Pam Stenzel, slut-shaming public speaker in high schools

[lilwriter85]

Does anyone know is Sex Talk is still on at all. I would love to see my husbands expression with her discussing anal sex or something of that nature. After all she just looks like your A-Typical grandma, but then she starts to talk about sex and you go oh my.

I remember Oxygen aired it and the last time I remember seeing it was maybe 2005.

[slh12280]

Out of curiosity, do you automatically consider it a "bad choice" for a teen to have sex? I do agree that teens need to hear there is nothing wrong with abstaining from sex if they don't feel ready, even if many if their friends are in sexual relationships. And I agree that there should be support and not shame for teens who make decisions that they regret. I'm not sure I agree with labeling all teen sex as a bad choice though. It's an entirely normal choice, and is not necessarily always unhealthy or regrettable, IMO.

I referring to situations where the person may regret it later. Like they were not planning on having sex and it "just happened." Later, they regret what happened. This is certainly not every case but it does happen, as it does with adults. What I am saying is that a sexual regret should not be blown up to be bigger than what it is.

[Blahblah]

As well as the usual info, I remember Sex Ed at my co-ed Australian high school (in the late '80's) included our very embarrassed young female home group teacher using a broomstick handle and a condom to teach us how to roll them on properly and remove them safely.

[Salamander]

This woman may have spoken at my high school. :shock: My sophomore year or thereabouts my school had an assembly with a speaker who was big on the abstinence talk and had a whole long story about a teenage girl who was pregnant and considering getting an abortion. But she reconsidered, put the baby up for adoption, and here the speaker gave a dramatic pause and said, "That baby...was me." Cue SHOCK and AWE from the audience...well, a little of that and some eye-rolling. I used to be really judgmental and uninformed, and I lapped this talk up with a spoon, but a lot of my smarter peers knew it was bullshit. I know I wasn't the only person who agreed with the speaker's POV, though.

I went to a public high school in a relatively conservative part of a liberal state, and the speaker didn't explicitly bring religion into the talk. But there was a lot of slut-shaming and pro-life nonsense, as well as the implication that having sex is deadly (because of STDs/STIs) so just don't do it until you're married. For some reason :roll:, she didn't address how STDs/STIs automatically become a non-issue once you're married. Apart from this assembly, my high school only had a week's worth of very minimal sex ed in ninth grade.

It really, really pisses me off how inadequate and uneven (across states) the U.S. education system is when it comes to sex ed. Preventing STDs/STIs and unwanted pregnancies is a public health issue, and using an abstinence-based approach in sex ed classes is both actively unhelpful and proven to be counterproductive to the presumed goals.

[RandomTrivia]

Does anyone know is Sex Talk is still on at all. I would love to see my husbands expression with her discussing anal sex or something of that nature. After all she just looks like your A-Typical grandma, but then she starts to talk about sex and you go oh my.

I miss Sue, she was always fun and educational, and as I recall she wasn't afraid to be blunt about misinformation. She retired the Oxygen show in 2008 (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-05-06-talk-sex_N.htm) but she has a website, http://talksexwithsue.com/ and it has video clips. It kind of indicates that the show is still being aired, but I'd guess those are reruns, but compilation dvds are mentioned as being in the works. :) And there's always Youtube.

[LynnGrey]

I heard this woman speak probably 3-5 times when I was a teenager (1996-2001). Both in public school in North Dakota and at Christian youth conferences in Colorado. I used to love her talks. But I also used to be a conservative Christian girl who believed in saving sex for marriage. Now I can see her message for how damaging and misinformed it is.

[Raptured_Pope]

Wow. That's a blast from the past for me, too. Never saw her in person but was exposed to videos of her while in Catholic school and then heard her being interviewed a couple of times by James Dobson back in the day. Hadn't been on my radar forever and I honestly thought someone would have exposed her shtick long ago but am glad that maybe now's the time. Better late than never.

(And what's with the Romanian subtitles on the Jezebel video link? Go USA, the leader in exporting fundy-weirdness.)

[Burris]

She’s shrill, and dishonest in her description of STIs. In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFYPigFlp7w, for example, Stenzel offers all of these terrible statistics about how much more likely sexually active singles are to contract an STI than are abstinent people or married couples. She doesn’t mention that...

...most of these STIs are treatable

...at least one group of STIs – Herpes – is common enough to skew the numbers: A large minority of people - one in four or five - have Herpes

...monogomy is no protection against STIs: One can contract Scabies, for example, by coming into contact with an objects infected with the mite

When Stenzel argues the numbers, she fails to point these things out. (Rather, she scares and shames her audience so much that some of them would rather suffer with what they know to be an untreated STI than go to a doctor for treatment.)

I can’t imagine the kind of bullshit she inflicted on those girls who came to her for crisis pregnancy ‘counseling.’ She basically admits to lecturing those girls who tested negative that they should be way more afraid of STIs than of pregnancy, which she hastens to point out is not a life-threatening condition. (She herself has gone through pregnancy three times, she brags.)

And why are so many of these evangelical speakers such incredible loudmouths? Do they think they can make up for a lack of facts by yelling?

[divadivine]

One of the students is fighting back against the school principal who threatened to call Wellesley to say the student who refused to attend the convocation was of poor character. Very interesting read...

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201304150062?page=1

[Peppercorn]

Thanks for the link. That is one brave girl. Wellesley should be thrilled to enroll her.

[HeckBound]

Being an adult is no protection against regretting having sex with someone.

Wellesley will be more than pleased to have this girl.

[longskirtlotsakids]

I was a child of the 80s and in a Catholiv school.

Thank the FSG for Dr Ruth and Sexually Speaking. I was 14 before I realized I had three holes.

But by age 17, I totally knew how to use them.:mrgreen:

[micatite]

In relation to Pam Stenzel, there's this recent story about a high school girl who protested Pam Stenzel's ‘Slut-Shaming’ abstinence assembly despite alleged threats from her school principal.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/17/1883121/west-virginia-abstinence-assembly/?mobile=nc/

[infooverload]

One of my facebook friends just posted this article and I thought good for the girl for injecting a little truth into the discussion. The prinicipal on the other hand I thought was a douche weasel for trying to threaten her. She posed a threat by being articulate and intelligent in a male dominant sexually repressed environment. We all know how young women who are intelligent and articulate about sexual health are treated, just look at Sandra Fluke and how she was treated.

[louisa05]

She’s shrill, and dishonest in her description of STIs. In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFYPigFlp7w, for example, Stenzel offers all of these terrible statistics about how much more likely sexually active singles are to contract an STI than are abstinent people or married couples. She doesn’t mention that...

...most of these STIs are treatable

...at least one group of STIs – Herpes – is common enough to skew the numbers: A large minority of people - one in four or five - have Herpes

...monogomy is no protection against STIs: One can contract Scabies, for example, by coming into contact with an objects infected with the mite

When Stenzel argues the numbers, she fails to point these things out. (Rather, she scares and shames her audience so much that some of them would rather suffer with what they know to be an untreated STI than go to a doctor for treatment.)

I can’t imagine the kind of bullshit she inflicted on those girls who came to her for crisis pregnancy ‘counseling.’ She basically admits to lecturing those girls who tested negative that they should be way more afraid of STIs than of pregnancy, which she hastens to point out is not a life-threatening condition. (She herself has gone through pregnancy three times, she brags.)

And why are so many of these evangelical speakers such incredible loudmouths? Do they think they can make up for a lack of facts by yelling?

At one school I worked at, they let an abstinence speaker come in who told the kids that yeast infections are an STI. I had a tearful freshman girl come to me very upset because she had had one when on an antibiotic and did I think people who knew about it (including her doctor and her parents) thought she got it some other way and how did she get it at all if it is an STI...

I was spitting mad that I had to explain to an upset 14 year old virgin that antibiotics can cause yeast infections and everyone who is in medicine and most adult women already know that.

To the school's credit, they never let that speaker in again even though she was local, charged no fee and begged to come twice a year.

[rward]

It's amazing how quickly things went from "condoms on a banana" to "SLUTTYSLUTSLUT!!!1!!eleventy!!"

I graduated high school in 1994 and received full sex ed. A family member of mine graduated in 2003 and received full slut shaming. Which was unfortunate, because she got pregnant at 13 and gave birth at 14 and the father was extremely abusive. After her daughter was born and her boyfriend left, she started dressing provocatively and having lots of sex with lots of different guys after that, and I sat her down and asked her about it. I'm not against casual sex or provocative dress, but she hardly seemed to be enjoying herself.

She said, "It's not like I can pretend I'm a virgin." and burst into tears.

See, what she got from abstinence only was that only virgins counted, and since she wasn't a virgin, she was a slut and sluts can't say no.

I have no patience for Stenzel and her ilk. None at all.

[roamincatholic]

This stuff makes me livid. I'll never forget my high schools "sex ed". We had two women come in and they did a demonstration. Lined up five students at the front of the room, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl. Then had one girl stand off to the side. The students in the line spat in cups of water they each had and then poured it into the cup of the person next to them. In the end, the girl at the end of the line had a cup full of dirty, spit filled water, and the girl off to the side had a cup of clean water. They then asked the boys in the class which glass of water they'd rather drink.

I got lectured right and left about purity in youth groups, but that sticks in my mind more than any of the other presentations ever did, and it was in a public school. At the time, I thought this was totally normal (being brainwashed), but looking back, I can't believe they got away with it.

And now that my home state is trying to be even more willfully ignorant, perhaps more of my classmates can benefit from Stenzel and friends' form of sex education.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/1 ... 09223.html (Not breaking since it's Huff Post.)

[susanmr5]

This reminds me of the only major sex-ed I got in high school.

This married couple came to our school and presented two different assemblies together, one to the guys and one to the girls. I remember at ours they showed these horrible slides with pictures of STDs. Then they talked about no kind of sex being safe and all the horrible things that would befall you if you engaged in sex. And their sad confession of how she had fallen and had sex with someone else once before they were dating and they didn't want others to make that mistake!

But what *really* put them over the top was what they considered "acceptable" dating behavior. Honest-to-God Fundie Courtship rules: No touching at all at first. Then after X amount of time together hand holding is ok. X time passes and hugs are ok. Group dates only until you've been dating so long, then dates alone are ok. No kissing at all until you were engaged (that might have been marriage, but I don't think they pushed it that far). You get the idea. They had a slide with a detailed timeline type thing. Then we were all given little cards to sign to pledge that we'd wait until we were married to have sex and they were selling t-shirts that had, "Ways to say no to Sex" or "Things to do instead of have Sex" on them.

As far as I know the school never asked them back.

[LadyBlue]

That water anecdote just reminded me of a sex ed class we did in high school. BUT, it wasn't an abstinence thing, it was an STD thing and the moral was "wear a condom". It also wasn't water; that's pretty gross, I think it was bits of paper. It's been 23 years or so, though.

[rward]

That water anecdote just reminded me of a sex ed class we did in high school. BUT, it wasn't an abstinence thing, it was an STD thing and the moral was "wear a condom". It also wasn't water; that's pretty gross, I think it was bits of paper. It's been 23 years or so, though.

Our version of that was green food dye and plastic gloves, the point being that people who wore gloves had clean hands after everyone shook hands, ie, condoms work.

[Rosie]

I love Wellesley College's response to Katelyn speaking out:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04 ... ?mobile=nc

[lilwriter85]

I love Wellesley College's response to Katelyn speaking out:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04 ... ?mobile=nc

I loved that response. I'm glad about a lot of attention that Katelyn has been getting and hopefully her speaking out will inspire other public schools not to book Pam for gigs. I'm not surprised that Pam is raking in six figures a year. She does speak at religious youth rallies in addition to the school gigs. Pam knows that many private religious schools will always be willing to hire her. I would love to see her lose business from public schools.

[Trynn]

Hmmm sounds familiar.... I'll have to look it up to be sure, but I think she was the author of a book my grandma (not one I was close to) gave me called "Sex has a price tag." I wasn't curious at all about sex until much later, and then I read it looking for details. here are some things I remember:

1. Condoms are meant to prevent pregnancy, not stds.

2. One out of three condom batches in he is fail whatever testing mtjhod they use, and are sold anyway

3. The being conceived by rape story --this makes me think they are the same

4. Something about a sweater beig paid for rigt away verses on a credit card, and how the latter can be more expensive depending on payments/interest

5. If you're not a Virgin, boys won't want you.

6. THose who are raped can still consider themselves virgins

I no longer have the book, so I am gong off of memory, but yeah... I almost wish I still had it just so I could see how I feel about it as an adult.

Excuse typos, I'm on my phone

[Hane]

One of my facebook friends just posted this article and I thought good for the girl for injecting a little truth into the discussion. The prinicipal on the other hand I thought was a douche weasel for trying to threaten her. She posed a threat by being articulate and intelligent in a male dominant sexually repressed environment. We all know how young women who are intelligent and articulate about sexual health are treated, just look at Sandra Fluke and how she was treated.

I literally rolled my eyes when Principal Douchebag went all "I'ma go tell Wellesley on you!" Has he no idea what Wellesley is and stands for? He's not only an idiot but ignorant.

And, as the director of our local alternate school for teen moms said to me lo these 20 years ago, "Of course we don't use abstinence-based sex education. IT DOESN'T WORK."

[GolightlyGrrl]

Can we make Katelynn an honorary Jingerite? And I'm so glad Wellesley is sticking by her. Katelynn is exactly the kind of person you want in college-a smart, critical thinker.