Middle-School Sex! More! Faster!!
Mike Males (similar version printed as “A Cold
Shower for the Teen Sex Beat,” Extra! January/February 2002)
Teenagers
are "experimenting with a wider range of behaviors at progressively
younger ages"--especially oral sex in junior high school--reported the
Alan Guttmacher Institute (http://www.agi.org, 12/00). How does AGI know?
"Growing evidence, although still anecdotal and amassed largely by
journalists." Translation: "no evidence."
No
matter; journalists sweated more to dredge up pubescent fellatees than the
Pentagon has to unearth Osama. Spurring the media stampede was The New York
Times (4/2/00), announcing, "The Face of Teenage Sex Grows Younger."
Oral sex “is like a goodnight kiss to them," the Times quoted a Manhattan
psychologist. Washington Post Magazine (7/16/00) chimed in: an "unsettling
new fad" of oral sex is indulged by "about half" of suburban
middle-schoolers. (Sources: unnamed "counselors" and
"experts"). "The sexual revolution hits junior high," USA
Today (3/14/02) headlined. (Evidence? Hackneyed shocked-grownup clichés
repeated for decades). Oprah (ABC, 4/29/02) invited adult guests to palliate
their own admitted promiscuities by deploring "the epidemic of oral sex in
junior high;" stay tuned.
“Teens are having more sex--and
getting more diseases” by “turning to sexual behaviors that were once
considered taboo,” US News & World Report’s (5/27/02) cover story blared.
Evidence? Nothing new--just more anecdotes and breathless quotes from perpetual
alarmists such as the Centers of Disease Control’s Lloyd Kolbe and
pop-psychologist Lynn Ponton. Meanwhile, the press either ignored or downplayed
calming authorities such as Deborah Haffner, sexuality educator and former
president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United
States, who “dismisses the press reports of oral sex among middle-school-aged
adolescents as largely media hype, saying that only a very small number of
young people are probably involved" (Guttmacher 12/00).
America’s
press regularly hypes “Teens and Sex.” Is today’s “crisis” any different? The
real story is the ignored realities, which continue to be surprising, even
shocking--but not in the way the popular media and excitable experts who
perpetuate misconceptions of orgiastic eighth graders find titillating. Junior
high kids don't report having much sex. Surveys indicate many more boys claim
sexual achievement with many more partners than do girls (which should arouse
skepticism). Even so, few than one in six students has intercourse by age 15
(Guttmacher 12/00).
Another
cold shower for crisis-mongers: Among today's 10-14 year-olds, birth rates are
lower than they were in 1950, while total pregnancy rates (birth, abortion, and
miscarriage) are at their lowest level since statistics first were collected in
1973, Guttmacher reported ("U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics" 3/01).
Despite better monitoring, sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhea
and syphilis (both transmittable by oral sex) fell to their lowest rate in 2000
among boys age 10-14 since 1958; among girls that age, the lowest since 1972
(Centers for Disease Control, "STD Surveillance 2000").
More
troubling to media pantings about younger boys and girls getting it on, the few
young teens who get pregnant or diseased almost always had considerably older
partners (or coercers, or rapists). Birth records show junior high boys father
just 8 percent of births among junior high girls; men over age 20 father four
times more. HIV infection rates are nine times higher, and other sexually
transmitted infection rates are six times higher, among girls age 10-14 than
among boys their age, also indicating older partners. And while reporters and
authorities continue to pretend sexual risk similarly affects “kids from all
walks of life” (US News 5/27/02), CDC figures show HIV and sexually transmitted
disease rates seven to 30 times higher among poorer than among middle-class and
more affluent teens (STD and HIV/AIDS Surveillance, 2000).
Some
dampening conclusions are evident. The junior high sexual revolution (like
everyone else's, only much less dramatic) happened 30-40 years ago. Kids have
gotten much safer since, with poverty remaining by far the worst risk. The main
danger to young girls remains older men. And if junior high boys really are
having lots sex of any kind with junior high girls, they must be avoiding
pregnancy and chancres very responsibly (unlike older males). Perhaps the
ever-frantic media and quotable authorities should be celebrating, not
condemning, teenagers’ downward sexual trends.
Mike Males, senior researcher for the Justice Policy
Institute, teaches sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.