More than half of American teens ages 15 to 19 have engaged in oral sex, increasing to nearly 70% for those who are 18 and 19, according to the largest federal study of the nation's sexual practices.
The study also found that 11% of women ages 18 to 44 reported having at least one homosexual experience in their lifetime, up from 4% in a similar survey conducted in 1992.
Taken together, the two findings suggest a shift in sexual practices, in which females are using oral and lesbian sex "as a safer alternative than [vaginal] sex with men," said epidemiologist William D. Mosher of the National Center for Health Statistics, the study's lead author.
"If it is seen as a safer alternative, it is an interesting response to the campaigns to reduce teen pregnancy and to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and HIV," he said.
However, only 9% of the teens reported using condoms during oral sex. Studies have shown that gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes and human papillomavirus can be transmitted in this manner.
"They have not been given a strong enough message about the health risks of oral sex," said Dr. Claire Brindis of UC San Francisco.
hell's bells, what do these kids think they are doing??? "it isn't like we hooked up??" "we didn't have sex" "we just, well, you know, played around." Now anecdotally i can support the findings from my research over the last fifteen years of my own student's progress and development. In the last three years alone, numerous female high school students have stepped forward publicly to avow their bi-sexuality and overt lesbianism, when just five years ago that was a socially stigmatizing taboo. Before this study was released i had asked some former students from a decade ago, if they were aware of that much homosexual experience among their peers. They said there were not, and did not believe that they were socially able to engage in those behaviors as a response to the problems in the world around them because of the red neck christian ethical climate which surrounded them. In that some of that same christian ethic is promotional of chastity and thus encourages virginity while accepting irresponsible non-intercourse sexual behaviors, it should come as no surprise that more and more females are engaging in bi-sexuality while male homosexuality is declining in the same settings.
What strikes me as particularly dysfunctional is the excessive overt "advertising" of these traits, especially on websites such as yahoo personals and myspace.com. When you have a public forum encouraging young adults(and the all too many teens who lie about their ages to use the systems) to literally advertise their sexual preferences as a "cool" card, you are are society that has begun to turn away from the idiot moralizing and socially destructive fundamentalist ethic at the same moment that that group is insisting upon forcing that on people. This overt expression of sexual non-preferences is a revolutionary act in the face of the mounting campaign by evangelicals and fundamentalists to hold power over the personal cognitive views of the population. The only reservations i have are in the choices to not be safe about it, otherwise this trend is wonderfully radical.
