Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Remember when AIDS was the WORST thing that could happen to you instead of just a sucky but very often survivable disease?

That is my hypothesis on one of the reasons teen pregnancy (and STD rates and STI rates) are growing rather than shrinking like they have been for 15 years.  Kids in the 90's were terrified to death of AIDS.  If you had sex, you would get AIDS, and no one would let you swim in the city pool, and then you would die in a terrible shrinking manner that would be awful and painful and involve lesions on your face.  This was a basic truth everyone knew.  And even nice kids who had never even had sex--like Ryan White--could get AIDS.  I went to Catholic school, so I knew that sex before marriage would obviously come with Biblical repurcussions of the huge and horrifying proportions that brought us the Plagues of Egypt and other awful things.  And even if you didn't go to Catholic school, I think the prevailing message of the 90's was unsafe sex is deadly.  I feel like most of us had to be vaguely aware that condoms were necessary for sex not to kill you, and I feel a lot more of us (than the kids of today) were likely to wrap it up.  I mean, remember when TLC wore condoms on their clothing.  It was a totally big deal.  Now I think condoms are thought of as unecessary, especially as lots of teen girls are on birth control to fix their acne/regulate their periods all in one swoop.  Basically, they need a little more fear of a great big sex induced disease pandemic those kids today.  They need it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's also the abstinence-based sex ed in schools factor to consider. No information on birth control or diseases. Just basically, "wait until you're married." Because that's obviously so effective.

-al said...

Sally, I don't know you, but damn you for beating me to the punch.
I was just thinking about this today, with the announcement that Sarah Palin's kid got knocked up. I imagine she was taught abstinence only, and had no idea what the hell a condom is used for.
I liken it to teaching soldiers in boot camp "Getting into firefights with the enemy is bad. So don't do it. Oh, that Kevlar over there, don't worry about that. Just don't get shot at. Armored Humvees? Who cares, don't get shot at."

Heather K said...

But I also think those were made a lot easier to let fly once the crisis(!) point of the AIDS epidemic became controllable (or more controllable) with medication.

Love Jesus or not, saving it until marriage or not, condoms were necessary for virtually everyone in the 90's. I actually went pretty far in life with abstinence based sex ed (thanks Catholic school) which omitted all reference to masturbation, condoms, any from of birth control but the rhythm method (to be practiced by loving married types), and also came with an oddly misleading diagram of the female reproductive organs. But I watched TV documenting the AIDS crisis (we all did, Ryan White, candle in the wind) and I think that was where I first met and got a general idea about condoms because even though I went to public high school there was no condom banana demonstration, just a description of what to do.

Dropped At Birth said...

i believe in population control.

also, i had a rather short layover at chicago o'hare last night!

Heather K said...

You read it here first, Jenny advvocates drowning small children like kittens.

Dropped At Birth said...

:)

alas...i advocate much more than that! hehe

i swear...if only i was leader of the world!

i'll tell you this much--i do believe in the death penalty--and there sure as hell wouldn't be this many jails!

Heather K said...

Violent, violent, dangerous Jenny!