In comments to my sports/virginity question where I questioned why, for instance, losing one’s virginity was supposed to destroy your life but blowing your knee out in high-school sports isn’t; why getting an STI (even a bad one like HIV) is supposed to ruin your life but picking up hepatitis while trekking in Nepal isn’t, MinorityReport (who blogs at, well, Minority Report) said

Great point. I wish that would have been the gist of my high school sex-ed classes.

An example: The school hired chastity speaker, Molly Kelly. I forget most of her talk. However, I do remember one very clear image she used. Throughout her speech Molly repeatedly dropped an apple. At the end of her presentation she held up the apple she had dropped and an apple that had been set aside. She then asked which we would rather eat, the apple that had been dropped on the floor (repeatedly) or the apple that had been set aside. It drove her point home, and for me at least it made an impact.

I would have been nice to hear something like, “But if you do _______, it’s not the end and life goes on.”

She said it here.

Oohhh, I had this realization after reading her Molly Kelly story and now I’m kind of beside-myself irritated.

You know all those abstinence-only metaphors of apples, roses, even gum and tape? Every one of them is a single-use consumable good. Bouncing an apple into apple sause just takes the cake though. The difference between apples and, oh, say, your body is even if you managed to get bruised during sex you’d still recover quickly. And most of the time, for most women and men, you’re not bruised during sex to begin with.

Apples, gum, roses, tape, suckers, etc., don’t recover at all but they’re fucking things, not people!

You want a better, but still-inanimate metaphor for a man or woman who’s had sex? Try a rubber ball. In fact try a superball since those seem to bounce with more energy than they begin with. How about a book? Try a deep pool that a pebble has been tossed in. A painting, an alarm clock, a window, a fireplace, a chicken and an egg (which came first?), a ski hill, a piano or flute.

And to be perfectly honest I don’t care for any of those because humans aren’t inanimate nor are we, women or men, either literally or figuratively consumed in the course of, well, intercourse.

A dropped apple is simply marvelous for propaganda in the service of patriarchy but evilly inaccurate for sex education.