Tag Archives: youth sex

Youth Sexuality

media literacy, teaching cultural competencies, ,

According to data collected by Hunter College with the Human Rights Campaign, men are 12 when they first think they might be gay or bisexual. Women are 16 when they first think they might be lesbian or bisexual. By the time LGB people hit college age, they have, on average, had sex with someone of the same sex and have decided for sure that they are LGB. So it is no surprise that so many people come out before or shortly after graduating from high school and explore these aspects of themselves during those years.Regardless of an individual’s sexuality, these are the sexual development years and so many youth are exploring sexuality during this time, with whomever they are drawn to be with.

So how are our cultural views on sexuality during youth changing? Last weekend, Ryan Allen, under the stage name Reann Ballslee, was named Homecoming Queen at George Mason University, a school with some 30,000 students. While there are some who are nay-saying his being named to this position, this is a title given to the person with the most votes after they performed at a qualifying pageant in early February, so clearly an awful lot of GMU students were comfortable with a drag queen being named Homecoming Queen and cast their votes for Reann Ballslee.

On the other hand, high schools across the country are grappling with staging a newly-released toned-down version of the musical Rent. It seems that many communities are not yet comfortable with the idea of high school students talking about sex, STDs, and drugs. Oh, and there are two gay couples in the show. Perhaps the parents and administrators ought to attend the Homecoming this weekend at GMU?

Meanwhile teens across the country are now being booked on pornography charges for texting pictures of themselves nude to friends and partners. Some of this is certainly warranted, as when a boy takes pictures of his girlfriend and texts them to his friends, but much of it is the same fear of human sexuality, especially among youth as probably drives the people fighting Rent productions. I’d be interested certainly to see gender breakdowns; I’d assume that these photos are more often of and by young women trying to live up to cultural expectations of being sexualized. Where is the line here between allowing youth to be sexual as human beings and protecting youth from being victimized by our culture?

So how are we talking with youth in Sex Ed class about sexuality? What sort of language do we permit in schools? Is language that puts women down or sexualises them laughed off by teachers? Does homophobic language merit merely a “hey, cut it out!” or more conversation about what homophobia looks like and means? What messages are we sending youth through both what we talk to them about as well as what we do not talk to them about?

Political Meddling in Youth

managing behavior, politics of education, ,

When the economy tanks, some people work on helping each other out, and some look for how to mask their agendas.

In Georgia, some State House members are questioning why Georgia’s University System is supporting faculty with listed expertise in topics they don’t understand or maybe agree with, like oral sex. Aside from the fact that this is a terrific example of why we need the institution of tenure to protect faculty from meddling politicians, I have a major issue with this particular example.

In today’s youth culture, much has been made of changing attitudes in sex among youth, and how oral sex is not seen by many youth as being ‘real sex’. Georgia does not apparently collect sexual activity data, but here in Maine, 17% of 8th grade students have had sex, and in Alabama, which I picked just because it’s next door to Georgia, nearly 51% of 6-12th graders have had sex.

The reality is that nearly a third of 15-17 year-olds in this country have had sex. According to 2002 numbers from the CDC, 49.1% of 15-19 year-old males have had vaginal intercourse with females, and 55.2% have either given or received oral sex with females (they don’t seem to break out same-sex data with as much detail). For 15-19 year-old females, the numbers are slightly higher (53% vaginal, 54.3% oral).

The one other set of numbers (from the same source) that could be kinda scary is this: of 18-19 year-olds who have never had vaginal sex, 35.3% of females and 30.6% of males have given or received oral sex.

This means that there are tons of sexually active youth out there who may consider themselves “virgins” and, therefore, may ignore information about STDs.

Damn right I want experts in oral sex studying the topic. Ignoring things doesn’t make them go away, and often makes them worse. If we’d only talked about AIDS before it became the AIDS epidemic….