Something That is Nagging at Me.....

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Well, this may be awkward, but I'll get it off my chest anyway.....


During our sex-ed class, the teacher was showing us a Powerpoint about relationships, stats on teen pregnancy & STDs, sex and the law, etc. Well, in that PPT under the "Sex and the Law" section, there was stuff about statutory rape, abuse, and the like. There were two things that I was taken aback by in particular, however, and one that really bugged me. But first, I'll start off with the least irritating one:

"Sexual Abuse Isn't Sex":

I say that this one doesn't bother me as much because he was partially correct. Sexual abuse covers a wide variety of things, but it does not really turn into sex until you throw rape (of any kind) in the mix. Anyway, below is the one I was really surprised by:

"A Person's Virginity Cannot be "stolen", only given away".:

This is where the teacher caught me off-guard. It seemed to me like he was trying to say that someone who has been raped is still a virgin based simply upon the fact that they did not consent to sex, which is an outright lie.
Keep in mind that while this was an abstinence-only thing (which I have no issue with seeing as I agree with that general idea) and that he admitted that his sister had a daughter as a result of what was essentially date rape (he had said that someone had slipped something in her drink or something of that nature), it wasn't really something I would have expected to come out of his mouth. Last I checked, the dictionary defined "rape" as:

"Unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent.

Now, ignore the "age" part for a minute. What it says pretty much is that rape is indeed a form of sex, the only difference is consent vs. lack thereof. Now, let see how the word "virgin" is defined according to the dictionary:

"A person who has not had sexual intercourse".


If you look at both of these, you'll notice they're pretty much opposites of one another in regards to the whole "virgin" aspect. Therefore a rape victim/survivor cannot be a virgin.

Maybe he needs to read those and see whether he thinks they match up....

He was speaking pretty much metaphorically from a psychological and emotional point of view.

He was trying to get across these points;

If you have been sexually abused, please do not think that consensual sex is like that.
If you have been sexually abused, that does not count as having sex when you are asked if you have done certain acts.
If your only sexual experience is from being sexually abused, you do not have to count that as having sex, or having done that act.
If you have been raped while you were a virgin, you can still think of yourself as a virgin, and when you have sex consensual sex for the first time you can consider that your actual first time.

I'm sure he knows the definitions of the words, and that what he is saying is not technically true, but he's talking to kids, and some of them may have been sexually abused - he has no way of knowing and many don't tell anyone - and he wants them to know that they can still be "pure" and "virgin" even if someone has abused them. He doesn't want someone who has been abused but never had sex to think that his abstinance program won't apply to them because they aren't technically a virgin.

In the parameters of an abstinance only program, sexual experience gained via abuse or rape is not "counted against you" as "not abstaining".

No professor at a medical or law school would say those things to their students, because they would be dealing in physical evidence only. He was discussing not only physical, but emotional aspects of it. He's not going to explain that to the class, because most NT's "get it" when somebody speaks like that. They are probably aware that rape is actually sexual intercourse, and that after being raped, no one is a virgin.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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