A few weeks ago I wrote about abstinence-only education, and mentioned that many websites teens and adults use to glean information about safe sex practices actually disseminate factually incorrect material. I said I would write more later. Now I am.
* * *
A website called 1flesh.org, which calls itself “the revolt against contraception in marriage,” is one such site whose creators engage in questionable behavior that fosters the potential for great harm.
The site’s creators describe themselves as: “A bunch of college students rebelling against the current sexual culture, seeking to elevate it to new heights of awesome by opposing the use of contraception and promoting natural methods of family planning.”
Natural family planning methods are valid if used properly, but they don’t prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Advocating against other preventative methods with invalid reasoning and incorrect information has serious and frightening repercussions.
The website incorrectly links hormonal birth control to prostate cancer and links contraception to HIV rates. The store is under construction but soon it’ll sell swag.
The site is full of flashy graphics that say things like, “How condoms ruin sex.”
Under the philosophy section, the site incorrectly name-drops Aristotle to argue that “the natural end of sex is both unity and procreation—love and new life.”
The writers use a deeply flawed analogy to argue this point, comparing those who choose to use condoms to those who struggle with bulimia, an eating disorder.
They write: “We reject bulimia as disordered because it seeks to have only half of eating’s natural end—the pleasure of eating. It rejects the other half—being nourished. When the act of eating is not allowed to achieve its natural end, the act is detrimental to the organism. The bulimic suffers, psychologically and physically.”
According to the authors, this is akin to using a condom and not allowing sex to end in procreation, since that goes against the natural end of sex. Not only is this a misunderstanding of eating disorders in general and insensitive to those who have them, it also suggests that safe sex, or sex that doesn’t result in conception, is somehow a disease.
The site also claims: “Condoms ruin sex by changing its very nature, by putting a physical barrier between husband and wife, preventing the natural ‘bonding’ quality of sex in part created by the absorption of semen by the woman.
“We here at 1flesh hold onto that antiquated bit of folly, that the pick-up culture is degrading to men and women, and sex was meant to be forever, a promise of love as much as a good time. Condoms take away one of the primary biological features of sex that make it forever, as well as reducing its health benefits and degrading the amount of pleasure involved.”
The main creator of the site is a teenage blogger and college student who also rails against marriage equality on his other blog, Bad Catholic, and is proud to attend a nonsecular college that recently cut all student health care in response to the birth control mandate.
The following gem, an explanation that being against gays in general has nothing to do with hate, is from one of his blog posts:
“For we know that the gay lifestyle leads to a higher risk of HIV, depression, substance abuse, and a generally lower life expectancy. To oppose the normalization of a lifestyle that leads to this degradation of the human person—specifically the same-sex attracted person—is no hate at all, but a love. Not a love most people want, but a desire for the good of the beloved nonetheless.”
It’s important to note that his writings against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community are an extension of his eager interference in how others live.
He also claims that LGBTQ citizens don’t actually want the right to marry (in much more offensive language, also throwing in the incorrect tidbit that the Roman Catholic Church invented words like “love” and “marriage,” and therefore should have a monopoly on their definitions).
The 1flesh writers also believe sex should occur only within the confines of marriage, and that marriage should be undertaken prior to determining sexual compatibility.
Bloggers like this present a huge problem for women who don’t want to be preached at or talked down to by misinformed men.
Unfortunately, the Bad Catholic isn’t alone in his ignorance.There are many other sites like this, and the language on most of them is upsetting because it’s not medically sound and reeks of benevolent sexism.
It’s this emerging dependence on benevolent sexism from so-called men’s rights groups and anti-abortion (“pro-life”) organizations that worries me the most, because it specifically targets impressionable teenagers who may have been educated under abstinence-only education.
Benevolent sexism teaches these teens that restrictive gender roles ought to be strictly enforced and upholds harmful myths about female purity and a woman’s role within a sexual relationship.