imagine that you have a four year old and a really beautiful giant chocolate cake
and you put the cake in front of the kid and that’s it you dont give her any plates or any utensils you just sort of set the cake down in front of the kid and then tell her not to eat it
and the reason you tell her not to eat it is because she’ll get messy or she’ll eat too much and get sick but instead of telling her that you just sort of look at her and then go ‘yeah’ and walk away and leave her to her own devices
and then obviously the minute you walk out of the room she’s begins that cake i mean come on it’s chocolate and beautiful and yeah you told her not to eat it but you know what fuck that noise it’s a perfectly good cake why not
so she digs in but you didnt give her anything just the cake ( and what a beautiful cake it is ) so she just sort of digs in with her hands and she gets it everywhere and then eventually she’s eaten so much that she gets sick and you come back in a couple of minutes later and she’s there sprawled on her chair with cake all over her face and floor and feeling like she’s going to vomit and you shake your head at that four year old and go ‘i did all i could this is all her fault now’
that’s abstinence-only sex education
And this is a great metaphor because it also explains why sex education leads to higher rates of abstinence
If you just put cake in front of kids and go “cake is BAD FOR YOU DON’T EAT IT”, well of course they’re gonna eat it
But if you explain that it’s important to eat cake in moderation with a healthy spectrum of foods or else it can make them sick and give them forks and knives and lessons on the four food groups and the food pyramid and remind them that if they’re not ready to exert the kind of self-control that cake requires it’s okay to eat their vegetables now and have cake for dessert later because really cake is always delicious, then a hell of a lot more of them will make the informed decision not to eat cake right now
(Source: senuiq, via baconbeernboobs)
