Abstinence by Protyus A. Gendher
Abstinence
Abstinence Abstinence Abstinence
I read this shit and none of it makes sense
Because nobody I know is doing this
I’m pretty sure most “girls” want to see a penis
But in my gendered reality
This lesson, this teacher, this culture would make a monster out of me
For failing to be someone controlled
Someone who didn’t roll over and do what they’re told
Why can’t a good girl be sexually healthy?
Every word in Sex Ed tells a story
This would have us think that the perfect lady
Keeps her legs closed until her wedding
And only then is she allowed
Because her ownership was vowed
But for some people this isn’t even a choice
And why give each gender a different voice?
Boys become men when they start having sex
And more status with each girl that comes up next
But by virtue of my ovaries
I’m supposed to suppress my natural biology
Because they assigned me “girl”
As they become more, we become less
Their gain is at our expense
And that’s what is taught to be natural and right
So much for living in a time of enlightenment
I know in times before there was a fear
Of babies out of wedlock, the message is clear
But this social indoctrination
Has nothing to do with sexual education
Or healthy bodies, relationships, and minds
So why do they make us all waste our time
Learning this obsolete moral code
With only one option and only one road
And they preach this to us as if everyone could
Make all the right choices and be perfect and good
But there are some people erased and ignored
When this classroom diatribe is endured
Consider for a moment a person like me
Who sees a life full of possibility
And was taught that they could go take life and grab it
And decide what they want, and work for it, and have it
Does it really seem like such a bad thing
That I don’t envision children in my future setting?
And I don’t see a man that I always concede to
Doing first everything he needs me to?
And marriage isn’t appealing either
But I’ll come back to this point later
So, what of me then, a withered-up shrew
All alone till my balls turn blue?
I know I still have sexual needs
Shouldn’t I be able to fulfill these?
And why would this make me any more bad
Than the boys we knowingly raise to be cads?
Besides in order for them to gain status
Don’t they have to find a girl to give it up gratis?
Why should sex have to be attached
To all of this meaning being enacted
By others
And what of my safety and the safety of others
Who may someday become fathers and mothers
Shouldn’t we focus on reducing the dangers
From having sex with friends and strangers
So we’re all safer and better off
Not ending our lives with an STD cough?
And even the girl four seats down the row from me
Who really does want to fall in love and be married
Shouldn’t somebody tell her about
All the choices she’s living without?
Even if she gets married at eighteen
And manages never to give a man entry
Before the time appointed by god, or these classes
Or governmental trespasses
Shouldn’t she know that she has more alternatives
Than to postpone motherhood though marital abstinence?
Shouldn’t she know all of the ways
That she can plan her life anyway?
Now consider another unmade
But I’m sure the religious right prefers it this way
The boy who sits in the back of class
With the far-too-stylish sweater and slacks
He’s never going to have the sex that he needs
To become a person by performing the deeds
In this lesson on morality
Cloaked as sexuality
But this book says nothing of men with men
And the teacher threatened to send
Me to the office when I asked out loud
Why queers have been excluded from the crowd
And so the message that he gets to hear
Just like me, as sexual queers
Is that we don’t count, and won’t get to be people
Unless we play by their rules, that’s it, it’s that simple
And if the rules here vary from state to state
Then why is this absolute enough to perpetuate
The stigma against those who can’t get hitched
Unless their lucky enough to be rich
Or live in a state more forward than ours
But he lives here, so to play it smart
He keeps his mouth shut hoping no one will notice
Or question his behaviors and motives
This education filled with binaries
Concerned with pomp and finery
And so many without ID
Erased in prescriptive words of the mighty
Those in transition, fluid, and flux
Who will never fit in someone else’s box
And there’s another who sits in the corner
Already physically distanced from others
The words on these pages claim they never had
A chance to be a whole person to begin with
The words written here say they’re damaged and wrecked
In a way that makes them discarded, wretched
And they never even had a shot
But the teacher’s happy with it, “so what?”
So what, if they’ve been sucking dick since they were five
So what, if that’s one of their first memories of being alive
It’s easier to pretend that they don’t exist
And that everything’s fine, if we just practice abstinence.
Interested? Go back to the beginning! Start Here
Leave a Reply