Drink the Spit: Abstinence Only’s Greatest Hits

In my audio rant on World AIDS Day, I mentioned Abstinence Only Sex Indoctrination. This video was just highlighted in my daily mailing from AlterNet. Yes, we pay for this.

15 thoughts on “Drink the Spit: Abstinence Only’s Greatest Hits”

  1. The marriage trip is supported by Adam and Eve, the creation story of out culture.

    There are other creation stories — here is one that lasted for 3,000 years in ancient Egypt, the country that produced the Jews, who gave us Adam and Eve.

    This is from one of the more recent chapters of Book of Blue.

    Zeber was revealing itself to me as a potential future. I was being introduced to a place and time that was possible, among many potential dimensions that humanity could enter and explore. I have always understood this about the future: there are what you might call hypothetical realities which may or may not manifest based on the choices that both individuals and humanity makes.

    But these potential realities exist, and often by accident and sometimes by intent, it is possible to visit them. This is much of what we do when we dream, particularly those vivid ‘happy dreams’ that transport us to another place. As more people visit a hypothetical reality, its ‘reality’ establishes in the collective consciousness and the probability of its ‘future’ existence increases. In a sense, we make contact with the future, we go there and we colonize it. It always starts with one individual who opens the space.

    The feeling in Zeber reminded me of my past life memories of Egypt, in particular, of my lifetimes in Heliopolis. This is the ancient city of Ain Shams, which translates to center of the Sun or eye of the Sun. In ancient Egyptian the name was Iunu, or pillar. As the name suggests, this was an ancient city of solar worship, indeed the central city, which was so basic to the ancient Egyptians. Its principal god was Atum, whose name means complete. Atum was the creator god; he is said to have made himself from primal chaos. In turn, he creates the first god and goddess after him through masturbation.

    There are different versions of the story. In one, he masturbates and takes his semen into his mouth; the pleasure is so great that he creates Shu and Tefnut to share the pleasure with. In another version, he puts the semen into his mouth and spits out Shu and Tefnut. In a third version, he has sex with the goddess Iusaaset, who manifests as his shadow, or his hand, which seems to be another way to describe masturbation.

    Atum, the complete one, is often described as androgynous, that is, as having properties of male and female. As his mythology progressed, he was seen as the bridge between Earth and Sun — the pillar.

    Out of this creation story grew the temples where ritual masturbation was practiced by men and women, together, their bodies shaved head to toe. These were what you might call cults of ecstasy, where the continuous raising of self-given erotic energy was connected with upholding both society and the cosmos. The feeling at the core of this ritual was completion, and the creation of an environment where self-completion was embraced and supported. The ancient Egyptians priests and priestesses, as were many observers of human nature, aware that people lived with a sense of incompletion, and ritual masturbation was believed to hold open the space for people to be at peace with themselves.

    Relatively little has been said about these temples or the practices there. Of them, one author wrote that nothing remains. So beautiful was their temple that it’s said to have had a floor that was so perfect, one could see the stars reflected in it. The ancient city is mostly covered by a suburb of Cairo, but ruins were recently discovered.

    Enough is known to verify that the temples existed and to establish some of the core ideas. For the details, it is necessary to put yourself there. For many years, I’ve been meeting others who have recollections of lifetimes at Iunu. I’ve gradually gathered an understanding made contact with the beauty of the ritual practices. To an extent I’ve been able to bring them in to my current lifetime.

    Though it’s fairly obvious, it’s worth stating that our society’s beliefs about what constitutes ’sacred’ and ‘profane’, and what constitutes acceptable forms of sexuality, are a different story than that of Iunu; as a result, we live behind a veil. Yet because the seeds of all the ideas that took root in Iunu are connected with self-given orgasm, and since this is such a common experience, many have maintained an undeniable thread of connection to this history, its power to heal and heal relationships and to connect us with the inherently divine being at the core of human nature.

    The inner temple is still a sacred space. Many have tried to defile it. It has incredible enduring strength and regenerative power.

    Humans perceiving ourselves as incomplete has had catastrophic consequences, such as humanity with all its potential being degraded into a state of near-perpetual war and conflict, most of it rooted in internal sexual division which in turn creates the feeling of being stalked by death.

    I keep meeting people who remember Iunu or to whom it makes perfect sense. We know about the beyond-gorgeous celebrations of life that we shared with one another and let overflow into the cosmos that surrounds us. I remember the faces, and the sounds. Mostly I remember why: that is, why we were so devoted, and who we recognized one another to be.

  2. ya…and my kids are in the state that doesn’t teach abstinence only…in the schools.

    I caught a “friend” of one of my daughter’s friends holding “group counseling sessions” after school with my daughter and some others – in the context of this post I don’t think I have to explain more.

    The riot act does not begin to describe what I let loose on that woman.

  4. You know something that I personally find VERY interesting?

    Along with all this sick garbage that the fundies are pushing around as “purity,” a lot of young people (predomintely in the Midwest and South) are getting STD’s from anal sex and oral sex.

    Vaginal sex before marriage is bad; anal sex (unprotected) is acceptable. So long as the vagina is “untainted” that’s all that matters?

    Has America always lived in a schizophrenic sexual fantasy that begins and ends with “shame?” I just wonder if it’s always been this way?

  5. ” who is going to buy the cow when they can get the milk for free”

    yeah, that’s one i got direct from mom when it looked like my long-term live-in relationship was foundering on its assumed way to marriage. we never got married, but it’s not because we were having sex.

  6. Wow. Where are Erica Jung and Xavier Hollander when you need them? Like Eric, I read everything I could get my hands on when about sex and sexuality starting when I was 12. Everybody I deemed worthy was pretty happy about my reading selections, too. I predict a lot of unhappy marriages in the future that will mirror the unhappy marriages of the future as these AO people try to push kids back to the “June Cleaver” days of pearls and twin sets, backseat sex (good thing there are no more drive-ins, eh?) and hushed up abortions or long vacations at adoption facilities. It’s all too sad.
    So let’s endeavor to counteract by giving age-appropriate advice to the young people in our circle that sex is good and healthy and that understainding and accepting sexuality as a critical component of our physical and spiritual selves is essential. Who’s with me?
    Spread the love.

  7. When I was in 10th grade, two “youth pastors,” a young man and a young woman who could have been no more than thirty from a Catholic church across the street from the high school, were invited to speak to the health class about abstinence. In this school, we did learn about contraception, but the Christians were considered a valid educational viewpoint. I believe they were the only guest speakers invited to speak on the topic of sex. This enraged my non Christian classmates and I, since it felt like a violation of the separation of church and state, and it was deceptive too — these people tried to logically argue for abstinence until marriage, but that logic was really just a mask for their religious trip, which they weren’t allowed to talk about openly in public school. I don’t think we ever did anything about it, though.

    Anyway, I remember that after these two utterly uptight “pastors” gave their spiel, a boy in the class raised his hand and asked whether they believed it was acceptable to masturbate. The man said, “It never really did anything for me.” the boy replied, “Maybe you weren’t doing it right.” The teacher kicked him out of class. The woman never responded to the question, as if there were no chance of it being applicable to her.

  9. Amanda, thank you for giving voice to something I felt while watching this but that did not bubble up into words

    “the spit renders the cup unattractive, unwanted and inappropriate for proper use. therefore sex before marriage renders a person unattractive, unwanted and inappropriate for ‘proper use’ — that being marriage.”

    here was the message I got “who is gonna buy the milk when they can get it for free” — meaning flirt but dont give up that ass if you want a diamond ring and a promise

    both sick messages….

  10. “And apparently drinking from a cup of communal spit is reminiscent of drinking cum?”

    actually, i think the video presents the metaphor as something worse/broader than just drinking cum. the message as i understand it is: a virgin is an empty vessel. in the same way people spitting in to a cup is a casual way for everyone & anyone to contaminate a cup, sex is a casual way of contaminating and demeaning a virgin. the spit renders the cup unattractive, unwanted and inappropriate for proper use. therefore sex before marriage renders a person unattractive, unwanted and inappropriate for ‘proper use’ — that being marriage.

    disgusting and disheartening. and the message therefore debases both the young person choosing non-marital sex and sex itself. or if we do look at the cup as more emblematic of a girl than just any youth, and the spit as cum, it sends the message that girl who has sex is contaminated by boy’s dirty semen — turning both genders against themselves.

    ugh.

    i was a kid during the 80s, and i remember being really disappointed that our school district discontinued the sex ed they used to do in… whatever grade it was (5th?) the year before i got there, if i recall. i don’t remember what they told us in jr high “health class,” and it seems to me the segment we got in high school health class was pretty straightforward. i’m pretty sure we didn’t get anything as twisted as the cup of spit demonstration, thankfully.

  11. This does explain a kind of incapacity for sexual language that I keep noticing; they have sexy down, but actual sexual awareness (besides “people want to fuck me,” if that) seems to fall off the cliff. I cannot imagine being so turned off as someone would be, being programmed this way. It’s such a profound distortion.

    I spent my childhood reading and looking at everything I could, and was curious enough to be confident by the time I started having sex at age 16. If I was told again and again that sex was disgusting or dangerous, I never would have felt that way or became the person I am today.

    Yes this is incredibly sad. Obviously it would destroy the confidence of young people in themselves; and it’s a form of psychological and emotional abuse.

    Notably, it starts in 1981; it was one of the first policies Reagan implements.

  12. Just for the record……makes me feel beyond bad…..makes me want to throw up into a cup and offer it to the people that teach this crap to our kids.

    I’ve got a lot better perspective on why my 19 year old college junior daughter is so unwilling to get involved with anyone. Even all High school kids assume that having a boy or girlfriend means sex – and only sex. (Cause if it’s not about sex then it’s about marriage? I’m not following the path here.)

    And apparently drinking from a cup of communial spit is reminiscent of drinking cum? Or just “equally gross” as “sex”?

    Ya. way way way more than bad.

  13. That is one of the most disheartening things I’ve ever seen. Despite the fact that it’s true, it also makes me feel quite bad…

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