#FastTailedGirls: Hashtag has a painful history behind it
OPINION - Fass is nothing more than a synonym for whore. Nothing more than a polite calling card, a proverbial welcome mat plastered on a child’s reputation that invites public scorn, objectification or, worse, tacit approval for the physical sexual exploitation of minors...
Thanks, in part, to a more aggressive public health policy that includes the proliferation of sex education and more pervasive use of birth control, pregnancy among teenagers in the U.S. have been quietly dropping over the last 20 years. “The short answer is that it is a combination of less sex and more contraception,” Bill Albert, the chief program officer of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, told TIME magazine.
That’s the good news.
But the statistics among younger teens girls are damning. Pregnancy rates, while declining for most teens, are rising sharply among younger teens. Sexual activity among teens age 10 to 14 is increasing at alarming rates. And for black girls those numbers are even higher. It is no coincidence that, given the lower rate of contraception usage among younger teens– especially in impoverished communities where cost and limited sex education are factors—unintended pregnancy is also more prevalent.
More damning still is that nearly 40 percent of all children born to mothers who are 15 and younger are fathered by men between the ages of 20 and 29. According to Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization devoted to advancing reproductive and sexual health among adolescents, the age gap is usually 5 to 10 years.
The social and financial costs are extraordinary. Those young mothers and their children are more likely to become dependent on welfare, drop out of high school and engage in illicit drug use. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 50 percent of teen mothers earn a high school diploma by age 22. Their children are more likely to struggle academically, have more health problems, be incarcerated at some time during adolescence, give birth as a teenager, and face unemployment as young adults.
“It takes one trifling “man” to impregnate a child, then abandon her to raise the baby on her own. But she gets shamed? #FastTailedGirls,” I tweeted.
In a study reported by Advocates for Youth, “nearly 66 percent reported non-voluntary sexual activity; 44 percent reported having been raped. The average age of first rape was 13.3, with the rapist’s average age being 22.6.”
“About 74 percent of women who had sexual intercourse before age 14 and 60 percent of those who had sex before age 15 report having had sex involuntarily at some point in their lives.”
It is time to break this cycle, time to break the silence. It is time that we stop shaming children and stop celebrating those who deliver that harm. It is time to put the onus where it belongs—on the men who perpetrate these crimes and the people who protect them.
Editor’s Note: This has been a #breakingBLACK column. Goldie Taylor is a featured Grio columnist and her #breakingBlack columns will regularly appear every Monday. Follow Goldie Taylor on Twitter at @GoldieTaylor, and join the discussion at @theGrio with the hashtag#BreakingBlack.
