Read the comments her friends posted to her original post too.
Impressively if naively open-minded, willing to consider that the religious organization might not be pressing its agenda because it took pains to exclude mention of religion itself.
So delightful, thankfully the will probably follow Tam to the FotF website where they will learn that the org always follows its agenda even when social engineering outside the context of religion. Those kids are whiz-bang, they won’t be fooled for long.
It’d only be amusing if it weren’t actually true. As it stands, a conservative christian organization is currently being allowed to proselytize and teach misinformation in this Singapore college as if it were valid relationship information. “Focus on the Fuckwits” as @teapot so elegantly put it are hell-bent on deploying a dominionist agenda in as much of public and private life as they can get away with (bad pun intended.)
I don’t find this situation funny at all, I find it alternately sad and frustrating that these students are being cheated out of a decent sex-ed class, and horrifying because these dominionists are gaining traction and need to be stopped before they implement the christian equivalent of sharia law.
The booklet states that “Many guys feel neither the ability nor the responsibility to stop the sexual progression with [girls]”, and thus they “need your help to protect both of you” (page 28).
I agree with AT’s point that this kind of book is insulting and indirectly supports rape culture, but this page and the cover are not quite as blatant as is made out. FotF is against premarital sex - they aren’t saying that it’s her fault if he forces himself on her, just that in the context of a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, he may be less willing to wait for marriage. The booklet takes it as read that this would be a Bad Thing, but she shouldn’t assume that he will be as convinced about that. Likewise, the front cover is not saying “she said no, but she really meant yes”. It’s the kind of folk knowledge that ‘guys and gals’ can’t understand each other because those crazy hormones get in the way that you’ll see on any number of Facebook posts. AT rightly points out that assuming that women are incomprehensible lessens the respect that you have for what they say and could lead to men assuming that she wasn’t really serious when she said no.
One of the big problems with this is that even if you agree with their opinions, they assign practically no responsibility to the guy. Listening to someone share their problems rather than immediately fixing them and sending a few texts to reassure someone that “we’re OK” is better than not doing that, but it’s really superficial and takes hardly any effort or commitment. The girl may be told that sex outside marriage has serious emotional consequences, but the guy is practically told that this is one of those hangups that girls have. She wants to feel more emotionally secure as the physical relationship develops, but a 30 second voicemail message should take care of that problem. He’s told that he should be careful about his “visual choices”, but that’s in the context that nobody would blame him if he did stare at another woman. I mean, what was she thinking by walking past while scantily clad? Rather than saying that men are particularly susceptible in this area and should show more responsibility, they put the responsibility on the woman - both infantilising the guy and asserting his dominance. If the woman is pressurised into having sex against this kind of advice, she is more likely to feel both violated and guilty, while he can excuse it because acting on sexual urges just shows that he’s a man with a pulse. The (s)he said/(s)he meant could have been a way to remove some misunderstandings in relationships, but it’s just one-sided and sounds like this. Even if you were to accept the conservative Evangelical perspective, this is all pretty terrible advice.
My upstairs neighbor blast Focus on the Family radio a couple mornings a week at like 7am. I can’t hear the words (except the couple of times I pressed my ear to the hot-water pipe to hear what they were moaning on about) just a bassy, incoherent mumbling (really, you need you 5.1 on to listen to this crap?). The dripping condescension and faux concern comes through loud and clear though, and the sad, bizarre background music is downright creepy. I can’t imagine subjecting myself to a daily thorough talking-down about the all the ways I could fail to make my husband faithful.
Needless to say I now have a 200 pack of the best earplugs on the market…
Probably the speaker is located in one room, and the listener not quite in another. The bassy notes is probably a side effect using a speaker that’s too small to reproduce a baritone without distorting into a mess of low frequency noise,
It’s amusing because we’re adults and know this shit for what it is. It’s not amusing when we remember this is being presented as fact by authority figures (teachers) to children in school, who presumably have to answer “correctly” on any tests in order to pass the class.
It helps me. My blood pressure stays lower if I don’t get all worked up over things that I can’t or won’t fix. If getting worked into a tizzy over every disturbing thing you see on the Internet makes you happy then god bless.
Rather than saying that men are particularly susceptible in this area and should show more responsibility, they put the responsibility on the woman - both infantilising the guy and asserting his dominance. If the woman is pressurised into having sex against this kind of advice, she is more likely to feel both violated and guilty, while he can excuse it because acting on sexual urges just shows that he’s a man with a pulse. The (s)he said/(s)he meant could have been a way to remove some misunderstandings in relationships, but it’s just one-sided and sounds like 