When it comes to the laws of attraction, Janie Fredell has all the answers the young women of Harvard University are looking for!

“Some women get weekly artificial tans and pedicures, revealed faithfully every Friday night by mini-skirts and stilettos,” she wrote in The Crimson, Harvard’s daily newspaper, in March 2007. “[But] I have found a much simpler means of garnishing male attention—abstinence... In addition to preserving health and happiness, virginity is extremely alluring.”

Fredell, set to graduate in ’09, is a member of True Love Revolution, an organization based out of Harvard whose website claims to “promote respectful and open-minded discussion of issues relating to abstinence, sex and marriage.” Fredell cut her abstaining teeth her freshman year, as she told The New York Times Magazine just last March. Confounded by the liberal atmosphere of Harvard, Fredell began rebelling against “a culture that says sex is totally O.K.” Seeing her fellow student body beginning to know and appreciate the capabilities thereof, so to speak, made Fredell alarmed. “The hookup culture is so absolutely all-encompassing,” she explained to Time’s Randall Patterson. “It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!”

TLR is one of a seemingly growing number of so-called chastity clubs, focusing its efforts on teenagers across the country, espousing the virtues of self-denial. On the group’s homepage, the words “THE REVOLUTION” are displayed in big bold letters at the top. “We strive to present another option to our peers regarding sex-related issues, endorsing ideas of abstinence and chastity as a positive alternative for ethical and health reasons,” it says on the site. The website also offers red t-shirts with the words “Liberté Egalité Chasteté” printed on them.

“By not engaging in sex, abstinent couples seek out and discover fun and creative ways to express love and intimacy,” TLR opines in its knuckle-biter of an FAQ section. In other words, the best way to feel sexually gratified is to not have sex at all.

The no-sex propaganda machine has been turning out an aggressive campaign in recent years to ensure that young people don’t learn about one of life’s most wonderful experiences. Outspoken participants like Pam Stenzel, whose vitriol you just have to hear to believe, have been screaming at kids for years to ignore their instincts as mammals. But the latest scheme is to make young adults think abstinence is “cool.” Abstinence posters have been popping up on billboards and in cafeterias (see here, here and here), and along with abstinence clubs, there are now even organized events akin to abstinence proms. One such event is the Braveheart Purity Ball where young girls go to a formal event with their fathers as their dates. This is billed as a bonding experience, where girls learn how to honor their daddy’s wishes to stay pure, and fathers learn how to show their daughters they love them by proving they are their protectors. You can just see hundreds of William Wallace wannabes lined up on the dance floor, clad in kilts and war paint, ready to scream out, “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our daughters to bed!”

The awful consequences of abstinence-only propaganda are many and varied. The thing they seem to have in common, however, is that they don’t work. They don’t work in preventing teen pregnancy, they don’t work in preventing the spread of STDs, and they especially don’t work in preventing young adults from engaging in sexual activity in the first place.

Take for example that just last month a study by federal health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that a quarter of young women have at least one of four common sexually transmitted diseases. These are human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis. Among those infected, 15 percent had more than one of the diseases. It was the first national study of its kind. The president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, claimed that these findings point out the dire need for comprehensive sex education in the United States.

“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Richards said. “And teenage girls are paying the real price.”

Richards is not, by the way, exaggerating the numbers. From 1996 to 2006, Congress has managed to funnel over $1.5 billion dollars, both through federal and state matching funds to abstinence-only programs, according to nonewmoney.org. “Beginning in 1981 under the Reagan Administration, the federal government has consistently supported abstinence-only-until-marriage programs despite a lack of research proving that they are effective,” as it says on the website.

Today’s democratically controlled Congress, instead of changing direction on failed policy, is pushing for more money to fund abstinence-only programs—$28 million more. MSNBC’s Dan Abrams cited a USA Today report with some eye-opening numbers. Three-quarters of teens have premarital sex by age 20. Fourteen percent of teens have reported having sex with four or more people. Abrams, after wondering why a government program that didn’t work would still receive such massive funding, mocked the pro-abstinence position by covering his eyes and saying “Oh, please tell me they’re not gonna do it. I hope they don’t do it.” 

Abrams’ guest, Valerie Huber, executive director of National Abstinence Education Association, tried to respond that more and more teens were remaining celibate, citing a study that claimed the approach really was working. When Abrams asked her who the study was conducted by, she begrudgingly admitted “Virginia’s Abstinence Education program,” at which point Abrams pointed out that Virginia is one of the states that, along with New York, have recently refused federal funding for abstinence-only education. Abrams’ other guest, Air America Radio’s Rachel Madow, smiled and said, “Whenever I evaluate myself I turn out to be doing awesome as well.”

Madow then turned serious and told Abrams, “If abstinence programs are being used to substitute for programs that actually give people usable information about contraception, STDs and HIV, then they are killing people. They are not just expensive, they are deadly.”

Abstinence-only programs fail due in no small part to their utterly unrealistic goals, especially with regard to delaying young people from having sex. Remember when you were young? Do you remember how not horny you were? Remember how all you thought about was how much you didn’t want to have sex? Right. Neither do we.

The fact is the average age of a person’s first marriage is 27 for men and 25 for women, compared to the fewer than 7 percent of men and 20 percent of women ages 18 to 50 that were actually virgins when they were married. What’s more, just 10 percent of adult men and 22 percent of adult women report their first sexual intercourse was with their spouse.

It’s no surprise either then that young people, regardless of what is being taught to them, are not abstaining from sex.  An April 2007 study commissioned by Congress showed that students involved in abstinence-only programs were just as likely to engage in sexual activity as their peers who did not participate in such programs. Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. conducted interviews with more than 2,000 teens in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia. Roughly 1,200 of those teens had participated in abstinence-only education programs only four to six years prior to the study. Noteworthy as well is a case of a female high schooler who became part of Silver Ring Thing, a youth abstinence program for teens that supposedly “understand that abstinence until marriage is not only God's plan for their lives, but also the best and only way to avoid the harmful physical and emotional effects of premarital sex.” She lost her virginity two weeks later.

Teens who take the virginity pledge also put themselves at high risk for STDs. Many such teens engage in sexual activity that does not involve intercourse. They are more likely than other teens, according to a study by The Journal of Adolescent Health, to engage in oral and anal sex, thinking that only vaginal intercourse qualifies as loosing one’s virginity. Such teens are less likely to use condoms, thus making their risk of contracting STDs very high. This would explain why pledging teens and non-pledging teens have similar rates of infection.

HBO’s Bill Maher, never one for subtlety, weighed in about the logistics of abstinence-only education on his show Real Time in April 2005. “Taking the pledge… makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex and four times more likely to allow anal. Which leads me to an important question: Where were these pledges when I was in high school?” said Maher. “Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian right actually got their precious daughters to say to their freshly scrubbed boyfriends, ‘Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass. And then I'll blow you, I promise.’ Well, at least [they’re] really thinking outside the box,” said Maher. Maher’s analysis, though crude, does debunk conservative myths regarding the social conditioning of young people.
A less spoken of but equally as destructive result of abstinence-only education is a perpetuated negative stigma against women, sometimes described as the “Virgin-Whore Dichotomy.” Women throughout history have typically been held to preordained standards of “purity” and “sanctity.” Those that deviated from them would be reviled as harlots.

In an interview with Alternet’s Jessica Valenti in 2006, Martha Kempner of Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), says that abstinence-only programs are less about education and more about enforcing gender roles. “This is a social agenda masquerading as teen pregnancy prevention,” she says. “Saying that the most important thing you can do is get married and have children isn't the most empowering message.”
 
SIECUS has been monitoring abstinence-only education for some time, and according to Valenti, what they are finding is disturbing. “The shame and fear-based teachings are chockfull of sexist stereotypes, outdated notions of gender roles and even dangerous messages about sexual assault.” The responsibility is put almost exclusively on the females, she writes. The curriculum basically teaches that boys can’t help themselves be so sexually aggressive, so it’s the girl’s “job” to prevent them from having any. Sex Respect, an abstinence-until-marriage group, says that “because they generally become aroused less easily, females are in a good position to help young men learn balance in relationships by keeping intimacy in perspective.” The workbook goes on to even warn students that “a young man's natural desire for sex is already strong due to testosterone…[and] females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasize about sex as well.” Valenti also reveals this little nugget from the workbook; that Sex Respect urges girls not to “tease” boys into sexual wrongdoing. “A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing.”

Finally, while Janie Fredell explains that “it takes a strong woman to be abstinent,” can’t it be said that it takes an even stronger woman to buck the societal norms men have used to impose controls on them?

Lena Chen, a “student sex blogger” as the Times described her, told the magazine: “For me, being a strong woman means not being ashamed that I like to have sex.” Chen, who writes the blog sexandtheivy.com, debated Fredell on the merits of abstention versus indulgence in front of about a hundred students at Harvard’s Winthrop House residence, and explained to the Times that “to say that I have to care about every person I have sex with is an unreasonable expectation. It feels good! It feels good!” Chen seemed to describe her unapologetic views of sexuality as a form of empowerment, adding “the culture reacts differently when women make the same decisions men do.”

Shelby Knox, a sex-abstainer-turned-youth-activist who speaks to young people across the nation about comprehensive sex education responded to Fredell’s column on The Huffington Post. Knox wrote: “What confounds [me] is that although Janie rails against the stereotypes and sexual double standards imposed upon women, she aligns herself with a movement that not only accepts but also relies upon those stereotypes to convince young people to join up.” Knox believes Fredell, along with the rest of the abstinence-only movement, may think it’s helping young women by shielding them from promiscuity, but it ends up only hurting them by offering no perspective on the real source of their oppression. Knox feels the best way to help young people is not the force-feeding of ethical standards, but education.

“Sex is inevitable… so it seems far more proactive to challenge outdated and harmful notions about each gender's relationship to sex, not necessarily with sexual activity, but by educating both men and women toward positive, healthy expressions of sexuality that neither subjugate nor deny the humanity of either partner,” she wrote.

Disease, unwanted pregnancy, billions of dollars in wasted tax-payer dollars, and gender bigotry. It doesn’t sound very “alluring” now, does it?