We Should Look in the Mirror First

Sex Education for Teenagers: We Should Look in the Mirror First

Here’s a little quote I’d like to share with you:

"We kowtow to an ersatz teen "culture" which is heavily sexualised. Many [teenagers], in consequence, have full sex too early, assisted by sex educators handing out condoms and morning-after pills; again there is damage to developing confidence." (Libby Purves, The Times, 17th August 2004.)

Hmm... so, is the writer saying that on the one hand, these young people are not sufficiently mature to have sex for the right reasons (they want it, as opposed to feeling pressured into it), but on the other hand, they are sufficiently mature to only do it with condoms and morning-after pills on offer? Or is the idea that having these essential precautions readily available to teenagers implies that it’s okay for them to have sex? Something of a moral dilemma here; it’s not really a good idea for young teenagers to be sexually active because they’re not emotionally mature enough to cope with many of the consequences, and early sex puts young women at greater risk of cervical cancer. However, by the time we reach the stage of handing out contraceptives and barrier protection, we should accept that if they’re going to do it, there’s probably not a lot any adults can do about it, and the risk that they might catch some incredibly nasty diseases or become pregnant at a young age outweighs the risk of implying to them that we, the so-called ‘adults’ think it’s a good idea for them to be sexually active. Better, surely, to prevent rather than cure, with better sex education. (In fairness, Libby Purves’ original article makes some good points – see here for details: www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-152-1219506,00.html - I just didn’t like that argument!).

Everyone has an agenda when they talk about sex education for kids, so here’s mine: I’m with the ‘give them appropriate education all the way through their childhood’ brigade, as opposed to ‘giving them sex education encourages them to have sex early’ brigade. I’d like to pretend this is based on scientific research, but if I’m honest it’s based on the ‘well I had that and it never did me any harm’ reason that most people seem to employ. I do have other reasons though, mainly that sex is a natural part of our lives, but it’s unlike other natural parts of our lives, like eating, in that it involves not just our bodies, but our whole selves. We are rarely more vulnerable in our whole lives than in the period of adolescence when we first begin to explore our sexuality without the mental protections we acquire in later life (‘if he won’t wait he’s not worth it’, ‘just because someone doesn’t fancy me doesn’t mean I’m a failure’, etc.). But, does early sex education encourage teenagers to experiment? There’s some evidence from Scandinavia that it doesn’t, but here isn’t the place to rehash that tired old debate. Instead, I’d like to introduce a new way of looking at the whole issue: the whole sex education debate is a cover-up, distracting us from the real problem. Adults.

The debate on sex education for children and teenagers rages on because for as long as we can keep the focus on the kids, we can keep it off ourselves. Childhood is the period in which people turn from tiny babies into adult members of society. It necessarily involves the tranmission of the values of adult society to these new members of society; how else are they going to fit in? A big, big part of parenting is this attempt to make sure your kids grow up with the values you want them to have - whether this be ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’, ‘all people who aren’t of our faith are heathens’ or whatever. But as any parent knows, this isn’t easy. As children grow up and mature into adults, they begin to question their parents’ values. Ideas from the outside world begin to creep in. Indeed, one of the most painful parts of the growing-up process (for both sides) is that moment when you stop unthinkingly accepting your parents’ values and realise that from now on, it’s up to you what you believe in.

I believe that the problem with teenage sex is not the teenagers. The problem is with our culture. Look around. Is sex respected in our culture? Lots of individual people do respect it, of course. They take precautions, respect their partners and generally get on with it. But the overwhelming message that come through – promoted in adverts, TV soaps, films, music, magazines – is that sex is all about the physical. It’s about how your partner looks, being attracted to someone walking down the street, pulling someone you’ve just met in an club. Seriously, when was the last time you saw someone on a TV show refuse to have sex not because they or the person on offer was attached and shouldn’t be playing around, but because they didn’t feel they knew them well enough? And if sex is all about the physical, it follows that it can be used to sell things. Hey, if no-one’s emotions are involved and there are no bad consequences - no STDs or unwanted pregnancies in three-minute songs or two-minute adverts - what harm is being done? So we see women eating chocolate bars as if they’re giving a blow job, women in their underwear leaving trails of beer round the house, etc. (It’s never the men posed in suggestive positions, is it?). I’m sure this is not a new idea to most readers of the F-Word!

This message of easy, cheap sex is what teenagers are picking up on. They perceive adults – especially the twenty-something adults they’re about to turn into – shagging around with no regard for the consequences and think, well, if that’s what you do to be an adult, that’s what we’re going to do. Our society is living in denial about sex. The message is still not getting through to lots of people that if you shag the wrong person without protection, you could catch a fatal disease or become infertile; combined with the promotion of sex, sex, sex everywhere, this can be lethal. This is my retort to the anti sex-education brigade; sex is everywhere. You cannot grow up in modern Britain without seeing sexually suggestive adverts (the Opium billboard, anyone?) or hearing sexually suggestive music. Denying children appropriate sex education ignores the fact that they will be exposed to images of sex throughout their lives, and without the appropriate tools to understand what is going on and what sexual relationships involve, they will struggle in later life.

All this sounds quite prudish, doesn’t it? Who would deny that in a country with free speech, we should be free to have Page 3 girls, FHM magazine and soft porn on Channel Five? I doubt anyone in any position to do anything about it is going to try to reign in these aspects of our culture, because when push comes to shove, lots of people in Britain like them and make money out of them. I really doubt a twenty-something man who reads FHM or Playboy thinks about the plight of the harassed mother in WHSmiths who has to explain to her child why the woman on the cover is wearing no clothes, though I personally would like to drag out and beat up whoever produced the t-shirt I saw recently on a girl no older than nine or ten saying ‘I’m game if you’ve got the balls’.

Heck, I’m guilty too - I like Sex and the City and Cosmo's ‘Guy Without His Shirt’ feature as much as the next straight woman. But would it kill us to keep these things a bit more private, to allow children to grow up without being continually confronted with adult sexuality? Apparently it would. I guess as a society we’ll keep on selling sex, and then wonder why so many teenagers act like they’ll be failures if they don’t sleep around. Instead of telling them to grow up, Britain should take a long hard look at itself.