Also, abstinence-only dumbasses, the peppermint pattie ceases to exist after it is eaten! Who would wish for that, to be consumed? Sluttiness for me, thanks.

Came to say what @1 said...

So what they're saying is, once you fuck a virgin girl, she's gone ("she's been eaten"), so you need to go find another virgin girl to fuck, and so on.

Got it! Thanks conservatives!

In my mormon youth group classes, we girls were taught that boys wouldn't want "already been chewed gum" that had been used, then stuck on a metaphorical bed-post.

Are black girls also peppermint patties?

This kind of teaching is also common in the Mormon church, where "sex ed" classes have involved giving every student in attendance a piece of gum and then, after a minute of chewing, instructing them to pass their gum to the person on the right. The moral: losing your virginity turns you into a pre-chewed piece of gum, and who wants that?

Such teaching was blasted—shockingly and heroically—by Elizabeth Smart, the LDS member and kidnapping survivor who said one of the reasons she didn't try to escape her kidnapper/rapist is because she believed that having "lost her virginity," she was worthless.

Yeah, I remember some sort of 'Christian advice for youth' book I was looking at many years ago that made this sort of comparison between a virgin girl and a new car. Like, if you're a totally untouched girl, you're like a pristine new model; if you go out with a guy and smooch a little bit, it's sort of like if a guy sat in the car and messed with the settings and left some candy wrappers behind; if you have a heavier make-out session, it's like the guy breaking some of the plastic bits and leaving some spilled soda and muddy footprints on the interior; if you have sex, then that's like the guy taking the car for a test drive and crashing it, doing serious damage all over. And so, who in their right mind would pay the full sticker-price for a car that's in such bad shape?

At the time, I remember being impressed with the idea that any sort of vaguely sexual activity (even light kissing) was essentially damaging, and also with the way that this advice was structured so entirely to try and prevent girls from having sex that it became potentially hurtful/condemnatory to girls who've already had sex. Actually, that hurtful/condemnatory aspect was probably part of the point...

And of course, these things are all false analogies anyway. Girls are not cars. Or peppermint patties.

Unreal...just unreal. Fuck this, I need to get out of Dixie.

hmm, such a terribly wrong analogy. The more sex you have the better you are at having sex - duh. Virgins are shitty in bed. Who wants THAT?

Is there anything else where being a total beginner is prized? Who wants to eat a meal prepared by someone who has never cooked? who wants to go skiing with someone who has never skied? The only people who want to do that are people whose own skiing / cooking / sexing abilities are subpar and can't stand the thought of being with someone who might be better than them at said activity.

Moses smell the roses, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT CHOCOLATE HERE. Unwrap it, pass it from hand to hand, drop it on the ground? I'll most likely dust it off and eat it, because it is still chocolate.

@9 Preach, brother. Even bad chocolate is usually pretty good (unless it's, like, white chocolate, or that food-grade paraffin stuff, which I supposed could be the equivalent to dating a woman and then discovering she's a bugfuck crazy no sex until marriage nutter.)

Well, that's what happens when you put Forest Gump in charge of the school system.

Why is it always about how dirty the girl gets? Or do they just assume boys are filthy to begin with?

@12 - A boy who has had sex is like dating a tooth with chocolate all over it, or something.

I have never wanted to fuck a candy bar so bad.

I always knew Peppermint Patty was a whore. :(

@12,
Because Eve ate the apple of course, while Adam was just being good.

Gender in the bible:

Men = Bros before Hoes
Women = Evil Vaginas

I went through this with the "chewed gum" lesson. My youth leader spit her gum into her hand, held it out, and commanded us to chew it. Of course, no one would. She then glared at us and said, "Remember that, young ladies. No one wants to chew someone else's gum!" We pretty much laughed in her face and I never really thought about it after that, until I read what Elizabeth Smart had to say about it. The thought that she was worthless after being raped, that she was that chewed piece of gum that no one would want, is a large part of why she didn't scream for help when her captors took her out in public. This message is really internalized by so many girls, and can have truly tragic results.

It's a common analogy in a lot of churches. I was supposed to use that one when I taught "Catholic Vision of Love" in a Catholic school (for the record, I didn't believe most of what I was teaching--I just needed the job).

I was helping a youth minister here (ELCA Lutheran - not Catholic) to put together a coming-of-age event for junior high kids. We had guidelines from our regional body about what to talk about and how to do it (body image, bullying, loving who you were created to be, etc.). She decided to throw that out completely and do a program about chastity and purity (she was from our most conservative congregation). In one of the activities, the girls were going to pass around a rose, each was going to take a petal from it, leaving nothing but a stem by the end. The point was, just like the rose was no longer beautiful when you started taking petals off of it, your sexuality is no longer beautiful if you give up your virginity before marriage. The boys were going to smash a TV with a sledge hammer to make the same point.

At that point, I stopped going to planning meetings and I refused to take our junior high kids to the event. It's a horrible message, and it's a bad message theologically for our denomination.

So conservatives never marry divorced women? Only buy brand new cars? Never get pets from shelters? Never shop on eBay? Or does the analogy only work for chocolate?

Although I'm neither a candy, a rose, nor a piece of gum, I might not mind those bad metaphors as much if abstinence only education were effective.

Systematic reviews of research evaluating abstinence-only sex education have concluded that it is ineffective at preventing unwanted pregnancy or the spread of STIs, among other shortfalls.

It has been found to be ineffective in decreasing HIV risk in the developed world, and increases the rates of unplanned pregnancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstinence-…

@14 - No way! Softball playing lesbian gym teacher. Marcie is her wife.

"Mmmmmm, chocolate."
- Homer Simpson

Too bad there's not some easily available to young people method of teaching safe and healthy sex education that does not shame, is not sexist or damaging to newly forming sexual identities. If only someone with an international audience could call on some contacts in the world of sexual heath and healing. Something on the order of Sex Gets Better. Or some shit like that. One day the technology will exist to get good information to kids and bypassing ignorant parents and schools and churches and Republicans. One day. *sigh*

I guess what I don't get (even though I was raised with all this stuff too) is why it's so full of shaming for the girls, when it's the boys sticking their dirty, dirty parts in us that makes us all dirty and used up. Right? Isn't it supposed to be at least as shameful for the boys?

I shouldn't joke about it--my husband grew up with it too, and they made him feel fairly dirty for being nothing but normal. *sigh*

Welcome back from vacay, Dan. Terry's instagram shows him in Palm Springs, but no signs of Dan that I saw, if you were on vacay together the Integratron seems awesome.

Speaking of Terry -- maybe he should write a diet / exercise book. His body fat appears to be impossible to achieve for someone who isn't 20 anymore. Wow. Jealous.

@ A Girl Is Like a Piece of Chocolate: well put! Boys too. In fact, people. And just like a box of chocolates, who in their right mind would want to eat only one kind for the rest of their lives?

@21 +100.

"With the teen birth and sexually transmitted disease rates among the highest in the nation, Mississippi lawmakers in 2012 moved to require school districts to provide abstinence-only or so-called abstinence-plus sex education programs to students."

Oh the irony that their enforced "education" programs are actually causing the high teen birth and STI rates through lack of information and a double-helping of social shame. Oops! Fucked that one *right* up. Good job Mississippi lawmakers, congratulations in ruining another generation's lives. Keep 'em poor and dumb! And you'll keep getting elected.

@12 - What do you mean? Everyone knows that...

What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.

@ 3 & 5 Thank you for reminding me of the "chewed gum" thing from my also Mormon youth. I wonder if they're still doing it. God bless the child if they are. It took a long time to get over that kind of mindfuck.

I wouldn't find this so objectionable if it were applied to boys and girls equally. There are still better analogies out there, though. The chocolate is useless once it's been eaten. I remember reading about a secondary virginity program that gave the girls presents. When they opened them they were things like lipstick and stuff that had already been used by someone else. The stuff was still presentable, but it had been used by someone else first. The message in that program was, "Wouldn't you want to save yourself for someone who won't just use you once? Yes, it's still good, but wouldn't it have been better new?" Again, there are different views about sex and waiting, but it's better than this dirty chocolate analogy.

@28: Cool! In one fell swoop you can render a kid compliant and consumerist.

It's a stupid analogy, and that it's never used for boys as well just shows the sexism in our society. But as #16 pointed out - it can have real consequences for a girl thinking she's "ruined".

How sad that they are still using this horrible story.

It's unbelievable. I've never been told in school to be virgin until marriage. That's some stuff that my mother would have experienced - but not in school, obviously.

@22, there IS such a sex-ed curriculum. It's called Our Whole Lives (OWL for short) and was created by the Unitarian Universalist Association together with United Church of Christ. I've taught it and my kids have gone through it, and it's awesome. Lots of solid info about anatomy, puberty, eroticism, masturbation, sexual orientation, gender, risks of shared sexual activity (STIs, pregnancy, heartbreak, abuse) and pleasures of same. Emphasis on diversity, communication, consent, safety, and pleasure. It's a program this pro-sex feminist can get behind. Learn more at http://www.uua.org/re/owl/

I was always taught that if I had a piece of chocolate, the polite thing to do was offer to share it.