Ladies to listen to.

Amanda and Deborah both have entries up commenting on a recent article at American Prospect. The article argued that yet another reason why setting kids on an abstinence-only sex education course doesn't work is, As Amanda writes,

...abstinence-only education is not only damaging to kids’ health and mental well-being, but it’s also not helping the problem of rape, and may be even making it worse.

...teaching that men want sex and women want love but don’t want sex means that young men figure there’s no such thing as an enthusiastic “yes” to sex. If men think all women are reluctant to have sex at all points in time, then that means that they think sex is basically always rape. If you think all sex is rape because women never reallly want sex—as this abstinence-only curricula subtly teaches—then you think that rape is socially acceptable.

Deborah expands on that point.

That’s vitally important, and it’s an essential element of date-rape and of disbelieving rape victims. “No” only means “no” if “yes” means “yes.”

Both entries have too many good paragraphs to excerpt here. Read the whole thing(s).