Teens

The story in last Thursday's New York Times began:

Twenty-one sexually exploited children have been saved from the streets, and 389 people arrested on charges of trafficking children for prostitution, in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls the largest such multistate sweep ever, officials said Wednesday.

The five-day operation, this week and last, spanned 16 cities and involved hundreds of local, state and federal agencies in the work of rescuing missing children, many of them runaways, and identifying networks behind domestic child trafficking for the sex trade. (Susan Saulny, "Hundreds Seized in Sweep Against Child Prostitution" June 26 2008)

It continued:

This blog is an on-going conversation about adolescent sexuality, and all of the nuances and social issues inherent to the topic.

What a day! Eliot Spitzer resigned. Melissa Farley, Tracy Quan and Dina Matos McGreevey appeared on the same New York Times Op Ed page. And in other news we learn that at least 25% of teenage girls are infected with STIs.

Thanks to Feministing I learned about Condom Awareness Week before the week was quite over. In any case, as a result of that post I surfed over to the Advocates for Youth condom campaign page where they've got lots of great "e-cards" promoting condom use. This is one of my favorites, but click here to see the whole page. Send one to someone you love!

In fact, what a great way to start that safer sex conversation you've been meaning to have!

Also, click here for their "Rights. Respect. Responsibility." Condom Art Contest, whose mission is:

to normalize discussion about safer sex, to provide science-based information about the effectiveness of condoms, and to increase partner communication about using condoms for those who are sexually active.

Certainly that's a mission we support here!

And here is a page of links to stories by teens about buying condoms, using them, and about the need for self-protection.

Via two of my favorite blogs yesterday I learned about some kids who really put the lie to the assumption that teens are too immature to handle clear conversation about sex.

First, from Jessica at Feministing I learned about two 8th grade girls who, to protest their school's teaching abstinence only sex ed wore t-shirts that had condoms pinned to them, and the words "Safe Sex or No Sex" written across the front. They were suspended for two days for causing a distraction and dressing inappropriately.

Missing the excitement of all those awards shows that you'd be enthralled by right now if it weren't for the intransigence of the Producers association? This contest is way better: Teens and young adults making videos demonstrating the need for improved sex ed programs.

You know that I've long argued in favor of age-appropriate comprehensive sex education for kids starting in elementary school and working through high school. You also know that's a hard sell in a nation that increases funds abstinence-only sex ed even while states are rejecting the money and even though research shows it to be ineffective.

To help spread the message about how necessary comprehensive sex ed is, and also about how bad a lot of the sex ed that teens now receive can be, RH Reality Check in partnership with SIECUS, Isis Inc., Advocates for Youth and the National Sexuality Resource Center sponsored a video contest. Young people were invited to send in short videos describing their sex ed experiences or envisioning the kind of sex ed they think is best.

The top 10 videos are posted here and you can vote for your favorite until January 16.

Newly homeless youth are likelier to engage in risky sexual behavior if they stay in nonfamily settings — such as friends' homes, abandoned buildings or the streets — because they lack supervision and social support, a new UCLA AIDS Institute study has found .

While the study may be iluminating to those who work in fields of support and intervention, but I think it just reaffirms what we all (should) know: Parental supervision and support is essential in keeping children safe.

Also noted in the report, was this: 

The researchers also found that, in general, U.S.-born or foreign-born Latinas were less likely to engage in sex with multiple partners than were females of other races and ethnicities.

 So much for the hot-Latina stereotypes, hmm?

I can't tell you how much it angers me that people who claim to care about the dangers faced by gender non-conforming teens contribute to that danger by insisting that the closet is the only source of safety and by spouting the kind of rhetoric that endangers the teens in the first place.

(Transcript here.)

Genarlow Wilson is free today after the Georgia Supreme Court ordered yesterday ordered his release. Yet the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports on other teens still locked into sex offender registration for similar crimes.

Age of consent laws, and the punishments attached to them, are deeply problematic. Yet solutions to those problems are hard to even talk about in a society like ours that so stigmatizes sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and that has developed out-of-proportion fears of teens, of sex, and of the combination of the two. 

this is a smashing idea!!!

the pleasure project

because sex education is rarely sexy

and erotica is rarely safe

bringing sexy back into safer sex