Please.
I need to understand.
How is it that these days oral sex is not considered SEX???
Seriously.
Maybe a young-ish blogger can bridge the generation gap so I can understand.
Or maybe a blogger who works with adolescents understands and can explain it to me.
Cause I don't understand.
I have a patient here we go again who is about to turn 14. And she's performing oral sex on random boys who are just friends. But it doesnt count as sex. And all her friends are doing it. I've taken a poll of the pediatricians and they all say the same thing.
Yeah, kids don't think of it as sex.
Drowning Turkey Stance
I've already had conversations with my patient. I've reminded her and others that the only thing you don't get from oral sex is pregnant. Everything else you can get. Herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV. I remind them that some can be treated, and some cannot.
Do they really want to take that risk?
The girls won't use condoms
cause the boys don't like it that way.
Of course they don't.
And being that they're teenagers, their brains are physiologically unable to consider that they are vulnerable. They are human. They are not invincible.
It can happen to them.
So this patient heard something about one of the boys she had serviced, and went into a typical adolescent freak out that she may have caught something from him.
She came in for testing.
And I went through my spiel again. And I saw it go in one ear and out the other.
aye aye aye
I'm not super up tight. I've had my share of pre-marital sex and multiple partners. But it was never casual. Serial monogamy. And admittedly not always safe. honestly that's really hard to achieve. But in my book, any kind of contact with a penis is...SEX... how can it be nothing? How can it mean nothing?
It's not borrowing a pencil, or sharing a Cherry Coke.
It's a PENIS.
And you know, it's not reciprocal. That's the general understanding we have from our patients. Boys and girls. Girls go down, boys do not. And boys don't call. Or acknowledge. But I'm sure they talk. They usually do.
So I have to believe that it's the same age old story. Girls putting out to feel acceptance, to feel special, or to have a boy like them.
I need to understand. Not as a health care provider. I've been dealing with this for a long time at work. But now my kids are getting older. And I have a daughter. I need to understand. As a mother.
It's kind of yucky to imagine my daughter and her friends coming up and thinking random oral sex is OK. Or no biggie. Or not sex. That it doesn't count.
Cause if it's not sex, when does No mean No?
I think that's the part that scares me the most.
I talk to my kids. Jack is 12. We've talked. He's now at the age where he feels more comfortable talking to his father. And they TALK. Bruce answers all his questions, and clarifies confusion. Explicitly. And gives him a good dose of ethics and morals and what constitutes respectful and responsible sexual behavior.
When Ty and Mia start asking the questions we'll talk with them too.
But still... peer group has such power...
Do I sound like a prude? I probably do. I probably am.
I just don't get it.
Can someone please explain?
It isn't just oral sex; it is sex itself. One girl I know, who was dating a boy I know, had sex with someone else (actually several different someone else's) and couldn't figure out why the boy broke up with her. "Come on, it's just sex, it's not like I was DATING him!" This girl is 16. Sex is, these days, as meaningless as a handshake. And it isn't just the boys anymore who do it; friends with benefits? Both sexes. Fucking someone for the sake of fucking and never even looking the person in the eye at school? Both sexes do it. I would normally be all over "girls as victims" part of it but the guys are being victimized as well, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I don't get it, I think a lot of it comes from shitty (there, I said it) parenting and lack lack of any kind of moral or ethical beliefs or teachings at home. I don't mean religious, either. I think a lot of it comes from kids not having supervision or limits, I think it comes from being taught that a body is just a body, and those feelings are just biology. The young women are not taught about having respect for themselves (and I do NOT preach abstinence only, BTW, but I do preach safety and emotional involvement) and their bodies, and the young men are taught that they can do whatever they want; really, where are boys seeing that if they create a child, they are held accountable? Schools (at least here) are not allowed to teach safety, they are only allowed to teach abstinence-which doesn't work.
The older kids and I took a class called Strengthening Families a year ago; the instructors were people who work daily in the juvenile justice department. And guess what? Most experimental behavior comes between the hours of three and six o'clock, when parents (if there are parents) are at work. If you haven't talked to your child about sex and your personal feelings and why you feel the way you feel before age nine (yes, NINE) the statistical probability of them contracting an STD opr having an unwanted pregnanacy increases by something like 60% (I don't remember the exact figures, I am sorry).
So. Lack of education. Lack of proper supervision. A media that not just airs but PROMOTES teen sexuality and the sexualization of women. A culture where it is perfectly acceptable for men to father children and cause or spread disease and have no accountability. Schools that do not teach these kids about personal responsibility. Parents who don't give a shit, either because they can't or aren't around or whatever.
Grrrr. I am sure I will have more to say on THIS subject. :)
I just don't get it either. Especially because of the whole "servicing" thing - just not something I would have ever considered.
ReplyDeleteI remember going to lots of parties my senior year. The kids at these parties were with very smart, very popular, from very high achieving families. Of course, there was NEVER an adult at any of these parties. One room (probably a home office as it only had a bookshelf and computer) was the (???) room. I forget what they called it, that was close to 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in that room, girls would sit in a circle and boys would take turns being in the middle. Of course the boys always had their cock out and the girls were taking turns sucking away. Eewwwohhh!! Needless to say, I was too much of a prude to go into that room!! In fact, the first time I started to walk into the room, I was horrified by what I saw in the 2 seconds it took for me to close the door.
I hope that I can teach my daughter to be a prude like me.
I have heard of this too and I think it's horrifying and mostly because of the reason you cited about how it's the girl servicing the boy and not ever the other way around. I believe that oral sex has long not been considered as "serious" as "real" sex. There's an old saying I've heard- "Eatin' ain't cheatin'" but of course it is.
ReplyDeleteAs a health care provider you can only do what you can do. But as a MOTHER you can reenforce the belief in your daughter that sex is a very special part of life that should be considered very seriously and only as part of something which will benefit a relationship from both sides. A RELATIONSHIP!
It's a hard one, Mama.
Funny how we live in a world where yes, drugs can kill you but sex can kill you just as dead.
I wrote a post a while back about talking to my kids about drugs and sex but I can't get the link to copy. Why is that?
But if you do a blog search on my blog for "Honey, Are you smokin' de dope?" you'll probably find it.
I think it's a way to halt having sex to keep your boyfriend because if you're doing the oral sex thing, the pressure to have actual sex is right there. I think girls do it to proetct themselves from the pressure of having sex. It IS a big deal, and it's gross, but it stops the pressure from "going all the way" Right or wrong, that's just the way it is. Put Mia off by telling her about funky spunk and various diseases, that should do the trick.
ReplyDeleteIt's shocking isn't it? I grew up in the 70's when lots of people were having sex, we just weren't lying to ourselves about what we were doing. The neighborhood moms with daughters older than mine have told me horror stories, lipstick parties, where multiple girls wearing varying shades of lipstick or gloss give bj's to boys. Ugh. If a penis is out, it's sex. If pants are down its sex. That's what I'm telling mine. From what I hear, it's a mix of good kids, smart kids, rich girls doing this here, which makes no sense to me at all.
ReplyDeleteI think more distrubing than the promiscuity and risk is the fact that girls are digressing into something for boys to use. It's such a huge step backwards. It's not empowering, it's demeaning. They just don't see it yet.
Tight parental supervision is the best weapon I can think of against this latest humiliation. And maybe communication. Ugh.
Be bwave michelle. It's kindof scary out there!
What an interesting topic. I don't think it's bad parenting or even a lack of parenting. Not even a lack of information. I had good parents, a very good understanding of sex, pregnancy, STDs. I had books, I read them, I understood them and yet every chance I got my neighbor and I were experimenting with each other when I was 14 - 16. Ever since I was a kindergartner (when I can remember those feelings) I have felt unloved, unwanted. Intellectually I know I'm loved, but I have these nagging doubts in the back of my brain. When I became a teen those doubts were quadrupled especially when I got hormonally excited with a boy. If there was any sign that they liked me, I'd do just about anything to keep that feeling alive. My parents could have bought me everything in the world, hugged me for days, told me that they loved me non stop and I still would have felt this feeling of being unloved.
ReplyDeleteThis may not be what is going on with these girls, but I had no peer pressure when I was a teen. My friends would have been horrified with me. I needed to feel like I belonged, even if it was just for a few minutes.
No you do not sound like a prude.
ReplyDeleteAnd it drives me crazy that oral sex is not considered sex. It is sex; it's just not intercourse.
And it drives me crazy that the boys get and don't give. No I don't want a bunch of 14 year olds going down on each other, but young ladies "What are you doing?" These boys do not deserve more than you do. And they should be just as worried about you liking them.
Oh dear. I don't get it either. I consider oral sex a MORE intimate act than actual intercourse.
ReplyDeleteI plan on running away from home the minute Dottie starts menstruating.