Episode 1
For the Love of Puritans and Pigs
Hello! This is Michelle, your host, certified sex therapist and licensed mental health therapist, and welcome to the first ever episode of Going Down on History, the podcast where we look at someone somewhere in history who either got famous because they did (or someone accused them of doing) some outrageous sexual act or was already famous and then did something sexy that scandalized society.
Why is this important? I can’t really tell you why I think you should find these stories important. I really think that reason will be different for everyone. For my part, I think history is fun. My kids look at me like I’m a psychopath when I say that, but it’s true. But I’m also a sex therapist who believes sex, whether we are having it or not, is an important aspect of being human and interacting with each other. And if there is anything I can say with confidence, it's this: as long as there have been humans, they’ve been having sex. And as long as there has been sex, people have been getting in trouble for it. For example….
In the quiet village of New Haven, Samuel Hoskins and Elizabeth Cleverly lived as devout Puritans, their lives deeply rooted in the strict moral codes and religious practices of their community. They were both born and raised in the same small English village of Bishop’s Waltham but when an opportunity presented itself to start a life across the Atlantic in what would become modern-day Connecticut, they arranged passage with other would-be colonists and left their English homeland behind. A brave new world awaited them in the colonies.
Their days were filled with toil and prayer, for Puritan life left little room for leisure. Sundays were strictly reserved for church, a place where the entire village gathered to hear sermons that warned of the dangers of sin and the promise of salvation. Both Samuel and Elizabeth were raised with the understanding that their actions were always being watched—by their neighbors, by their ministers, and by God.
Despite these teachings, the spark between Samuel and Elizabeth could not be extinguished by mere doctrine. Their courtship began innocently enough in England, with stolen glances during church services and brief, chaperoned walks after Sunday worship. However, as their feelings grew stronger, so did their longing for each other. And perhaps it was this desire that inspired their idea to leave family and country behind, hoping their new home would also give them the freedom to finally be with each other.
One moonlit night, under the cover of darkness and driven by a passion they could no longer suppress, Samuel and Elizabeth met in secret. They exchanged vows of love and promises of a future together, but their desires led them to break the sacred rule of chastity before marriage. Their repeated intimate encounters, seen as moments of moral weakness, were soon discovered by the ever-watchful eyes of their fellow villagers.
The punishment for their transgression was swift and harsh. Samuel and Elizabeth were brought before the elders and the entire village, where their sins were publicly proclaimed. As part of their penance, they were subjected to a grueling session of public humiliation. Standing in the village square, they faced the scorn and rebuke of their neighbors. The elders, wielding switches, administered physical punishment, their strikes a painful reminder of the gravity of their sin. This punishment was not just a personal torment but a public spectacle meant to serve as a deterrent to others who might contemplate similar transgressions.
During this period of penance, Samuel and Elizabeth found solace only in each other. Their love, tested by shame and suffering, grew stronger. In spite of their experiences of public correction, the pair continued to steal away, each enjoying the company of the other more and more. In another time, perhaps their unwavering support for one another would not have gone unnoticed, and gradually, the villagers' attitudes would have softened towards their behaviors. In time, recognizing the depth of the lovers’ remorse and the sincerity of their passion for each other, the elders would have granted them permission to marry.
This unfortunately did not come to pass. Samuel and Elizabeth themselves were only teens and even at this time, being below the age of consent, still needed their parent’s permission to marry. Samuel’s father had passed before he’d even sailed from England and his mother did not join Samuel in the new colony. Elizabeth’s parents also did not join their young daughter in her trek across the sea. Who then would give them permission to legally marry? Intent on making their bond official, they did the only thing they could think of to finally be married. They presented themselves before the court and declared their love for each other. They told the magistrate their parents had consented to their marriage and, in truth, no one questioned their claims. As the court was well aware that these two youths had already been sinful with each other and received repeated punishments for their actions. In the court’s eyes, they had defiled themselves and made themselves unsuitable for any other partner. The court proclaimed this in their decision to Samuel and Elizabeth but ultimately allowed them to marry.
Though they would always bear the scars of their past actions, Samuel and Elizabeth were determined to build a future founded on their love. They wed in a humble, private ceremony, unattended by a community that had failed to understand the complexities of human desire and the power of forgiveness.
The community’s judgments of their earlier dalliances eventually softened and both husband and wife became accepted members of the township. Together, they rebuilt their lives, dedicating themselves to their work and to each other. They had six children together though Samuel would unfortunately die at the very young age of 40 and Elizabeth would survive her husband an additional 18 years, never remarrying.
Now, this story is no Scarlet Letter but these two people really did exist in Colonial America. Two young adults who probably fled England because their folks told them they couldn’t be together and thought the colonists would give them a fair shot at being together. Unfortunately, they joined a colony of Puritans. Yes, those fun-loving folks who believed in dressing in black, frowning upon any form of joy, and putting the "pure" in "puritanical." They're the ones who thought stepping even one toe out of line could land you, and everyone else, in the fiery depths of eternal damnation. But oh, did they have secrets! Behind those stern façades lurked tales of forbidden desires, clandestine rendezvous, and more scandalous shenanigans than you could shake a Bible at. I figured, why not start this passion project with a focus on that kooky group who would really inspire how American sexual views evolved over time. So buckle up, because we're about to take a wild ride through the history of Puritan hanky-panky!
Picture this: buckle hats, bonnets, and a whole lot of repression! Puritan is a word that immediately conjures images of strict religious beliefs and practices as well as hard work, thrift, and moral living. And to hear them tell it, Colonial America pretty much demanded hard work and moral living, what with all the untamed wilderness being "dark, evil, and sinister" and the temptation offered by the savage natives and literally anyone who wasn’t a Puritan. Puritans saw themselves as the only ones eligible for salvation while everyone else was pretty much fucked. As such, they took their way of life very seriously because it wasn’t enough for the individual to be pious and good. Their covenant hinged on the spiritual health and welfare of the community and if some folks weren't towing the liturgical line, then there could be hell to pay for everyone.
If someone violates one of their rules, those in power won’t hesitate to bring down the hammer before that one person’s wickedness spreads like an infection. And that proverbial hammer could be a literal flogging, a few days in the stocks, banishment, or…death.
In fact, if Puritan makes you think of anything, it’s likely the words "fire" and "brimstone". Here’s a little taste from a 1741 sermon called Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God:
[Excerpt from Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God 38sec]
The preacher is basically telling his flock, "Hey, you know that loving God you've heard about? Well, turns out He's not so keen on your misbehavior! Sooo…get your shit together or he’ll drop you into the flames of hell where you belong, you little worms!" Lovely. I’d call it a guilt trip but it doesn’t sound like God would even bat an eyelash at letting go of the vermin. So insignificant are we vile sinners.
Even by the more pious of us today, Puritans are called the leaders of biblical authority and "doctrinal precision". Their interpretation of the bible…actually, there is no interpretation. The bible says what it says. Did God stutter? Nope.
The once governor of the Plymouth colony, William Bradford, wrote about a couple of incidents among his Puritan peeps. The conviction and punishment were laid out in the Book of Leviticus and I grant you, the Old Testament is harsh in general with almost everything deemed worthy of capital punishment. I guess people could be pretty stubborn about traditions in the Bronze Age and nothing short of death could change their stance on things like human sacrifice, divination, or cursing your parents. Leviticus also deems this upcoming crime as a capital offense…for everyone and everything involved.
There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbery, being about 16. or 17. years of age. He was this year detected of buggery (and indicted for the same) with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, 2. calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one who accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him, and he declared which were they, and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury, and condemned, and after executed about the 8th. of Septr, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was; for first the mare, and then the cow, and the rest of the lesser cattle, were killed before his face, according to the law, Levit: 20. 15. and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great & large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.
In case you need a translation: a teen was caught in the act of sex with one farm animal and then confessed to loving on many more. The powers that be then executed the animals, making the boy watch first of course, and then executed him as well. Let me add what Mr. Bradford discovers when he asked the boy why he thought this was a good idea:
Upon the examination of this person, and also of a former that had made some sodomitical attempts upon another, it being demanded of them how they came first to the knowledge and practice of such wickedness, the one confessed he had long used it in old England; and this youth last spoken of said he was taught it by another that had heard of such things from some in England when he was there, and they kept cattle together. By which it appears how one wicked person may infect many; and what care all ought to have what servants they bring into their families.
Puritans didn’t really want to come to the New World. They strike me as a group of people who lack a sense of adventure. First, they tried to purify the Church of England of what they saw as rampant corruption, instead endorsing a simpler, more devout form of worship. As you can imagine, they got laughed out of England. After trying again in a few different areas of Europe, they eventually landed in the wilderness of what would become America, where they went all-in on their way of life without the "infection" of outside wickedness. Go figure why that didn’t work.
Let's jump back to 1642, an interesting year for justice. New Haven Colony finds itself the home of one George Spencer and it doesn't take long for the townsfolk to take a dislike to him. To be fair, in court records of the time, he is called a "habitual troublemaker", described as a vulgar, blasphemous, profanity-spewing poor excuse for a human being who can’t keep a job AND, to top it all off, a self-proclaimed atheist. He was also not a handsome person. He had what was described as a dead, white, filmy eye that locals found…off-putting.
But it's 1642. Farm life is hard and workers are hard to find. So instead of running him out of town, they force him to read the bible…daily in the hopes that he eventually comes around.
One day, one of Mr. Spencer's previous employers wakes up, and while starting his chores, he notices something strange in the pigpen. His sow had given birth but one of the piglets is deformed…with one dead, white, filmy eye. Can you see where this is heading? This piglet’s existence was seen by the townspeople as an "act of God," meant to reveal Spencer's crime of beastiality.
So George Spencer is charged with a capital crime, punishable by death as we have already learned. But in order to get a conviction, there need to be two witnesses and unlike the previous example with the teenage boy, this time there were none. But that’s only true if you take the word “witness” literally. I mean, how does one subpoena God?
You get creative, that’s how.
They ended up using the deformed piglet as the first witness. But they still need one more witness and at this point I’ll give them credit that no one lied and said they saw the act when they didn’t. Because one shouldn’t bear false witness, right? Instead, they allegedly approached Spencer himself and promised him leniency if he were to confess, making him the second witness against himself. Trusting them at their word, he did. And then they convicted him and sentenced him to death. Spencer probably said something like, “Um, where’s my leniency?” To which he was probably told, "Yeah. We're leaving the leniency to God." At which point he tried to retract his confession. Unfortunately, the court used his retracted confession as the second witness statement anyway and George Spencer was indeed hung by the neck until dead.
.
Now you'd think this tragedy happening once would be enough. And…you’d be wrong. Same crime, different pig and the man’s name was Thomas Hogg. I can’t make this stuff up. The townfolk didn’t like Mr. Hogg either. He’s not the conforming type and people were constantly trying to throw him under the bus for one reason or another.
Much like Spencer, he gets accused but luckily for Hogg, he had learned from George Spencer's mistake. He denied the charges and refused to give any kind of confession. Without it, they couldn’t get a conviction. In the end, they only got him for lying and stealing, he was whipped and jailed for a brief time, but ultimately was allowed to go free. And I can only assume he got the hell out of town.
George Spencer was eventually given a posthumous pardon, it just took 373 years after his execution for it to happen. But I use these cases to show that the words measured and reasonable did not exist in Puritan jurisprudence. This group didn’t just oblige the wrath of the Old Testament, they embraced it.
And I grant you, these cases were very specific to beastiality. But beastiality and sodomy could be defined as anything promiscuous, adventurous, or outside the familial ideal, and that’s a pretty wide net that can catch all manner of activities.
From an official standpoint, excessive passion could be seen as a distraction from the real focus of marital bed activities: making babies! But we know from collections of personal correspondence between Puritan spouses that they were actually pretty relaxed about sex as long as it wasn't premarital or extramarital. Letters preserved from this time show a lot of passion between couples and it wasn’t always about growing the family. And when you live in a really, and I mean REALLY, rural place, a marriage ceremony by an actual member of the clergy or magistrate isn't always a possibility. Plus there is no amount of fire and brimstone that can keep raging hormones at bay. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak, am I right? And it seems that was the case for Samuel Hotchkiss and Elizabeth Cleverly.
Not too much is known about them outside of court records as they were frequently whipped for being too familiar with each other outside of marriage. The number of sexual offenses, sexual offense here meaning being amorous with someone you are not married to, the number of these cases brought to court outnumbered literally any other type of criminal complaint in New Haven County. But I have to ask, if that's how many they were catching, how many were they not?
Because the farther one traveled away from populated towns and into the more rural areas of the colonies, the faster and looser sexual mores became. You also have to imagine that with the growth of the colonies, you were inevitably going to get external influences moving in or through, and not all of them are going to be as uptight about sex. As a result, some families started fudging the definition of "pre-marital" when it came to sex. Maybe, you didn't have to actually be married. Maybe just being committed to one another was enough to know each other in the biblical sense.
By the end of the 18th century in New England, it wasn't that uncommon for a bride to be well along with child by the time her wedding day arrived. And that was if parents could even compel the alleged father to do the right thing by their daughters because without witnesses, men could easily deny having any part in the pregnancy. That left young women with no prospects for marriage and their family would have yet another hungry mouth to feed on top of that. Eternal torment in the pits of hell are not a deterrent. Public humiliation isn't working. And beating them also seems to be falling short. What is a God-fearing Puritan family to do?
Once again, you get creative. According to Dr. Richard Godbeer, professor of History at the University of Kansas, parents recognized the importance of holding unwed fathers accountable and to them, the key component of this was making the interlude common knowledge to other people. If young couples could steal away in secret, there would be no witnesses and it could be called rumor or hearsay. But if the couple was encouraged to stay in the home WITH the girl’s parents and the girl later became pregnant, then parents, relatives, neighbors could all attest to, "Yes, that Johnson boy did stay over at Prudence's house and now she is with child."
If you control the narrative and the outcome to a certain extent, then scandal can be avoided. Their daughter's marriage prospects remain intact, or they could at least secure financial support for her and the baby from the young man's family.
Granted, parents were not hoping the young couples would have sex. But if it happened...and it apparently happened often, then at least the young woman and her family had some recourse. This is where the act of bundling becomes a popular option and the practice in colonial America was just as much about accountability as it was about courtship.
Bundling dates way back to the middle ages, throughout Europe and into parts of Asia. I saw it in the movie The Patriot where Heath Ledger’s character is sewed into a burlap sack, leaving only his head out. The sack was meant to act like a full-body condom so the young couple can get to know each other a little more and the lady's virtue remains intact. I guess this depends on mom’s sewing skills and just how determined the love birds are. If my past experience has taught me anything, where there’s a willy, there’s a way. And most of the people I know, both men and women, would take that bundling sack as a challenge.
Bed courting has been the intention of bundling for hundreds of years and oftentimes, both parties of the courtship are tied into separate sacks that limit their access to the other. Other times, the sack only covers their lower extremities and the couple is actually encouraged to take advantage and explore the exposed parts of their partner’s body. It was believed that taking this step to ensure non-penetrative pre-marital sex could help the young couple decide if they wanted to marry and take the next step, leading to further stability within the marriage later on. Since families used to rely on having numerous children to share the workload, inherit land and wealth, and, thanks to illness and injuries, accounting for premature deaths, if a marriage couldn’t provide an heir, it couldn’t serve its purpose. If someone couldn’t perform in the bedroom, there weren’t going to be any babies. It wasn’t uncommon for marriages to be dissolved because of the inability of one or both partners to consummate the relationship and either partner could petition the court in order to be released from the marriage.
In other cases, bundling was a necessity in homes where there weren't that many rooms or heating of multiple areas of the home was too costly or impossible. And sometimes parents stayed in the room with the couple as an extra layer of security. And sometimes they didn't.
I suppose following attempts at abstinence, this was the next form of birth-control for our plucky settlers. This was very specifically about securing the best possible outcome if the teen hormones got out of hand.
And I’ll hand it to the Puritans for generally accepting the "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen” perspective.
The Puritans got their start in New England before expanding into new territories opened up by treaties, land purchases, and straight up genocide. During their embrace of manifest destiny, how did their views on sex and sex education shift?
They didn’t. Puritanical teachings are responsible for some of the most ass-backward teachings that persist to this day. That men cannot control themselves, women need to guard their virtue and that, once again, sex is only moral when it happens after marriage. The abstinence-only approach is trash. But while doing the research on how sex education is mandated in different states, I learned just how inconsistently sex education is implemented in this country.
Modern U.S. Sex Education Data
The Guttmacher Institute is a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. Its primary mission is to generate high-quality research, evidence-based policy analysis, and educational resources to promote reproductive health, reduce disparities, and ensure access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care. The Institute has dedicated a good portion of their resources in surveying the sex education offered in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Its looked at the general education topics covered, content requirements for sex and HIV education, and life skills education including sexual consent, relationships, and prevention of violence.
And the results of this analysis review are pretty illuminating.
For example, did you know that only 35 states and the District of Columbia are required to teach sex education and/ OR HIV prevention? The and/or is a crucial conjunction in that these states do not require that BOTH sex and HIV education be made available.
States where neither are mandated include Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Texas. This doesn’t mean sex education isn’t an option in these states, it’s just not a requirement.
In the states where there is a requirement to teach one or the other, only 18 states require that the information about sex education be medically accurate. Thankfully, 26 states plus DC require the HIV education to be accurate. And only 4 states explicitly forbid education from promoting any kind of religion. 35 states and DC give parents the option to opt out.
Fun little side note: on this specific table, there is a footnote key with a Psi looking symbol which reads: Sex education is required in a county if the pregnancy rate is at least 19.5 or higher per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17. This symbol is found next to only one state on this chart. Want to venture a guess which state that is? Go on, I’ll give you a few seconds to take a guess.
Tennessee. It’s Tennessee. As if any of us are surprised by that considering their recent political priorities.
When we say “comprehensive sex education”, that means there is a combination of contraception and abstinence in the conversation. According to this analysis, 21 states plus DC mandate education about contraception where 39 states plus DC mandate abstinence be either “covered” or “stressed” in these programs. 19 states require that sex be stressed as important while in marriage only. A discussion of sexual orientation is only mandated in 11 states but in a state like Kentucky, it is outright prohibited. In other states, specifically Iowa and Florida, it is not required or limited depending on what the state thinks is age-appropriate. And Oklahoma, bless their hearts, their HIV education continues to teach that “homosexual activity” is considered to be “responsible for contact with the AIDS virus.”
The final chart looks at sex education where healthy relationships are the focus and this education can include topics of asserting personal boundaries, refusing unwanted sexual advances, the importance of consent, and self-control and general decision making about sexuality. You’d think this was at least the low-hanging fruit of education where the goal is to have all 50 states plus the District of Columbia gung-ho about the initiative but no. 31 states plus DC talk about healthy relationships and 27 plus DC mandate talking about self-discipline. Only 10 states plus the District of Columbia mandate their sex education initiatives to explicitly incorporate discussions about consent. For some reason, the data for 7 states is not included in this table.
Upon reading these stats, I thought to myself, I don’t have enough to do in my day to day so I got curious about what the rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault (both greatly underreported regardless) are in states without this mandate. And what I discovered is that while there is a positive correlation between a state that does not mandate healthy relationship education as sexual and dating violence prevention and that state’s rate of intimate partner violence, it does not seem to be a statistically significant correlation by numbers alone. I am sure its pretty damn significant, however, to every man, woman, and child that gets caught in a violent and/or exploitative relationship where education may have helped one or both partners see the red flags early on. For me, even one person in this type of relationship is one person too many.
Nevada has one of the worst rates of intimate partner violence in the country, surpassed only by Kentucky. These two great states are followed by Alaska, Arizona, and Indiana in their rates of domestic violence. I also looked at stats on the rate of sexual assault of female teenagers. The states with the highest rates in this category are Idaho, with the highest rate in 2023, California, and then Utah in 3rd place.
These rankings are…I was going to say a dubious honor, but let’s be real. There is nothing honorable about these statistics. You ran the stupid race and won first place. I say that because the states that ranked highest in Intimate Partner Violence in 2023 were also states that opted out of teaching either or both healthy relationships and sexual violence prevention. Kentucky does not mandate sexual violence prevention, Nevada does not mandate teaching either of them. And where the assault statistics are concerned, you have two sparsely populated states ranking up there with one of the most populated states in the country. California’s population density equals approximately 650 people per square mile (that's 251 per sq kilometer, if you’re metric). In contrast, Utah and Idaho have lower population densities. Utah's population density was around 105 people per square mile (40 people per square kilometer), and Idaho's was even lower, with around 22 people per square mile (or 8 people per square kilometer). Idaho does not mandate teaching sexual violence prevention and Utah does not mandate teaching about healthy relationships. California teaches both.
I took statistics so I know correlation is not causation. A majority of these states tend to run on the conservative side and there is likely a higher rate of gun ownership as they are mostly rural states with a lot of farming and a lot of wilderness. Social norms, like an increased acceptance of violence as a recourse, and socio-economic factors like unemployment rates, education, and poverty also contribute to higher rates of IPV. And conservative states also tend towards greater religious influence. Religious institutions can play a significant role in shaping attitudes towards sexuality, as we just covered with the Puritans, and may influence reporting patterns and access to support services for victims, including victims of sexual assault. Certain denominations also tend to maintain systems that rely on gender inequality. States with higher levels of gender inequality experience higher rates of sexual violence. This could be due to power imbalances in relationships and societal norms that perpetuate gender-based violence. I see a lot of post-Trad Wife horror stories on Tik Tok these days where they speak to how the church encouraged them to work for the household and even when they were managing their own businesses, they were also encouraged to put everything in their husband’s name and this is purely anecdotal, but a lot seem to be coming out of Utah. Rural areas also experience higher rates of substance abuse which increases the risk of sexual violence by impairing judgment and inhibitions, and reducing the ability to recognize and respect boundaries.
So, yeah, correlation may not be causation but if I see smoke, I’m gonna suspect fire. And the US does not really seem intent on putting these fires out anytime soon. So if teens and young adults aren’t getting accurate and helpful sex and relationship education in their schools, where are they getting it from?
The Wonderful World Wide Web
I know I say this as a sex therapist who is using social media to promote myself and my services but there is such a saturation of sexperts these days and I have to say that not all of them are worthy of the platform the internet has given them. Sex is catchy, sex sells. Talk about sex in a fun way and you will get the followers and the views but what is the content? What is being shared, what is being promoted, and what is being suppressed?
Here are some of the pros and cons of online sex education.
The pros are super easy: Anonymity, accessibility, and affinity.
Sex questions can be awkward and I cannot tell you how often I and others have prefaced a sex question with, “This may be a stupid question but…” So many people, especially adolescents, may prefer to remain anonymous when they are curious about sexual topics and the internet helps them do that to a certain extent. Sometimes, anonymity isn’t just about being bashful, it can also be about safety. If the physical community is not welcoming to persons in transition or contemplating anything outside of judeo-christian, heteronormative sexual practices, those persons can be in danger physically, emotionally, and financially.
Accessibility: As of 2018, 95 percent of adolescents who have access to a smartphone and immediate access to journals and articles online can answer questions like, Why does it burn when I pee, why am I bleeding from my vagina, or quite possibly the most commonly asked question on the internet, Am I pregnant?
And lastly, affinity. Teenagers prefer to seek information out from peers and peer-oriented sources. When teens start to experience specific conditions, health or otherwise, having access to people their age in digital spaces can help address feelings of isolation and contribute to a sense of belonging. It is a network, afterall.
Unfortunately anonymity and accessibility and even the network aspects of online spaces are also the cons because anyone can go online and post “data” or speak from their “lived experience”, pretending they are an adolescent or young adult or pretending that they are an authority on the subject of sexual health and sexuality when they actually have ulterior motives.
Not everyone is a good, ethical educator. And bad, unethical sex education can come from literally anywhere. Someone doesn’t need an education to give bad information and extensive education is no guarantee that they know what they're talking about. A couple of years back, I heard a sexologist who presents herself as Dr. sex expert, tell a listener that if they didn't like the medications that were affecting their libido, they should just stop taking the medication. And THAT is a big no-no. But thanks to increased accessibility, all anyone needs to share their opinion is a phone and a thought. The amount of misinformation and disinformation about sex online is equally mind-boggling and is problematic for a whole shit-ton of reasons.
As a result, to this day, the abstinence-only approach continues to weasel its way into sexual health conversations.
The Puritans Get a Little Boost
In 1975, the World Health Organization published the following: "...the notion of sexual health implies a positive approach to human sexuality, and the purpose of sexual health care should be the enhancement of life and personal relationships and not merely counseling and care related to procreation or sexually transmitted diseases." Almost 50 years have passed since this declaration.
Up until the 1960s and 70s, the focus of sex ed was to prevent sexually transmitted infections, eliminate masturbation and prostitution, and to establish that one should wait until marriage to become sexually active. Gradually, a more medically accurate program for sex education was adopted across the country, intended to decrease risk-taking behaviors among our youth.
Then there was a shift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N8nMzHaGcs
In case you weren't sure, that was the voice of Ronald Reagan in 1979. During his first presidential campaign, Reagan would woo the Christian Conservatives and eventually give them a seat at the political table. The Christian Right has been politically motivated and militant in the legislation of moral issues ever since, including in sex education.
So of course the debate over sex education changed in 1980. Reagan put it front and center and opened the floodgates with sensationalist claims.
In 1980, Reagan passed The Adolescent Family Life Act, or as it was otherwise known, the "Chastity Act". It promoted things like "self-discipline" and "chastity education". Eventually, legal challenges to the federal funding of religious education were successful, albeit 12 years later, and programs were instructed to remove direct references to religion. However, by this time, the programs had already been made available throughout the country for years and you can't put the worms back in that can.
And this is where the Abstinence-Only approach to school-based sex ed programs gains its traction. And by abstinence-only, we mean that abstinence from sexual activity until marriage is presented as the only morally permissible option and everything else, like condoms and birth-control, is either avoided or minimized. Abstinence-only programs often emphasize moral or religious values, presenting abstinence as the morally superior choice and framing premarital sex as morally wrong or unacceptable. These programs typically provide minimal to no information about contraception, condom use, STI prevention, and other aspects of sexual health beyond the message of abstinence. And when they do, they typically use fear tactics to deter young people from engaging in sexual activity, such as emphasizing the risks of pregnancy, STIs, and emotional consequences associated with premarital sex. Early in 2024, The Heritage Fund, a conservative think tank, openly advocated for a “feminist movement” to eradicate birth control, “returning the consequentiality to sex.” As if women having sex for pleasure are deserving of punishment when science has made it possible to minimize those specific risks. And thanks to this moral, regressive slant, the abstinence-only sex ed also tends to exclude or marginalize discussions of LGBTQ+ identities, relationships, and sexual health, reinforcing heteronormative perspectives. Well, no shit everybody’s turning to the internet for information.
And I’m not saying it’s right. People are essentially being fed a shit sandwich at school, at home, and at church when it comes to sex ed. So they turn to the internet for more shit sandwiches but at least those sandwiches are prettier and more engaging. It reminds me of a line from the movie The American President, that people get so desperate for something that they’ll cross the desert and when they don’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll drink the sand. If you remember that scene, then you know the line that follows is pretty scathing: “People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”
Sexual politics are making the natural progression of normal human behavior way more complicated than it needs to be.
The Fallout
Did you know that the CDC conducts a survey each year called the National Survey of Family Growth? And in this survey, they ask respondents about their sexual health perceptions. In their 2015 to 2017 survey, young adults ages 18 to 24 were asked to assess their feelings about the first time they had sex. You know what the numbers said?
71 percent of men said their first time was “wanted.”
Only 45 percent of women in that survey could say the same.
25 percent of men described “mixed feelings” about their first sexual experience. For women? That number is 50 percent.
The only question where both men and women reported similar numbers (that’s 4% of each group) was when they reported their first experience was unwanted. 924 females and 886 males responded to this survey over three years. If we do the math, that means there were about 36 young women and 35 young men who reported they didn’t want their first sexual experience.
Now, consider that in 2017, the number of men and women aged 18 to 24 in the United States was actually just under 31 million. Only 1,810 people responded to this survey. That’s not even 1%. That’s not even half of 1% of this age group. That’s 0.006% of that age cohort for 2017. Do you want to make yourself sad and hear the extrapolated data that makes this number more representative? It’s 1.24 million. That is 4 percent of 31 million. That is a lot of fucking people!
That is a lot of people who felt forced, coerced, or otherwise unprepared for their first sexual experience and that can be traumatic as hell. Can you imagine if there had been a space for them growing up where they could have received comprehensive education in a socially acceptable and accessible setting? Where the education could have included a conversation about consent? About grooming and predatory older adults?
I hate to keep throwing more history at you (I really don’t hate it, I actually love sharing information with people) but did you know that the First Lady of California admitted their abstinence-only approach failed in 1996. She cited some numbers about the rate of teen pregnancy but she also mentioned that despite the moms being teenagers, the fathers were much, much older. If you ever get a chance to watch the video, watch her face when she delivers that statistic. I think that piece of information made her angrier than anything else she talked about.
Because despite what the pearl-clutching, bible thumping group has said, comprehensive sexual education and having access to contraception does not make teens more promiscuous. What the data has found is it gives them the cognitive capacity to consider their circumstances, to slow things down and think, “Oh, I know where this is heading” and then decide, do I want this or do I need to stop this because I am not ready. When pleasure is part of the conversation, there’s greater consideration of mutual satisfaction, which can lead to more conscientious decision-making regarding contraception, protection against sexually transmitted infections, and other aspects of sexual health including consent, which can include waiting until someone is emotionally and physically ready. Teaching them to say no and resisting peer pressure because sex is just as much about their pleasure as it is about their partner’s.
As a sex therapist, when I talk about pleasure with my clients, we talk about empowerment and owning our sexual experiences, because it’s not just about saying No, it's also about saying Yes and knowing how each of those situations feels not just in our bodies but in our minds.
I have one anecdote to wrap up this episode.
In 2021, I bought my first new car. The lady who helped me at the dealership was so sweet and told me her whole life story because, as you probably know, buying a car takes forever. While she is filling out my information, she inevitably gets to the employment section and asks what I do. I tell her I am a therapist. She says, "Oh, like a massage therapist?" That is usually the first thing people assume so I smile and say, "No, a sex therapist." She didn't know what to say next, so she just said, "Oh!" and continued with the application. While we were waiting to hear back from the finance department, she blurted out of nowhere, "Being a sex therapist must be so interesting." I nodded and said it could be. She got quiet again. Then she said, "When they taught me about sex back home, they told me if I had sex before I was married I would die." I don't know what I was expecting her to tell me, but it certainly wasn't that. I apologized to her that that was the experience she was given. She added, "My first time, I was terrified because I'm sure a small part of me still believed that."
We can do better for our kids. They're going to get information, both good and bad, from somewhere. Why not give them a socially legitimized space to explore the topics of sex and sexuality? Or maybe we do like the Puritans and go back to public floggings. But seriously, wouldn't it be better to provide them with accurate, comprehensive education instead of leaving them to navigate the internet's rabbit holes? Let's empower them with knowledge and respect, not fear and ignorance.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Going Down on History.
For a list of resources and episode transcript, please visit my website www.knowledgeispleasure.com and feel free to check out all the other goodies in progress there. If you have any ideas for a future topic you’d like to have featured, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter. You can find me under the handle The Mindful Sexpert on both. Until next time my friends, stay curious and stay sexy.
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