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We shouldn’t abstain from sex ed

OK class, today we’re going to be talking about the differences between men and women during sex. Men are like microwaves, they ‘heat up’ quickly and finish just the same. Women, on the other hand, are like crock pots. They take a while to heat up and take hours to finish.

No joke, that’s what my middle school nurse told me and my fellow classmates about sex.

We weren’t given any context as to what that meant, it was all up to us to figure it out using our own devices.

That’s because we were raised during the time of abstinence-only sex education.

It started in the 80s’ when Congress passed the Adolescence Family Life Act (AFLA). It was designed to encourage young people to wait until marriage while also providing support to pregnant and parenting teens.

By 2000, there were three abstinence-only programs created by the Federal government that encouraged states to teach abstinence-only programs for grant money.

These federally funded programs existed in some form until 2010 when President Obama put an end to them.

However, they still haunted schools across the country and were the continued basis for sex education programs.

That was exactly what I was taught in high school.

Basically, my school nurse wanted to scare the living hell out of us by telling us all the things that would happen to us if we had sex before marriage, you know, STDs, pregnancy, mental health problems and an inevitable death without truly telling us about other birth control options. We were then sent into the world of high school under the guise that we would be OK.

Except we weren’t. The whole ‘figuring things out for ourselves’ tactic ended up backfiring and creating big problems.

Teen pregnancies, STD cases and misinformation filled high schools around the country. In my high school, my graduating class was the only class to reach graduation without a teen pregnancy since 2014, and every class that followed mine had at least one pregnancy and countless pregnancy scares.

Taking an abstinence-only approach to teaching sex education isn’t effective because there is no real education involved.

According to stuvoice.org, only 17 states require sex education to be scientifically accurate. That means that the things we are being taught could be wrong.

And that was proven.

A study done on those federal grant programs in 2004 by Rep. Henry A. Waxman found that “two-thirds of the abstinence-only education curricula studied contained incorrect scientific information regarding condom failure, sexually transmitted diseases, the health consequences of abortions,

and mental health” according to NCAC. org. Now, things have gotten a little better over the last couple of years as organizations and medical studies preach comprehensive sex ed. But it’s still not enough. Aubrie Lawrence Sex ed needs to cover every aspect of sex, including the uncomfortable bits, and let students make their own decisions about what is right for them. It needs to teach students about sex that also isn’t heteronormative. That way, students who belong to the LGBTQ+ community are getting a fair education as well. I understand that abstinence looks good on paper, but it’s not working. We can’t leave it up to porn, the internet or religious threats any longer to teach teenagers how to practice safe sex, and the very real consequences that occur without it.

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-In-CHIEF Aubrie Lawrence editor@csceagle.com

NEWS EDITOR news@csceagle.com

OPINION EDITOR Velvet Jessen opinion@csceagle.com

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Participation on The Eagle staff is open to all Chadron State College students. The Eagle is a student newspaper produced by and for students of Chadron State College. Opinions expressed in editorials and columns written by the student staff belong solely to the authors. As a public forum, The Eagle invites guest columns and letters to the editor from all readers. Opinions expressed in submissions belong solely to the author(s) and DO NOT necessarily reflect the opinions of The Eagle staff, its adviser, CSC students, staff, faculty, administrators or governing body. Please limit all guest columns or letters to 400 words. Deadline for submissions is noon Monday for consideration in the following Thursday’s edition. The Eagle reserves the right to edit or reject all submissions.

6Jan. 20, 2022 | The Eagle | csceagle.com Opinion

As We See It

If you want to be a parent, act like one

u By Velvet Jessen

Opinion Editor

If you want to be in charge of your children or remain part of their lives, you need to stop acting like a child. Being a parent while divorced or married isn’t easy but throwing a fit about your situation isn’t gonna help either.

Not every relationship is perfect or meant to be forever and that’s OK. Co-parenting can be difficult but it is worth it if you really want to be in your children’s lives.

It’s hard to not be with someone you pictured spending your life with and it’s really hard to not be with your kids all the time and miss them growing up.

But sometimes life doesn’t work out quite like you think it will and you end up having to deal with those little things.

The best you can do from there is to act with humility and grace.

Accept your situation and move on in the best you can. Try and be a present positive person in your child’s life. Unfortunately, it often seems not many people can do that or are willing to.

Instead, you can find videos, comments, or - apparently - printed and sold books made by angry and indignant parents who would rather blame the world than take some initiative.

One stance often taken by angry, divorced dads is that the system that people go through with custody and divorce only benefits women. (I wonder who created the systems that assumed men wouldn’t want time with their kids?)

Now I’m glad for the dads that put in the time and effort with their kids and are fairly awarded custody or split custody. They deserve all good things.

However it’s often those that scream loudest who do the least to help themselves.

Stephen Baskerville’s book, “Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family”, seems to be a handbook for those screamers. In his book he gives some advice on divorce and custody.

In his book he argues, nofault divorces exist to let women exploit men. (They exist because sometimes no one is the bad guy the relationship just doesn’t work.)

In family court men are punished for being absent or being abusive without confirming evidence. There aren’t really deadbeat dads. (I know a few people who would disagree.) And that dead-beat dads are an excuse for women to extort men for money.

He also says that women are just as likely to physically abuse their spouse and that men just do it when they are threatened with divorce or limited custody. (Because abuse is always a good way to keep a wife or access to your kids.) He also goes the traditional route and blames ‘radical feminists’ for saying divorce is OK.

If you can read that and agree with him then maybe his book is for you, but if you want to keep a relationship with your kids, his book probably isn’t for you. Instead of persuading change or making scholarly arguments, his book takes a route similar to break up albums.

Has a break up album ever solved the problem? No, but listening to the album feels good when you’re not ready to get over your situation. His book is for people that aren’t ready to accept their situation.

So you’re no longer someone’s husband. That sucks but being bitter about it doesn’t help anyone.

It instead hurts everyone involved, including yourself.

What’s particularly shocking to me about this book is somehow not that he seems to suggest that abuse is OK if divorce is on the line. It is where I found the book.

I found an article on dadsdivorce.com talking about the book and while it’s not quite an endorsement it doesn’t do anything to discredit his potentially harmful statements. The only truly negative thing in the article is that it might not be ‘practical help’.

I think it’s time we call things as they are and stop giving anything that could make a tense situation worse, the time of day.

Velvet Jessen

Preteens and teens are suffering in relationships

u By Kamryn Kozisek

Staff Editor

When we are children, adults are constantly warning us about stranger danger and how little kids get kidnapped and sold. We all knew that if an adult tried to be friends with us or try to touch us to tell a trusted adult.

But no one tells middle schoolers that a 20-year-old doesn’t think you are mature for your age and you don’t just ‘get’ him. No one tells high school boys that it’s bad to get a middle school girlfriend because girls your age don’t like you.

Once we grow out of our little kid phase and into our preteen phase, adults stop protecting us and start blaming us. In sex-ed I remember being told a story about a 13-year-old who had a baby with a 17-year-old and the point of lesson? Absence. Just don’t have sex until you are married.

When I was a senior in high school, I remember the guys in my class joking about ‘freshman head hunt.’ This is how they would make bets or discuss sleeping with the incoming freshman girls. They would talk about how hot they were and rate them like it was a joke. Other people I have spoken to had similar experiences.

Most girls I know, either know someone who was in a ‘relationship’ in middle school or as a freshman with a guy who was in his late teens or early 20s. They thought they were so cool and we thought they were cool.

Often their parents were aware and boiled it down to them testing boundaries or just liking older people. Kids use the example of their parents age gap to make it okay for five-year age gaps in young relationships.

No one is telling kids that dating older people and letting them convince you to have sex could be considered rape.

At the same time, no one is telling kids that tricking someone or having to ‘convince’ them to have sex with you is rape.

At what point does it change? When do we stop saying “adults are not supposed to touch kids like that” to “you shouldn’t have slept together.”

Is it when we get our own lockers and personalized schedules or is it when we grow into our bodies and start wearing makeup? Is it when our hormones set in, is it when learn when sex is or is it when we start fighting with our parents? When do parents stop worrying about pedophiles and start worrying about teen pregnancy instead?

Based on Nebraska Statute 28-319.01., only sexual penetration of someone younger than 12 by someone 19 or older or sexual penetration by someone 25 years or older on someone ages 12-16 falls under sexual assault in the first degree.

As someone who has siblings in middle school and high school, I do not want my siblings to go through being manipulated by someone older than them.

I want them to grow up with healthy expectation for relationships and to know when someone is manipulating them.

Kamryn Kozisek