Children

Jehovah’s Witnesses Counsel Teens About Their Virginity As If Talking to Infants

As with most fundamentalist religions, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in sex before marriage. This includes all forms of sexual behavior, including oral sex, touching another person under their clothes, and the like.

A person can be strongly counseled and restricted from certain authority and other privileges, or outright disfellowshipped (excommunicated) if they engage in this type of behavior. This includes teenagers, no matter how challenging it may be for them.

To supposedly “help” teenagers maintain their chastity, the website of Jehovah’s Witnesses, jw.org, recently released a worksheet aimed toward teens called, “Strengthen Your Convictions: Virginity.”

Let me repeat that; it’s a worksheet.

An actual worksheet where teenagers can write out their answers to incredibly dumbed-down scenarios and questions like, “Most young people who engage in premarital sex regret it afterward. Why do you think that is the case?” and, “Do you act on each impulse the instant that it wells up inside you?

Capture virgin

A worksheet to help teens make grownup, mature choices, or a comic book for children? It’s a bit difficult to tell.

Source, Please

The questions in this worksheet are bad enough; I suppose they’re meant to get teenagers thinking, but they’re so overly simplistic and leading that they don’t actually challenge the intellect, or ask for any type of actual thought. The question about “acting on impulses” is just Yes or No; it doesn’t talk about examples of what this means, why it’s good to resist certain impulses, the advantages of thinking before acting, and so on.

Note the other question above; it says that most young people who engage in premarital sex regret it afterward, but then offers no studies to back up this point, no statements from experts to lend it any credibility. It just asserts this fact, which is a way of telling someone what to think. The idea is planted in a teen’s head that “most” premarital sex is regretful, and that’s that.

For Teens?

Expecting or assuming teens will write out their thoughts about sexual activity is also downright insulting; what teenager is going to sit down and actually write their answers to questions about their impulses and premarital sex, like an obedient little child? Most teenagers I know hardly have the attention span to do real homework for school; they’re not going to sit alone in their rooms and actually write, word-for-word, their thoughts on sex, relationships, and impulses.

What happens to the worksheet after they’re done; do they get a gold star if they put down all the “right” answers? Is it put on the refrigerator along with their history test? Do the parents get to review it?

The actual worksheet itself is also bothersome and offensive. The graphics used are very cartoonish and something I would expect to see geared toward a 10-year-old. Some might point out that children that young can be sexually active, or at least curious about sexual behavior, but the worksheet depicts kids much older; they’re in cars, drinking alcohol, and obviously older than ten or eleven.

Despite the apparent audience for which the worksheet is intended, it’s set out like an immature comic, with cartoon figures and text boxes that have no more than two sentences each, something that would appeal to the short attention spans of pre-teens.

Insulting

The ridiculous nature of the worksheet itself can be laughed at endlessly, but there is a reason to seriously consider the approach of a worksheet meant for teenagers about something as important as sex. Teens become sexually active because they have sexual feelings, are curious, and because it’s fun and feels good; I’m sure we can all agree on that. However, let’s be honest; teens might also try sexual behavior because it makes them feel like a grownup.

Teenagers have an instinctive need to establish their own maturity and identity, separate from their parents. To prove to themselves, and to others, that they are no longer children, they might act out, rebel against their parent’s rules, and do things that are usually reserved for adults.

Don’t take my word for it; read this site, written by Liz Birch, a licensed psychotherapist, who discusses the issue. Also, note this quote, “It is the very nature of adolescents to push boundaries,” from Aspen Education, written by educators. (See how easy it is to find actual sources for assertions?)

teens 2While teenagers are not yet adults and shouldn’t be afforded the rights and privileges of an adult, and it may be shortsighted to think you should always talk to them like adults, talking to teens as if they’re still little children may be just as ineffective. If teens feel insulted, or that the adult talking to them “just doesn’t get it,” they’ll tune them out, or even be offended.

This can be especially true of teens today, who live with mass communication at their fingertips. These ones have access to more information with the internet than probably their parents ever had in the best of libraries, meaning that they may be more savvy to all sorts of facts, figures, research studies, data, foreign cultures, and so much more. Talking to them as if they’re children who need the world explained to them might be insulting and grossly unnecessary.

A teen may also be so savvy that he or she would immediately pick up on the lack of a credible source, just as I did above; they may even start wondering at how that compares to what they hear from kids at school who outright brag about having sex. In turn, they may become very skeptical about the truthfulness of everything that’s asserted, and may even realize that they’re being told what to think, not being asked to actually think.

It Happened to Me

This worksheet provided by Jehovah’s Witnesses for teens made me think of a similar situation, and it has to do with makeup. (Bear with me.) A few years back, I ordered from an online store a box of concealer from a somewhat upscale makeup brand (for the guys, concealer is a type of thicker makeup that you add to troublesome spots).

When it arrived, it was in a box that resembled a little girl’s diary, complete with an engraving that looked like a lock for the book. On the inside “flap” or cover of the box was the statement, “this diary belongs to,” over a mirror.

confessions_concealaholic_bLet me explain. If a woman is old enough to buy makeup online and needs a box of concealer for the shadows under her eyes, chances are she’s too old to want a pink diary with her name on it. (That felt good, getting that out.) A woman who is old enough to earn the money needed to buy this brand of makeup is typically going to be old enough to hold down a real job.

Grownup, adult women don’t always want to be pretty-pretty princesses, all excited about their diaries, but may regularly delve into intelligent concepts like science, law, education, politics, business, and the like. If you want to do something unique and original for your packaging, that’s great, but this didn’t come in a mini briefcase or history book; it came in a pink diary. With a heart. And a mirror inside so I could get all excited about my own stupid face.

This concept of treating grownup, adult women like little girls is so infuriating to me, a woman who works full-time, manages a home all on her own, and who runs a website like this, that I actually tossed out the entire box. If that company wasn’t going to show respect to me, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with their product.

Think about how this might apply to the virginity worksheet provided by Jehovah’s Witnesses. They want teens to make mature, adult choices about something as mature and adult as sexual behavior, but they present their message as if they’re talking to someone just out of infancy.

They want teens to be smart about sex, but present their message in the most stupid, dumbed-down way they possibly could. They don’t acknowledge how intelligent and savvy teens might be today, or show them any respect, but start right off the bat as if teens are virtually illiterate and have the comprehension of grade school children.

The message on the worksheet itself may have some merit and value, but it forgets to respect the intended audience. Just like that box of expensive concealer that insulted me before I even opened it, this worksheet insults teens with its presentation alone. This makes me wonder if they, too, might not toss it out before they even consider the contents.

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9 replies »

  1. I could almost appreciate the simple, childish tone if they were genuinely trying to reach out to pre-teens with fact-based sex and relationships education. I feel like we start too late with children in that regard. However, it’s supposed to be the beginning of a constant and evolving dialogue that’s adjusts accordingly as the child matures physically and emotionally. A worksheet is laughably inadequate.

    To say nothing of the ideas inherent to the religion that attempt to stifle and tamp down a person’s sense of autonomy over their own body, which has a lot to do with how they are able to respond in the moment.

  2. Tossing out the concealer is ironic. Isn’t it? Or am I misunderstanding you? Did you actually throw out the product with the box?

    • I pulled everything out of the box and tossed away the box, then tossed the concealer since it was so cakey anyway. The entire experience was a fail. Poor product, poor packaging. How can you make the greatest mascara in the world and the worst concealer? Oh well…

  3. Always love your stuff, Alex! The dumbing down of a worksheet is typical for JWs. My personal feeling for the reason they write for kindergartners is that childish banter is much easier to translate – much easier to reach those without an education – just as they are doing in poorer countries and the only places they are gaining membership.

    • I wondered about that too, if they’re not thinking of the third world countries they need to reach. Interesting though that the illustrations only depict white kids, steering wheel on the left side, etc.

  4. Must remember to never mess with you, but you are a realist… They have to dumb down their stuff. How dumb were we for once thinking they had the ‘truth’. Collecting old book helped me realise it was all a bunch of crap, i read in old jw books that the pyramids were gods witnesses, when i asked an elder to explain he said “the truth gets brighter as the day gets nearer…” Oh I see , you can teach bunk then dismiss it with a cute phrase… HOw dumb we were.

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