The abstinence scam.

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Position: Flip Side

If things are not working out as planned, you might want to consider a career in the expanding field of abstinence education. It's generously subsidized by the federal government, and has been since President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill of 1996, which provided abstinence training for impoverished women (though not, alas, for him).

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There have been men in my life who were naturals at abstinence training without the slightest formal preparation. One renounced dental hygiene. Another developed a passion for Frank Sinatra. In each case, I embraced abstinence without any regret. In yet another case, marriage alone was enough to induce that sanctified state.

Most people, though, require a bit of training to get into the abstinence training business, so I went to the website of WAIT (which is an acronym for Why Am I Tempted?) Training to look at the sample curriculum. It contained a lot about love, marriage, and STDs. None of it was terribly technical, until I got to the part about how to explain the difference between the sexes, where the following demonstration was suggested: "Bring to class frozen waffles and a bowl of spaghetti noodles without sauce. Using these as visual aids, explain how research has found that men's brains are more like the waffle, in that their design allows them to more easily compartmentalize information. Women's minds, on the other hand, are more interrelated due to increased brain connectors."

Maybe my spaghetti brain wasn't up to this challenge, but it did seem to imply that sex would involve a mixing of waffles and pasta, possibly with maple syrup for lubrication. Disgusting, yes, but no doubt a surefire recipe for abstinence.

My next step was to call Joneen Krauth-Mackenzie, executive director of WAIT, to further pin down the requirements for becoming an abstinence trainer. Her program admits only college-educated people, but they can be of any age or sex.

"Do they have to be abstinent themselves?" I asked.

Not at all, she assured me, proudly confessing to being "like an animal" with her husband.

How about gays?

Well, yes, they could teach abstinence to gay teenagers.

So--no barriers at all, and you can become a Certified Abstinence Trainer...