It took the team of cognitive linguists at Real Reason to help us see that those of us who advocate for better sex education may unwittingly be undermining our mission by the very language we use. 

To help us become better sex ed advocates, Real Reason took a close look at how Americans understand sex and sexuality; the images of sex and sexuality that proponents of abstinence-only programming use to push their agenda; and the language used by advocates for comprehensive approaches that provide accurate information and skills to help teens live healthy lives now and in the future. 

Real Reason considered several key concepts operating in the debate over sexuality education, including sexuality, education, government, and development. For brevity's sake, let's look at the most dominant in this context: sexuality. After combing through mountains of material on sexuality education -- from fact sheets and speeches made by advocates on both sides of the debate to legal briefs, blogs, television transcripts, and special linguistic databases -- Real Reason identified two prominent cultural models of sexuality influencing the debate:  

1) sexuality as an undesirable, contaminating substance, and

2) sexuality as EXTERNAL FORCE, specifically, an OPPONENT.   

In the first, sexuality is something you suddenly and unfortunately "come into contact" with, not something that has always been a natural part of who you are. It's seen through the lenses of pure and impure, good and bad: think "dirty" jokes, "filthy" language, "polluted" young minds, and even the virgin/whore dichotomy. 

See more stories tagged with: sex, teens, abstinence, sex ed

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Sex and Relationships! Sign up now »