Friday, December 03, 2004

Financial support and admiration for the chaste

There's a fabulous episode of "Seinfeld" in which it is revealed that abstinence causes men to become brilliant (George Costanza all of a sudden wants to discuss "the atom") and women to become idiots (Elaine stares gleefully and applauds at a display of spinning car tires).

Abstinence-only education, though, sounds like it's failing to teach that important lesson, but is teaching a few other, more dubious ones: "One course says women need 'financial support' and men crave 'admiration.'" But don't we all both need financial support and crave admiration? Regardless, I don't see how women's supposed need for financial support, presumably in this case from a man, and men's supposed craving for admiration, presumably in this case from a woman, are supposed to have anything to do with abstinence.

Let's say a woman wants money and becomes a prostitute. She will receive her much-needed financial support, while the man who pays her will, in a certain, sleazy sense, receive admiration, or at least feigned admiration. No abstinence there.

On a less extreme level, suppose a woman, in search of this "financial support" and waiting for a future husband to provide it, refuses to have sex until marriage. Aside from the fact that this may well turn off some suitors, let's say she does, in the end, get married. Assuming she gets married at, say, 25, in this model, she's been without real financial support (which can only, of course, come from a man) since leaving high school.*

If the abstinence-only folks are calling this "financial support vs. admiration" thing human nature, then how exactly will abstinence provide women and men with what they need and crave?

*Another thing I'm not sure about with abstinence-only education: is the idea to abstain while in high school or until marriage? One sounds a whole lot more feasible (though still, of course, not all that feasible) than the other.

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