Theresa Smalec
Performance Studies, NYU
Email: tsk201@nyu.edu

"'The New Virginity:' The Performance and Politics of Surrendering Young Peoples' Rights to Sexual Education."

I. Playing The Numbers Game: Performing 'Knowledge' of Teen Sexual Behavior.
In this paper, I will explore the local and hemispheric implications of a high profile abstinence education campaign recently launched in America. Bearing the title, "The New Virginity," the December 9, 2002 issue of Newsweek magazine features an attractive young couple: a clean-cut, white male and white female in a warm embrace. Inside, an article called "Choosing Virginity"1 begins with the following declaration: "A New Attitude: Fewer Teenagers Are Having Sex." The authors, Lorraine Ali and Julie Scelfo, make it sound like something earth-shattering is happening: "There's a sexual revolution going on in America, and believe it or not, it has nothing to do with Christina Aguilera's bare-it-all video, Dirrty" (61). Further to differentiate the sexual attitudes of today's 'authentic' teens from the confessional, problem-ridden, sexually-active young people so often represented on television and in film, the Newsweek authors emphasize, "The uprising is taking place in the real world, not on 'The Real World.' Visit any American high school and you'll find a growing number of students who… have decided to remain chaste until marriage" (61).
This radical turn towards abstinence on the part of America's teenagers sounds pretty amazing, doesn't it? Newsweek certainly considers it to be big news in America's sex-obsessed culture. MSNBC network also deems the "New Virginity" as remarkable stuff. In January 2003, three ardent spokeswomen made their case for this campaign on that network's "Phil Donahue" show. Well-groomed and Caucasian, like the teens on the Newsweek cover, these women teach federally funded abstinence-only workshops in America's public schools. They cheerfully assert that the number of high school students "who say they've had sex has dropped precipitously, from fifty-four percent in 1991, to forty-six percent in 2001." They also recite a slogan they use while lecturing teens about the virtues of virginity: "Sex education is really sex invitation!" In short, the sole type of information that educators should offer young people about sex is to save it until marriage. Donahue's conservative guests propose curtailing federal funding to schools that educate teens about condoms, other forms of contraception, or abortion.
What's interesting about the Newsweek article and the women featured on "Phil Donohue" are the types of statistics they offer: data based exclusively on what teenagers claim they don't do. On the one hand, the sources of information that both groups provide seem quite credible: Newsweek cites a recent study, part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). According to this government survey, "the number of high-school students who say they've never had sexual intercourse rose by almost ten percent between 1991 and 2002" (61). Newsweek also puts forward the testimonies of six young men and women who vow to remain chaste until marriage. We learn about their "personal" (61) reasons for making such a decision, and about some of the social-religious factors that help or hinder in maintaining this pledge. Despite setbacks and temptations, all six of the teens interviewed insist that they will hold out and wait for conjugal intercourse.
On the other hand, it is frankly naïve to assume that reporting what teens will admit about their sexual behavior is adequate proof that pre-marital sex and high-risk sexual practices have taken a nose-dive. Oddly, the authors of "Choosing Virginity" do not mention the percentage of American high-school students whom, in 2002, admitted to having sexual intercourse. Moreover, they fail to indicate whether the CDC study asks about sexual practices other than penile-vaginal intercourse: fellatio, cunnilingus, anal sex, all those acts that parents and politicians would rather not imagine their children performing. Incredibly, the CDC does not ask such questions! Upon investigating exactly what the CDC does ask teens about their sexual behavior, I discovered a list of eight questions,2 none of which address activities other than "sexual intercourse." Meanwhile, according to the 2001 findings of Lorraine V. Klerman (University of Alabama's at Birmingham School of Public Health), and John Hutchins (National Campaign to Prevent Pregnancy), there is still "no research on what teens define as sex."3 If we don't have reliable means of determining what teens interpret as "sex," how can we possibly claim to know what they regard as "virginity?" Local clinicians are not reporting a decline in sexually transmitted diseases associated with oral sex. In fact, not so long ago, there were reports from across the country about how some adolescents view oral sex as abstinence.
Another problem in terms of assessing high-risk behaviors such as sex with multiple partners, use of drugs or alcohol prior to intercourse, and failure to use condoms or birth control is that the CDC study asks only students about their "last three months" of activity, or about their "last time."4 How valuable is this data if it does not address habitual practices: the types of behavior that teens routinely engage in, and not just isolated experiences? It is good to hear that a large percentage of teens say they had sober, protected sex during their "last time," but what about all the other times? It only takes one mistake to contract to get pregnant, or to contract a sexually transmitted virus.
Finally, there is no information about the racial and socio-economic composition of the students surveyed. Was the study conducted at inter-city and inter-racial high schools, in rural areas, private schools, working-class districts, and/or upper-class neighborhoods? Newsweek offers no clues with respect to such factors. Meanwhile, in the actual CDC questionnaire, the demographic breakdowns are done solely on the basis of students' age and race. There are no questions about socio-economic status, or about the relationship between socio-economic factors and teen sexual practices.
Despite the government's assuring statistics about what teens say they don't do, there is troubling data to be found elsewhere. In 1998, the Annie E. Casey Foundation published a "KIDS COUNT" special report titled "Why Teens Have Sex: Issues and Trends."5 This publication tackles many concerns and developments omitted from the CDC questionnaire, from Newsweek's special issue, and from the discussion of abstinence education carried out on the "Phil Donohue" show. The Annie E. Casey report begins by acknowledging "some hopeful news for the future of America's families." In agreement with the other statistics cited so far, this report concedes:
Since 1991, the percentages of American teenagers getting pregnant, giving birth, or having abortions have all fallen. Teen pregnancies have declined 14 percent since 1990, reaching the lowest annual rate in more than 20 years. Similarly, the rate of births to teens is down 12 percent from the beginning of the decade.6
Yet even with significant decreases over the last decade in teen pregnancies, teen births, and teen abortions, the number of American high school students engaging in pre-marital sex remains astounding. In 1997, the total percentage of teens that reported ever having had sex was forty-eight percent (48%).7 By senior year (12th Grade), this figure jumped to sixty-one percent (61%). And, as recently as 2001, the Center for Disease Control found that sixty percent (60%) of high school seniors reported having had intercourse.
This suggests a meager, one percent (1%) decrease in the teenaged sexual activity among high-school seniors over the last five years. That's nothing to crow about if one seeks to argue that abstinence is spreading like wildfire. Teens are still having sex, though many claim not to try it until later on in their high school careers. And though we may cautiously acknowledge that abstinence is on rise among certain groups of American teens, the overall rates of decreased sexual activity reported in the popular press often mask important differences among subgroups. In 1997, for example, forty-four percent (44%) of non-Hispanic whites, fifty-two percent (52%) of Hispanics, and seventy-three percent (73%) of non-Hispanic blacks reported ever having had sexual intercourse; the disparity between sexually active whites and blacks is almost thirty percent (30%).
In contrast to the promising statistics and upbeat interviews with virginal teens that comprise Newsweek's feature story, the Annie E. Casey report confirms that not only abstinence, but also consistently protected sex, are far from becoming American trends. For starters, the teen birth rate is actually higher today than it was ten years ago. It is also worth emphasizing the following data:
[T]he United States still has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized country. About 40 percent of American women become pregnant before the age of 20. The result is about 1 million pregnancies each year among women ages 15 to 19. About half of those pregnancies end in births, often to young women and men who lack the financial and emotional resources to care adequately for their children. And when parents are financially and emotionally unprepared, their children are more likely to be cared for either by other relatives, such as grandparents, or by taxpayers through public assistance.8
Furthermore, as the children of baby boomers swell the ranks of American teenagers over the next few years, the absolute number of babies born to teens is likely to increase, even if the birth rate remains constant. When the Annie E. Casey Foundation used the 1996 rate to project the number of births to women ages 15 to 19 in the year 2005, researchers predicted a fourteen percent rise in the number of babies born to teen mothers.9 The majority of these births are likely to be out of wedlock, as were seventy-six percent of the teenaged births in 1996. And, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a private, non-partisan effort launched in 1996, the vast majority of unmarried teen mothers choose to keep their children rather than put them up for adoption.10
What are the social and economic costs of unplanned teenaged pregnancies and births? Experts estimate that the combination of lost tax revenues and increased spending on public assistance, child health care, foster care, and the criminal justice system amounts to approximately seven ($7) billion annually for births to teens.11 In Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing, researchers note that during her first thirteen months of parenthood, the average teenaged mother receives AFDC and food stamps valued at just over $1, 400 annually.12 Multiplying this figure by half a million teenaged births per year results in a staggering amount of money. Yet the thought of trying to provide for oneself and one's baby with an annual allowance of $1, 400 is even more appalling.
Of course, out-of-wedlock births are not the only unwanted things that can happen to young people as a result of unprotected sexual activity. According to the American Social Health Association, three million teens per year (about one in every four sexually active teens) contract a sexually transmitted disease.13 Chlamydia and gonorrhea are more common among sexually active teens than among sexually active men and women aged twenty to forty-four.14 And some studies show that up to fifteen percent of sexually active teenaged women are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV), many with the type of HPV that is linked to cervical cancer.15 According to a survey sponsored by ABC News, "Most teens radically underestimate their risk for sexually transmitted diseases."16 Of teens who responded to that survey, forty-five percent think that STDs don't increase the risk for AIDS, when in fact they do. Less than twenty percent of teens realize that even one sexual partner during a lifetime puts them at risk of a sexually transmitted disease. Shockingly, More than twenty-five percent say that the risk isn't significant until a person has had more than twenty partners!
If data announcing what teenagers don't understand about sexually transmitted diseases is not enough to make one shudder, perhaps statistics about the costs of their misinformation will. Half of all new HIV infections in the United States occur among people under twenty-five years of age, and thousands of teens become infected with HIV each year.17 The 2002 HIV Surveillance and Epidemiology Program Quarterly Report, published by New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,18 documents that one hundred and thirty two (132) people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in New York City during 2001. One thousand and forty-nine (1, 049) people between ages twenty and twenty-nine were diagnosed in that same year. As of March 31, 2002 there were 76, 504 New Yorkers diagnosed and known to be living with HIV or AIDS. An estimated 25,000 additional people are living with HIV but have not yet been diagnosed. Equally as important as the number of existing cases, there are thousands of young people who put themselves at risk of infection each time they have unprotected sex, and many do not even realize the stakes.

II. What Is Going On? Why Does the Bush Administration Insist on Abstinence Education Only Despite the Socio-Economic Realities of Teen Sexual Activity?

What is really going on in teenaged American sexual life, and elsewhere in the Americas? Despite unnerving reports about America's persistently high rates of teen sexual activity, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases among young people, there is currently an unprecedented effort, led by evangelical Christians and the George W. Bush administration, to deal with such realities by ignoring them. Worse still, those who endeavor to confront these realities by means of "comprehensive sex education" are suddenly being threatened and/or punished with the loss of federal funding.
According to an article by Debra Rosenberg, published on December 1, 2002 in Digitaljournal.com, there is mounting government pressure on public educators to teach celibacy alone:
In classrooms around the country, programs that urge teens to postpone sex are on the rise. More than one third of U.S. high schools teach abstinence until marriage and 700 abstinence programs spread the sex-can-wait gospel in all 50 states. Next year George W. Bush hopes to boost abstinence spending to $135 million -- up from $60 million in 1998 -- fulfilling a campaign promise to spend as much on abstinence as on teen family-planning programs. Abstinence is such a big priority that it falls into the portfolio of top Bush political guru Karl Rove. It's also one social issue the new Republican Congress is eager to advance. "There's certainly nothing in the election results that will push this in another direction," says Oklahoma Rep. Ernest Istook Jr.19
At home in the United States, Bush has not merely kept his campaign promise to spend as much on celibacy as on comprehensive sex education programs; he has poured all of the new monies into the most restrictive type of abstinence program -- Special Projects of Regional and National Significance (SPRANS) -- more than doubling its budget to $73 million.20 To receive this money, groups must follow eight strict criteria, including teaching that "sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects," and that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity."21 By law, SPRANS programs cannot promote or endorse condom use. Many of the groups that won these grants in 2002 are faith-based, including anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers, Catholic charities, and a Christian college. (Technically speaking, the groups aren't supposed to preach: in July 2002, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the state's abstinence program was illegally using federal money to promote religion.)
Nevertheless, the ironies abound. Whereas federal law dictates that groups who receive such funding must not moralize, the federal legislation pertaining to SPRANS does precisely that. Aside from advocating monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the benchmark for all sexual activity, it also preaches that poor people should not have sex. In an article titled "Reproductive Roulette," Jodie Levin-Epstein highlights a third clause that groups who accept SPRANS funds must advocate: "Sex is for the self-sufficient."22 What exactly does this mean? Levin-Epstein notes that it is difficult to interpret this criterion, since "self-sufficiency" is presumably a measure of economic status. Yet "since the law is silent on the definition of self-sufficiency, the income a couple needs to achieve before sexual relations become appropriate is ambiguous."23 Do people need to clear the poverty line? Must they make enough money to support a child in the event of pregnancy? The law does not spell it out, but the implications are troubling.
One especially disturbing inference is how this criterion contradicts the 'logic' used by the Bush Administration in other arenas of women's reproductive rights. On January 31st, 2002, Claude Allen (the new Health and Human Services Secretary), reclassified the fetus as an "unborn child," granting health coverage to "an individual in the period between conception and birth."23 Ironically, health coverage for the woman carrying the fetus is not mandated, and she is not entitled to postnatal care. By defining the fetus as a "child" from the moment of conception, this ruling violates basic principles of constitutional law and undermines Roe vs. Wade. It also denies women the right to control their own healthcare, and puts the health of pregnant women at risk. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have criticized this legislation, stressing the following paradoxes:
You can't separate care for the mother from care for the fetus. They are integrally related, and it is impossible to imagine that something that affects the health of the mother is not going to affect the fetus, so that it puts physicians in the difficult position of trying to decide which aspect of care is covered and which is not. It makes no sense.24
To medical professionals, this ruling makes no sense. Yet it makes 'perfect sense' if one considers the ultra-conservative, evangelically Christian corporations who funded Bush's undemocratic entry into the White House. Low-income fetuses get mandatory health care, whereas low-income mothers get forced into having children for which they are not prepared. Meanwhile, the fine print underlying this prenatal coverage says it expires soon after the child is born.25 Claude Allen (another African-American man chosen by the Bush Administration to explain its irrational and unscientific policies to the American public) argues: "This legislation is focused on quality health care for children. It's a win for the state because they're able to provide health-care for those children and their mothers who don't currently have them."26 But with numerous American states abruptly being forced to cut back on health care services due to the economic crises they face, we may wonder who really "wins" as a result of the new laws regarding unborn rights. After birth, it's back to Bush's norm for dealing with low-income citizens: "Fend for yourself!"
Sexuality and surrender is the title of this working group. Sadly, the latter term seems especially apt in relation to the issues I explore. Public school systems are increasingly mandated not to teach teenagers about condoms or other means of birth control. However, when the consequences of such ignorance emerge as an unwanted pregnancy, the law says: "It's your own fault, your poor moron. Didn't you know any better?" The reason why many teenaged parents don't know any better is precisely because they are socially and financially disenfranchised: they lack access to the sex-ed resources offered in private schools, at colleges, on the Internet, and in other arenas of middle and upper-class culture. If teens from low-income families don't learn the facts of contraception and disease prevention in the public schools they attend, it is unlikely they will learn them elsewhere. Despite evidence suggesting that America's recent decline in teen pregnancy, abortion, STDs, and HIV infection is due to the Clinton administration's focus on comprehensive sex education (aimed at teaching young people to protect themselves and thus prevent unplanned effects), Bush is taking an antithetical approach.
The 'antithetical' approach of this administration is not limited to draconic legislation about what types of sexual information may be taught to teens in public schools. Many other aspects of American sexual behavior are also under attack. While the consequences of these devious attacks may not be visible till the Bush Administration is out of office, there is no doubt that they will horrify, outrage, and murder thousands of Americans for decades after the fact. According to an article by Charles Ornstein, published in the Los Angeles Times on April 18, 2003, "Federal Spending on HIV Prevention [Is] to Shift Course." Ornstein reports on how AIDS awareness groups recently learned that "Federal funding on safe-sex programs to prevent the spread of HIV among uninfected people will be curtailed next year in favor of a new campaign to stop the spread of the virus by those who already have it." The changes will likely come into effect in July 2004.
Not surprisingly, Bush was too cowardly to deliver this deplorable news to AIDS prevention groups in person. Rather, he let Dr. Rob Janssen, Director of HIV Prevention at the national Centers for Disease Control, spread the word during a conference call with more than a dozen prevention advocates: "The government plans to invest most heavily in initiatives that offer HIV testing and counseling to infected people." This new strategy is apparently "aimed at more than 200,000 people who have HIV but do not know it and may be passing it to others unwittingly." At stake is ninety (90) million dollars of federal funding! Mindful of the vast sum of money up for grabs, we may wonder how Bush and the CDC plan to find those elusive people who do not know yet that they are infected. Will they be tested while in prisons, while arrested for unrelated offences, while brought into hospitals for unrelated injuries? Who will decide on the "profiling" used to identify people at risk of HIV and AIDS? Will it be racially based, based on occupation (sex workers, drug dealers, male figure skaters, and interior designers), or based on socio-economics? Maybe all those who do not clear the poverty line will be rounded up and screened for HIV? Actually, the CDC is urging mandatory screening of all pregnant women, rather than relying on patients to volunteer for testing. Moreover, the new guidelines also make HIV testing a routine part of care in doctors' offices and clinics.27 The CDC will ask local and state governments to adhere to these guidelines in exchange for federal funding. What's amazing is that no one is protesting the highly suspect consequences of involuntarily screening thousands of unsuspecting people for HIV!
After these peoples (believed to be low-income minorities with little access to health care, or to knowledge that they are at risk) learn they are HIV-positive, what will the government do to help them? No extra monies have been offered for treatment, and there is no specific information yet about the government's plans. Yet based on the precedents set with respect to teenaged sex education programs in public schools, we can surmise the sorts of faith-based restrictions to be placed on Bush's appointed HIV "counselors." In short, people with HIV will be "treated" by means of God and prayer: not condoms, needle exchange programs, education programs geared at sex workers, or programs educating gay men about minimizing the risks of their sexual activity.
Do my predictions sound a little paranoid? Perhaps, but the Bush Administration is already censoring scientific and public health research. In 2003, the government began screening proposals for terms like "sex workers" or "needle exchange." Scientists were warned that if they used these phrases, their requests for funding would be flatly rejected. Sex workers and drug users are two communities most affected by the AIDS epidemic, yet it seems that the Bush Administration is willing to let people die in order to promote its political agenda. As of 2004, "There will be no more safe-sex workshops,"28 says Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People With AIDS. Anderson adds: "There are not going to be any more public attitude campaigns around HIV and AIDS."29 Ronald Johnson, associate executive director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center in New York, also fears that the CDC is "making a significant movement" away from programs aimed at HIV-negative people, "to the point of not even funding such programs."30

III. Hemispheric Conclusions: Protecting Future Generations at Home and Abroad.
In effort to evaluate the Bush Administration's unprecedented backing of abstinence education at the expense of other forms of sex education, I have examined the intersecting modes of performance and politics underlying this faith-based campaign. What socio-economic and racial stratums of teenagers benefit most from high-profile campaigns such as "The New Virginity?" What sorts of young people are excluded from or even killed by the gaps and oversights underlying these campaigns?
Aside from his unyielding focus on abstinence education in America, one of the first acts of legislation passed by George W. Bush upon his "election victory" in 2000 was an executive order cutting off federal funding to international agencies that support women seeking an abortion.31 Reversing the policy of the Clinton Administration, the move was timed to support thousands of anti-abortion protestors rallying in Washington to protest against the twenty-eighth anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's "Roe vs. Wade" decision to legalize abortion.
In short, there was nothing 'accidental' or 'bumbling' about this performance of ultra-conservative Christian morality. President Bush made it clear from as early on as January 2000 how he feels about women's reproductive rights, both in North American and Hemispheric contexts: "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad," wrote Bush in his Executive Memorandum.32 Read my lips: there will be no more federally funded abortion in the world by the time I am through with my Presidency. Women, surrender your rights.
If we extend to hemispheric contexts the legislation pertaining to human sexual activity that has already passed in the United States since Bush came to office, we start wondering how the world will survive this madness. A huge percentage of the billions of AIDS dollars that Bush is bragging about sending to Africa must be used for abstinence-only education. This money should be used for effective HIV prevention programs and for AIDS treatment, not to preach to people who do not share our cultural values or mores. Millions of lives are on the line across the globe. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration continues to perform its hypocritical sermons on the covers of Newsweek, on the MSNBC Network, in CDC reports on teen sexual behavior, in America's public schools, in international schools and hospitals, and in congressional sessions where our elected representatives decide where and how funding pertaining to sexuality should allocated. We must not surrender the struggle for awareness and protection. We must start fighting back, educating our children and our fellow human beings around the globe with the tools that we had the good fortune to acquire in saner times.