Black Teen Virgin [UPDATED]
Young Black Teenagers (YBT) was an American hip hop group from Long Island, New York that consisted of ATA, First Born, Tommy Never, Kamron, and DJ Skribble.[1] Despite their name, none of the group's members were black.[1]
black teen virgin
When I finally had sex years later, after being coerced into it, all I felt was shame. Crushing shame. For years. Until I began the daunting, painstaking work of unlearning and shedding all the ugly shit I had been taught about sex, my virginity, and my hymen. It was heavy lifting and it fucking hurt. Healing hurts.
Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it's just we have a harder time finding it.Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to forget the hymen all together? Might we start to see the instability of terms like untouched, pure, or innocent? Might we question the act of sex, the very notion of relational sexuality? After all, for many people it is the sexual acts they don't do, or don't want to do, that carry the most abundant emotional clout.Virgin Envy is a collection of essays that look past the vestal virgins and beyond Joan of Arc. From medieval to present-day literature, the output of HBO, Bollywood, and the films of Abdellah Taïa or Derek Jarman to the virginity testing of politically active women in Tahrir Square, the writers here explore the concept of virginity in today's world to show that ultimately virginity is a site around which our most basic beliefs about sexuality are confronted, and from which we can come to understand some of our most basic anxieties, paranoias, fears, and desires.
Fortier is a stone island in the comfortable residential district, a place kids come to from somewhere else, a school with a dead-end reputation whose mandate is to accept any student, including those kicked out of other schools. Many of its teenagers come from Desire, where the streetcar used to go. You won’t see Desire on Louisiana tourism posters: Its brown-brick housing projects are treeless and miserable, with shattered windows and metal doors opening onto dark interior stairways. Buildings are numbered like cell blocks. Very young mothers wheel babies into the cement bunker of a half-empty corner store, with a wire-mesh anteroom that can be locked quickly to keep out the unwanted.
Abstinence clubs are not only for those who have never had sex. Some teens call themselves "born-again virgins." None of the Fortier kids watching the video is a virgin. "When I broke up with my girlfriend I lost a piece of my mind," says Martee. "Sex relationships get rocky and shaky. You ask yourself, ‘Is that a physical bond or an emotional bond?’"
John Wyseman is the special-education teacher who founded the Pure Hearts Club at Fortier. When he and his wife, Karen, a school administrator, set about to address teen pregnancy in 2002, they decided teaching birth control would be "talking out of both sides of your mouth." So they started the club, now funded partly by the Governor’s Program on Abstinence.
Critics call abstinence-only sex education "fear-based" and dangerously incomplete. Traditional "comprehensive" sex education teaches that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and disease but includes information about birth control as well. While abstinence-only is growing rapidly, funding for comprehensive sex education has remained static, despite its proven ability to reduce teen birth rates.
Nationwide, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds dropped 26 percent in the last decade. (If abstinence education played a part, no rigorous study has yet shown it. The drop is commonly attributed to concern about AIDS and better contraceptive use.) But 13 states, all in the South, still have teen birth rates that, as one report put it, "rival the rates of nations such as Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Mexico." Overall, the United States leads the industrialized world in teen pregnancy and birth rates; nearly half a million children are born to teen moms each year—11.5 percent of all U.S. births.
It’s also about politics. The GOP’s interest in abstinence-only education emerged from its conservative-Christian ranks, a sector that George W. Bush cultivated when launching his national political career, and whose support he must maintain in order to win reelection. Bush has been among abstinence-only’s greatest champions since he was governor of Texas, the movement’s incubation chamber. Austin is home to the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, whose founder, Dr. Joe McIlhaney Jr., preaches that birth control and decriminalized abortion lead to sexual revolution, a confusion of proper gender roles, and perdition. While governor, Bush once proclaimed at a conference organized by McIlhaney’s institute that abstinence was the only way for teens to avoid the "Pandora’s box" of premarital sex and to embrace "a life that is physically, and morally, and emotionally healthy."
In addition to outright grants, the federal government provides $4 in matching funds for every $3 in state funds. Richey says that when he approaches the schools, "we tell them, ‘We’ve got a plan here, it won’t cost you a thing.’ " (All states except California accept abstinence-only monies.) Richey makes no excuses for a sexuality-education program that examines neither sexuality nor birth control. "Talking about contraception is taking them to the edge," Richey says, leaning forward. "Bottom line: When you’re dealing with teenagers, the more sex information you give, the more sex you get."
Major studies, however, including one by the Kaiser Family Foundation, have concluded that traditional comprehensive sex education does not increase sexual activity among teenagers. When a 2001 report from Surgeon General David Satcher said the same, the Bush administration publicly disagreed and failed to reappoint him when his term expired.
(In this black-and-white world, some kids don’t fit at all. The federal abstinence-education guidelines require youngsters be taught that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity." Ask Dan Richey, "What about gay kids?" and his answer is quick and dismissive: "They’re gonna get HIV.")
"It’s a way for the Bush administration to funnel funds to groups ideologically in tune with them," says Joe Cook, executive director of the state ACLU, which brought a legal challenge to the Louisiana program. The challenge did not contend that the programs were inaccurate or dangerous, although those were some of its findings. ("It’s not illegal for the government to mislead teenagers—it might be unethical, but not illegal," Cook says.) Instead, the ACLU charged that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund religious activity. A federal judge ruled that the governor’s program must cease proselytizing or risk defunding.
"There’s room for abstinence-only, and room for abstinence plus," says Dr. Kevin Stephen, an obstetrician who directs the New Orleans Health Department. "One size doesn’t fit all." Stephen, an African American, says he knows the reach of black churches and has no problem with their sending a celibacy message. (Doctors in New Orleans credit a recent drop in teen pregnancy rates among African-American girls to an effort by black churches to address the issue.) Nevertheless, the first thing a visitor sees in Stephen’s reception room is a bowl of condoms, free and inviting as chocolate kisses. Stephen and his colleagues refuse to be put in a box. "My problem with abstinence-only education is what it doesn’t talk about. You can’t teach [sex education] unless you have a holistic approach."
The streets of New Orleans on late spring nights are warm and sensuous. Windows stay open, so a neighborhood walk can mean hearing canned television noise or the notes of the next generation’s Neville Brothers from a local club, or catching a smell of incense, hearing a baby cry. It does not seem at such times that a battle is going on for youngsters, in the name of education. Somewhere, unmistakably teenage voices ring out, and laughter. 041b061a72