| It’s too bad the media is so unreliable. Otherwise, I could take comfort in the fact that so many teenagers are engaging in oral sex like a bunch of, um, horny teenagers.
"I’ve always said if all sexually active teens stopped intercourse altogether and only had oral sex, teen pregnancy and STI rates would decrease dramatically," says Alex McKay, the research coordinator for the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (sieccan.org).
It’s a controversial position, but McKay, speaking on a panel called "Canada: What’s Going On in Research, Education and Therapy" at the Guelph sexuality conference earlier this summer reminds us that 10-15 years ago the buzz word in sexual health education for young people was "outercourse," that is non-intercourse based sex.
"Now we’re all freaked out because some of them took our advice," he laughs. Still, while the media would have you believe that teenage girls have turned into a bunch of rainbow-club-membership-toting, Hoover vacuum cleaners, Alex McKay says that data on the subject is often misinterpreted.
For example, the "teenage oral sex panic" was created in large part as a result of media stories claiming that anywhere from 50 to 70 per cent of teenage girls were having oral sex. But, says McKay, these reports fail to distinguish that this percentage is out of the total percentage of sexually active teens.
The other problem is that most studies lump teens into a wide 15 to 19 age range, says McKay.
According to SIECCAN’s own 2004 Report Card on Adolescent Sexual And Reproductive Health in Canada, while 60 to 70 per cent of sexually active teens aged 18 to 19 said they’d engaged in oral sex (even once counted), only 20 per cent of sexually active teens aged 15 said they’d done so.
What percentage of teens is sexually active? For teens — male and female – aged 15 to 17, McKay found that 30 per cent had engaged in first intercourse, with 16.5 being the average age among this group. By age 24, this figure rose to about 70 per cent.
As for the popular notion that kids are doing it younger and younger, McKay insists the age of first intercourse has remained pretty much steady for the last 10 to 15 years. One thing that has changed is the number of partners sexually active teens say they’ve had. However, here again, seems teens aren’t the floozies we’re led to believe they are. According to SIECCAN’s report card, the number of teens who’d been with only one partner has increased. The number of teens with six or more partners decreased.
Still, headlines like the Toronto Sun’s "Wild World of Teen Sex!" from May of this year fuel our paranoia about teenage sexuality and continue to spread misinformation. For example, the Sun article reported both an increase in teen pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), when in fact, says McKay, teen pregnancy rates have been declining for years and are at an all time low in Canada.
As for increased rates of STIs, McKay does admit they’re on the rise, but credits this at least in part to raised awareness and increased testing. In fact, in the ’90s, before the teen sex panic years, most STI rates were declining.
That’s not to say there aren’t genuine concerns, says McKay, rates of chlamydia being one of the most alarming.
And condom use is still an issue, but again, young teens aren’t the major concern. According to McKay’s research, condom use is higher among them than older teens that often abandon condom use when they start using another form of birth control. They believe STIs aren’t an issue, he says, because they say their partner is "faithful" or because he or she "looked clean."
Frankly, this kind of naiveté is more alarming to me than a teenager giving someone a blowjob. And the media’s no help on that front.
"It’s hard enough to get good sex-positive education in schools," says McKay. "It’s even harder if we’re operating on this notion that civilization is crashing down because teens have gone wild."
In 2003, the Canadian government published Sexual Health Education Guidelines, but they are just that, guidelines. Sex education in Canadian schools varies from province to province, board to board, school to school, and classroom to classroom, explains McKay. According to a New Brunswick study, he says, most students reported having received no sex education or rated what they did get as poor. Instead of freaking out about what young people may or may not be doing sexually, McKay wishes we would focus on how and when they learn about it. And the younger the better.
"We’ve lowered the age to grade seven and eight in some cases, but I’d like to see sex education as low as grades five and six," says McKay. "We need to get to kids before they become sexually active." |
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