Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Another reason to buy your teenager a dildo…

As promised yesterday, another reason to buy your teenager a dildo if she or he is inclined to seek one out.

Please note: While subtle and relevant, this television advertisement does contain sexual connotations.

Some time ago a teenager at the church where I worked approached me and asked if I would take her shopping for a vibrator. (Although she didn’t know the word for a vibrator, she alluded to it with a bright red face…) I thought it was great, and so took her (with her mother’s explicit permission and money) to a local store to buy a vibrator. These stores are now legal in the state of Texas. That is to say, in addition to being able to sell educational aids, they are also able to sell sex toys.

I’m sure some of you are somewhat horrified at my openness in helping a teenager obtain a vibrator. However, with her mother’s permission, I think it turned out positive for everyone. This young woman was particularly sexual. She wanted desperately to engage more sexually. But she didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t have any prospects for one, and she acknowledged that even if she did, she wasn’t sure she was emotionally ready for sex.

So what’s a sexually aroused teenager to do? Well, masturbate. And I am all for encouraging safe masturbation among teenagers. It keeps them off the streets and off each other.

However, it can be hard for a teenager to obtain a vibrator. Teenagers generally feel far too awkward to ask mom or dad, and who else can a teenager ask, really? There just aren’t many adult/teen relationships where sex is talked about enough and openly enough to encourage a teenager to reach out and ask for help at obtaining sexual satisfaction. (This, of course, leads to lots of household items being used for masturbation instead, including the old standbys, the hairbrush handle and the cucumber.)

So what to do? Well, broach the subject. Let your teenager know that you’re happy to help them buy (or help them find someone else to help them buy) a vibrator, a dildo, lube, whatever. This offer will not turn your child into a sexual deviant, it will help them become sexually happy so they don’t feel the need to go searching for sexual happiness.

If you need more convincing, come back for tomorrow’s post…

Generally children under 9-years-old ask questions about (1) things they have heard and seen grown-ups talking about and doing and (2) things their friends have heard and seen grown-ups talking about and doing. So the long and short of it, if the child is asking, as the adult you have to answer because the kid has some personal knowledge they’re trying to work through. But before you jump headlong into an elaborate, wordy explanation of oral sex and mutual pleasure, stop and take a breather. Ask the kiddo some questions to get a clear picture of just exactly what they are asking. It’s probably nothing like what you assumed.

However, if your kid really is asking what you were worried they were asking, you can feel free to say: A man’s sperm meets up with a woman’s egg to make a baby, and then the baby grows in the woman’s tummy. If questioned further, you can even say that the sperm and the egg meet in the woman’s tummy because that’s where the baby grows. Further question can be followed up by saying that the man’s sperm gets to the woman’s tummy by the man’s penis going inside a woman’s vagina and leaving some sperm inside her. That will probably be enough to seriously gross most kids out. Follow that description up by saying that’s an adult thing to do, kind of like driving, voting, and drinking alcohol.

Particularly in this age of visual images, so many of them sexual, bombarding our lives, it is important to address what your kids are seeing around them. Teach them to analyze and criticize hyper-sexual images. Feel free to talk about why it’s inappropriate for children to wear make-up and bikinis, why it’s silly to sell widgets by putting almost-naked women (and occasionally men) on top of said widget, and how girls and boys bodies are different and how they evolve into the differences in men’s and women’s bodies. Feel free to talk about how it’s silly that some people think marriage is only for one man and one woman and that it would make more sense for any two people to be able to be married, whether they’re boys or girls. (Most kids have an innate agreement with this point, because they’re generally focused on same-gender friendships at that age.)

But before I leave off this topic for the moment, I want to impress on you the lightness of most children. They, by and large, haven’t been exposed to much sexuality in other people. They may or may not be enjoying their own sexuality yet. So before they’re 9 or so, they just don’t need much in the way of explanation - just what it is, and whether it’s okay or not. It’s that 9-and-up set that start needing and wanting more explanation and conversation.

I have been thinking a lot recently about teenage moms.

I wasn’t a teenage mom myself - I was 21 when I got pregnant - but I looked like a teenager, and was often treated like a teenage mom. In other words, strangers felt they could make derisive comments about (a) my assumed inability to parent, as attributed to my age, (b) my assumed lack of responsibility, as evidenced by inability to use birth control, and (c) my assumed poor choice in a job as a nanny, because clearly I was too young to have my own child.

The thing was, I knew I could parent well, that I was responsible, and that I wasn’t too young to have my first daughter. I had an inner core of strength and belief in myself and my little family that I’m not sure many teenagers have.

The way to help families, even families with teenage parents, is to hold them, strengthen them, support them. Negative and assumptive comments by strangers, acquaintances, or friends do not support families.

I am reminded of a book I like, You Look Too Young to be a Mom, by Deborah Davis. It’s a collection of writings by teenage mothers and adults who use to be teenage mothers. Here is one poem that I think expresses teenage pregnancy well:

#9 Bus by Caitlin Crane

He unfolds like a Japanese fan

and I can feel his slippery feet

kicking my ribs like fence posts,

his head growing between my bones,

jumping with hiccups.

I can feel where his heart is beating

and where his fists, juicy plums,

beat out moon-music.

I want to move my swollen feet,

dance,

brave and hysterical,

down the narrow aisle.

I want to say to

this woman sitting next to me,

watching rain from the open window drip onto her sweater,

“My son is signing, can you hear him?”

To the bus driver, who has never heard of reggae,

who spent the seventies in a cathedral with Elvis,

I want to say,

“Listen, he is singing God songs.”

To the pretty girl with red hair and two babies,

who drinks orange juice out of a water bottle,

and coughs into her fist

I want to say,

“Why are your eyes apologetic?”

But when I turn to speak,

my mouth open and half a word hanging out,

I can see it in their skin.

Their faces thin over hard lines,

over, “Get her out of the welfare office, get her out of my wallet.”

Over, “Another one.”

And, “Poor baby, poor girl. She doesn’t even have a chance.

My son is coming,

And I don’t have the time to wait for you.

My son is coming

and he will dance to your echoes of injustice,

his face to the sun.

So who are you going to vote for?

Here in Texas, we’re just over one week away from our primary/caucus, and everyone is going crazy. This is the first time I’ve really experienced such craziness in a presidential race. Generally, by the time the Texas primary/caucus roles around, the candidates have been defacto-chosen. Then, in the general election, everyone just writes Texas off as Republican. So we don’t get much attention either time.

But this time…boy, Texas is big stuff! And even more astounding, Texan Democrats are big stuff! Big fun for all!

So in the even that you haven’t decided who to vote for yet, or your teenager hasn’t decided who to vote for yet, here are some links that might help you figure your way.

• Students for Barack Obama
• Students for Hillary Clinton
• Students for McCain
• Students for Ron Paul
• Students for Huckabee

So that’s it for the candidates. Now, you ask, but what do these candidates have to say about sexuality education, reproductive rights, and more? RH Reality Check (Information and Analysis for Reproductive Healthcare) has you covered! They have a complete section of their website devoted to the 2008 presidential election, with lots of useful information. Take a look! I can’t recommend this page highly enough.

Another great condom commercial!

The other day I was talking with someone about good video sex education content, and we started talking about the condom commercials I’ve posted here. That conversation got me started looking for good ones again, and I found this one. Hope you like it on this Friday morning!

To see the other condom commercials I’ve posted, use the drop down menu called Categories to the right, and search for Condom Commercial.

Rev. Debra Haffner wrote yesterday about her experience talking with teenage girls about sex and sexuality. One of the things she mentioned in her post was her five criteria for a moral sexual relationship:

1. consensual
2. non-exploitative
3. honest
4. mutually pleasurable
5. protected if any type of intercourse occurs

She went on to list the four things that are needed in a relationship to know if it’s moral:

1. time
2. communication
3. trust
4. shared values

I really like this kind of sex education.

I was talking with a friend the other day, and she said that as a teenager she knew pretty much all there was to know about the physical aspects of sexuality. And so she believed she knew all there was to know about sexuality.

One of the problems my friend mentioned was her discomfort as a teenager and young adult in talking about sex with adults. She could get important information about STIs and safe sex, along with the nuts and bolts of how to engage in french kissing and oral sex, from books. But she couldn’t get conversation about discovering her own boundaries, how to say “No” to physical contact, or what it means and feels like to love and be loved.

How is it possible that our sexuality education has been downgraded to incorporating only the physiology? Why and when were morality and emotion taken out of the public discussion of sex? Regardless, I stand proudly with Rev. Haffner and many others, trying to bring these critical aspects of the conversation back into open conversation.

So when you talk with your children and teenagers about sex, don’t feel the need to mince words about the moral and emotional implications of sexuality. Providing substance in the form of your own values is far, far more effective and valuable to them than providing a vacuum.

The Voices of American Sexuality Magazine blog posted yesterday about an exhibit about sexuality directed at the 9- to 14-year-old set at the French museum Cite des Sciences. You can experience some of the exhibit in an on-line, English-language form: Sex - Wot’s the big deal?

Now, looking over the exhibition site, it is highly evident that this kind and extent of content would never make it into the sex ed classrooms of most 9- to 13-year-olds in America.

I have to admit, I feel pretty ambivalent about some of the exhibition. Check out the “keep an eye out” section and you’ll see what I mean…the video had good verbal content, but I found the animation truly gratuitous in some places. I also found the computer animation of the in-utero experience occasionally creepy (it’s filed under “making babies.”)

But I really liked other parts of it - including the frank and funny discussion of birth control - condoms, the pill, and the morning after pill. I also really liked their presentation on “the panorama of love.” It’s funny, it’s engaging, it’s informative.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty good site for 13-year-olds. And maybe for the occasional 9-year-old. Take a look, and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Conventional wisdom suggests that teenage boys have one thing on their minds. And it’s not history class. Statistics that support this theory abound: Teenage boys have testosterone surges multiple times a day. Teenage boys think about sex an average of every 28 seconds. The theories go on.

A study was recently published in the Journal of Adolescence called “I wanted to get to know her better”: Adolescent boy’s dating motives, masculinity ideology, and sexual behavior. (The first thing this proves, of course, is academics’ inability to create a short and snappy title.) The results from this study suggested that, while teen boys are not dis-interested in the physical, they are at least as interested, if not more interested, in building a good relationship with someone they really liked.

I like this study. I like it when researchers try to get past the conventional, stereotypical assumptions that inhabit most of our world and find out what’s really going on. I like it that they tried to create a study that actually got to know teenage boys rather than pigeonhole them.

Do I put substantial weight on the results of the study? Honestly, as a researcher and a statistician, I’m not sure.

Why did this study come up with different results from so many others? Can the results be replicated? What’s the researcher biased? Were the questions slanted? Is there a peer-group effect going on here? Basically, I want the differences between this research and past research and conventional wisdom explained before I jump excitedly on-board and start singing the results from the rooftops.

However, as a parent and a sex educator, I absolutely put substantial weight on the results of this study. I choose to believe that all people have the best possible motivations for their actions, including teenage boys.

It is critical that we interact with teenage boys with the assumption that they want high quality, mutually satisfying, and emotionally supportive romantic relationships.

Teenage boys are much more likely to live up to our assumptions and expectations of them than to put their own personal expectations far higher than those we set. This is really true of most people in most situations.

As parents of teenage girls this does not mean, of course, that we let every boy who comes over stay the night in our daughter’s bedroom because he probably means well. But it does mean that we treat him and his relationship with our daughter with respect and approval.

Teach teenage boys how to engage respectfully by respecting them. Assume the best of them so that they can assume the best of you. Get to know the teenage boys in your life so that they will want to get to know you.

Forget the statistics about teenage boys when you meet an actual teenage boy. Because when you do, there will be one individual standing in front of you. Maybe he is average. Maybe he is not. Regardless, the only way to know for sure is to get to know him.

Thank you to everyone for your great comments about my This I Believe series. I really enjoyed reading your reactions, and I’ve changed some of what I wrote to incorporate your good ideas. I’ve posted the edited series permanently on it’s own page so new readers can see where I stand.

If you didn’t read what I wrote before, or you want to see what it looks like now, take a peek! I will continue to revise and refine this statement of belief as it changes and as I change, so don’t hesitate to comment - positively or negatively, it’s all important for me to think about.