Focus on the Family’s workshop is sexist and promotes rape culture

From ‘Christian charity defends workshop which Hwa Chong student called sexist’, 7 Oct 2014, article by Pearl Lee, ST

A Christian charity that conducts sexuality and relationship education workshops in schools has defended its programmes, after a student said it promoted gender stereotypes. Student Agatha Tan, a first year junior college student at Hwa Chong Institution, had on Friday attended a workshop in school, run by Focus On The Family Singapore, a pro-family Christian charity.

…She referred to a booklet given to students, which said girls need to feel loved, can be emotional and have a “deep need for her boyfriend to find her beautiful”. The booklet also said boys are “visual”, and that a “guy can’t not want to look”, and they have a desire to “visually linger on and fantasise about the female body”.

Ms Tan said the booklet “paints girls as hopelessly dependent beings who are incapable of surviving without guys”. She called it an “extremely sexist view” that “trivialises girls’ problems” and “serves as a foundation for the further boosting of the male ego”.

…But Focus On The Family Singapore – approved by the Ministry of Education to run sexuality education programmes in schools – said on Tuesday that the workshop that Ms Tan attended is not a sexuality education programme. “It is designed to be a relationship programme to help young people unravel the world of the opposite sex, uncover the truths of love and dating, and reveal what it takes to have healthy and meaningful relationships,” said its head of corporate communications, Ms Vicky Ho.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/education/story/christian-cha...

In Agatha’s lengthy rant about how sexist the FotF booklet is, she accuses the programme of ‘promoting rape culture’ in school, and detests the use of the word ‘gal’, which makes the intelligent, modern woman sound like a dim-witted floosy. Agatha comes across as a worthy candidate for AWARE membership, a young, aspiring, independent woman who would intimidate the average jock who’s enslaved by raging hormones and makes dick jokes all day long. Alas, mainstream media is full of gender stereotypes, from men losing their minds over a woman’s perfume in TV ads, to ‘gals’ in sexy sports attire seducing men in a SAFRA club. Surely it’s an exaggeration to cry ‘rape’ everytime the female form is objectified to sell a product, whether it’s a gym membership, a sportscar or a Christian workshop for young adults.

We hardly ever take such distortions of gender identity seriously, that is until an organisation like FotF claims to be one of the leading authorities in adolescent relationships and starts to drill into innocent young minds a half-baked, pseudo-scientific account of what today’s young women, and men, want. Instead of admitting that their material is mostly a sweeping, lazy generalisation of how boys and girls behave, FotF has the cheek to maintain that what they’re dishing out are the actual TRUTHS of love and dating, when these are in fact tired cliches masked as sage advice, stuff which read like rehashed Aunt Aggie columns right out of the 60s, when young ladies are supposed to curtsey before a line dance and boys only grow testicles after learning how to ride a horse like a swashbuckler.

Here’s my breakdown of the relationship ‘tips and tricks’ which FotF advocates for a ‘healthy and meaningful’ relationship:

1. Reverse psychology always works if you’re a woman. If  she says ‘sure..go ahead’, you walk away at your own risk. If she says ‘I’m not upset’, she actually refraining from kicking you square in the balls.

2. Shouting gets your point across. e.g the interrobang in ‘ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME ?!’ It’s OK if you’re a girl, you’re ‘supposed’ to be an emotional, needy creature with the privilege to boss your man around.

 3. Believe everything a man says. Especially when he says ‘I love you’. Because he means it. Obviously.