one more reason you might want to wait to have sex

Even the most liberal adult will usually say the older a girl is when she starts having sex, the better. Partly that's because of the assumption that older teens will be more mature, more educated about sex and more able to protect themselves from the risks associated with it, than younger kids.

Now the cautionary types can add an additional reason to wait: abuse.

it's a fact: teen sex doesn't always end in disaster

If you listen to a lot of the chatter out there, it would seem as if sexually active teens were the equivalent to lighted sticks of dynamite: disasters waiting to happen (as illustrated by Gossip Girl).

There are a few reasons people feel this way:

One is the moral belief that sex should only happen between a married man and woman. This logic holds that since most teens aren't married, they shouldn't be having sex.

Another is that people worry about teens' emotional states. They fear that teens are too immature to handle sex and will be devastated when things don't go as they planned.

Then there are serious health concerns. Teen pregnancy and the risk of contracting an STD are often cited as good reasons to urge teens not to have sex.

arrested for carrying a condom!

I know I shouldn't be surprised by things I read in the local paper. But a story I came across a few days ago in the NY Daily News still managed to alarm me--and it wasn't just because of a headline that screamed, Nabbed as Hooker on Way to Hosp.

What surprised me was the explanation the police gave for arresting a woman named Monica Gonzales for prostitution.

Here's what happened: Gonzales had an asthma attack and was walking to the hospital late at night. Apparently, the street she chose to walk down was known for prostitution.

The officer who arrested her said he saw Gonzales approach a car. Despite the fact that he never saw her solicit sex (for all he knew she was saying hi to a friend or giving directions), he hauled her off to jail.

His explanation? According the the article, "[The officer] claimed Gonzalez was carrying a condom and had been arrested before as a hooker."

just for girls--a big helping of lies

Are you familiar with a magazine called Just For Girls? If not, allow me to introduce you to it.  Just For Girls is a short publication created by an anti-abortion group called the Human Life Alliance.

From what I can tell, the assumption of the publication is that their audience is both opposed to abortion and also not very bright.

Here are some tidbits from its pages:

"The pill blocks...implantation by thinning the lining of the womb, and the baby is aborted."

Plan B "also blocks the conceived embryo from implanting. The baby is then aborted."

"Abortion is a painful option. Women have described it...as the most awful thing they have ever been through. Women often block out the memory of it and regret having aborted their baby. Not only do these women have lives haunted by their abortion, but they also have an increased risk of infertility, miscarriage and premature babies."

"Trying to hide your pregnancy with abortion only leaves you alone to cope with all the depression, pain and regret that follows."

the pill DOESN'T kill babies

Here a question for you. Why do you think an organization opposed to abortion is encouraging more unplanned pregnancies? That's what the California based American Life League seems to be doing with its "The Pill Kills Babies" campaign.

The pill they are talking about is the birth control pill. The babies they are talking about don't exist.  But the result of their campaign might be a lot more unwanted pregnancies when women shun this extremely reliable form of birth control. 

crystal responds to her rape by posting on YouTube

What would you do if you were raped and the local prosecutors declined to prosecute the rapist? When that happened to a 16-year-old named Crystal, she posted a plea for help on YouTube.

Crystal wasn't out for vigilante justice. She didn't reveal her attacker's name or any information about him other than his age. What she did was beg for help and ask for answers.

Watching her video is pretty tough. But what is almost as hard to stomach are the abusive comments left by viewers--and there are a lot.

cutting connected to risky sex

Self-injury (aka cutting) has gotten a lot more attention in the last few years. One of the results of this has been to make some cutters more defensive about what they do.

I've heard girls say things like, "Why do people care so much? It's not like I'm hurting anyone else." Others explain that they are not suicidal, and that self-injury is just the best way they have found to release emotional pain.

I understand this logic. But the problem with it is that in addition to the fact that a cutter may accidentally injure herself more seriously than she intends, cutting is a band aid solution. It's not a long term cure. So while cutting might temporarily make someone feel better by distracting them from their issues, it's not going to make those issues go away.

Adding to these concerns about cutting is a new one. A recent study found that girls who cut, are also less likely to use condoms when they have sex.

ever present sexual harassment

Brad Davis.  I still remember his name because he was the kid in high school who could say anything to girls and get away with it. Brad Davis was the guy who cornered me in the library in front of all his friends and asked if I had bowed legs because I'd been having sex with Mr. Reynolds, our science teacher. 

He was the kid who informed Gina Mitchell that she would be giving him a blow job as soon as her braces came off. He was also the older boy who crowded Angela Walker into her locker as he breathed into her face telling her what he was going to do to her when no one was around.

Looking back it seems clear to me that this was sexual harassment.  But as teenagers it never occurred to us to call it that. We knew boys could humiliate you, and make you feel scared and uncomfortable, but doing anything about it was not an option anyone considered.

The way it worked back then was that boys made comments to girls everyday. Your job as a girl was to come up with a quick reply that kept them in their place. It was almost expected that boys would make sexual remarks, and that girls would be able to shrug them off. Only prudes were openly offended.   

canada raises the age of consent

When I was a kid growing up in Canada, the age of consent for sex was 14. It had been that way since 1892 and it would stay that way until May 1st of this year, when the age was raised to 16.

Canada's Conservative government argued tor the raise, saying that young Canadian teens were being targeted by adults looking for sex on the Internet. Whether or not this happened as frequently as supporters of the law claimed is subject to debate. But the fact remained that Canada's age of consent was lower than countries like the United States, Britain and Australia. That helped convince a lot of people that Canada had to get in line with the rest of the Western world.

Plus, on the surface, the law looked pretty good. Unlike some sex laws found in the States, the Canadian law didn't criminalize vaginal sex between teens. That's because it had a "close-in-age" provision that allows teens to have sex with other teens within five years of each other. So a 14-year-old could have sex with an 18 year-old without getting in trouble.

However, in Canada the age of consent for anal sex  has always been 18. That means that even if two 17-year-olds have anal sex, they are technically breaking the law. As a lot of youth rights and GLBT groups pointed out, the changes to the age of consent law would have have been the perfect time to address this glaring inequality.

STDs & the blame game

When I was fifteen, my friend Sandra became the first person I knew to get an STD. Under other circumstances, the fact that she even had anything might have been kept quiet. But Sandra had a tough relationship with her mom, and needed to talk.

So over fries and coffee, she told a small group of us about the older guy in her building she’d had sex with and how at first she only thought she had a urinary tract infection.  “But,” as she explained, "It kept hurting so I went to the Pine Free Clinic after school and the doctor said it was herpes."

ditch the condoms? not for a while...

Love condoms? The fact that one in four American girls are walking around with STDs would lead me to believe that for a lot of folks the answer is probably no. 

So here's another question: Why don't we have better options for safer sex? You'd think that in this day and age someone would have come up with method that didn't make its target audience cringe.

the end of the oral sex "epidemic"

A few years back, it felt like you couldn't turn around without encountering an alarming story about the teen oral sex "epidemic." Or the rise in "lipstick" parties, where guys competed to see how many different colors of lipstick they could collect on their penises. 

On the heels of these sensational reports came the explanations. A common one was that oral sex was a new trend, popularized by teens who were trying to remain "technical virgins" while still experimenting sexually.   

I was pretty skeptical that lipstick (or rainbow or chicken ) parties were happening every weekend in living rooms around the country. It also seemed weird to declare that teens had just discovered blow jobs. But it made sense that kids would try to hold on to their hymens by doing something that was sexual but that didn't seem as intimate or risky as intercourse.

"plan b" not sold here

I was walking through my neighborhood the other day when I came across a sign in the window of a local drug store that said: PLAN B NOT SOLD HERE. (There it is above).

I knew that a lot of women had encountered pharmacy refusals for this medication, but until now it didn't occur to me that this might be happening where I live in Brooklyn, NY.

Plan B is the brand name for emergency contraception, (AKA: the morning after pill). Emergency contraception is a birth control pill that you can take up to 120 hours after unprotected sex.  It will help prevent a pregnancy from occurring.  It won't stop one that has already happened. That's why it isn't an abortion.

So what's up with pharmacists refusing to sell a medication that could prevent countless unplanned pregnancies from happening?  A lot claim religious or personal oppositions, saying they oppose abortion and so will not sell this pill.  Despite working in a medical field, many do not seem to understand that pregnancy can take up to five days to occur after sex, and that if Plan B is going to work, a woman cannot already be pregnant.

Some pharmacists do get this distinction and simply claim that they cannot stand in the way of a potential pregnancy. I wonder though, do these pharmacists also refuse to sell condoms or the pill?  (I imagine they do...)

mississippi parents may soon have to tell police if their kids are having sex

Some folks in Mississippi are trying to pass legislation that would make it a crime for a minor’s caretaker not to report underage sexual activity to law enforcement officials.

Mississippi would not be the first state to require reporting of teen sexual activity.

But what is radical about the Mississippi law is that it would require reporting by people other than doctors and social workers. In fact, under this law, a parent who knew that her child was sexually active would be required to notify authorities. Failing to do so could get a parent charged with child abuse!

the effects of anti-abortion propaganda

What do you know about abortion? Depending on where you learned about the topic, you might be walking around with some pretty inaccurate information. I was thinking about this after reading a comment left in response to my post on Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

A gURL named tisha wrote, “If you do see pictures of what they do to the fetuses [during abortions] it will tear your heart out it's so heart breaking and hurtful to see how they do these things.”

I've seen some of the images she is talking about and I can understand her reaction. But here's the thing: A lot of those pictures are fakes designed to get exactly that reaction!

reacting to a teen's miscarriage

For a few days in March, the media was all over a seemingly sensational story about a fetus found on an airplane.

Headlines read, "Fetus Found On Airplane, Teenager Questioned.” News anchors offered teasers like, "Was the baby discarded in an airplane bathroom born alive? Find out more at 7."

"slut" the endearment formerly known as "bff"

A while back, I ran a health seminar for a group of high school girls. Before we started I handed out a sheet with questions like: What do you want to get out of this program?  Are there any issues you think we should talk about?  What is one thing you really like about your group of friends and one thing you find challenging about them?

I asked the girls to answer the questions anonymously and then to give them to me when they were done. When I got the papers back, I kept on seeing the same thing. Girl after girl had written that something she didn't like was how everyone called each other skank, slut and ho.

"Wow,” I said to the group after glancing over the sheets. “It seems like there's a lot of name calling going on.”

scapegoating miley cyrus

Last month, like many months before it, Miley Cyrus made headlines. This time it was not because the 15-year-old had sold out concert tickets within seconds or attended the Oscars for the first time. Rather, it was because she had appeared in a photo spread draped in a sheet with her back exposed with an expression deemed to be one of post-coital repose.

The shot was called indecent by numerous self-appointed guardians of propriety. Many of these folks left comments on blog posts saying things like:

“Being slutty seems to be an easy access to the adult world,” and, ”I'm kinda tired of Miley being overly sexy and then being all like 'I think it's normal for a 15 year old girl'. Or, you're a Disney star and you stay wholesome and covered up for the fan's sake or you decide to branch out, but please don't be two-faced and stick to your image!”

It's true that Miley is a Disney role model to tween girls. Because of this she is supposed to follow certain rules. She can be cute and bubbly, sassy and spunky, but she isn’t supposed to be sexy. Never mind that plenty of other teen girls are sexualized by the media (or that shows like America's Next Top Model, The Hills and Gossip Girl display a lot more skin and suggest far more sexual situations than Miley's photo shoot did), when someone like Miley is given a good girl role, she is expected to stay in it.

dating daddy at father/daughter purity balls

I, (daughter's name)'s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as i lead, guide and pray over my daughter and my family as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by god to influence generations to come. 
--Pledge from the Generations of Light Purity Ball

Has your dad ever said anything like that to you?  He might have if you’d attended one of the increasingly popular Daddy/Daughter purity balls that have been popping up around the country.

teen pregnancy: way more common in your grandmother's day

Ever since it was reported that teen pregnancies had risen for the first time in fifteen years, there has been an awful lot of talk about the subject.

It doesn't help that there's a pop culture onslaught of teen pregnancies in movies like Juno, and TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Gossip Girl and House. All this talk makes people convinced that underage mamas are the latest trend.

I'm not so sure. Partly because when you look at the big picture, this latest rise seems more like a blip than a mountain.

go ask alice gets the boot for all the wrong reasons

I recently read that Go Ask Alice, the 1971 tale of drug experimentation gone horrifically awry, has once again been banned.  This time the ban was in the Berkeley County school district in South Carolina. It occurred, “After a parent complained about her 13-year-old daughter having to read explicit curse words and sexual language out loud in class.”

This is nothing new. Alice has been banned for similar reasons since its publication 37 years ago.

To be sure, Go Ask Alice is full of sex, drugs, cursing and all those other tantalizing tidbits that grabbed my attention when I first discovered it in sixth grade. But if there is any reason to ban Alice, it’s not because children can’t handle such a gritty slice of real life, but rather because the book is not about real life at all.

crisis pregnancy centers are the crisis

I've had a lot of students over the years, but one I think about a lot is Lana. I met Lana when I was working in the Bronx and she was a very pregnant high school senior. She had the baby around graduation, but despite earlier plans to raise the child with her boyfriend, they soon broke up. Then after one too many fights with her mom, she moved in with a guy named Jason, who was more into smoking pot and watching TV than being a step-dad.

Pretty soon Lana was pregnant again. She sat in my office holding her infant daughter saying, “I can't have another baby. I just can't.” 

“What do you want to do?” I asked. 

“Abortion,” she answered.

don’t worry, you’re not the last virgin in the world

When I was a teenager, it seemed like everyone around me was having sex. Tia was first in seventh grade. Rona did it next. Monica waited until the end of ninth grade when her long-distance boyfriend Kai came to town. Lisa and Julia lost it the summer between 11th and 12th grade. Christy, right around graduation. Like I said, everyone.

Actually though, that wasn’t really everyone. When I think about it, it wasn’t like these were all my best friends. Some were, sure, but others were just girls I knew. If you had asked me at the time, however, I would have told you with great authority that in my school, the sexually active outnumbered the virgins.

on masturbating: answers from an expert

Masturbation might be one of the most misunderstood sex acts. It has been equated with everything from perversion to mental retardation.

The idea that girls even masturbate can cause a bit of confusion. People wonder: What would they do? Isn't that just a guy thing? Do girls really get horny?

One person who isn’t confused is my friend Jamye Waxman, the author of Getting Off, a book on women and masturbation. She shared some thoughts on why so many people think female genitals are dirty and how double standards affect us all.

Searc

you know what gets old? "hot xxx lesbian sex" stereotypes

While checking my inbox this morning I came across some enticing links. I was informed that only a click away I could find, amateur lesbian teens in shower, hot lesbian teens, two lesbian students kissing, six lesbian teens playin’ together and sexy young lesbians hot office love.

Not exactly what I had intended when I added the term “lesbian teens” to my growing list of google alerts.

It’s not that I was surprised. Ten years worth of offers for penis enlargement and porn cured anyone with a computer of that emotion a long time ago. I’m also aware that the lesbian fantasy is rarely about a woman who is actually a lesbian. (If it was, the fantasizer wouldn’t really have a chance of getting any action, which is often part of the fantasy).

But regardless of who is really being fantasized about, every time I check to see if there's a news item about lesbian teenagers, I am instead greeted by an offer to see something XXX.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly fine to have turn-ons. But the constant sexualization of lesbians gets a little old after a while. You know what else gets old? The notion that it is “hot” for two girls to make out, but it’s nasty when two guys do the same.

when did homophobia become fashionable again?

When I was in fifth grade, my school put on a play called Sky Happy. It was a musical written specifically to commemorate Vancouver’s 100th year in existence. I was not into it, so I complained to what I assumed would be a sympathetic ear.

“Daaaad,” I whined to my father, “I have to make a puppet that sings! That’s so gay.” Instantly he sat up straight and got serious. “Ellen,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

“Yes,” I said exasperated. “It doesn’t mean that. It just means it’s stupid.”

Well, according to my dad it did mean that and the way I was talking made it sound like the play wasn’t the only thing I thought was stupid.

One miserable lecture later, I felt humiliated and pretty pissed at my dad. But I also felt weird about saying, "That's so gay." Though I didn’t tell my dad, I took it out of my vocabulary.

concerned women of america: awfully concerned with keeping teens in the dark

Have you ever heard of a group called Concerned Women For America (CWA)? If not, let me tell you a bit about them.

CWA is conservative Christian organization whose goal is to bring, "Biblical principles into all levels of public policy." The way they seem to want to do this is to deny a lot of rights to people who aren't like them.

One of the main things CWA is opposed to is comprehensive sex ed. But they don't stop there. They are also against:

• Any rights for GLBT people
• Hate crime legislation that includes sexual orientation
• Abortion rights
• Emergency contraception in all cases including rape
• Feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment

abuse: another reason teen girls are getting pregnant

For a number of years, I worked with teens in the Bronx. One of these was a girl named Gina. When I met Gina, she was a very pregnant high school junior. By the time I left the job she was the mother to two children. She was also missing a front tooth, thanks to Rich, father of the second. This guy, like the majority of men who father teens' babies, was a whole lot older than Gina.

When Gina told me that she was pregnant again, I asked what she wanted to do. “Well,” she said. “I was thinking I’d get an abortion. But Rich said he’d kill me if I did.” When I tried to prod in true teacher fashion (How did this happen? Why didn’t you use a condom or take EC?), it slowly came out that the pregnancy wasn’t an accident. Gina’s boyfriend had forbidden birth control. He wanted her to get pregnant.

unequal oral?

If you did a survey of sex scenes in movies, you'd find a lot more films showing guys getting oral sex than girls. If you did a survey of sexually active American teens, I wouldn't be surprised if you found the same thing. Though I don't have hard data to back this theory up, I do have plenty of anecdotes. I also have Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley's book, Restless Virgins.

Restless Virgins chronicles a year at Milton, a posh boarding school outside of Boston. During the year, the school is rocked by scandal after a sophomore girl is found to have given oral sex to five members of the boys' hockey team in one night.

Throughout the book, Marisa and Abigail address the fact that a lot of the sexual activity that goes on between students is one-sided. Girls hook-up with boys to gain status and popularity. Guys seem to embody some of the worst male stereotypes in their treatment of the opposite sex. 

Since they had done such an extensive case study, I thought Marissa and Abigail would be good folks to talk to about the unequal oral sex phenomenon. They pointed out that at Milton, this was related to things like girls' self-image, and boys' view of girls. As they explained, "We live in a post-feminist era, but sexual equality among teens still isn't there."