Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Okay, so this site isn’t for younger teenagers - it explicitly states it’s for those 18 and older, actually. But it’s still a fascinating phenomenon. Crazy Blind Date. Ever heard of it?

They get your information, information about what kind of person you’d like to date, where in your local city you’d like to meet them, and when you’re available. Then they set you up with someone on super short notice - like, half an hour. And you’re not allowed to know anything about the person before you meet them at the date. You can go on a solo date or a double date.

I have to say, after reading through the site and generally approving of their methods to ensure you are who you say you are, I can see the appeal of going on a Crazy Blind Date.

Nevertheless, I also see the point that my friend who alerted me to the site made: It doesn’t seem too terribly safe. Even though you’re meeting in public and have proved you are who you say you are and all that happy jazz. I think, were I a single college student, I would probably set up several blind double dates with a friend, to see if it was totally lame or not.

What do you think? Is Crazy Blind Date:

(A) a fun, spontaneous way to meet new people?

(B) another poorly conceived way to make yourself stalker-fodder?

Hi Folks,

On this Valentine’s Day, buy your kid some condoms and a copy of Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnets.  You can’t go wrong with such a combination!

Given that this week is Valentine’s Day week, I’m going to write a little bit about adolescent romance.

First, close your eyes. Let your memories from high school wash over you. Center your self back in the body you had then, the sense of self you had then. Remember the hard chairs and uncomfortable tables. Open your eyes, and see what you saw then. See that one person who use to make your heart jump and your stomach wobble when they walked across classroom. Feel that again.

Was that love or lust? Can you tell the difference now? Could you tell the difference then? How?
Sometimes I wonder if we can only tell the difference between love and lust in hind-sight. I wonder if we call an attraction that lasts only a short while lust, and an attraction that takes the time to grow into respect love.

What do you think? And is there a way to teach teenagers the difference?

This week - and Thursday in particular - is often either glorious or pure torture for high school students. (Or at least for the girls. I get the feeling there are plenty of high school boys who don’t really notice or care?)

Here’s what happened during my 4 years of High School Valentine’s Days:

Freshman year: A secret admirer gave me a stuffed Dopey doll (of the Seven Dwarfs fame). I hoped it was a different special someone than it turned out to be, but had a lovely time feeling admired nevertheless.

Sophomore year: Sat around grousing with a Senior friend about how horrible Valentine’s Day was when you’re alone. We decided to hang out that night, and ended up at an outdoors flower market and bought flowers for each other. There was a sense of innocence and ease between us. It was the start of a very sweet - if also very short - relationship.

Junior year: I was an exchange student in Germany, and was depressed in a general sense about my life. Looking back, I’m sure it was from a terrible lack of sun that I’m used to here in Texas.

Senior year: My boyfriend left a carpet of rose petals from my front door to my car door, where he had tucked in a calligraphy poem he wrote to me. Flowers were delivered to me at school, and he took me out for a romantic dinner that night. We probably made out afterwards, or maybe had sex. Romance at the highest level!

Looking back now, I think my sophomore year Valentine’s Day was my favorite. There was no stress, there was no judgment, there was no expectation about the night itself or about the good-bye kiss. My worst was hands-down my time in Germany.

What was your favorite Valentine’s Day during High School? What was the worst? What did you learn from those experiences?

Last week, the New York Times posted two stories I think are interesting enough to share with you.

The first: You’re 16, You’re Beautiful and You’re a Voter is about the enfranchisement of teenagers. The basic gist is that teenagers do better when their rights and privileges are gained slowly over time. This has, for example, well with drivers’ licenses in many places. The author is suggesting we do something similar with other rights, primarily with voting. Those younger than 18 would be able to gain the right to vote by completing a course in civics - while maintaining the principle that anyone older than 18 could vote. I like the idea. I like stair-stepping rights and privileges, and I like the idea of enfranchising young people earlier, as they show they are ready and able.

The second: The Vanishing Point is about a recent trend - say the last 5 years? - in male models going from a grown 6 foot man packing some good muscles to a relative waif with absolutely no fat and essentially no body tone. These male models now look far more like their female counterparts - they look like a thin veneer of skin hanging on a bone frame. These male models are now starving themselves, actively loosing muscle, in the same way that female models have done for many years. I find the perspective in the article repugnant - that male models are just going where female models have been for some time now (to the androgynous rail) and that there’s just not much to be done about it.

Hello! And welcome to Part 3 in a 3-part series on:

What I Think About Parents and Sex Education!

On Tuesday I introduced the series, and today I’m talking about my third point:

Sex is not all bad. Even for teenagers. In order to maintain credibility, parents have to acknowledge that fact.

This is a scary point for lots of parents. But the fact is that all adolescent sex does not end with rape, pregnancy, and AIDS.

Being sexually active does not increase the likelihood that a teenager is going to be raped.

Most sexually active teenager girls do not get pregnant. Most sexually active teenage boys do not get someone pregnant.

Lots and lots of teenagers are sexually active without ever getting or giving an STI. (There’s no good information out there on many teenagers have ever had an STI, though, so it’s hard to say if it’s most or not.) And most common STIs are treated pretty easily these days, so it’s not such a big deal even if they do get one!

Now, can all these bad things happen? Of course. Should we be diligent as parents to help our teenagers avoid them? Absolutely. Part of being diligent is making sure our children know that we know that every single time they do something potentially dangerous something horrible might not happen to them.

Otherwise, something like this happens:

Lucy’s mother has told her to never, ever have sex without a condom. Ever. Lucy understands from her mother’s warning that if she ever - EVER! - has sex without a condom she’ll get pregnant and get and STI.

Lucy’s best friend Marisol and her boyfriend Johnny have sex without a condom. A lot. Marisol does not get pregnant and does not contract an STI (that she knows about).

Lucy’s understanding of her mother’s warnings are now in direct contradiction with Marisol’s proven reality.

So good sex education needs to acknowledge that you don’t get pregnant every time you have sex without a condom - but then ask the question of whether the teenager is willing for this time to be the one when she does get pregnant.

Hello! And welcome to part 2 in a 3-part series on:

What I Think About Parents and Sex Education!

Today I’m talking about the second point that parents need to explicitly acknowledge:

Everyone has sex. Not all teenagers. But all teenagers do need to learn the facts about sex. It’ll come in useful at some point. Promise.

The main point I want to make here is that you can educate your teenager about sex and sexuality without assuming that your child will therefore start having sex. Maybe your teenager will have sex during high school - maybe not. About half of all teenagers do. About half of all teenagers do not.

But I’m not even going to get into this argument right now. Because here’s the point: Everyone needs to know the facts about sex and sexuality. End of story.

This is not an argument about whether it’s okay for teenagers to have sex. This is not an argument about whether people should wait until marriage to have sex. This IS an argument for basic information about an activity that almost everyone in the world engages in at some point in their lives.

So if you have a hard time with sexuality education because you want your teenager to avoid having sex, change your perspective on what sexuality education is meant to do. Sex Ed is not like Driver’s Ed - you don’t get a license at the end. What you should get is good information that you can draw on throughout your life about (a) your mind and body and (b) other people’s minds and bodies and (c) how they interact.

(And, before someone posts a comment about it, I want to point out that, in fact, not everyone has sex. But the vast majority of people do, and it’s probably safe to assume that your kid will. And even if he or she does not have sex, he or she should still be knowledgeable about it.)

Hello! And welcome to Part 1 in a 3-part series on:

What I Think About Parents and Sex Education!

Yesterday I introduced the series, and today I’m talking about my first point:

Parents have to talk to their kids about sex. Before the kids start asking. Because otherwise it’s too late.

If you’re already ready to stop reading, DON’T! I’ve got a great post on how to talk with teenagers about sex. You can read it here.

In talking with parents, what I have seen is that by the time parents start thinking about talking to their kids about sex, the kids are already in the know. Way, way too far in the know for most parents’ comfort.

This happens, of course, because Little Suzy in their class at school (or church or playgroup or homeschooling group or whatever) walked in on her parents in, shall we say, a compromising condition. The parents weren’t able to think up a convincing lie fast enough, and now everyone on the playground knows that Little Suzy’s parents get up to something funny during nap time. Now, neither Little Suzy’s parents nor any of the other parents probably have any idea that the children are contemplating compromising positions because the children are wise enough to know that when an adult lies badly, they shouldn’t go talking to other adults about it.

The moral of the story is to talk to your kids about sex. It might be really embarrassing for everyone. Okay, it probably will be really embarrassing for everyone. But better that than your 10 year old boy thinking that girls have two butts.

The other big benefit (beyond a simple transfer of information) to starting these conversations yourself rather than ignoring them unless you child asks, is that you are letting your kid know that it’s okay to ask questions. That it’s okay to use these words (penis, vulva, butt, vagina, breasts, wet dream, etc.) in conversation with you and other adults. This will pay off big dividends as they get older. Trust me.

Here’s some conversation topics that should be started with little ones:

1. The differences between women and girls. The differences between men and boys.
2. A little introduction to what marriage means - friendship, trust, love. More on the physical will come later.

These two topics: (a) information about our bodies and (b) relationship primers are really the two key topics.

So to make sure you cover everything, take some time and make out a list of all of the conceivable things in each category that a sexually active adult would need to know. Then roughly order them according to age when a person should learn them (youngest to oldest). Keep this list tucked away some place private, and mark things off the list as you have those conversations. Then you’ll always know what the next topic you need to cover is - and you’ll be able to keep a general eye open for a conversational opening.

I wrote an e-mail to a friend last week, and mentioned to the recipient that if she was interested in knowing more about my perspective on sex education and how parents figure into that, she could come to this blog. She did. The next time we talked, she pointed out that while my blog was interesting and that she enjoyed reading it, she didn’t actually get much from it about my actual perspective.

So here we go, boys and girls: This week is going to be all about what I think about sex education and parents. I thought about doing a Top Ten list, but really there’s just three critical points. So I have a Top Three List instead:

1. Parents have to talk to their kids about sex. Before the kids start asking (because by then it’s too late).
2. Everyone has sex. Just not all teenagers. But all teenagers do need to learn the facts about sex. It’ll come in useful at some point. Promise.
3. Sex is not all bad. Even for teenagers. In order to maintain credibility, parents have to acknowledge that fact.

This is going to be a 3-part series. Once I have written the other parts, they’ll be linked from the comments section at the bottom of this page.

(Written by guest blogger JustAnotherTeen.) 

Hello again!

Karen has graciously asked if I will write about once a month here, so this is my first regularly scheduled post. I will likely post on the first Monday of every month unless I have something that I urgently want to write about. If anyone has any questions or ideas for more blog posts, please email me at justanotherteen@gmail.com. But on to the post at hand!

Coming from an ultra-conservative family (for more click on the Guest Blogger category), I was not exposed to gay people until I started attending my current school. One of my earliest memories about homosexuality was when I was in third or fourth grade. My parents were talking to another person after church and he said something about lesbians. I, being the inquisitive child, asked what lesbians were. My parents seemed embarrassed and said we would talk about it at home. At home, they probably only explained by saying God didn’t like it when people were lesbians, I don’t remember exactly.

After this experience, I don’t remember any close encounters of the homosexual kind until I was in high school. I was home schooled for two years and worked cutting grass with some people from church. One of these men was a “former” homosexual who used to work at Disney World. (My parents believe that Disney World is the most evil place on earth, not the most magical.) I never even thought about this man’s homosexuality at the time, and contrary to what conservative churches sometimes imply, he did not sexually abuse me.

My next experience was when things really started to change. When I came to my school, I thought it was horrible that they would let an openly gay guy have a leadership position. While I did not believe I was homophobic, I still mostly held my parents’ belief that gay people were bad. However, due to the atmosphere of my school, I got to know more than one person who was gay, and realized that it really doesn’t matter. I realized that not liking gay people is just another form of discrimination, and is just as bad as racism. I realized that gay people are just people, and that they have real emotions and are still terribly mistreated sometimes.

Then later in the year, one of my closest guy friends was practically forced out of the closet in the worst way. A “friend” of my friend and his secret boyfriend eavesdropped and told practically the whole school that they were dating, despite the fact that my friend was not out of the closet. I did not know he was bi at the time, and regardless I wanted to beat some people up for spreading these rumors, false or true. (And I must say that the idea of my puny self beating someone up is highly unlikely!) My friend told me he was bi, and this shocked me a little, mostly because he and I were such close friends. I didn’t care, it just came as a surprise. That event blew over and my own sexuality started to emerge. I knew I had fantasies about men, but I also liked women. This didn’t completely confuse me as I already had a bisexual friend.

I had my first sexual experience, before my girlfriend, with another boy. We started off cuddling and progressed further in what can only be considered an experimental one-night-stand. After this, I was worried about my own sexuality being revealed the same way my friend’s was. I did NOT want it to come out that way, so I posted about it on my blog. Even though I am at a very accepting school, coming out was still very hard for me to do. It meant going against my parents and hoping that there would not be backlash from my friends. Thankfully, my friends and the other people at my school could care less. Coming out was a painless experience for me.

But I know this is not the case for a lot of teenagers. Lots of gay or bi teenagers either want to come out, but can’t, or want to stay in the closet. I had a very easy situation, and honestly cannot imagine the angst some people have had to go through about their sexuality.

Why in our modern society do teenagers and even adults feel they have to hide their sexuality?
Why do people not all accept everyone for who they are, not what they want them to be?

Why do people think it’s OK to be homophobic or just plain not like homosexuals when it is not OK to be racist?

Why are gays and lesbians not given the same rights as everyone else?