I am sorry that the abstinence-only until marriage initiatives have not worked to decrease the number of teens who are sexually active. I am sorry that they have not worked to decrease the rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. I take no pleasure in seeing "the opposition" to R.E.A.L. sexual health education go down in flames. That doesn't mean, however, that I can appreciate the aggressively defensive posture that the abstinence-only crowd is now taking.
On November 7, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released a definitive study showing that abstinence-only programs don't work. Instead of responding with a sincere, "how can we improve," stance, the abstinence-only crowd has released a plethora of editorials and letters to the editors that misquote research studies, twist facts, attack supporters of comprehensive sex ed, and downright lie in an attempt to defend themselves and discredit the critics. There have been a few examples of this approach in the pages of The Daily Oklahoman lately.
I don't get it. If the abstinence-only folks were truly in it to benefit teens and keep them healthy, you'd think they would be open to evaluation and positive criticism. Hmmmm. Maybe they really aren't in it for the kids.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
They Like Us
I was recently invited to provide an educational program for two classes in a rural Oklahoma high school. It was the first time we had been invited to the school. The teacher of the two classes had met me when she worked for another agency. She asked me to cover just a little about everything--STIs, HIV, pregnancy risks, safer sex, sexual decision-making, abstinence--so her students would understand the complexity of sexual decision-making. She also wanted the students to have their questions answered with the most current, factual information.
I left my office at 6:30 a.m. to give me some wiggle room in case I got lost driving to the high school. (I did make one wrong turn, but I figured it out in time to keep me from driving to Texas by mistake.)
I reached the school about 20 minutes early. A large man unlocked the front door to the school. After looking me over and asking me how he could help, he stationed me just outside the principal's office. Immediately the principal of the school came out of his office to ask me how he could help. Both these men acted a bit gruff and suspicious. The principal left, I assume, to find the teacher who had invited me to her classes. During the next ten minutes, several teachers hurried through the halls, eyeing me with interest. Some of them also asked how they could help me.
I usually don't get nervous in my job, but anxiety started to build within me as one teacher after another asked who I was and how they could help. What were they thinking? What were they going to do?
Finally, a student introduced herself and guided me to the correct classroom.
The atmosphere of the classroom was a bit chaotic as students were rushing in and trying to figure out why I was there and what I would be like. Eventually things settled down, and the teacher began to introduce me.
Then the phone rang. My heart stopped. I just knew that one of the other teachers had spoken to the principal about the appropriateness (or rather, inappropriateness) of teaching students about sex and of inviting ME to be the speaker.
Instead, it was one of those other teachers asking if his students could also attend my talk. That was followed by another teacher calling with the same sort of request.
It turned out that I was more than welcome to the school, and that the teachers and students were all very happy and appreciative that I was there. Most of the students ended up staying for both class sessions. It was wonderful!
On by trip back to the office, I had some time to reflect on the experience. It is so easy to internalize all the garbage that the anti-sex ed minority throws at us. But in the real world, kids are hungry for good information and teachers and parents want the kids to have access to that good information. That is what Get R.E.A.L. Oklahoma! is all about.
I am looking forward to returning to that rural high school. They made me feel appreciated and reminded me how important it is to not jump to conclusions based on stereotypes. They sure didn't, and it was great.
I left my office at 6:30 a.m. to give me some wiggle room in case I got lost driving to the high school. (I did make one wrong turn, but I figured it out in time to keep me from driving to Texas by mistake.)
I reached the school about 20 minutes early. A large man unlocked the front door to the school. After looking me over and asking me how he could help, he stationed me just outside the principal's office. Immediately the principal of the school came out of his office to ask me how he could help. Both these men acted a bit gruff and suspicious. The principal left, I assume, to find the teacher who had invited me to her classes. During the next ten minutes, several teachers hurried through the halls, eyeing me with interest. Some of them also asked how they could help me.
I usually don't get nervous in my job, but anxiety started to build within me as one teacher after another asked who I was and how they could help. What were they thinking? What were they going to do?
Finally, a student introduced herself and guided me to the correct classroom.
The atmosphere of the classroom was a bit chaotic as students were rushing in and trying to figure out why I was there and what I would be like. Eventually things settled down, and the teacher began to introduce me.
Then the phone rang. My heart stopped. I just knew that one of the other teachers had spoken to the principal about the appropriateness (or rather, inappropriateness) of teaching students about sex and of inviting ME to be the speaker.
Instead, it was one of those other teachers asking if his students could also attend my talk. That was followed by another teacher calling with the same sort of request.
It turned out that I was more than welcome to the school, and that the teachers and students were all very happy and appreciative that I was there. Most of the students ended up staying for both class sessions. It was wonderful!
On by trip back to the office, I had some time to reflect on the experience. It is so easy to internalize all the garbage that the anti-sex ed minority throws at us. But in the real world, kids are hungry for good information and teachers and parents want the kids to have access to that good information. That is what Get R.E.A.L. Oklahoma! is all about.
I am looking forward to returning to that rural high school. They made me feel appreciated and reminded me how important it is to not jump to conclusions based on stereotypes. They sure didn't, and it was great.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Kay Holiday is a dear, longtime friend to many of us in the fields of sexuality education, HIV services and HIV prevention, teen pregnancy prevention, lgbt support, and other public health work. Kay was kind enough to share the following story for this blog. What an inspiration! Thank you, Kay.
I’ve just returned from Hyderabad, India for a 10-day mission trip and had an amazing experience with more than 100 Banjara women (Banjara is an Indian tribal group). I spoke to these women in two different settings outside Hyderabad, which is located in south central India. One setting was a women’s conference sponsored by several moderate Baptist groups. These beautiful and sweet-spirited women were from rural villages (thandas) and most would be considered uneducated by US standards – few spoke English.
I gave my testimony about my son living with HIV disease, then started with some trepidation in my “HIV 101” presentation – complete with condom demonstration and distribution. There were some stunning questions from the Banjara women: Why must my husband wear a condom if we are married
I had the good fortune of having one mature Indian woman there who was my ally – she had been doing some HIV education in her village, so she was my ‘bridge’ in communication. Although I had an interpreter, she was an unmarried woman – which created a cultural barrier at certain key moments. When I was doing the condom demonstration and said, “put the condom on the erect penis,” she couldn’t say the words.
Another stroke of luck was that the interpreter, who is a homeopathic physician, brought some HIV/AIDS prevention posters, written in their language, so I used the posters in small groups. That created animated conversation and many questions – the interpreter and I went from group to group, answering questions that the women were too embarrassed to ask earlier.
Most women knew someone in their village who had AIDS or who had died of AIDS, leaving orphaned children. One woman told about a young woman in her village, who has AIDS, and has been banished to a small hut away from the village. Such accounts made me think I had traveled back in time 15 years. The Times of India that very week had reported an 11-year-old boy in West Bengal being banned from his school because he was HIV positive. In the small groups, we discussed the myths they had heard in their villages – and I hope they heard my answers as I tried to dispel the myths: the food vendor who cut his finger, bled into the dal and gave AIDS to two girls who ate the dal; the husband and wife who were infected from a mosquito.
It’s a terrible situation in India because antiretrovirals (medications to treat HIV disease) are not always available. When talking with two Indian physicians who treat AIDS patients in Hyderabad, I learned they primarily treat the opportunistic infections and antiretrovirals are not even used until the person’s T-cell count is below 200, which indicates a very weakened immune system!
Culturally, at least in the rural areas, MSM (men who have sex with men), is not acknowledged. During my presentation, I explained that HIV can be transmitted ‘”from female to male, from male to female, from male to male, and female to female.” I received many quizzical looks; then in small group sessions, one woman said, “I don’t understand the ‘male to male’ that you were saying.” I explained there are some men who have sex with men and those men might be married to women, and her reply was, “Oh, no, we don’t have that here.”
Therefore, take an over-populated country, with tremendous poverty and gender disparity (and thus, little condom negotiation), no effective treatment for early HIV detection, limited prevention efforts, no acknowledgement of MSM – the results: a known recipe for a pandemic.
My emotions ranged from gratitude for such an attentive audience and honest questions and true concern about the disease they see taking their villagers, paired with a helpless sense of pending disaster for the people of India. I hope my brief efforts in India touched some lives and hearts – I truly needed to be reminded of the story of the man walking along the beach, trying to throw all the starfish which had been washed up on the beach back into the ocean so they could survive. A passerby asked him why he was doing that….that it really made no difference. The man picked up one more starfish, threw it back into the ocean and said, “It does to this one.” My hope is that I made a difference to just one woman.
I’ve just returned from Hyderabad, India for a 10-day mission trip and had an amazing experience with more than 100 Banjara women (Banjara is an Indian tribal group). I spoke to these women in two different settings outside Hyderabad, which is located in south central India. One setting was a women’s conference sponsored by several moderate Baptist groups. These beautiful and sweet-spirited women were from rural villages (thandas) and most would be considered uneducated by US standards – few spoke English.
I gave my testimony about my son living with HIV disease, then started with some trepidation in my “HIV 101” presentation – complete with condom demonstration and distribution. There were some stunning questions from the Banjara women: Why must my husband wear a condom if we are married
I had the good fortune of having one mature Indian woman there who was my ally – she had been doing some HIV education in her village, so she was my ‘bridge’ in communication. Although I had an interpreter, she was an unmarried woman – which created a cultural barrier at certain key moments. When I was doing the condom demonstration and said, “put the condom on the erect penis,” she couldn’t say the words.
Another stroke of luck was that the interpreter, who is a homeopathic physician, brought some HIV/AIDS prevention posters, written in their language, so I used the posters in small groups. That created animated conversation and many questions – the interpreter and I went from group to group, answering questions that the women were too embarrassed to ask earlier.
Most women knew someone in their village who had AIDS or who had died of AIDS, leaving orphaned children. One woman told about a young woman in her village, who has AIDS, and has been banished to a small hut away from the village. Such accounts made me think I had traveled back in time 15 years. The Times of India that very week had reported an 11-year-old boy in West Bengal being banned from his school because he was HIV positive. In the small groups, we discussed the myths they had heard in their villages – and I hope they heard my answers as I tried to dispel the myths: the food vendor who cut his finger, bled into the dal and gave AIDS to two girls who ate the dal; the husband and wife who were infected from a mosquito.
It’s a terrible situation in India because antiretrovirals (medications to treat HIV disease) are not always available. When talking with two Indian physicians who treat AIDS patients in Hyderabad, I learned they primarily treat the opportunistic infections and antiretrovirals are not even used until the person’s T-cell count is below 200, which indicates a very weakened immune system!
Culturally, at least in the rural areas, MSM (men who have sex with men), is not acknowledged. During my presentation, I explained that HIV can be transmitted ‘”from female to male, from male to female, from male to male, and female to female.” I received many quizzical looks; then in small group sessions, one woman said, “I don’t understand the ‘male to male’ that you were saying.” I explained there are some men who have sex with men and those men might be married to women, and her reply was, “Oh, no, we don’t have that here.”
Therefore, take an over-populated country, with tremendous poverty and gender disparity (and thus, little condom negotiation), no effective treatment for early HIV detection, limited prevention efforts, no acknowledgement of MSM – the results: a known recipe for a pandemic.
My emotions ranged from gratitude for such an attentive audience and honest questions and true concern about the disease they see taking their villagers, paired with a helpless sense of pending disaster for the people of India. I hope my brief efforts in India touched some lives and hearts – I truly needed to be reminded of the story of the man walking along the beach, trying to throw all the starfish which had been washed up on the beach back into the ocean so they could survive. A passerby asked him why he was doing that….that it really made no difference. The man picked up one more starfish, threw it back into the ocean and said, “It does to this one.” My hope is that I made a difference to just one woman.
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