In Alabama last week, a teenager girl named Alysha
Cosby was banned from participating in her high school
graduation. Had she not fulfilled her course requirements?
Had she committed a disciplinary infraction so severe
as to not allow her one of the chief memories of one’s
high school years? Had she threatened to be disruptive
or violent during the proceedings?
Advertisement
Of course not. Alysha
committed the grave sin of being pregnant. She was officially
prohibited from attending her Roman Catholic school’s
graduation ceremonies, and had been told that she could
no longer attend the school because of “safety
concerns.” Her guidance counselor had delivered
Alysha’s diploma to her at home earlier that week,
but despite officially receiving her degree from the
school, her name was not listed in the graduation program.
Alysha bravely decided that it wasn’t fair to
not be able to participate in something so significant
in her life, went to the ceremony in defiance of the
administration’s directions, and at the end of
the proceedings, called her own name and walked across
the stage. In response, her mother and aunt were pulled
out of the audience and ejected by the police.
This story would be infuriating enough, but the last
few sentences of one story I read about Alysha really
emphasized the offensive hypocrisy of the school’s
actions: the father of Alysha’s future child was
also a graduating senior, and was allowed to fully participate
in graduation.
Alysha’s treatment comes at the same time as
new developments are made in regards to that darling
of the White House, abstinence-only sex education. The
American Civil Liberties Union just announced a lawsuit
against the government for funneling over $1 million
to an organization promoting abstinence called “Silver
Ring Thing.” The program describes the silver
rings that participants are given to symbolize their
commitment to remain abstinent until marriage. What
the name leaves out, however, is that the silver rings
also are engraved with lines from the Bible, and the
organization as a whole is extremely evangelical. The
founder of the program, Denny Pattyn, has declared that
he will never “take the gospel out” of the
group’s curriculum and program, because they “believe
the power for abstinence is a changed heart,”
in essence admitting the truth of the ACLU’s allegation
that the organization is nothing more than a group dedicated
to converting people to Christianity.
This latest example, however, is hardly the first when
it comes to inaccurate abstinence programs with a broader
agenda. Just as Alysha Cosby’s school was happy
to punish her for being pregnant, yet not sanction the
male student who was just as “culpable”
for her pregnancy, abstinence-only education tends to
mix bad science with sexist messages. (Of course, the
recent hearings in Kansas demonstrates rather conclusively
that the Earth-built-in-six days/Creationism/Intelligent
Design crowd doesn’t really give a damn about
science.) From a survey of the 13 most frequently-used
abstinence-only programs receiving federal government
funding, Representative Henry Waxman publicized several
examples of students being taught that a man needs “admiration”
and “sexual fulfillment” from his partner,
while a woman needs “financial support.”
Another program teaches that “women gauge their
happiness and judge their success by their relationships.
Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”
And my personal favorite, a story in a series called
“Choosing Best” told of a knight who decided
to marry a common village maiden rather than a princess,
because the princess kept giving him advice about how
to slay a local dragon. The fable finished with “moral
of the story: occasional suggestions and assistance
may be all right, but too much of it will lessen a man's
confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”
Don’t you feel better knowing the young minds
of America are being molded into such virtuous forms?
That must be why, in the 2006 federal budget, Bush proposed
an increase in funding abstinence “sex education”
programs of $39 million to $206 million, with similar
increases until the outlay would reach $270 million
in 2008.
In these heady days of being flush with currency to
spend on social programs—it’s not like there
are millions of Americans living without health insurance
or anything—I suppose I should be thrilled that
Bush wants to spend over a quarter of a billion dollars
a year teaching little girls that if they have the temerity
to imply that they might be equal to little boys, they’ll
never get married. After all, if they don’t have
sex education teaching them their inferiority, where
ever will they get it? Even having grown up in the liberal
wonderland of California, I can tick off scores of times
that I faced sexism in school. There was the math teacher—the
same religious nut that I’ve mentioned in previous
articles for dressing up as Moses at Halloween and telling
Bible stories—who discounted the ability of any
female students to be award-winning competitors on the
math team. There was the physics teacher who was renowned
for giving special assistance to any female student
who visited him at lunch and admitted, in between sobs,
that she just couldn’t do science, but any male
student admitting similar difficulty got stony apathy.
In a training program that I’m going through
here at Cambridge as part of a peer support counseling
scheme, we recently had a discussion on assertiveness,
and what might prevent people from asserting themselves.
After a productive several minutes, the older woman
leading the discussion said she was surprised that none
of us had mentioned what she would have thought of first—a
fear that being assertive isn’t feminine. I was
very proud that the thought hadn’t occurred to
any of the trainees, and many of my fellow counselors-in-training
later expressed the same reaction. Apparently Bush doesn’t
agree. We females should keep our mouths shut and busy
ourselves with protecting our chastity in the hopes
of someday receiving financial support for it—and
should you fail, expect to be ostracized by those whose
job is to help you reach adulthood as a productive and
educated citizen. And as the fine Christian male who
impregnated you walks proudly across the stage from
which you are excluded, be thankful that you live in
a land where people will eagerly sacrifice your constitutional
rights in service of their religion.
Dara Purvis can be read each Monday, here at Raw
Story. You can also visit her online at www.darapurvis.com.
