Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Dr. Kris Gowen was lovely enough to take some time to talk with me last week about teenagers and the Internet - particularly YouTube.

Kris modestly describes herself: I have been a sexuality educator for 14 years and I have spoken nationally on teens, the Internet, and sexuality at conferences and at public, community-based venues.

What she fails to mention is that she is a dynamic and passionate educator and researcher.  Kris is one of the people that makes me feel lucky to be in this field because it means I get to meet her!  (Okay, so I haven’t met her In Real Life yet, but maybe someday…)

I asked Kris to talk with me because a parent who relies on me for advice and information about adolescent sexuality came to me with questions about how to respond to her son’s video on YouTube.  It was a very harmless video of him and a few friends lip singing to a comedy song.  I told her not to worry about it.  But the conversation got me thinking about YouTube and how parents should think about and interact with the medium when the video is not so innocent.  Naturally, I called on Kris, my resident expert on all things that reside at the meeting point of sexuality, the Internet, and teenagers.

Karen: Thank you for answering my questions, Kris!  First, what should parents of teenagers know about YouTube?

Kris: That it is not just about watching videos. It is a place where teens can upload videos, and form communities. People can contact each other through this site — it’s really a video-based social networking site that is used by everyone from youth to non-profit organizations to the federal government! It’s for all these reasons that it is one of the most popular sites on the web. I suggest everyone go on YouTube and check it out for themselves!!

Karen: In general, should parents be concerned if their teenage son or daughter has a video up on YouTube?

Kris: Short answer, no. I know some teens who put up final school projects on YouTube. I just saw a great one on the importance of the HPV vaccine that was created by a teen local to Portland, OR (where I am). What parents should be concerned about is the content of any video that is up — especially if it contains illegal behavior or an activity that can get the youth in trouble with the school. Also important is to know whether the video contains anything that speaks ill of another person. Parents might be concerned if the video a teen makes violates copyright laws by containing unoriginal work (e.g., some people put up unauthorized clips of their favorite TV shows — that is illegal). But so many videos are fun, creative, and exciting without being harmful, illegal, or dangerous.

Karen: So what are topics/information/content, etc that parents of teenagers should be particularly concerned about, or should watch for?

Kris: Depends on the parents. Some parents like it when their teen seeks out good, reliable, information about certain health issues (sex, drug use, etc). So simply looking at keywords is not really going to help. There are some very good condom demonstrations on YouTube for example. To me, that might be a signal that a youth is taking responsibility (or is just curious). But if youth are watching videos about suicide, are checking out fights, or things like that — I would be concerned. If youth are cleaning out their cache and/or cookies, though, it is going to be hard to really find out what their kids are watching, since you don’t have to download anything onto the computer itself, and a person’s favorite video section is protected via username and password.

Karen: How should parents respond if their teenagers are cleaning their cache/cookies/history?  Is that a sign that parents should be concerned or should they understand it as an age-appropriate need for privacy?

Kris: I think it’s natural for a teen to clean out his or her computer. Cleaning out one’s history could be a sign that the teen is hiding something “bad,” or it could simply be that the teen doesn’t want the parent to find out about something — maybe the teen is helping out a friend and looked up information on eating disorders. Maybe the teen simply doesn’t want his or her parents to know everything. It’s like not wanting a parent to read a diary — there might not be anything bad in it per se, but it’s still personal. The main message here is that parents have to learn to trust, work with, and communicate with their teens. They can’t rely on spying and software to do the parenting for them. There are so many workarounds — some simple, some complex — but there is always a way around any gadget a parent uses to try to figure out what a teen is doing online. The solution to dangerous and unhealthy online behavior lies in communication and the parent-child relationship. Setting guidelines sends a message, but aren’t things that an adult can fall back on and rely on completely.

Karen: How should parents react if they find out their teenager has a video on YouTube from a third party - say, a friend or teacher?

Kris: Again, it depends on the video. In my example of the student project, the parent should be proud! If it is a video of their child in a fight, or doing something illegal or immoral, the first talk needs to be about the action itself. Only after that, can there be dialog about how posting things on the Internet that are usually very private, allow those very same actions to become public property. Those videos can be used in court testimony, by future employees as “character references,” etc. If a youth says “they will never find it,” you can calmly point out that you did….

If you’d like to read more from Kris, take a look at her blog: Virtual Mystery Tour.  Everything else she does is also linked from there.  Hopefully I’ll get around to interviewing Kris again soon about cyberbullying.

I like this video.  I like that it shows a mother encouraging her son to have a positive, mutually fulfilling sexual relationship.  It’s a rare thing to see this kind of parent/child interaction, particularly in this country.

So what do you think?

Last night I finally went to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno.  I’ve been wanting to see this movie since I caught the tail end of it at the Austin premier through an odd sequence of events.  The end was hysterical!  I couldn’t wait.  Well, last night was the first obvious opportunity to present itself, so I went with a friend.

Basically it was a romantic comedy with the only occasional difference that there was a lot of talk about sex and a few naked bodies (with exclusively flaccid penises).  In other words, it was cute and funny and standout perhaps only if you don’t tend to talk about sex for a living.  But even my friend who went with me commented that she expected more raunchiness, nakedness, and sex from a movie with Porno in the title.  The poster certainly implied that.

I have two major problems with Zack and Miri Make a Porno.  And they’re biggies.

1. No condoms.  Are you KIDDING me??  WTF?  Of all the irresponsible, unacceptable uses of poor judgement, this one ticks me off the most.  Okay, so most romantic comedies don’t include condoms in the lead characters’ love scene.  Fine.  I get that.  It’s “romantic.”  (HA!)  But strangers having sex for a movie?  They should totally be wearing a condom.  It’s not even supposed to be romantic!  (And trust me, it wasn’t.)  It’s supposed to be raunchy and porno-stupid!  (It was.)  So why, why, why skip this major part of safe sex?  Grrrr…
2. So when Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have sex for the first time after 20 years of monogamous friendship, they fall in love somewhere between the insertion and the mutual orgasm after 5 minutes of missionary position intercourse.  As if.  Even for a romantic comedy it was completely over the top and unnecessary and led to the statement by Zack: “We went out there to fuck, and we ended up making love.”  Sigh.

So problematic images of sex abound.  And if movies had no impact on people’s actions, I wouldn’t really care.

The integration of condoms into sex/fucking/lovemaking scenes in movies has the potential to have a huge impact on teenagers’ and young adults’ safe sex practices.  After all, our society has given sexuality education of our young people over to the movies and media, since the education system and most parents aren’t willing or able to talk about it.  So the media industry really should step up and start showing safe sex, along with less violence and sexualization of girls.  (Does sarcasm come across the Internet?  Disappointingly, probably not.)

And when will this constant barrage of social weight stop supporting the ideas that (1) just because you’re in love, the sex will be fabulous, and (2) vaginal intercourse alone should be orgasm-producing for women?

I could stomp around, metaphorically speaking, on these topics for some time.  But instead I’m going to turn off my laptop and walk my kids to school.  Hopefully in ten years, by the time the oldest is thinking about actually having sex, these walks to school and back will provide opportunity for us to talk about and bust these myths.  If you don’t have those kinds of conversation with your kids, make sure somebody is.

The other day the illustrious Paul Sunstone left the following comment on this post:

One of the challenges that I’ve found when talking with teens is boredom on my part. At first, that might sound counter-intuitive, Karen. After all, our sexuality is so important to us that it might be hard to imagine someone could become bored with a discussion of it. But I’ve noticed time and again that when some teen starts talking about sex and relationships (as in “What do boys want?”, etc.) I’ve found it difficult to get enthusiastic about discussing the subject. I very much suspect that’s because of two things: First, I’ve been over the same subject so many times that I’ve lost my enthusiasm for it; and second, I’m not an expert on the subject so it kind of puts me on the defensive to be asked about it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt frustrated that I didn’t have a concise, insightful answer to some question I’ve been asked. Despite all that, I feel something of an obligation to the teens who ask me these questions. When they trust me enough to discuss their sexuality with me, I know I would feel bad putting them off. So, what to do?

You spend all day talking with teens about their sexuality. How do you stay enthusiastic? Do you ever worry you’re sending the message that you’d rather be elsewhere? And should I be concerned about sending that message anyway?

It’s an interesting, multifaceted dilemma and question.

Figuring out how to stay enthusiastic has not yet presented itself as a problem for me, Paul.  I am just naturally inclined to be interested.  In addition to my work with teenagers, I do a lot of work with parents.  So in addition to thinking about the teenagers and their sexuality education and development, I also think about parents and how parents can best interface with teenagers, and from there about the extended family dynamics.  It may be that because my wider view on adolescent sexuality, my engagement level stays higher.

I also just delight in adolescent enthusiasm and passion.  So in addition to the subject matter, which I find inherently interesting and fun to talk about, teenagers themselves tend to engage me.  They’re cognitively advanced enough to hold a truly nuanced conversation, idealistic enough to hold a value to it’s highest potential, and generally very deeply immersed in whatever it is they’re talking about.

So I have never had cause to worry that I am sending the message that I’d rather be elsewhere.  (Okay, that’s not completely true.  Yesterday a dear friend was in a bad car accident just before my college class, and my attention was notably lacking.  But I explained the situation to my students, and they were very sweet about it.)

Should you be concerned?  Well, probably.  Appearing disinterested (that you’d rather be somewhere else) can be a huge blow to a teenager who is opening up deeply - perhaps for the first time to an adult - about her or his sexuality.  One of your responsibilities as an adult who teenagers open up to is making sure that the teenager wants to come back and talk more, and continue to access adult perspective, experience, and knowledge.  By not being attentive about these theoretical issues, you might be inadvertently making the teenager think that you’re not available for concrete advice.

Sometimes, though, there are extenuating circumstances that take our attention away from the young people who come to us for conversation (as with me yesterday), and explaining our lack of attention and focus is fine.  Actually, it’s great!  Teenagers can learn much about balance by experiencing adults who are open and upfront with their movement towards balance, even on the days that balance means the teenager is the one who gets the short end of the stick.

Every teenager needs an adult to talk with about these issues.  I’m so glad to know you’re out there, Paul and the many others who read this blog, talking with teenagers and supporting them in their sexuality education and sexual development.

This morning is all about the educational theory.  Here’s what it comes down to:

I love teaching.  It is truly one of my great joys in life, I’m told I’m pretty good at it, and the information I share has the potential to be life-transforming.  But I hate grading.

It’s a problem.

The classes and consultation work I do with parents and teenagers I find richly fulfilling and highly useful to my clients.  They enjoy class time, they get to think about interesting things and do fun and thought-provoking activities, and they go away with more information in the realms that are the most interesting and relevant to them at that time.

On the other hand, when I teach in the college setting, I set up a core curriculum that I want to make sure every student learns regardless of interest, relevance, or attention span.  While I still work to my fullest to incorporate interesting and thought-provoking activities, fun examples, and in-depth conversation, there is only so far I can go in this direction if I have to have a test with a grade at the end of the day.  More of my time is spent on having the students do activities that I do not necessarily think are intrinsically useful (like tests) and on me grading those activities.  This bugs me.

Now, I do teach classes that are not sexuality classes, but instead are child development, general psychology, research, or educational theory classes.  I see these as inherently different.  These classes are oriented towards professional development.  Students will often need the information from these classes to advance either academically or professionally, and the content will be relevant to them in those contexts.  While there are some jobs where human sexuality is professionally relevant (like, say, my job), the majority of my college human sexuality students sign up for my classes out of personal interest rather than professional interest or need.

I wish there was a way I could stop the constant assessment of knowledge and skills in this context.  But I haven’t been able to come up with one.  My professional skill and reputation are relevant, as are the skill and reputation of the college.  So I understand the need for this grading process within the context of the current system - I just wish the system were different.  I think we could go deeper, be more honest, and spend more time on the topics the students are more passionately interested in.

And we could, I truly believe, create an educational system where standard grading is not an integral part of the process.  One of the articles I often have my educational theory students read is about how including the 0 in an average assessment of students’ capabilities is statistically and mathematically inappropriate.  But, they always argue, how do we get the students to do the work if that 0 isn’t hanging over their heads?

Ah, how indeed.

That intrinsic/extrinsic motivational dilemma deeply felt and often used by teachers who work in a compulsory-educational system.  And then students get use to it, and by the time they see me in college, there is little I can do to encourage them to throw off their mantle of feigned disinterest in everything school related and steep themselves in the content I bring to them purely out of interest.

But this is exactly how my students come to me outside of educational systems - full of interest, fun, attention, critical thought, and appreciation of the content.  It’s like a whole different world.

So, any suggestions out there on how to solve my grading problem?  Because I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the Internetz to find me one by the end of the day!  (Okay, not really.  But I’m certainly not turning away ideas!)

Yesterday I wrote a letter to Obama talking about what I would like to see him do in his first 100 days in office.  You can write a letter too!  And I think you should. In fact, ask your kids if they want to write a letter too - most teenagers will be voting in four years, and starting to take action about politics they care about will be good practice for them.

Here is what I wrote:

Dear President-elect Obama,

Congratulations on your election.

As you set the agenda for your first 100 days, please consider comprehensive, developmental-appropriate sexuality education for children of all ages.  I know you believe in this!  (Who doesn’t remember that McCain ad…)  Now start to take a stand.  Make sure that our children know how to keep themselves safe from unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and that they have access to the information and services they need to put that knowledge into action.

Providing education and preventative health care services and access to birth control and condoms is far cheaper, easier, and accessible than treating STDs or supporting unprepared women through pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting.

President-elect Obama, right now, and through your first 100 days, you hold immense sway over the American people.  Your election is historic, and your ability to bring change is substantial.  I have great hope that you will tend to this responsibility closely.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Karen Rayne, Ph.D.

Will it make a difference?  Heck if I know.  But if I didn’t write anything, I’d know for sure neither Obama nor anyone who works for him would hear what I have to say.  After you write, come back and tell us what you said!  Or if you don’t want to, then at least tell us here what you would like to say.

I have something to confess: I am highly remiss and negligent.  On October 20th, 2008 Paul Sunstone awarded me with his highly prestigious, highly sought after Sun Mountain Award.  It even comes with a number!  See:

But seriously, I am very honored.  Paul’s blog, Cafe Philos, is one of my favorites.  Paul’s posts are always interesting, and often talk about two subjects close to my heart: teenagers and sexuality.  Paul also said some very complimentary things about me, which frankly made me blush a little.  He calls me wise!  I love it when people do that.

In other news, my blog has been nominated for two Weblog Awards!  If you like this blog, please a moment of your time to go vote for me!  You can find my nominations for Best Hidden Gem and Best Individual Blogger.  On those pages, you’ll find my blog listed about half-way down the page.  You can click the little green circle with a plus sign on it right below my blog information, and you’ll see my score go up by 1.  Hooray!  Thank you!

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’ve been loving your comments recently, everyone.  Thank you for jumping in!

The other day, my friend Jairy left this comment on my post On Trust:

I was also a bit taken aback during our first class when I asked the group about what their concerns were about the class. I posed the idea that maybe they would be embarrassed to not know something. One brave teen replied with just the opposite. That they might know something that maybe they shouldn’t. I guess I was a bit naive in this regard, assuming that they didn’t have as much information as they already did. That really helped me to gauge where they really are. I have been very proud of them in their willingness to volunteer their understanding and ask questions to help clarify their understanding.

I really liked his point, because it brought out what I was looking to say about adolescent/adult relationships (that teenagers often want to appear innocent, and so adults often do not have a full picture of their sexual knowledge) and applied to another important relationship: friends and peers.

In a group of teenagers, young people often feel the need to show that they know enough about sex to appear cool and knowledgeable, but not so much that they come across as a slut or a show-off.  It’s a delicate walk, and one that is made more difficult when the youth come together in a classroom to learn about sex.  Now, they are suddenly placed in a situation where the teacher is trying to draw them out, to figure out how much sexual knowledge they actually have in order to target the classroom content appropriately, but they are often trying to not let anyone know exactly how much they know.  It’s a wobbly dance, particularly those first few classes.

To help move along the process of figuring out how much the kids know, while allowing them to save face, I generally have them do a number of anonymous assignments.  Writing anonymously seems to help ease them into the idea that eventualy they’ll be talking openly, an eventually they often do.  The need to slowly get comfortable talking about sex with each other is a primary reason why a sexuality class needs to be spread out over a period of time, ideallly months.  This holds true even (perhaps especially) if the group of youth already know each other - there is even more face to save when they already know everyone else than if they are all strangers.

Yesterday someone commented on an earlier post called Making menstruation personal again.  Here is what she (or he) said:

I find the “medicalization” of menstruation abhorrent, but I disagree that “menstruation is one of the first parts of teaching young women about sex and sexuality.” Of course sex ed is really important, but I think explanations about periods should be separate from it. I understand that menarche is part of puberty, but menstruation is not a sexual event and is not part of one’s sexuality. Getting your period is a normal bodily function and I think it does people a disservice to link it to sex.

Before I say anything else, I want to be clear that getting your period is absolutely a normal bodily function.  As is sex.

Now, I realized as I was responding to the comment that I feel very strongly that menstruation must be an explicit part of sexuality education.  I didn’t want to start raving in my own comments section, so instead decided to write a whole post on it.  So here are my reasons why menstruation must be included in a good sexuality education program for individuals of all ages:

1. Many people have times in their lives when they are trying to have - or not have - children.  At these times in their lives, people’s fertility is closely tied to their sex lives.  They need to understand their own fertility and their partner’s fertility - including menstruation - in order to make choices about their sexual actions that supports their pregnancy (or non-pregnancy) goals.
2. As is alluded to in 1, family planning choices affect sex.  However, menstruation also often affects when and how women want to engage in sexual activities (for example: distaining sexual activity during their period or really enjoying it).  Moreover, the hormonal changes around women’s fertility cycles often affect their interest in sex.  Therefore, menstruation can be a sexual event, and is part of many women’s sexuality - even if they have not explicitly acknowledged it as such.

Now, this is not to suggest in any way that when a young girl is approaching puberty, it’s the right time to give her a full rundown of the connections between menstruation and sexual intercourse or even an in-depth talk about reproduction and what role sexual intercourse plays in that.  The age when a girl starts to menstruate has a huge impact on how much information needs to be included in those pre-menstrual and menarche conversations.

Over time, however, those connections do need to be made in age-appropriate ways.  My college students still have questions for me about the connections between fertility cycles and sexuality - and they are good, important questions that are often born out of their own experiences, and I can’t think of another place where they might have the opportunity to ask them.

This morning I was thinking about trust.  About who has it, and who doesn’t.  And what that means about innocence and knowledge.

Because I occasionally find myself in front of a group of young teenagers talking about this most intimate topic, promising I won’t tell their parents what they say, teenagers often confide in me or at least speak openly in front of me, in ways they say they do not usually do with adults.  Here are some of the things I hear:

I hear that their parents don’t trust them.  I hear that their teachers don’t trust them.  I hear that this pains them deeply.

But I also hear that they do not trust their parents.  I hear that they do not trust their teachers.  And I hear that they assume this is just the way of the world with adults.  (”Well, except you,” they are sometimes kind enough to note with a nod towards me.)

The long and short of this massive distrust and general pain that teenagers hold in their relationships with many adults in their lives is that they are unwilling to talk about sexual matters with them.  This can result in the adults in their lives thinking they are far more innocent and unknowing than they actually are.

Sometimes, early on in our conversations, a young person will say something, and another will punch him or her in the shoulder and, nodding towards me say, “That’s SO inappropriate!  You can’t say that!”  The indication clearly being, they can’t say that in front of an adult.  I smile and say as quickly as I can, “There is nothing inappropriate here.”  They stare at me, “Really??”  And often promptly try and shock the socks off me.  This is where I really get to the meat of what they know about sex and what they have questions about.

These kids are not innocent.  But nor do they really have knowledge.  Rather, they are in is this world of pigeon-sex-speak that preteen and teenagers use.  Words are tossed around in a terribly cavalier way - cunt, prostitute, pimp, dick - without any real knowledge of what they mean (but they make adults rise their eyebrows!) and giggles are plentiful.  Few adults are invited into this world where teenagers use their extensive sexual vocabularies - and even fewer are asked to take part in deciphering the jumbled-nonsense-code that sexual words have become.

But why not?  Why don’t teenagers invite adults, who they otherwise like and engage with, into their world of sexual (mis-)understanding?  Why do parents and teachers, who otherwise feel that they know and understand a teenager’s level of development, massively mis-judge their sexual knowledge and/or experience?

Well, it’s tied up in social stigma, intergenerational conflict, and teenagers wanting their parents and teachers to think the best possible of them.  All this means that teenagers are inclined to lie about their knowledge level, make themselves seem more innocent than they actually are.

Not long ago, I was giving a class to a group of young people.  They were all engaged and on-topic and had something to share, both in terms of offering their prior knowledge to the group and asking questions to clarify their prior misunderstandings.  Afterwards, I was talking with a parent whose child had been in that class.  The parent said how pleased they were that their child had been there.  Their child had given them a blow-by-blow of the class that was quite accurate, except that the child indicated that all of the information presented was new - nothing they had known before.  I was pretty stunned, as the parent continued to thank me for presenting this new information to their child in a warm, engaging way for the first time.  Based on the young person’s input during class, they were relatively knowledgeable in a slang-based, nervous kind of way.  This parent is one who is often in deep conversation with her child, and feels she knows her child well.

So here’s the problem for parents and teachers: It is incredibly hard to know when a young person does not trust you with their complete sexual knowledge and experience.  But just because a youth has not talked about a specific aspect of sexuality (or even stated their ignorance of it), does not by itself lend credence to the young person’s actual lack of knowledge.

To combat this problem work to see that the pre-teenagers and teenagers in your life have no reason not to trust you about sexuality - bring up the topic in conversation, be forthright, and spend a lot of your time listening closely to what your teenager has to say.  Building that trust is the first step towards a truly open conversation where you’ll get the best possible understanding of the young person’s places of innocence and knowledge.