A post about exams? Not quite. Belle already blogged about this NYTimes Magazine article a few days ago, but I thought it was worth some more discussion. The piece is about how widespread oral sex seems to be among high school students and how casually teens approach the topic. (I should note that it’s not clear how representative the sample on which the author draws is of high school students in general, but the topic is worthy of consideration even if it represents only a fraction of students, I think.) I am certainly not in favor of abstinence-only education and am all in favor of teaching teens about safe sex. My concern is about the one-way approach many teens seem to be taking. In the following sentence, Belle addresses the problem of girls performing oral sex on guys without any reciprocity: “If letting some guy just show up at your house so you can suck his dick is empowering, then I’m Henry Kissinger.” In case that doesn’t make that much sense out of context, be sure to read Belle’s post with a relevant quote from the article. By the way, for an additional reality check, note that this is not only a high school phenomenon, it seems to start in middle school for some. Also, for those (including a commentator on Ogged’s blog) who think that you can’t get STDs through oral sex, this may be worth reading.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned this when I wrote this post. There is a great data set that addresses lots of related issues and has led to lots of publications: Add Health. There’s room for more work on the new data especially, if anyone’s interested.:)
{ 28 comments }
Chris Bertram 06.07.04 at 7:57 am
Ogged’s commenter is not justified in an outright denial of the possibility of transmission via oral sex. But when the various possible routes are examined, we find that with some there is a “theoretical” possibility of transmission and that with some others there are one or two documented cases. Condoms for fellatio? Maybe, especially from the fellator’s or fellatrix’s protection. But when the CDC suggests “plastic food wrap also can be used as a barrier,” it is time for a bit of cost-benefit analysis.
q 06.07.04 at 8:10 am
It is easy to ask teenagers questions about sex and end up with alarming material, but is it truthful? …casually teens approach the topic… Well, teens spend hours practicing looking cool, so they would be casual wouldn’t they.
Adult guilt/confusion about past problems about sex contributes to the mixed message. Sexual humiliation, molestation and abuse, slappers and tarts have been around for centuries. So what’s new, maybe only loss of ability to control your environment and NYTimes saying there is an orgy in your street and you are not invited? Sadism in TV. TV with semi-naked people, commiting gross acts. On TV, you might watch a 13 year-old or 50 year-old get raped, or implicit approval of the sex promotion for young naive children. Sex as commodity: campaigns to give prostitutes rights. Mockery of the Catholic Church because of corrupt priests, despite it spending a lot of time promoting chastity. Validity as Coooolness: defined by extremism in sexual perversion – “I’m a BDSM it shows how Coool I am”.
dave heasman 06.07.04 at 9:46 am
“q” shows his hand here : –
“Sex as commodity: campaigns to give prostitutes rights”
Generally I think the idea is to get the authorities to enforce the rights that prostitutes are supposed to have – like the right to have rapes and murders investigated. Not a lot to ask, is it? But it doesn’t happen.
q 06.07.04 at 12:15 pm
Dave:
To clarify, the “Sex as commodity: campaigns to give prostitutes rights.” I was referring to concerned the campaigns to legalise prostitution as a commercial trade. Hence sex as commodity.
Your comment appears to be talking of a different set of rights: the right to have rapes/murders investigated, which is indeed “Not a lot to ask”.
jdw 06.07.04 at 3:14 pm
This explains why all those punk kids need cell phones, at least.
I realize it’s a pretty fraught topic politically, but has there ever been a study done which has shown that sex when you’re young hot and horny will destroy your future? My evidence is only anecdotal, but when I’ve run into slutty girls I went to high school with, it doesn’t seem like they’re appreciably worse off than anybody else.
eszter 06.07.04 at 3:59 pm
JDW – Slutty girls, but not slutty boys? Are the girls performing these acts at this age supposed to be more slutty than the boys? This is a very typical approach to such questions. When you say “worse off” I don’t know what you mean. There are a lot of ways in which people can be affected by feeling the pressure to do things they are not necessarily interested in doing. I am not suggesting that none of these kids want to do what they are doing, but the idea that girls just adore performing these acts without any reciprocity just doesn’t seem fully healthy. What exactly is the take-away message? Their pleasure is less important? Their bodies are gross? I am not exactly sure what would be the right dependent variables to study whether they are worse off in the end.
jdw 06.07.04 at 4:44 pm
_JDW – Slutty girls, but not slutty boys? Are the girls performing these acts at this age supposed to be more slutty than the boys?_
Insofar as “slut” is a slur, yes. A 15-year old boy who’s getting laid like tile is not a slut. A 15-year old girl who is, is. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.
_When you say “worse off†I don’t know what you mean._
I don’t know what I mean, either. Aside from untimely pregnancy, what’s the problem with having sex at 14? Do sexually active 14-year olds make less money at 30, or not go to college, or what?
_There are a lot of ways in which people can be affected by feeling the pressure to do things they are not necessarily interested in doing._
Yes. They could give BJs without reciprocity. What’s the problem here: the act itself, or the repercussions of the act? If it’s the former, then we should teach girls that if they’re gonna go down, he’s gotta come with her. It seems to me that this would not be an acceptable answer.
So that makes me assume that the problem everyone has is with the repurcussions, which leads again to the question: so what are they?
_I am not suggesting that none of these kids want to do what they are doing, but the idea that girls just adore performing these acts without any reciprocity just doesn’t seem fully healthy._
Well, if he paid for dinner, she obviously owes him. But in any case, that was more-or-less my point: yeah, it’s not fully healthy. But as far as I can tell, it’s outgrown pretty quickly. But if you know any hot self-hating 20-somethings in the Cleveland area who adore performing acts without reciprocity, LMK.
_What exactly is the take-away message? Their pleasure is less important?_
I would think that that thought would have to precede the act itself. Anyway, even I wouldn’t make the argument that teens should have sex to learn important life lessons, and I can’t think of any sexual situation that could yield a take-away message that is anything other than horrifying or humiliating.
Jeremy Osner 06.07.04 at 4:49 pm
JDW — you lost me with that last sentence there — I’m at a loss trying to figure out what you meant. Could you clarify?
jdw 06.07.04 at 4:55 pm
Sorry. Point was that sex is not something you (or I, anyway; maybe I’m emotionally stunted) look for “take-away messages” in.
I think a girl would have to think her pleasure is unimportant before she blows a guy w/o reciprocity. That’s not something she’s going to learn upon reflection after the act.
drapeto 06.07.04 at 5:51 pm
Aside from untimely pregnancy, what’s the problem with having sex at 14?
nothing, if you stick your head in the sand and ignore the context.
these girls are degrading themselves for the kind of attention and approval (!) that boys get more easily from their families, schools, sports etc. besides pregnancy, stds and tears, it’s a waste of time and ego. yeah, girls like that grow up to be responsible women, mostly, but they surely would’ve been more productive if they hadn’t wasted all that time in self-abasement.
laura m 06.07.04 at 6:32 pm
Ok, a couple questions about these rules:
Is giving oral sex _always_ self-debasement and degradation, but only when it’s a girl doing it?
Is it unthinkable that _at least some_ of those girls enjoy doing it to a guy, not just having it done to them?
Or is enjoying sex always about reciprocity defined as “I’ll do this to you if you do that to me”?
And lastly, is it inevitable that each generation has to be patronising to the next ones?
jdw 06.07.04 at 6:50 pm
laura m:
_Ok, a couple questions about these rules:_
Since I think I’m the only one who used the word “rules”, I assume this is addressed to me. If this is the case, I think you’re misunderstanding me somehow, if I’m being patronizing toward the next generation. But please explain, if I am.
_Is giving oral sex always self-debasement and degradation, but only when it’s a girl doing it?_
How about “self-effacing”, instead of self-debasing? That’s why it’s a nice thing to do. No, it’s not always degrading.
_Is it unthinkable that at least some of those girls enjoy doing it to a guy, not just having it done to them?_
Yeah, probably.
_Or is enjoying sex always about reciprocity defined as “I’ll do this to you if you do that to me�_
Not always directly. You could take pleasure in giving pleasure to a person you love. This seems markedly different from taking pleasure from giving pleasure to an acne-ridden high school football player who called you on a cell phone to demand a blowjob, however.
It could be that these girls are veritable St. Francises of charity, and just take joy in the orgasms of any given boy. This strikes me as unlikely.
_And lastly, is it inevitable that each generation has to be patronising to the next ones?_
Yes.
laura m 06.07.04 at 7:44 pm
jdw – no, I wasn’t referring to you, but to most of the adults comments cited in the article. The rules = the assumptions they seem to hold in their reactions.
There’s only one person quoted by the NYT – Jeanette May – that seems to be able to imagine that maybe not every teenage girl practising no-strings-attached sex is a brainwashed self-hating poor cow.
The others seem to exclude it.
Obviously many girls may do it out of pressure, and even say so, but I don’t find it that hard to imagine some others do really and genuinely like it, if they say so – why listen only to the former?
Why assume the scenario is always, inevitably the degrading sluttish kind? Some of the stories told are different from that, and many more stories were not told to the NYT.
It’s so easy to draw generalisations from a handful of anecdotes and interviews, particularly if you already have a theme to push.
Funny how when it comes to sex there can be this paranoia about teens being brainwashed by that consumer mentality that, in other fields, remains worshipped as the sacred engine of economy. Seems to me more control-freakery than genuine concern. And indeed, see how those abstinence folks are jumping right in. I find that kind of interference more worrying than peer pressure.
None of us has the right to judge other people’s consensual sexual activity. Even more so with teenagers. Everybody should make their own rules in that area, and that’s the age when you get the chance to do it.
And lastly, is it inevitable that each generation has to be patronising to the next ones?
– Yes.
Ah, envy. A more powerful instinct than sex.
Another Damned Medievalist 06.07.04 at 8:41 pm
Could it be a generational thing — that most of us who read and/or write for CT were brought up with sexual ideals that range from abstinence before marriage to “it means something and should be reserved for someone you love?” I would say so, except for the fact that, in western culture, sex outside some kind of meaningful relationship (with the exception of prostitution) has been generally frowned upon for at least the last 2500 or so years.
Several things bother me as a parent and as a woman:
*These are kids — where are their parents and why is there so little supervision?
*What happened to sports?
*When did oral sex become “not sex”? I know it pre-dates Clinton, because it was a justification for some girls when I was in high school — except that then, most of us thought that was a fairly sophistical argument
*Is this symptomatic of a larger trend towards being emotionally disconnected from the rest of society and from ourselves?
*And, of course, what are these kids thinking? Especially the girls.
BTW, I have no problem with the idea that some of these girls enjoy going down on guys and don’t mind it not being reciprocated — what I do have a problem with is that they don’t seem to recognize that it might be an issue. And perhaps, absent any cultural pressure to the contrary, having only recreational sex won’t disturb anyone’s emotional well-being. Maybe. I don’t buy it, but even putting relationship issues aside, I would expect people to worry at least a little about the health repercussions. And considering what we do know about the risk of STD’s (especially the nasty ones that have few symptoms, like Chlamydia) increasing with the number of sexual partners, I should think that, ten years down the road, when their fallopian tubes are shot, ther will be repercussions.
Anyway, I feel like I’m wavering between squishy liberal and moral majority. It’s just that my gut tells me that this is just wrong and disturbing on so many different levels.
DJW 06.07.04 at 8:57 pm
ADM, the article makes mention of several of the kids interviewed being on sports teams. Sports and sex are hardly mutually exclusive. At my high school, I’d dare say it was the opposite.
On the seemingly missing parents, well, they weren’t interviewed, and most teenagers like to present themselves as independent from their parents. But it’s fairly easy to keep all but the most authoritarian parents in the dark as a teenager. Even if they insist on keeping tabs on where you are and what you do, it’s not too difficult to erect a sufficient set of cover stories. I wasn’t really up to any debauchery of note as a teenager, but I made a point of keeping my parents in the dark about my friends, activities, etc. on general principle (what principle, exactly? I don’t know. I was a rather fuzzy thinker back then).
I remain pretty unconvinced that this article has identified a new and disturbing trend, as so many people seem eager to believe. All the kids interviewed strike me as the sort at or quite near the very top of the social hierarchy in high school. A decade and change ago when I was there, these kids got laid a lot more than the rest of us. And they wouldn’t give us the time of day.
However, if this story accurately portrays a new trend in adolescent behavior, it’s there’s positives to go along with the negatives. Too many of my peers went from relationship to relationship starting at 15, never really learning to be alone. This has little to do with sex, as many of them waited quite a while on that front. But they never learned to be alone, comfortable with themselves, etc. This worked out fine for some of them, but is clearly a problem for many others. Waiting on relationships could be very good news, and may be more important than the sexual dynamic, I suspect.
Ian 06.07.04 at 9:41 pm
When I was about 16 – a longggg time ago – I recall seeing a article – probably News of the World or Titbits because thats where I went for such stuff – bemoaning a new American fashion of necking parties for – gosh – 14 year olds.
I can remember it because of course I immediately wanted to know why we didn’t have them in England but more to the point I thought the definition of teenage sexual behaviour was ‘unsuitable’?
I’m not denying the issues around STDs but apart from Aids they were around in 1960 too. As a parent I always felt it hypocritical to take the ‘do as I say not as I did’ line – which isn’t to say I didn’t try – but in the end as I say – teenage sexuality is almost by definition ‘unsuitable’.
laura m 06.07.04 at 9:43 pm
“These are kids — where are their parents and why is there so little supervision?”
Don’t know, maybe parents are busy going down on their respective lovers. Hence unable to provide moral guidance. We are all doomed.
No really. These kids are 15, not 5. At 15, who ever wanted their parents supervising them about when and where and how and with whom to have sex? How is that supposed to be psychologically healthy? And for whom?
What is so wrong with recreational consensual sex between teens anyway. Like it’s this big shocking new product of a decadent consumer culture, not something that’s been there for ages.
Please someone tell me I’ve stepped right into a giant elaborate joke. You can’t all be serious.
laura m 06.07.04 at 9:59 pm
ian – _teenage sexuality is almost by definition ‘unsuitable’_
Absolutely, it is disturbing for parents. It titillates other adults. It makes for eye-catching pseudo-sensationalist tripe.
I too recall many similar refrains in the tabloids, they always crop up from time to time. They exploit that ambiguous line between moralism and voyeurism.
Some of the concerned readers of the NYT must have gotten a few kicks out of reading those legal descriptions of 14-year-olds getting down to it.
I really feel sorry for the kids interviewed. They should have known better than to talk to reporters about their sex life. That’s the disturbing part. The need to brag about it to a journalist, of all people…
drapeto 06.07.04 at 10:09 pm
Is it unthinkable that at least some of those girls enjoy doing it to a guy, not just having it done to them?
while you live in the lala land of your own speculations, i happen to live on planet earth, where i have a pretty solid grasp on the social dynamics of this situation, and the dynamic is about patriarchy and misogyny. is that unthinkable for you?
vivian 06.08.04 at 12:15 am
Why should we have to choose? Decades ago girls were expected by society to be virgins, and by their dates to put out. Neither allowed for female pleasure or active agency in choosing who or when. When caught, by pregnancy or gossip` she was condemned for life. Nowadays the “slut” label is partially gone, it would appear, and female pleasure, agency, choice, orgasm are at least on the table for adults, if not commonly valued by (these) teens. They also think about birth control and STDs, though they don’t think as well as we would like. It probably counts as progress, though not much improvement, they’re probably better suited to have healthy sex lives when they grow up. There is of course the potential that the abstinence crowd’s ethic will merge with this and turn them into real self-loathing sexual servants, but it doesn’t seem to have happened yet.
See, we can condemn both sides, the prudes and the supercilious-but-liberal adults.
q 06.08.04 at 2:35 am
laura m: _None of us has the right to judge other people’s consensual sexual activity. Even more so with teenagers. Everybody should make their own rules in that area, and that’s the age when you get the chance to do it._
How about this: “None of us has the right to judge other people’s drug use. Even more so with teenagers. Everybody should make their own rules in that area, and that’s the age when you get the chance to do it.”?
A major plank of rights-based politics is the right of self-determination. The trick is to balance that with an environment where “informed safe choices” are made. Hence children do not have the same status as adults in law.
Some young girl “sluts” I have met have psychological disturbances which seemed to have caterpulted them into rampant sexual activity. I don’t think that is the profile which “self-determination-ists” had in mind.
Belle Waring 06.08.04 at 3:31 am
Laura M: I think you’re being a little disingenuous here. I don’t deny that some people like to give blowjobs without any reciprocity. Look in the personals section of your free alternative weekly and see gay men advertising their willingness to do just that for young, ostensibly straight, men. No doubt many of these men have integrated this practice into a rich, fulfilling sex life. The idea that no-strings-attached blowjobs could play the same role in the sex life of an inexperienced 14 year old girl whose older partner is assumed to regard her own vagina as “nasty” and the prospect of bringing her to orgasm “gross” is just ridiculous. Surely you can see that. I don’t object to teenagers having sex. I object to sexist stereotyping and devaluation of girls’ bodies and pleasure.
Kathy 06.08.04 at 4:08 am
I’m 37 now, but I remember being quite sexually active from about 15 on (Yeah, I turned out all right, too).
It would never, ever have occurred to me to “give” without “getting.” I’d’ve laughed long and hard and walked off at the very suggestion.
As I recall, none of my partners hassled or even hesitated to “reciprocate.” Maybe I just had a good picker, or a forceful personality.
But I strongly agree with the posters who state that a girl who really has no interest in her own orgasm is rare to nonexistent. In other words, somethin’ WRONG with those chicks.
Of course, the whole thing could be just a bunch of hooey. Remember the “epidemic” of satanic ritual abuse in the ’80’s? Me neither…I was too busy having lots of fabulous, mutually pleasurable sex…
laura m 06.08.04 at 8:45 am
q — oh, so now sex=drugs? I see… Why don’t we compare it to murder while we’re at it. “Hi, I’m Laura, and I’m a moral relativist, I don’t see nothing wrong in killing other people as long as it’s consensual.”
I don’t think so…
I wasn’t even saying ALL girls loooove giving blowjobs, or even just casual sex in general, _and_ being treated like sluts. But those two things are not always equivalent. What Jeannette May was saying in the NYT article:
Note emphasis on that “if”.
It seems to me there’s a ton of patronising mysoginy and moralism in wanting to attach that “degrading” idea to all no-strings-attached situations at all costs, no matter how the girls themselves are experiencing it.
belle — absolutely, surely I can see that, and I agree, but it doesn’t seem to me it’s that kind of situation all the time. It’s a bit too easy to generalise. Not all teenage boys are insensitive pigs, not all girls are inexperienced self-hating idiots. I know no one was saying that explicitely, but that’s the feeling I’m picking up from reading a lot of the comments, starting from those cited in the article.
q 06.08.04 at 9:09 am
laura_m: _q — oh, so now sex=drugs? I see… Why don’t we compare it to murder while we’re at it. “Hi, I’m Laura, and I’m a moral relativist, I don’t see nothing wrong in killing other people as long as it’s consensual.â€_
Both “consensual sexual activity” and “drug use” are adult activities with controls over the exposure to/practice of children. How we regulate one might be instructive in how we regulate the other. Murder is generally not a legal adult activity.
laura m 06.08.04 at 11:29 am
q – drug use is not murder but it is also illegal. (Exclude pot from definition of “illegal drug” where applicable, depending on that country/state’s laws).
Drugs are also inherently and always unsafe and damaging to society (and health care systems). Sex is not inherently so.
You don’t regulate sexual activity by any other means than setting an indicative minimum age for consent. And even that is generally not applied when the activity is consensual and between teens of same or similar age. No one goes around policing places where teens hook up and arrest them as if they were exchanging heroin. I don’t think you’re suggesting that, are you?
So I really can’t see how you could compare sex to drugs in terms of regulating, nevermind in any other terms.
Honestly, it’s mindboggling.
laura m 06.08.04 at 11:52 am
Also, at 14 – 16 year old, you’re not exactly a child anymore. You’re sexually developed, whether you’re active or not. We’re not talking of sex between “children”, but teenagers. If sex is an “adult activity”, at which age should it start and _who_ gets to decide that?
Why not the teens themselves?
Again, the only defined rule is about legal age of consent, and even that is a pure abstraction and only actually used when there’s allegations of abuse, in an entirely different context.
So… nevermind that not everyone thinks teenagers being sexually active in any way is a bad thing or needs controlling. I just don’t see what kinds of regulations you could possibly introduce and how would you enforce them.
q 06.08.04 at 11:58 am
laura_m: _drug use is not murder but it is also illegal_
The legality of drugs use depends on the drug and which country you live in. Alcohol is widely available in many countries, for example.
laura_m: _You don’t regulate sexual activity by any other means than setting an indicative minimum age for consent._
Sodomy, oral sex, incest, adultary and bestiality are not always legal.
laura_m: _Drugs are also inherently and always unsafe and damaging to society (and health care systems)._
Can you provide some evidence. I think you need to do a bit more reading around the subject of drug use.
laura_m: _It’s a bit too easy to generalise._
Indeed it is!
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