Image, and post inspiration, from Feministing.com.

So… I… I gotta say I always feel a little conflicted when it comes to abstinence-promoting programs like Sherry Cline’s CoolVirginity.com. On the one hand they have perfectly mild advice like

First things first. Best advice is wait to date, 15 and under is just too young. Those years are about discovering who you are as a person first and gaining the maturity to handle the intensity of a relationship.

Which is fine. Really! I happen to agree that, developmentally, it’s best to wait to date, let alone have intercourse. (Just as a virtually all smokers start out as kids who wish they could look more grown up, I think an awful lot of kids rush sex in order to feel grown up. And by rushing or, worse, being rushed, you really do miss out on a lot of cool experiences that really do prepare you not just for handling the intensity of relationships but also handling giving and receiving considerably more enjoyment once you do start having sex.)

So like I say, I don’t really object to the abstract sentiment of promoting abstinence as part of a comprehensive sex education curriculum.

The problem I get into with A-O groups is that they get so focused on virginity as a vehicle for waiting till later that… well…that they come up with absolutely psychotic messages like the image above that, allegedly, is appearing or has appeared on billboards in the Waynesboro, Pennsylvania area.

Because if they’re trying to promote abstinence with that puppy they’re just going about it all the wrong ways!

Quick digression: Maybe 20 years ago I was at a conference in Washington D.C. and a naturalist friend and I decided to visit the National Zoo. We were sitting by the cat exhibit and for the most part the animals were all just lazing around. Except for the mid-size cats. There was this little boy running back and forth with some kind of jingly boots, laughing and making a lot of noise and just generally being a cute little rascal. And all those leopard/cougar-sized cats were chin down, eyes focused intently, and tracking that little boy like house cats track birds through a window. I didn’t notice until my naturalist friend pointed it out. She said “he’s exactly the size of their preferred prey and they trying to stalk him.” Yikes! Creep city!

Anyway, that billboard image up there? Holy cow but that’s just “why wait” stalker bait! An underaged or nearly-underaged girl, curled up submissively, talking about her pussy as an ultimate gift? (Whether because, perhaps, being a woman she doesn’t really have any use for it herself? Or because she just hasn’t yet figured out that she could have expectations and desires of her own. Or even “who cares, if she’s never done it before maybe she’ll think I know what I’m doing.”)

The point being that assuming girls even focus on the marriage part instead of the “ultimate gift to a man” part (and thereby over-romanticizing an early relationship and consequently prematurely “gifting” herself) the overall message is just an open invitation of lust not only to individual women’s individual prospective marriage partners but also to boys who aren’t yet ready to be responsible in their relationships either, and also older, possibly married men as well.

In which case those save-your-cherry,-sweetie lessons better be darn effective because the branding messages in that billboard sure are going to encourage men of all stripes to try overcoming them.

Which, if you were to ask me, is exactly the opposite of giving girls the time and space they need to figure out what they want, when they want it.

Oh, and can we just talk about boys for a minute here? i still don’t see anything in that message (or on that website) about either the benefits of waiting or the consequences of not. (And hmm… one of these days you should ask me about how ready I was the time I was given a “perfect no-strings-attached opportunity” to lose my virginity in 7th grade. And not just me but all the other equally young paperboys in our neighborhood. And how rattled we were. And how, as far as I know, every one of us “chickened out…” a.k.a. weren’t ready.)

Anyway, that billboard? Not ok if you believe in abstinence, and definitely not ok if you don’t.