Madeleine+G’s+2016+OpEd+Article

== =**How America's Sex Education Leads to Rape**=

The idea that sex is an ignoble and dishonorable act has mutated alongside our culture for generations and has transformed itself into one of the harshest double-standards in our culture. Men who have a lot of sex are called "studs" and are glorified and praised in the media as the "epitome of manliness", while women who have a lot of sex are called "sluts", "whores", "tarts", "twats", "hoes", "tramps", etc., and are constantly demonized in the media as these awful sex-crazed animals who will do anything for sex. (An interesting fact and a second example of this austere double standard is that there are over twenty different words that mean slut in relation to females, but no such words in relation to males.) This way of thinking is so common in some parts of the country that abstinence and "waiting until marriage" are taught in both middle school and high school as the only way not only for the boys to avoid the "sluts", but so the girls' vaginas don't "wear out" because they had sex with more than one person. This type of fear-mongering that's heavily biased toward abstinence is rampant throughout high schools across the country, and how it's taught to girls is extremely detrimental. The vaginas of non-virgins are often compared to a "worn out piece of tape", a "used toothbrush", a pair of "broken down shoes", and a "chewed up piece of gum". This message on its own is extremely devaluing to any girl who hears it because it bases her worth as a person on how many times she's had sex, and when this message is taught to young girls who've survived sexual assault, the results are catastrophic. Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted when she was fourteen, heard her sex ed teacher's seminar relating women having sex with multiple partners to a piece of gum getting "chewed" several times, and how after each partner girls become "old" and "worn down" until they are no longer desirable to anyone else. When Smart heard that, her immediate thought was that she was that chewed up piece of gum. The lesson that a woman's worth is based on how much sex she has is a toxic lesson to teach young impressionable girls because it breaks down their self esteem, their idea of their own self-worth, and the power of their own bodies. The vagina is a very powerful organ that can stand up to a lot more strain than these awful educators give them credit for; in fact the world record for how much weight a vagina can lift is 31 pounds. And it's not just the power of the vagina that gets left behind. Consent is a topic that's often glossed over as well, leaving many people, boys especially, with little to no knowledge of what consent actually is. Consent is when both parties verbally agree that they are both okay and willing to do some kind of sexual act together. Consent is not the removal of clothing; consent is not the retrieving of a condom or other type of protection; and consent is not a nod of the head or some other vague gesture. Consent cannot be properly given if one or both parties are under the influence of any kind of reason-impairing drug. If you're not sure if someone wants to have sex with you, ask them**,** and if they say no, do not have sex with them. Convincing someone to have sex with you is not an acceptable form of consent. Knowing exactly what consent is is extremely important because sex without consent is a federal offense, and one of the problems with abstinence-advocating teachings is that proper consent is ditched entirely in favor of saying "no" to all forms of sex, and those that do include consent usually chock up all the responsibility of refusal to women, which is incredibly problematic when this idea is mixed with rape. Whenever a woman is raped, some common things you might here people say about the victim is that "She was asking for it", or "She was probably drinking that night", or "Why didn't she stop him? She must have secretly wanted it". These are toxic assumptions to make because they automatically devalue the story of the victim and pin the blame on the person who was raped rather than the rapist, who actually deserves the blame. These assumptions in turn help to promote what's known as rape culture. When a victim's story is devalued and made to seem false or worthless, there's a higher chance that they won't report it to the police, so an astonishing number of rapists aren't being sent to jail - only 3% are put behind bars. Because people think that rape victims make up their stories just to get attention, lots of places that normally provide safe houses for other minorities, such as colleges, become openly hostile to rape victims, and in 31 states convicted rapists are allowed to sue for custody and visitation rights. To top it all off, politicians think that women can't get pregnant from rape (despite the 32,000 women who do get pregnant from rape each year in the US alone), which is why nothing is being done about either our country's faulty sex education system (which the government invested over 75 million dollars in last year), or the persisting and ever-worsening growth of rape culture in America. Until something is done about either of these major issues, women will be caught in a perpetual loop of double-standards and sexism, because our country tells women "don't get raped" instead of telling men "don't rape".