Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

I’m getting more interested in talking with doctors and their staff about how to talk with teenagers about sex and safe sex.
It seems that many of the stories I hear about doctors is that they just don’t talk with teenagers about sex. My brother, for example, has never had a doctor ask him [...]

Yesterday I filmed all day long with two delightful French documentary makers. We filmed at three locations: an interview at an office at UT, a local sex store where I introduced vibrators to an older teenager, and a local Unitarian Universalist church where I led a sex class for middle school students about sexual [...]

Today I am working with a film production company from France. They will be interviewing me about the beginnings of sexuality (remember our conversations about masturbation from last week?) for an up-coming international documentary. They will also be filming a (staged) sex ed class for middle school students. Here is one of [...]

The story of how we learn about sex and our bodies varies dramatically by culture and by era. There are so many places to learn about sex and bodies: parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, school teachers, churches, movies, music, advertisements, porn, and the Internet. And, of course, many more. [...]

This afternoon a mother asked me this question:
“When do I teach my 13-year-old son about birth control?”
Regrettably, the answer is much more complicated than the question. Because really, it depends. And on pressing her, it was clear that the boy knows how babies are made, and probably knows that there are ways preventing [...]

Sex ed by text message. Of course it happened first in San Francisco, where they’re serious about getting sex education messages out, in any medium possible.
The moral of this story is: Want to talk to your teenager? Do it in the medium she or he uses most. For many teenagers that’s [...]

Yesterday’s big news was the new Guttmacher Institute study that suggests teenagers are not using oral sex as a way to stay “technically still a virgin.” Rather, it says that teenagers who are engaging in oral sex are by-and-large also engaging in vaginal intercourse.
I must admit - I am rather surprised by this finding.  [...]

Planned Parenthood has a new education campaign for teenagers called Take Care Down There. At least one blog has questioned whether the site is cheesy - or more to the point whether it is too cheesy for teenagers. And yes, it’s highly cheesy. Here are two cheesy things I noticed about the site:

The [...]

This is a great book. The full title is actually: s.e.x.: the all-you-need-to-know progressive sexuality guide to get you through high school and college. That’s a pretty long title, but long book titles seem to be trendy these days. The title also sets up a pretty big goal for itself. Corinna [...]

Okay, so there’s a huge amount of nonsense flying around about this Vanity Fair picture of Miley Cyrus. And I agree, actually - it is a problematic picture. But really, come on, it’s not pornographic in any way. It’s not even really inappropriate for a 15 year old. The problem is [...]