Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

I recently met the delightful 24-year-old Sarah Dopp. Sarah’s understanding of gender and sexuality has developed over the years into a delicate balancing act between male and female, gay and straight. Sarah generously agreed to an interview to provide some insight into the path of defining sexuality when the standard road maps don’t make sense.

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KR: Sarah, can you introduce yourself a little? What would you say in an internet dating ad?

SD: [chuckles] The title of my most recent dating ad was “Androgynous Queer Girl seeks Androgynous Queer Boy.” Inside, it said, “I’m looking for someone to go on adventures with. Someone who knows how to laugh at the line-painters and make forts out of the boxes with sticks and sheets.” I guess you could say I’m playful.

I’m 5′10″ and I have a shaved head. I’m built like a man from the knees down and the shoulder blades up, but the middle of my body is made up of a woman’s curves. If I’m dressing down, my clothes are gender-neutral. If I’m dressing up, I mix and match feminine and masculine clothes and accessories until I feel like I’ve struck a perfect balance. I happen to be single right now, and my dates cover the spectrum of gender pretty thoroughly — from manly men to feminine women to transgendered people and androgynous folk. There are so many flavors of beauty in the world.

KR: How do you define your gender and your sexuality? Can you explain how that plays out in “real life” terms?

SD: I identify as queer. The word resonates with me and seems to describe both my gender and my sexuality, which are two separate things. I understand that a lot of people are still uncomfortable with that word, though, so I try to be flexible. You can call me bisexual or androgynous, and I’ll believe you understand who I am. If you live in a world where there are only two categories for gender or sexuality, you can put me in whichever one feels most comfortable to you. I usually won’t argue.

How does this play out in real life? It’s interesting. I get called “sir” a lot in public, but everyone who knows me understands that I’m female. Most people assume I’m a lesbian except for the men I date, and they’re often convinced that I’m straight. I’ve learned to stop taking it all personally and to go just go with the flow.

KR: So you’re single now, but have been in relationships with both men and women. Tell me a little bit about how your relationships have gone. Would you say that once you’re in a relationship that it follows a relatively standard path - something that would be familiar to most people?

SD: I’ve had several long-term relationships that were standard enough to make everyone in my family breathe a sigh of relief. There’s a sense that I’ll become more “normal” — or at least fit categories better — if I’m in a stable relationship, because it’s easier for people to understand. But I’ve also been in relationships where we both intentionally agreed to be non-monogamous or nontraditional in some way, and where that turned out to be a healthy arrangement for both of us. Those relationships are much harder to explain to the outside world.

KR: When did you first start feeling different from the standard girl?

SD: My mother has told me she suspected I was gay from the time I was six, but I don’t think I felt different until middle school, when all of a sudden “being pretty” mattered to everyone I knew. That’s when I noticed I was awkward. Really really awkward. That’s all I could understand at the time.

KR: How do feel your teen years were affected by your orientation? Did you acknowledge your difference or not?

SD: My orientation confused the heck out of me. I had crushes on boys, so that meant I wasn’t a lesbian. But sometimes I had crushes on girls, too, and I sort of looked like a lesbian, so that must have meant I wasn’t straight. I wasn’t taught that there were more than two categories for these things, and I really thought I was doomed to feel “invalid” for my entire life. To top it all off, the first boy I had a crush on turned out to be gay, and my first girlfriend later transitioned to male. The most I could really do was acknowledge that I was “weird” and embrace that.

KR: Do you think your peers were aware of the difference? If so, how did they react?

SD: Yep. They knew me as the “weird” kid, too. In middle school, I was the butt of way too many jokes, and I’m still surprised sometimes that I made it out alive. I became so severely depressed that I actually attempted suicide my first year of high school. After that, my life shifted, though. My weirdness morphed into some strange kind of social charisma, and people started to tell me that they envied me. I was different, I knew it, and I embraced it. Turns out, that’s what everyone else in high school wants to do, too.

KR: And what about your peers, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances these days? How do they generally react upon meeting you, and as they get to know you and your gender and sexual identity more intimately?

SD: Well, the whole “shaved head” thing seems to put my queerness out on the table before we have a chance to discuss it. People either make assumptions about me (which are sometimes wrong) or they start asking questions right away. I’m a friendly person who genuinely likes people, so I think people feel at ease around me even if they’ve never talked to a queer person before. When they begin to learn more about me, I find that they can either accept my “middle grounds” or they can’t. If they can’t, it’s because of their belief system, and that has nothing to do with me. They’re usually still polite about it.

KR: Is there anything more you’d like to say about how you define yourself in these terms or how that has impacted your peer or romantic relationships?

SD: In some ways, my queerness makes my world very big — I can shift my appearance to meet people’s expectations, and nearly every friend has the potential to make me fall in love with them. But in other ways, my world is very small. I know there are other people out there like me, and too many of them are hiding in shame.

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Tomorrow Sarah and I continue our interview, with Sarah speaking more directly to her family.

 (Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.)

I said I would write about substance abuse and adolescent sexuality, but I am amending that. I think there are plenty of people who use alcohol and drugs without abusing them (experimentation lies in this realm), but I think my opinions still stand.

Instances of rape (including date rape) are much, much higher if the girl/woman has had anything to drink, or any kind of recreational drug. And I think this isn’t talked about enough (although I know Dr. Rayne has referred to this correlation in the past). When you’ve had even one drink, your inhibitions lower and your natural caution goes by the wayside.

Please, consider, on a first date or any situation where you are around people you don’t know well, don’t trust well, please just don’t drink or drug! Its a good enough reason not to. The benefits of the recreation just don’t measure up to the serious safety issues.

I remember when I was young, my junior high actually showed “Reefer Madness” as an anti-drug message in our 7th grade science class. It was hilarious! And one of the things that’s important to include when talking to young people about the dangers of drugs and alcohol is that it feels good! That’s why people do it, and that’s why people can get addicted. Same thing with sex. When adults want to create “danger” messages, if they don’t include the fact that it all feels good, if they are only trying to scare youngsters into abstaining, kids can feel lied to. The message rings false. I don’t want to do that.

When experimenting as a child, teen, and/or young adult, just keep these safety factors in mind, and see if you can make the decision to only drink and/or drug if you are in very safe surroundings with very safe people. If you are ever having blackouts (periods of time when you are drinking where you can’t remember what you were doing), then realize that is a prime indicator of potential alcoholism. If you have blackouts, its really best that you not drink at all.

I don’t want to come across as a prohibitionist. Although I don’t drink at all any more, and I don’t take recreational drugs anymore, I have come to realize that some people can do these things in moderation. Even some binge drinking doesn’t mean certain alcoholism. (I’m in somewhat of a minority in the AA crowd these days.)

But I also know the pain of rape, and the pain of guilt. I absolutely don’t mean to blame a victim if she was impaired by alcohol, and was then raped. The rape doesn’t come as a result of the alcohol; the blame belongs with the rapist. But, especially in cases of date rape, the lines get so fuzzy and prosecution is practically impossible. I really want women to take care of themselves, and avoid sexual assault, and refraining from the use of drugs and alcohol is a very good preventative measure.

What do you think?

(Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.) 

Dr. Rayne has kindly let me weigh in as a guest blogger for the few days while she is at the SXSW Interactive conference; she knows one of my favorite topics in life is sex! I think this blog is playing a crucial role in the needed discussion of adolescent sexuality in the repressive context of our “abstinence-only” government propoganda. I’ll be posting today, Monday and Tuesday. Today, I’ll let you know a little bit about me and my perspective on sexuality in general. Monday I’ll write a bit about human sexuality from a biological evolutionary perspective, not something I’ve seen much about. Tuesday, I’ll write about substance abuse as relates to sexuality. Of course, I’d love to hear from you, and look forward to this continuing conversation. You may e-mail me privately at WendyHarlowe@gmail.com, or of course, simply comment here on the blog.

So, first off, Wendy Harlowe is a pseudonym. I can be much freer in discussing sexuality this way. I’m an “outlier” in this arena. You know what an outlier is? Statistically speaking, its someone outside the norm, someone on the charts far outside where most people fall. My history and experience are unusual, and my perspective is unusual in many ways. Does one follow the other? Perhaps, but not necessarily.

As regards adolescent sexuality, I had a lot of sex while an adolescent. I’ve had a lot of sex and sexual experiences as an adult as well. Briefly, here is some of what I’ve experienced: snatched by a pedophile at 9 yrs of age; burst out into sex, drugs and rock’n'roll at age 13; was gang raped by the bikers I was hanging around with at age 17; had lots of sex with lots of people in my teens, 20s and 30s, started slowing down in my 40s; worked in the sex trade in my teens — strip joints, porn theaters, prostitution; lived as a lesbian for about 7 years, late teens and early 20s; really enjoyed a lot of computer sex in my 30s; am now happily married (third time’s the charm for me); am bisexual, but fairly invisible in that regard since I now live a middle class married life with children; contracted gonorrhea as a teenager (with the diagnoses of infertility as a result — although after 22 years of using no birth control, I did become pregnant at the age of 38!); contracted herpes in my early 20s, still live with it; sobered up as a member of AA when I was 21 yrs old, so I only hit the alcohol and drugs heavily for 8 years.

This I believe regards sexuality: that so much of what is taken for truth isn’t; that monogamy and marriage originated as tools to promote patriarchy — to ensure that men know their progeny, can “own” and control their families; that there exists an unfair double standard that heaps blame and shame and negative social repercussions upon girls and women who are free with their sexuality; that religion and religious beliefs far too often reinforce the institutions of marriage and monogamy; that it is entirely OKAY to tryst with another person simply for the pleasure of the shared sexuality; that sex can be enjoyed in its fullness without expectations, without promises, without a future between the consenting participants; that honesty is the way to go; that there is an exquisite balance between selfishness and giving to the other in sexual encounters, and that this balance cannot be achieved at all times; that girls and women too often forgo their own sexual pleasure out of fear and timidity and the unexamined belief that they need to be nice; that sex isn’t talked about near enough; that one can deeply love more than one person at a time; that if one is in a long-term committed relationship, “extracurricular sexual activity” is not necessarily a betrayal of one’s partner; that the sexual drive is primal and exquisite and should be explored and enjoyed, not repressed and denied.; that our ideas about sexual morality are intertwined with our dysfunctional social strictures; that if we lived in a more child-friendly world, one wouldn’t necessarily need the monogamous/marriage institution in order to see our children raised well.

One of my favorite quotes: “… have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” — Ranier Maria Rilke

A question for you: what do you think about having multiple sexual partners? If we could get rid of the romantic notions that saturate our culture, that yearning for “the one” … the one who will make our life complete … could we enjoy our sexuality outside of a “long-term committed relationship”?

Dove has launched a major self-esteem campaign, aimed at reaching 5 million young women by 2010. I’ve posted two of the commercials created by this campaign (Evolution and Onslaught).

The goals of Dove’s campaign are good:

The Dove Self-Esteem Fund (DSEF) was established to raise the self-esteem of girls and young women to make them feel more beautiful and confident every day. The DSEF is part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a global effort designed to widen today’s stereotypical view of beauty. A global project, the Fund consists of a network of local country initiatives linked in strategy and direction by a global steering group. In each country, the DSEF supports a specific charitable organization to help foster self-esteem.

There are parts of the campaign that I really like, like the commercials. They also have a series called the Dove Reality Diaries. This is a series of videos and blog posts by four teenage girls about the issues they face - mostly focusing on body-image-related issues. These diary entries (written and video) are real and realistic.

I am, mostly, supportive of what Dove is trying to do here. I think these videos and diaries have the potential to really touch many parents and teenage girls. The on-line tools for parents and for teenagers are interesting, and has some good parts to it. (I do wonder about the “cool” factor of the site for teenagers. I mean, how many girls who actually have self-esteem issues go looking for a site that will help boost it?)

But I have one huge, major, ginormous issue with every bit of the website itself. There are no images of teenage girls who are not skinny, clear-skinned beauties. The pictures of mothers are generally of real women. So where are the real teenage girls? I’m not suggesting that the girls in the pictures aren’t actually real, or that their stories are not true. Only that they don’t match up with the majority of teenage girls or the majority of teenage girls’ stories.

(I mean, common. One of the girls in the Diaries site is trying to fend off her mother from making her get a nose job for graduation. Another just moved to further her modeling career, and is morning her loss of friends. A third spends a full hour doing her make-up before she leaves the house every single day. She agonizes over her friends’ boyfriends liking her more than them. While these are all true stories, they are not true for the majority of teenage girls.)

So I hope that Dove continues with it’s campaign. And I hope that, with time, they bring far more realism into their stories and images.

One of the places I went on vacation was Venice. It was truly amazing. The history was immense and fascinating. Venice survived as a city state for more than a thousand years. Sometimes Venice managed this through its location (great for trade, extremely difficult to attack), sometimes through it’s extreme wealth and penchant for gaudy shows of power, and sometimes Venice managed to stay independent and powerful through ruthless political and wartime acts.

Among the many museums in Venice was my favorite, the Doge’s Palace (or the Duke’s Palace, the ruler of the city). There was much to see and learn about Venetian history inside the palace, including where and how laws were made, how dissidents were routed out, and what kind of conditions prisoners were kept in through the 1930s (they were not good).

The one room (or series of rooms) that was in each museum, but that I did not expect, was the armory rooms. I guess I was just naive - I think of culture, art, and Carnival when I think of Venice. But, of course, all of that thrived because of the rather ruthless army.

And I must say, the armory rooms in the Doge’s Palace were pretty ruthless. They even had a little corner of one room with torture implements in it. Which brings me (in a long-winded manner) to today’s topic: chastity belts.

Now, I’ve written about chastity belts before. But I didn’t see, in person, people’s visceral reaction to what I wrote. In the Doge’s Palace I saw people’s visceral reaction to what was clearly a chastity belt. Here’s what it looked like from a few steps away:

And so, from across the room, people didn’t have much of a reaction. It was when they got close, and really visually centered in on the relevant parts of the belt that the reactions came.

I watched people from all different countries, with many different languages center in on this piece of torture. But they all made essentially the same horrified grunt as they realized what they were seeing.

I wonder whether the grunts from the men and women were coming from different places? Were they imagining life on the two different sides of the belt?

I wonder how many of them were surprised to see that some chastity belts protected against anal as well as vaginal intercourse?

I am also particularly interested that the belt was included in the torture items. Was it really considered a torture item at the time it was used? Or is that a cultural bias that the museum curators have? Does anyone know?

I am delighted to be back home and back at work in this New Year.

Thank you so much to Just Another Teen - I hope everyone enjoyed reading your posts as much as I did!

Later in the week, there are several topics I want to cover from my experiences on vacation (chastity belts in Italy and condom ads in Germany are top on the list!), but for today I want to turn everyone’s attention to a thoughtful Op-ed piece in the New York Times from yesterday.

Caitlin Flanagan wrote a piece called Sex and the Teenage Girl. It begins by discussing Juno and Jamie Lynn Spears, and then segues in this:

Pregnancy robs a teenager of her girlhood. This stark fact is one reason girls used to be so carefully guarded and protected — in a system that at once limited their horizons and safeguarded them from devastating consequences. The feminist historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg has written that “however prudish and ‘uptight’ the Victorians were, our ancestors had a deep commitment to girls.”

We, too, have a deep commitment to girls, and ours centers not on protecting their chastity, but on supporting their ability to compete with boys, to be free — perhaps for the first time in history — from the restraints that kept women from achieving on the same level. Now we have to ask ourselves this question: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated? And if it does, can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

Now, I am not so willing to gloss over the restrictive trends of yesteryear as either Brumberg or Flanagan appear to be in that short statement. (And nor do I think either of them are when the statement is taken in greater context.) But it is interesting to contextualize the historical tendency towards prudish, restrictive morals as caretaking. This suggests that our increasing sexual enfranchisement of girls is hurtful to them because it does not provide them with appropriate protection or care. (I don’t think this is true, but it is critical to remember that simple sexual enfranchisement is not our goal, because it distinctly lacks the guidance and decision-making support that teenagers need.)

So on to Flanagan’s questions: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated?

And my answer: No. The full enfranchisement of girls depends on them being treated sexually the same as boys. It is the double standard that is the primary issue at hand, with the mixed messages that girls receive as a strong second.

Boys are taught that, well, boys will be boys. They are taught that they are not at fault in their response if a girls is dressed a certain way or acts a certain way. The media, social morals, and religion are all relatively clear about this. (There are, of course, good messages about healthy sexuality out there for boys, but this distinctly unhealthy one is the loudest.)

Girls are taught that they should be sexually attractive (through the media), but that they must be the reigns on boys’ unharnessed sexual drives (through social pressures), or they will suffer horrible consequences (through religion, social pressures, and the media all rolled up in one terrifying message).

These uneven and highly mixed messages can wreak havoc on girls’ sexual choices, perceptions of herself and her body, and relationships with boys.

And to Flanagan’s second question: Can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

I say: Of course. But we will have to change the media, social morals and pressures, and religion in order to effectively do so. I’m working on changing the media and social morals myself, and leaving religion to someone more inclined in that direction than myself.

So what do you think? What are your answers to Flanagan’s questions? And how do you think is the best way to go about addressing the problem? (Because I do think that everyone agrees that there is a problem.)

(Written by guest blogger JustAnotherTeen.) 

“You seem very open, honest, and liberal, but you depict your parents as fairly rigid and conservative. How much do you think your parents impacted who you are and how did they do that? I like the person you present yourself as and I sense that you like yourself as well. Do your parents like you as you are or do you hide most of what you have shared with us?”

As I mentioned in the response above, I think some of my attitude and outlook on life are simply the opposite of my parents because I saw them every single day and I wanted to be different. For instance, my parents are often late everywhere they go, so therefore I have a tendency to be early for everything. I think my parents impacted me a lot in some ways, mostly because I consciously tried to be different than they are. My parents know somewhat that I am do not hold their values, but not the scale of which I disavow their narrow-minded ideas. For instance, they do not know that I am bi-sexual. They do not fully realize that I have had sex. I did not even tell them I was dating someone for half a year.

“What do you think are the basic criteria for people (teens) to have and be competent at in order to be able to make a healthy decision to be fully sexual? When do you think teens are harmed by sex too early or with the wrong people? Have you seen much of the problems that can be created by inappropriately early sexuality or do you think there is such a thing as inappropriately early sexuality?”

I think that the age of sexual maturity (being able to make the decision to have sex for the right reasons, not just peer pressure or such) depends greatly on the individual person, the way they were raised, and their partner. I think both partners need to understand that although sex feels good on a physical and emotional level, there can be serious consequences no matter what form or forms of protection are used. They need to understand different forms of contraception and be comfortable with each other and themselves. It should not be a spur of the moment thing in my opinion, but something that is discussed with maturity. That said, I doubt very seriously that any teenage couples are really that prepared, myself and my girlfriend included! I think teens can easily be harmed by sex with the wrong person, especially if there is a large age gap or something else that gives one partner authority. That is not to say that a 15 year old and a 17 year old should not be having sex, again it comes back to the individual relationship. As for problems with early sexuality, I think they are often the same for sex at any age: unwanted pregnancy and STIs, etc. Also, I believe younger people in general have a higher risk of being emotionally scarred but when I think about it, and I have no experience with this, it seems like older people (i.e. Over 20) can be scarred as well from bad relationships, sexual or otherwise.

“Your girlfriend’s mom seems to have ‘come around’ and is coping adequately with your relationship. Do you think there is a down side to this arrangement? What would be the parameters you would want to set up today if you were the parent of a teenager yourself?”

If there is a downside, it would be that she sometimes seems overbearing about making sure we have birth control. I am fully capable of getting my own protection so it just gets annoying when she keeps asking if we need condoms, although I think she has realized in the past few months that I am capable of getting my own and has stopped asking. If I were a parent, I would want to be open about all matters of sexuality but also I would understand if they did not tell me when they started having sex or something like that. I would like to know their partners but also understand that this may not always happen. I think a parent of a teenager should be more of an advisor than a dictator, there at all times to talk but not to rule. However, as I get older my views may change but I hope to be a good father (of adopted children) one day.

Again, I really appreciate everyone who sent in questions, I really had to think about my answers! I enjoyed blogging here for the past two weeks and would like to do it sometime in the future if I or someone else can come up with ideas for new posts! Thanks to Karen for allowing me this opportunity, and if anyone still has questions, that e-mail address is still usable!

(Written by guest blogger JustAnotherTeen.) 

As many great teachers as my school may have, there is one that I absolutely cannot stand. I was supposed to take Health Education in my sophomore year and I really wish I had. Unfortunately it would not fit in my schedule till my junior year. The coach that left at the end of my sophomore was a relative legend with the students. Despite being 70 years old, he had great relationships with students and was a very good coach. His version of teaching sex education as part of his class, according to other students, included having a table full of different contraceptive options on display and he would teach about all of them. Purportedly he sprayed spermicide all over the room on accident one day, and this was a room with carpet! Our next coach was not so open. In fact, he was quite the opposite. When it came time for reproductive health, it was clear that he was not at all comfortable with the subject despite having taught the material before at another school. He misspelled and butchered no less than five anatomical words, created a new hormone called proestrogen (progesterone), thought cervix was spelled cervex, and thought boys had a vas difernes (vas deferens), just to name a few. In addition to not being able to even say or spell the terms correctly, he refused to teach anything about contraceptives, saying that state law didn’t allow him to even give statistics. This didn’t sit well with me and I looked it up and printed an article that actually said the state requires contraceptive statistics to be taught. He blew this off in our class but I noticed he had made a poster with statistics on it for the next term of classes. Although I personally know enough about contraceptives to not be too worried about his refusal to teach us, I do worry for the others in the class that may have needed to know this information. As much as I think schools should be responsible for educating young teens about contraceptives, we know that some will not and totally ignore the fact. Even if you are not comfortable with the subject, I suggest finding some good information online and printing it for your son or daughter. It may be awkward, but it is far less so that finding out you are going to be a grandparent in a few months!

A mother recently asked me if teenage boys need pornography - whether that visual stimulation is really, really important to them and their sexual development. My answer? No. Teenage boys do not need porn. They may want porn. They may seek out porn. They may be fascinated by porn. All of these things are really, really normal.  But that does not mean that they need it.

Three decades ago the porn that was available to teenage boys was their father’s Playboy stash in his closet.  The current situation is much more problematic, because now the porn that is available to teenage boys is essentially limitless and includes every kink possible (without the cold-shower-effect of suggesting their father is into it as well).

So what to do when you, as a parent, find the paper or electronic trail your teenager leaves that ends in pornography?

Well, first you get really, really clear with yourself about how you feel about pornography. Then you talk with your teenager about it. “It” being porn.

And what to do if you never find that trail? Well, you have to assume it’s just because your teenager is better than others at concealing what they’ve seen. And that includes girls.

Every person, by the time they are 16, has seen some kind of pornography. Most have seen it much, much earlier. So you need not fear that you are introducing something that they have not seen or thought about privately. Rather, you need to fear that they have seen something they don’t know how to talk about.

Conversation about pornography with an adult (parent or non-parent) who is very, very clear about their own perception of pornography and can still talk openly and draw out the teenager’s perception pornography is the most effective route to supporting teenagers in navigating these tricky areas.

Boys need to know that girls often feel insecure around pornography. Girls need to know that boys are often curious about pornography. And everyone needs to know that (a) the bodies shown in pornography are extremely unusual and (b) it’s important to talk about and ask questions about the visual images they find, strewn carelessly about on the Internet.

What do you think?  What kinds of conversations about porn have you had with your children?  What kinds of conversation did you have with your parents?

Thanks so much to Heather Corinna from Scarleteen for this information.

Planned Parenthood is now dispensing the pill without a pelvic exam. You can read more about it.

This is a relatively unusual program. Planned Parenthood’s requirements are that you do not have:

• certain conditions that make it inadvisable to use a hormonal method [of birth control]
• symptoms that must be evaluated with a pelvic exam

Now, there is some argument against getting yearly pap smears, for reasons of cost and the potential of false positive results of pre-cancerous cells. However, Heather suggested to me that Planned Parenthood is providing the pill without a pelvic exam simply in order to reach young women who are scared of their first pelvic exam, and are using that as an excuse to not use birth control. There is no indication on the PP website of why they have decided to stop requiring a pelvic exam.

For tomorrow: much discussion about the new CDC findings that teen pregnancy rates have started rising for the first time since 1991. (Yes, you are free to go into the appropriate tizzy of outrage at this information. While you wait for my comments, there’s lots to read about it: here and here and here are good places to start.)