bonsugar

I'm pissed, and once again, feel the need to rant.
So I talked to my best friend, Becka, last night. Our parents knew each other before we were born, and we grew up together in the same crazy fundamentalist church. My mom (who raised me subsequent to my dad's death in my early adolescence) isn't remotely religious, but Becka's family is still deeply ingrained in evangelical Christianity, although not in the same crazy church. I gave up on religion long ago, but Becka was later in falling away from it. In the past four or five years, she's started claiming her independence and thinking for herself.
So at the mature age of 22, she recently became the last of my friends to lose her virginity. She's been dating this guy for a few months, and she's in love with him, and it was a magical experience, I'm told. She still lives at home, and apparently her parents found out she's been staying with the boyfriend on the weekends. So, when they did so, they scolded her as if she was a child. Something about, 'when you get pregnant, who's gonna take care of you? We are! When you get stds, who's gonna take care of you? We are!' So they go on this tirade, and basically call her a slut ('So are you gonna just try on every guy who walks by?'). And tell her that while she's living at their house, she cannot engage in such activities.
And I'm thinking, how many of my friends are as good off as she is? She waited until she was ready, and lost her virginity with someone she cares about and feels safe with. And she's doing it in a safe, healthy, responsible way. With, I might add, no support or education from her parents. They should be proud that she's gone about it the way she has. Fuck. And instead, they choose to shame her.
So Beck called my mom and cried to her for a while. And my mom, being the fucking amazing mom she is (btw, we made up), told her that her parents were being narrow-minded, and she's really proud of Becka for being honest with them and choosing to think for herself. And she offered for Becka to live with them for a while, which she may do.
Anyway, I was talking to my mom about it and thinking how interesting this is. . . Anyone who's grown up in a religious or conservative environment has been taught to save sex for marriage. And so you grow up thinking that you'll get married or die a virgin. Then you get a little older and realize that nobody actually waits until they're married. So you do the deed, not really knowing what you're getting into (because the extent of your sex education is 'it's bad, don't do it'), and end up having some shitty circumstances. Then you have children, and because you made bad decisions about your sex life, you teach them to save sex for marriage. . . so they don't make the same mistakes you made. So basically, you're perpetuating this cycle of ignorance.
And I was fortunate enough to have a mother who made me go on birth control when I was 16 because she suspected I was having sex with my boyfriend. This, coming from someone whose own mother slapped her when she was 19 and came home for a holiday with a diaphragm. It's like, how lucky am I that I had a supportive role model who taught me to be safe and responsible about sex? And I'm absolutely in the minority. So so so many girls (and guys, too, I'm sure) aren't equipped with the knowledge to do it right. . . so you've got AIDS, herpes, unwanted pregnancies, abusive relationships galore to deal with. . . Bah!
This is why I want to change the world. I want to be an advocate for these people whose parents choose to keep them in the dark. This stuff makes me so angry.
Fuck.