You're Teaching My Child What? (20 page)

But these intensive efforts to redefine social norms and reassure mixed-up kids—
it's “natural,” you're “normal,” just relax and be “who you are”
—don't appear to work. Teens still flock to the experts in angst, asking,
what am I
?

These readers don't experience their doubts as “natural.” They are troubled by their questions. They don't like the uncertainty.

What's an expert to do? They've provided reassurances ad nauseam—“It's OK to not know!” and “As long as you feel comfortable with your sexuality, there is no need to compare yourself to a norm”
³¹
—they've come up with all sorts of ways for teens to find support and accept themselves,
³²
but these kids keep pestering them: Help! Who am I?

The “experts” have a brilliant solution: have kids consult with their peers—other teens who are also confused. Kids have just as much wisdom as adults, right? Maybe even more. Here's how it works.

A teen girl turns to the expert on
gURL.com
. She sometimes fantasizes about women when she's with her boyfriend, she admits.
Am I a lesbian?
She wants to know.
Is this normal?

Of course you are normal, she's told. But it will take time for you to sort it all out. In the meantime, check out the “confused and curious” folder on the “when girls like girls” board. There are lots of other gURLs on that board who can give you advice and additional support.

As a parent, being curious myself, I ventured over to the “confused and curious” folder on
gURL.com
.

Talk about the blind following the blind—this is a cyber café for very lost souls. Can the experts at this SIECUS-recommended site be aware of what goes on here? These girls, some as young as thirteen, speak openly of their depression and self injury; a few provide the dates of their last cut or burn. Their questions abound: Who am I? How do I know? How do I pick up a girl? There's no end to the vulgarities. A poll, presumably devised by a teen, asks, among other things: Your favorite part of a woman's body? Do you like butch girls or femmes? Which do you prefer, beer or hard liquor? Have you ever given or received a lap dance? Which do you prefer, the taste of p***y or sushi?

I'm not making this up, folks. This is where the authorities entrusted with our kids' well-being and health send teens to sort things out. You can check it out yourself.

Similarly, Advocates For Youth refers “questioning” teens to a site they host called youthresource.com., where trained peer educators,
³³
ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-four, will help with their questions and concerns.
³⁴
Who are these peer educators?

Devin is a peer educator of undisclosed age. He writes,
Jae is getting a Masters in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is passionate about “diversity in gender and sexual expression.”

Another peer educator, Theodora, came out as a lesbian when she was fourteen. But now, she admits,

These are some of the “trained” peer educators that kids struggling with identity issues are referred to by a leading sex ed organization. I wonder, before writing that check out to Advocates for Youth, did anyone in Washington consider the dangers of confused kids consulting with even
more
confused kids?

As a final example,
Sexetc.org
³⁷
offers this pearl:

The only way to know if you are gay or bisexual “is to experience it and reflect carefully on the feelings that come up as a result of the experience.”
³⁸

Whose wisdom was that? Was it Devin's or Jae's? No, this gem came from a national authority. Elizabeth Schroeder is a human sexuality professor at Montclair State University and executive director of Rutgers University's ANSWER, a national organization that promotes
comprehensive sex education.
³⁹
She's also at SIECUS—the chair of their board of directors.
⁴⁰

With Ms. Schroeder's tip, readers can learn about teens who have followed it.

So there it is, folks, guidance from a head honcho, supported with testimonials from Natasha and Juliet:
Boys and girls, you hear so much about sexuality, and you're wondering where you fit in. Do you like girls? Boys? Perhaps... girls
and
boys? You won't know 'til you try. Afterwards, think about the encounter. Contemplate how you felt. You'll know.

This is unnerving. While parents worry about the anything-goes message on
Gossip Girl
, their kids are hearing the same thing from a credentialed professional—from SIECUS's board of directors to boot.

It shouldn't come as a surprise. No doubt Schroeder's touchstone is Kinsey's philosophy—
“sexuality is not an appetite to be curbed”—
so how could her suggestion to teens be any different? Her counseling is consistent with Kinsey's legacy and in the same spirit as books written for adolescents by an earlier SIECUS official, Wardell Pomeroy.
⁴²

But Pomeroy was writing in the 1970s, before herpes, warts, HPV, and chlamydia became household words. Most importantly, it was pre-HIV and AIDS. Natasha and Juliet live in a different world. When Ms. Schroeder encourages today's teens to experiment with same sex behavior, she's sending them to play in a minefield.

Teens and young adults with persistent, same-sex attraction face unique challenges. They are more likely to feel confused and isolated. Their families, schools, friends, and religious organizations may reinforce negative stereotypes. Coming out may be followed by rejection, discrimination, and even violence.

The last thing these young people need is more worry, shame, and stress. The last thing they need to hear is they've got herpes, HPV, syphilis, gonorrhea, or HIV. Yet each year,
⁴³
more and more of them
⁴⁴
hear exactly that.

Sex educators
⁴⁵
blame homophobia. Due to bias and victimization, they argue, non-heterosexual teens have less access to accurate health information and supportive medical care. Rejection by family and friends may lead to depression, substance abuse and runaway behavior. These young people can become homeless and engage in prostitution as a matter of survival. The remedy is to fight prejudice, improve these kids' circumstances, help them feel better about themselves, and—of course—provide ample “safer sex”
⁴⁶
information.

Worthy goals, but when the strategy includes giving the impression that all encounters—boys with girls, boys with boys, girls with girls,
girls with boys
and
with girls—carry an equal risk of infection, it's ill-advised. And dishonest.

The objective, I assume, is to level the playing field. Educators want all students to feel good about their families, themselves, and their sexual choices, and that's facilitated by teaching that everyone faces the same risks. Straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual—everyone's in the same boat.

This equal-opportunity approach to infection sounds fair—all orientations face the same risk—so both teacher and student feel good. You might say that sex educators have, for fairness sake, rewritten the principles of virology, bacteriology, and epidemiology. The hard truth is that the playing field is not level, and in the long run, denying that reality has catastrophic results for the very population it was designed to help. Teens embarking on same sex experimentation are on a road more perilous than their sexually active “straight” peers, and they need to know it.

The worst news first: as many as 50 percent of new HIV infections in the USA occur in persons under the age of twenty-five,
⁴⁷
and gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents
⁴⁸
are disproportionately represented among those with new infections
.

Despite decades of comprehensive sex education, billions of dollars toward safer sex programs, free condoms, and testing, the incidence of HIV in thirteen- to twenty-four-year-old gays and bisexual women is increasing. Says the CDC, “This age group has more recently initiated high-risk behaviors.”
⁴⁹

The behaviors placing them at higher risk than heterosexuals include:
⁵⁰
earlier age of sexual intercourse debut,
⁵¹
more lifetime and recent sexual partners,
⁵²
equal or greater levels of unprotected intercourse,
⁵³
and drug and alcohol
⁵⁴
use.

“Safer sex” doctrine calls upon teens to share their histories before commencing intimate behavior. Even if teens follow that advice—and usually they don't—the value of those histories could be moot. In the
worst case scenario, they provide a false sense of security, because many young gay and bisexual men are carrying HIV unknowingly. In one study of men who have sex with men aged 15–29, 77 percent were unaware of their infection, and of these, 51 percent had unprotected anal intercourse.
⁵⁵
The researchers conclude: “The HIV epidemic among MSM [men having sex with men] in the United States continues unabated, in part, because many young HIV-infected MSM are unaware of their infection and unknowingly expose their partners to HIV.”

Some of these unsuspecting partners are girls and women. You are probably aware that girls are not getting HIV from sex with other girls; female-to-female HIV transmission is extremely rare. They're getting it the same way straight girls do: from HIV positive boys. Lesbian and bisexual girls and women are as likely as heterosexuals to report experiences with males.
⁵⁶
Most significantly in terms of HIV risk, they are more likely to report sex with a gay or bisexual man
⁵⁷
and more likely to engage in unprotected intercourse.
⁵⁸

This is worth repeating. Females who are not exclusively heterosexual are more likely to have unprotected intercourse with a gay or bisexual male. Those males,
⁵⁹
in turn, are at high risk not only for HIV, but for HPV, herpes, syphilis,
⁶¹
and gonorrhea.

Do you see why I call it a minefield?

“Bisexual College Women at Greatest Risk for STDs” was the headline of an article reporting the results of a study of 30,000 sexually active women on 117 campuses.
⁶²
Students who described themselves as bisexual were 60 percent more likely to report an STD than their heterosexual counterparts,
⁶³
perhaps because of the number of their partners: women who reported having sex with only men or only women reported an average of two partners in the past year, while women having sex with both men and women reported an average of five partners in the same period.

Individuals who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual report more problems with mental health too: higher rates of anxiety, depression,
substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts.
⁶⁴
While I'm sure that for some people, societal bias contributes to their distress, the entire onus for these difficulties—emotional and physical—cannot be placed at the feet of a “heterosexist” society. It's just not intellectually honest.

The Netherlands is probably the world's most open-minded and sexually tolerant country in the world. At the vanguard of homosexual rights for decades, gay marriage was legalized there in 2001, with over 75 percent of the population supporting the bill.
⁶⁵
A 1998 study examining sexual attitudes in 24 countries asked the question, “Is homosexual sex wrong?” Only 26 percent of U.S. respondents indicated “not wrong at all” or “only sometimes wrong”; the corresponding number in the Netherlands was 77 percent.
⁶⁶