Sex Cells! How Nevada is Confusing the Hell out of Little Girls

[bondwooley]

A few weeks ago, we told you about the insane things going on in Mississippi schools -- where teachers are complying with a law requiring sexual education by teaching girls that "anyone who has sex before marriage is no better than a used piece of chocolate." Yuck. What could be worse than that?

Well, death, for one.

Not to be outdone by the lunatic slut-shamers in good ol' Mississippi, police officers (yes, police officers!) in the great state of Nevada are trying excruciatingly hard to teach young girls that pre-marital sex leads directly to dismemberment, drug use, prostitution, rape ... even death. (Really! They have video of slutty girls being zipped into body bags to prove it!)

These "Choose Purity" events, which are co-sponsored by the North Las Vegas Metro Police and attended by parents and children alike, seem to have one goal: confuse the hell out of kids about sex. How? By throwing just about everything imaginable at them. They're showing videos of prostitutes dying from grisly STDs and girls who drop dead after abusing diet pills. They're playing interviews with pimps and prostitutes and drug addicts -- including a woman who lost limbs in a meth lab explosion and a man whose face got partially eaten by a drug addict. On a more chipper note, they also have a beauty pageant winner on hand to let girls feel "empowered" by trying on her crown.

The logic of the police officer who orchestrated the event was straightforward: Abstinence = crime prevention.

Not everyone agrees. "I don’t know what is real about linking purity with those things," said a local health educator who attended the event and objected to the messages being sent to girls. Even worse, she pointed out, having all this disturbing information delivered by armed and uniformed cops made her wonder "if anybody came away with the idea that premarital sex is criminal.”

In the interest of fairness, perhaps, the cops are planning a different event for boys: "Choose Courage." For girls, purity; for boys, courage. Well, we suppose it's too late to hope for any consistency here. And speaking of consistency, in case any of the girls in attendance weren't confused enough, the Southern Nevada Health District was also there to hand out condoms. What in the world are they thinking in Nevada?

All of this enormous effort by the Nevada cops probably won't even work to encourage abstinence. A study at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says that kids who take "virginity pledges" are just as likely as those who don't to have sex before marriage. Except the ones who take the pledge are less likely to have safe sex. Oops.

So clearly the cops in Nevada are going to have to up the ante if they want fear and confusion to keep their girls "pure." So how are they going to do it? What do YOU think?

(Posted by author from original poll and article at http://lesterandcharlie.com/2014/05/08/sex-cells-in-nevada/)

[el_bryanto]

1. That's messed up - and if they are doing it officially should be shut down

Well it should be shut down in any case; but doubly so if they are doing it offically.

Bryant

[bondwooley]

2. Got a feeling it's not official

but you're right... it should be shut down.

[LadyHawkAZ]

3. IIRC they were off duty, but in uniform

Should be disciplined for that, at the very least.

[bondwooley]

4. Being disciplined would probably get them off. nt

[Nevernose]

5. It's not Nevada cops, it was one cop

Who got his department to sign off on it. He basically hoodwinked a large beuaurocracy. Also, there was plenty of actual information about STDs presented and even free condom distribution.

The larger mistakes were twofold, IMO: partnering with a religious organization, however well intended, is not the place of a government agency. This event is a case in point of how separation of church and state isn't just an "atheists being assholes thing," but often just a matter of pragmatism.

And secondly, the police and religious figures, whom I have no doubt genuinely meant well, are not professional educators, have not dedicated their adult lives to educating at-risk youth, and often have no clue what they're doing. Teaching, unlike many professions, is simultaneously an art and a science.

I'm the last thing from a cop supporter you'll find on os site, and have a long history of almost knee jerk Badge Bashing, but in this case I truly feel that the main culprit is one one well-intentioned cop who's still gullible enough to believe on "scared straight" and attends a well-meaning but fundamentalist church who got a police department onboard because it was put on for kids who live in the same neighborhood I grew up in.

There are lots of problems with the police departments in this area -- more than most -- but this was a fuck up, not endemic of their actual problems.

On edit: I agree with the gist of your essay. It was dumbshits doing dumbshits things.

[bondwooley]

6. Very fair points

And thanks for stating them so well.

As you pointed out, this is no territory for non-educators, no matter how well intentioned. It was no place for the police, even one.

It may not be endemic of the police to take such actions, but it is endemic of many segments of America that, even if from a pure heart, are confusing the hell out of future generations and not giving them the tools they need to be better than we have been. That's the sad part. We're supposed to share our knowledge -- not teach the inheritors of the Earth that Jesus danced with dinosaurs, that greenhouse gasses are caused by vegetables like ketchup, or that sex is a gateway drug.

We all need to try to do better and when we can't we should step aside.

[DreamGypsy]

7. Sex sells everything...and sex kills

...from the great educator, Joni Mitchell:

I pulled up behind a Cadillac
We were waiting for the light
And I took a look at his license plate
It said "Just Ice"
Is justice just ice?
Governed by greed and lust?
Just the strong doing what they can
And the weak suffering what they must?
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills
Sex kills

&feature=kp

[DreamGypsy]

8. Sex sells everything...and sex kills

...from the great educator, Joni Mitchell:

I pulled up behind a Cadillac
I was waiting for the light
And I took a look at his license plate
It said "Just Ice"
Is justice just ice?
Governed by greed and lust?
Just the strong doing what they can
And the weak suffering what they must?
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
Sex kills
Sex kills

Doctors' pills give you brand new ills
And the bills bury you like an avalanche
And lawyers haven't been this popular
Since Robespierre slaughtered half of France!
And Indian chiefs with their old beliefs know
The balance is undone crazy ions
You can feel it out in traffic
Everyone hates everyone!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills
Sex kills

All these jackoffs at the office
The rapist in the pool
Oh and the tragedies in the nurseries
Little kids packin' guns to school
The ulcerated ozone
These tumors of the skin
This hostile sun beating down on
This massive mess we're in!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills
Sex kills
Sex kills
Sex kills
Sex kills

[scrubthedata]

11. At least she had a logical approach. nt

[RobertEarl]

9. Kids are having sex??

OMG.

What's the problem, besides STD's, pregnancy and mean fathers?

They have pills for all that. I don't see what the problem is.

[Ilsa]

10. Yes, teach them that sex is the most vile, disgusting

Thing in the world and they should save it for someone they love.

That shouldn't create any problems, right?

[scrubthedata]

12. So the best way to stop crime...

... is to have a entire population of people who are sexually frustrated until marriage?

[Trillo]

13. And yet another generation of sexually-repressed Americans

is created, to give decades of sexual disappointment to their future spouses.

Look at the bright side. This will be good for therapists and the economy. If the psycho-sexually damaged married women are poor, and can't afford a sex therapist, well, they'll just have to pull up their britches and work a little harder for some extra cash.

[Brickbat]

14. Remember, kids -- sex is a dirty, disgusting thing that you should only share with the one you love.

[Exposethefrauds]

15. Many of the women who work by choice in porn or as strippers or other sex worker jobs come from

Very religious and conservative families.

Funny how the fundies never mention that