Thousands To Rally In Austin With Sen. Wendy Davis On July 1

[Coyotl]

8. Why I #StandwithWendy

Why I #StandwithWendy
http://austingastronomist.com/choose-standwithwendy/

When I was eleven years old, my school class took a break from learning one afternoon to attend a presentation about “Aiming for Success.” We filed quietly into the library where we listened to two youth pastor types give a lecture on “purity,” and “self discipline.” The focus of their pep-rally style presentation was sexual decision making, namely how practicing abstinence was the only possible way to achieve success as a teen. As they talked, a slide show of herpetic lesions, along with buzzwords about success and goals played behind them. There were other props, too.

“You only get one chance to unwrap a present,” lectured the speaker while she held up a shiny, pink package sealed with a bow. “Once you take off that bow, it’s never special again.”

My eleven year-old self had never considered sexuality in this way, and I was confused. Was I the present? If so, who had wrapped me up in the first place? Did boys have bows, too? And what if I felt like unwrapping my present with a girl instead?

Nothing we discussed in the school library that day helped clear that up. We didn’t talk about consent, contraceptives, or even the basic anatomy of our rapidly changing bodies. We also didn’t talk about what to do if you did want to have intercourse, which seems pretty germane since up to 10% of the children in my class actually were. Instead we focused on abstinence ............