The Right Way to do Abstinence-Only Sex-Ed

On an unconscious level, the human mind has difficulty processing negatives. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, that will have exactly the wrong effect and cause them to think of an elephant. If you don’t want them to think of an elephant, tell them to think of a peacock, or Abraham Lincoln, or an airplane.

It’s the same way with sex. If you tell people not to have sex, you may (or may not) get them to understand consciously why it’s a bad idea, but on an unconscious level, their brain hears the “have sex” part and can’t process the word “not.” The way to get people not to have sex is to put into their minds the sexual equivalent of a peacock, Abraham Lincoln, or an airplane.

Unfortunately, while many images can substitute for that of an elephant, there aren’t many things that can substitute for sex. Maybe religious ecstasy, but that’s quite difficult for most people to achieve, and there are “church and state” problems if it were made part of a public curriculum. Maybe certain drugs – opiates and SSRIs come to mind – but obviously we don’t want to encourage young people to use opiates, and it seems a bit drastic, and probably not very effective, to prescribe antidepressants for teenagers generally in order to calm their sexual urges. No, the only convenient substitute for sex is masturbation.

And that’s exactly what abstinence-only sex-ed should be teaching. I mean, OK, it’s probably a good idea to warn kids about STIs and pregnancy risks and the possible emotional complications of having sex. But mostly what sex-ed courses should be teaching is masturbation techniques. And about how much fun it can be. And about all the wonderful advantages of doing the sex thing by yourself (which I’ll get to later).

And outside of the curriculum itself, we should do things to encourage and enhance masturbation for teenagers. Hand out free sex toys in school. Change the law to let teenagers view pornography. (Some people might think the latter would encourage them to have sex, but I doubt it. A guy isn’t likely to be watching porn when his girlfriend is around. And when he does watch it – especially if he has been taught how great masturbation is – he won’t want to wait until he’s with her to have sex.)

What needs to be changed is the belief – particularly among boys – that masturbation is a pathetic substitute for sex. This is a wrong and destructive belief. I would argue, in fact, that social pressure, self-image issues, and the generally stupid values that pervade the teenage world (and the adult world) compel teenagers (and adults) to accept sex as a pathetic substitute for masturbation.

You might argue that masturbation must be a substitute for sex, and not the other way around, because sex is “natural” whereas masturbation is the sexual equivalent of AstroTurf. Clearly nature intended people to have sex, rather than masturbate, because sex is what enables people to reproduce, whereas masturbation has no obvious evolutionary advantage. Well, if you insist on personifying Nature, consider this: Nature clearly didn’t intend all women to have orgasms. Some women can’t come from intercourse, and some can’t even come from direct clitoral stimulation unless they use a vibrator. I submit that, for such women, a penis is a substitute – and a very poor one, at that – for a vibrator. I mean, they might be willing to accept that substitute because it comes with a man attached, and in any case the two aren’t mutually exclusive. But it’s silly to think that the “artificial” thing must be a substitute for the “natural” thing.

The issue is not whether masturbation is more natural than sex, but whether it is better. And, I contend, it is better. Here we encounter once again the original problem: the brain has trouble with negatives. The most important reasons that masturbation is better are negative ones: it doesn’t spread diseases and infections; it doesn’t cause pregnancy; it doesn’t have major potential emotional complications; it doesn’t involve the difficult and dangerous question of consent. Another reason that masturbation is better is that it is easier: it’s much easier to satisfy one person without hurting them than it is to satisfy two people without hurting either one of them – especially if you have access to all of the one person’s sense data. And let’s face it, when you have sex, it has to be with a real person, and real people aren’t nearly as hot as the ones you can fantasize about.

It will be argued that sex feels better than masturbation – at least for boys, and for many girls too. This is, first of all, a fairly minor advantage compared to some of the disadvantages already cited. After all, orgasms feel pretty damn good no matter what causes them. But I would argue that this supposed advantage isn’t even really there. The problem is that “masturbation” is interpreted to mean “manual masturbation,” which, for most boys and many girls, does indeed not feel as good as sex (at least if you ignore the uncomfortable parts of sex, particularly among the inexperienced). But in this day and age, masturbating manually is like riding a horse to work. They have automobiles now. I can’t honestly say I've done the reasearch myself, but I have the impression that, with the right sex toys, masturbation can feel even better than sex (particularly if you do take into account the uncomfortable parts of sex). For girls, this point is almost trivial, but I understand it’s also true for boys, given recent advances in masturbation technology.

The other big reason that people will say sex is better than masturbation is because of the intimacy. But intimacy doesn’t require sex. Arguably, when two people use masturbation to satisfy their sexual impulses, so those impulses don’t get in the way of their emotional connection, they have the opportunity to experience an even deeper level of intimacy than those who try to get intimate by fucking.

You may say that sex is more an expression of intimacy rather than a form of intimacy. OK, you’ve got me there. If two people have become very intimate and want to express that intimacy by getting as physically close as it’s possible for two people to get, then yes, sex does have an advantage over masturbation. Yes, in one particular case – one which, I imagine, is in fact rare among teenagers, though, given their limited experience, they may imagine themselves to be more intimate than they really are – in one particular, fairly rare case, yes, sex does have an advantage. One advantage. Sex has gotten one base hit off masturbation. But, Dude, I still want masturbation pitching for my team.

The real reason, I suspect, that sex is “better” (for boys) is that you get to say – or even if you act the gentleman and don’t tell anybody, you get to know that it would be true if you did say – that you had sex with So-and-so. That is really bad. We should punish boys (and men) for thinking that. Heck, we should even punish me for thinking that (although, since So-and-so wouldn’t even go out with me, the question of punishment is academic in my case). Really. I mean, personally, I don’t give a damn if they have sex, as long as they use a condom and all that. But to use someone else’s body as a reason to feel good about yourself – that’s really gross. Even if it’s subtle – as it almost always is – it’s gross. Even if the girl wanted it more than you did, even if you were in love, even if whatever – tell me honestly, after you’ve considered all the advantages of masturbation and the disadvantages of sex, that ego wasn’t the deciding factor.

I don’t know what to do about that, but it’s pretty fucked up. And it doesn’t mostly explain why girls have sex – since girls don’t get much credit for saying they had sex with So-and-so, unless So-and-so is the school’s star quarterback. I can recall hearing about some research as to why girls have sex. The first time the reason is usually curiosity. After that it’s kind of, “What the hell, I’m not a virgin any more, so what does it matter.” And there’s probably a boy that wants to have sex with her, and maybe she enjoys having sex, so what the hell. Plus she doesn’t want to be thought of as a tease, or as straight-laced and old-fashioned. And all the other girls are doing it. Blah, blah, blah. In any case, if we can convince the boys that masturbation is better than sex, the girl problem will take care of itself.

Then also, a lot of youngsters of both sexes have sex because they’re intoxicated. Yeah, I don’t know what to do about that either. Maybe the “abstinence only” thing was a bad idea in the first place. (Do you think?) If teenagers are going to get drunk and have sex, it’s a lot better if, before they left for the party, they thought of brining a condom just in case.