This story on digg (and its comments) were so vile, so one sided…and so common. After the feeding frenzy over the Duke case I sort of felt that brought out a certain group of people that like to feel as if white men are a persecuted minority. But looking around I think the really is a strong current of misogyny in online communities. I don’t know what causes it, but it really disturbs me. Anyway, a couple of writers have tackled this well. Read on:

Joan Walsh
Random Blogger I found on Google

The evidence has piled up for years that abstinence-only education is at best ineffective with no effect on its supporters. Thats because those people don’t give a shit about effective education. Most normal people, when finding that their solution has no effect on the problem tend to change what they are doing. This crowd chooses their actions based on predefined conclusions with no follow up. Because the results don’t matter, the intent does. They can’t stand the idea of women people having sex or evening thinking about sex. Therefor they don’t like sex ed, consequences be damned.

A new study reveals, surprise, that abistence education is completely useless:

For both the program and control group youth, the reported mean age at first intercourse was identical, 14.9 years,”

Amanda says:

The only reason to have abstinence-only “education” is to make a bunch of uptight, sexually repressed, closeted pervert adults get an ill-advised self-righteous goal of setting stupid standards for kids that they know will not be met, so those same adults can feel the self-righteous glee of imagining god damning another round of sinners to hell.

yeah, pretty much.

As an aside, that reuters article busts out some insipid balance halfway through:

Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control, the report found — countering the fears of critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will simply have more unprotected sex.

Ahh…well stupid us, abstinence education isn’t bad at all, it doesn’t make things worse! It just does nothing! Actually, I don’t believe that the control group received comprehensive sex-ed, which is what opponents of abstinence-only education want.

Amanda in top form:

Well, I’m calling bullshit. Let’s be perfectly clear. People aren’t mad at Imus for the sounds “nappy-headed ho”. We are mad because Don Imus is a racist fuckwit, everyone knows he’s a racist fuckwit, and when politicians go on his show and people go on TV defending him, they are saying, loud and clear, that racist fuckwittery wins and you people who are opposed to racist fuckwittery need to suck a lemon. We are mad because we want simple, basic justice and Imus and his buddies are resisting that. We want women to be athletes and we want black people to have the same access to education as white people and Imus and his buddies are resisting us. The exact language he used to convey the idea that he opposes female athletes and black scholars is interesting but not the ultimate point. The battle is over whether or not we as a society are going to grant full equality to women and black people or not.