Sex and Misdirection

I came across a fascinating blog post about abstinence-till-marriage and the techniques that its advocates use to make true dialogue impossible.

The language is rougher than I like to see here at the Vigilance blog. Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna "edit" their prose. I'll pick and choose for our more sensitive readers. The argument is too important to ignore. (It turned out I didn't really have to cut out very much of it.)

If you don't want to be exposed to some street vernacular, don't click on the link, ok?

Tristero, who now writes at Hullabaloo blog, is commenting on a New York Times column:

In today's Times, Lauren Winner writes:

If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage...

Wha? As the father of a soon-to-be ten year old daughter, why on earth would I want my future teener not to have sex until she got a state license?

Of course, I don't want her to get pregnant until she and her partner-to-be are emotionally ready and prepared to raise a child in a loving environment. And certainly, I don't want her to get sick or make others sick. But "help" her to refrain from enjoying the pleasures of intimacy? I don't get it - why would I want to help with something so psychologically and morally crippling? Hullabaloo blog

My more politically sensitive colleagues are probably cringing right now -- this argument just might be too risky, maybe we'll be vulnerable if we say what everybody knows. We shouldn't admit, should we, that sex is a good thing, and that we hope our loved ones have wonderful intimate moments with someone they love?

Everyone agrees that kids should not be having sex, and that's because they're too young. It's not really because the state has not licensed them for it. Nobody really worries about unmarried adults remaining abstinent -- oh, you'll hear it, "abstinence until marriage," but wouldn't you like to ask some of these people who are saying this stuff whether they "saved it?" Maturity is required for making decisions about sexuality, and so we encourage putting it off until adulthood. Maturity is the issue, not marital status.

Oddly, you rarely see anyone actually make this case.

I skip a few raw lines here, and keep going:

... [P]lease note the rhetorical devices here, in particular the intense barrage of baseless assertions - the "we" assuming everyone agrees that so-called "premarital" sex is a bad thing (and notice how she witholds the specific qualifier, "Christians," until long after the "we" has worked its magic); the weird assumption that abstinence is a sensible thing to inflict on a kid, a strange assumption even if you do think that teen sex is not necessarily a good idea; and the bizarre delusion that not having sex until officially licensed flies in the face of official values (see Virgin, The Forty-Year Old, and the hundreds upon hundreds of slasher films where the teen couple that just had sex inevitably gets dismembered in all sorts of gruesome ways ).

This is all of a piece with modern rightwing propaganda style, to pack as much loopy nonsense as possible into every sentence. This makes it exceedingly difficult to confront and rebut, but not because there's a solid argument to "engage." Firstly, the sheer amount of garbage that needs to be cleared away all but requires, as it does here, a response longer than the original winger passage. Secondly, the whackiness of many of the secondary assertions makes it extremely easy to get distracted onto tangents - for example, into a debate on exactly what is meant by "countercultural." Thirdly, the effect is literally paralyzing and intimidating. To read the word "we" in this context stops us (heh heh) dead in our tracks - huh? - and then "we" wonder what's wrong with us that "we" aren't focused on helping us make our kids' teen years as miserable as they possibly can be ("and no, little Ethel, no masturbation, either, that's a sin, and I really don't like you smooching little Lucy, either. You're too old now.").

This is some fast-moving stuff here.

I have noticed a few comments on the Internet recently, where people have stopped to question the anti-sex position that gets us into the awkward position of rejecting reality. Like, just a sec -- sex is a good thing.

This packing tactic was, if not pioneered by him, surely brought to a new level of obnoxiousness by Robert Novak many, many years ago, when he would ask a Democrat a trick question filled with screwy righty assumptions that simply would have to be dealt with before the question even could be addressed, thus enabling Novak to accuse the hapless Dem of wimpiness and evasion.

Finally, notice the appropriation and inversion of liberal/lefty rhetoric. We wish to help our teenager. We are the counterculture, sticking it to The Man. This is very common and very old. The early pro-coathanger activists would adapt Beatles songs and old 60's protest chants ("All we are saying, is give life (sic) a chance") and Lauren Winner is steeped in that tactic. And what are "we" gonna do in retaliation? It's not as if there are that many compelling rightwing songs around to rip off ("The Ballad of the Brie Ballet," maybe? Nah...).

Lauren Winner's op-ed is full of it - rightwing rhetoric, that is. Rhetoric that comes so naturally even to mediocrities like the inaptly named Winner they just speak it as a matter of course. Liberals and Dems have nothing comparable and they need to develop it. That's why those of us who've been shouting about rhetoric and framing long before Lakoff got famous insist that yes, ideas but also yes, you gotta talk real good, too. Liberals have many great ideas, but they matter nought if they're tongue-tied.

I think I disagree with Tristero's last conclusion -- I don't think our side needs to learn to call names and hijack reason in the service of ideology. We just need to keep our noses down, like bloodhounds, and sniff out the path of good sense, following it to a rightful and logical conclusion. True, we need to frame and define the issues, but it won't serve our viewpoint to do what groups like the CRC do -- taking things out context, misconstruing, pairing things that don't belong together in order to make one look bad, focusing on irrelevant details, making up facts and theories -- we don't need to do those things.

I don't want to win the argument by confusing the issues hopelessly and then storming out of the room in an indignant huff. That might satisfy some people, who are out to win at any cost, but in the long run you have to take these questions seriously, and that means you will have to discuss the issues directly and honestly. So if anything, the people on our side need to concentrate on returning to the issues. We need to decapitate unreasonable sloganeering and Swift-Boat emotional appeals before they drag us down, need to cut them off quickly and focus on the core arguments.

There are two important themes in Tristero's post: first, an acknowledgement that sex is a good thing which we hope our children will grow up to enjoy; second, an analysis of rightwing rhetoric that hits the nail on the head. We have seen plenty of this stuff in our Montgomery County sex-ed controversy, people saying anything at all to make anybody who supports overhauling the curriculum look bad. We have seen the curriculum wording twisted, we have seen personal attacks, rhetorical deceit, misdirection, outright lies. You can't argue against that sort of thing. Instead, you just have to overwhelm it. You have to ignore it and go to the actual issues. Maybe you look like you're only talking to yourself, since you can't engage the other side in reasonable discussion. Maybe you do, but you've still got to do it, you have to put the reasonable argument out there for reasonable people to think about.