Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Yesterday I wrote about the Silver Ring Thing. Among other issues with this program, I talked about the Born-Again Virgin process, and how much I dislike it. One of the reasons I dislike it is because I think it teaches teenagers (and pre-teenagers) that sexuality is something you can annul. You can [...]

Several days ago I received an e-mail with this as the subject line: “Born-again virgin.” Now, I receive lots of e-mails about sex and sexuality, but this one subject line really impacted me. I even waited to read the e-mail until I felt I would be able to respond to the subject matter [...]

(Written by guest blogger JustAnotherTeen.) 
Although this post was originally supposed to be for Friday, I got so many good questions on Wednesday that I did not feel they would all fit in one post. That said, I am still open to more questions for the rest of today or until about 10 PM Eastern time. [...]

(Written by guest blogger JustAnotherTeen.) 
My father is a minister and has been since he was 17. I will not name the denomination but it is obviously a Christian one and saying my parents are conservative is like saying the galaxy is big. Therefore, you can probably guess about the extent of sex ed I got [...]

Virginia has recently joined a group of 13 other states in refusing abstinence-only “sex education” funding from the federal government. Basically, this allows these states to design their own sex education programs - theoretically because they want one that is comprehensive rather than abstinence-only. Where does your state stand? Here are the [...]

Chew on this today: someone has apparently patented what they call a “security underwear device for sexual organs” (i.e., a chastity belt). Is it as horrible as it sounds? I think so. Is it real? It appears to be. How sure am I of that? Not completely, so I [...]

A study on teenagers’ understanding of virginity was published in the August 2007 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study looked particularly at adolescents’ understanding of virginity pledges and vague sexual education terminology. RH Reality Check distilled the results into two lists:
Adolescents believe virginity is maintained after participating in:

genital [...]

Yesterday a teenager at my church (Wildflower UU Church) told me that she didn’t really care about sex education, and nor did her friends really care about it. She didn’t seem to be trying to be rude – on the contrary, she was quite apologetic about it. Pointed out that it wasn’t because [...]

While I was on vacation the House “democrats” voted to INCREASE funding for abstinence-only-before-marriage sex education. I’m outraged that anything this outrageous could have happened while I was gone!
To drive my point home, let’s review. Here is the legal definition of a program that meets the requirements of “abstinence-only”:

Have as its exclusive purpose [...]

I’ve introduced Dan before - he’s my favorite sex advice columnist. Here’s another short intro: Dan talks about sex and tells things like they are in a way few advice columnist (or people, for that matter) are willing or able to do. He’s the go-to-guy for everything from freaky to vanilla sex or [...]