As to the OP, make all the decisions you like - publish guidelines, lecture sternly, whatever does it for you.
They won’t pay the least attention.
I assure you, women who marry death row inmates are not entering into a sexual relationship with them. And my understanding from another is that at least some women on death row get plenty of propositions from men on the outside.
Sorry, that should be " . . . my understanding from another lawyer . . ."
I don’t mean it in the strictest definition 
I’m including fantasies etc - basically, outside of straight sex.
I think pervert means to compare the things men will do for sex with the things women will do for a relationship. Correct me if I’m wrong, pervert.
This still isn’t the best example. Marrying a prison inmate sounds like a way to avoid having a relationship.
Well, it would make me happy to know that teenagers today don’t get any more than I got when I was a teenager. You draw your own conclusions,
That was Bio of a Space Tyrant, a stunning train-wreck can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it five-part series. The futuristicky space navy of North Jupiter (i.e. a stand-in for 1980’s America) had institutionalized “the tail”, or legalized prostitution. For some reason even the character exlaining it didn’t understand, the Navy was all hopped-up to identify and discharge homosexuals, hence the mandatory attendance. When enlisted ranks got to be E2s, they could form permanent relationships with another E2 of the opposite sex, and E3s could marry and have children.
Aside from giving Anthony another chance to describe sex in excessive detail (the fifth book’s early chapters have an almost Gor-ish passage involving handcuffs), it makes no real sense whatsoever. I can imagine a military organization offering free health services to the local prostitutes, on the basis that this can check the srpead of disease (several episodes of MASH* described this) but making getting lucky mandatory is preposterous.
Yes. You are right on both counts. I was going to use the example of battered women staying with their abusers, but thought that might bring up some odd associations.
Right! That’s the best way to describe it, too. I think that series had every instance of sexual abuse possible, from incest to rape.
Aside from giving Anthony another chance to describe sex in excessive detail
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He does seem to like that.
Well, I can see the logic behind it, in the theory of making it so regular and recreational that it isn’t important. I don’t think it should and can’t see a policy like that ever being implimented, though. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one culture in human history had had a similar policy. In parts of China, for example, it was common for the women of a house to sleep with visitors.
I think the most important thing here is just talking to your kids about it a lot and not in a sex-ed way but more of a “I’ve been there and this is what I’ve seen so be aware of the reality” way.
My mom never just said “No sex” she always explained to me why I shoudn’t be doing it and I never though I would until marriage. However, her reasons seemed like they were from a book and not very personal.
Anyway I ended up getting raped by my 16 year old boyfriend when I was 14 and it screwed me up. I had a lot of confusing feelings and I wanted to cover up the memmory by “doing it over again” with somebody else so I could pretend it was my choice to have sex. I know it makes no sense but that’s just what happened. It’s not surprising that the second guy was also abusive although we did use condoms. So after like two times I realized that I was being used and that he’s evil and left him.
I still had some of that “must regain control” thing going on though. I met a guy online and we instantly just clicked. After going out for just a month we had sex. It was his first time. If I could go back I wouldn’t have done it but we’re still together now after 19 months, never get into anybody elses’s pants, I’m on the pill, and we both get checked for STDs once a year. So in this case I feel like we’re being safe, we really love each other, and sex is just icing on the cake.
The point is sex makes a good relationship better and a bad relationship worse. When I have kids I’m going to tell them about all my experiences and those of my friends and just hope they can make the right decision for themselves. You have to just be able to talk to your kids like they’re your friends and on the same level as you so that you can have a really honest communication thing.
68%??? Of teenage males??? Shouldn’t that be more like 98%?
I think teenagers should be having sex — with each other, not 26 year old men or women, and only if it’s consensual, but yeah, absolutely.
I would be a bit surprised if pre-teens were interested in having sex, but I’d say the same for them as well: if you want to, with each other, it’s your body.
I’m curious
If you all think children are capable of making the types of decisions necessary to engage in open sexual practice, what about their capacity to make other decisions? Voting? Driving? School attendance? Work force? Raising their children?
Where do their rights stop, if they are assumed responsible enough to make decisions about sex, protection, and child rearing?
The cover article of the New York Times magazine on May 30 of this year was entitled, Whatever Happened to Teenage Romance? It explored the idea of “friends with benifits” and explained that for many teens today, emotional connection is reached through friendships with members of the opposite gender, and that sex is seen as a purely physical activity. Here’s the article:
http://www.benoitdenizetlewis.com/content/Teen_Romance_NYTimes.pdf
These teens have created, as best they can, something along the lines of the OP’s utopia. Sex is not stigmatized among these people. They have sex more or less at their disposal through their many friends with benifits. STDs and pregnancy are not particularly addressed in the article, leading me to assume that they’re not much of an issue.
The teens see this as an optimal situation. However, the fallout is not good. Often enough, long-term hookups lead to unintended emotional investment on the part of one participant, and the relationship becaomes complicated. This results in those teens blaming themselves for letting their feelings get in the way of what was supposed to be a diispassionate arrangement.
Whether or not a culture is one that treats sex as a big deal (and these teens have created a culture that, like the OP’s utopia, ostensibly does not), sex can still be a big deal. I would venture to say that this is especially true of teenagers. Teens not only lack judgment (and no indictment here, I am a teen), but they tend to attribute meaning to every glance and every sentence of conversation. They analyze thair interactions with people and assume they are always being observed as well; at least that’s my experience. Imagine what meaning teens see in glances during foreplay and in words spoken during sex. No matter how destigmatized and deemphasized sex becomes, teens will be the first to give it emotional importance. This makes it dangerous.
In addition, the OP mentions that people married in their teens once upon a time, and our bodies obviously assume we’re ready for sex when we hit puberty. But the gap between the age at which one is physically mature and the age at which one is emotionally and mentally mature is widening. In the days when Juliet was past ready for marriage at 14, or later, when colonial girls were engaged by 16, those teens had already entered adult life. There was much less of an intermediate stage. Children began learning how to work at a younger age, becoming responsible and self-sufficient. Their inner growth was made to keep pace with their outer growth.
(This is possibly partially reponsible for more upper-class people marrying older; they had to deal with much less hardship and responsibility at a young age, and therefore were not ready for the emotional and mental demands of marriage so young. But that’s just speculation.)
In any case, this is no longer true. We have childhood, preteenhood, teenage years, four years of college in which you take on some responsibility but are not expecte to be entirely serious, graduate years in which life becomes incrementally more serious, etc. Today’s youth is eased into adultdood at a much slower pace, much later in life. It makes no sense that as the responsibilities of life happen later and later, the emotional and mental demands of sex are being imposed earlier and earlier. If anything, teenagers are less ready for sex than they were 100, 50, or even 30 years ago, and yet they’re expected to be ready on the same timetable or even earlier.
I beg your pardon. I imagined a “teen sex utopia” based on the assumption that sex is a big deal – that it is so important that no teenager who wants it should ever be deprived of it or have to endure sexual frustration. Bear in mind, sex can be a very, very big deal, emotionally, to a person, even if it is de-linked from romantic or emotional involvement with one’s sex partner. Contrary to what some posters have said above, I think a teenage boy who can’t get laid by any of his peers, but who has the option to go to a clean, safe, neighborhood prostitute who is cheap enough to hire with his wages from his part-time Burger King job (and who is not made to feel in any way ashamed of taking that recourse), would have a very different and more enjoyable and less tormented experience of puberty and adolescence than the same boy who lives in our society as it is now and has only his own hand to rely on. I could be wrong.
Well, for one things, “teenagers” is a rather broad term. Thirteen counts, and so does 19. Most 13 year-olds, IMHO, are not ready, emotionally, for a sexual relationship. Most 19-year-olds are. Consensual, willing sex between emotionally stable older teens is no problem, IMHO. But, the ages of 13-15 are, often by its very definition, emotionally unstable.
Masturbation, on the other hand (heh) should not be discouraged at any age. My girls all started exploring themselves, obviously getting pleasure from it, by age 3. The important thing at that age is to teach that there is an appropriate time and place for these activities. I’ve always told them it’s like using the bathroom: perfectly natural, everyone does it (I say “everyone” to young kids, because at three, they’re too young to understand “a high percentage of”), but it’s private. To me, the idea of expecting teens (and even pre-teens) to not even masturbate is ludicrous! They have urges, which are quite natural, and masturbation is about as harmless a way to satisfy those urges as you can get!
So oral sex isn’t sex?
My SO is a psychotherapist who specializes in adolescents and she reports that this is a more and more common feeling among teen agers.
You are wrong (well I think you are at least). The torment that teenagers feel has to do with peer acceptance and finding their place in the world. Sex is only part of the equation. Yeah Johnny could be going to the local prostitute every week but it’s not the same thing as developing a normal sexual relationship which is a lot more satisfying and can be less expensive.
Besides, being sexually frustrated is normal for every guy because you can’t have sex ALL the time with EVERY hot girl you see.
That’s grossly unfair! I’m a perfectly normal guy (ok, mostly normal…pretty normal…more or less normal…) and I certainly don’t want sex all the time with every hot girl I see! I would be entirely content to have sex just once with every hot girl I see.
And this is a wrong idea why exactly?
From Webster.com:
Main Entry: sexual intercourse
Function: noun
1 : heterosexual intercourse involving penetration of the vagina by the penis : COITUS
2 : intercourse involving genital contact between individuals other than penetration of the vagina by the penis
By my definition, genital means a sexual organ, sexual organ to me means something able to reach orgasam. The mouth is NOT able to reach orgasam (or can it?), there for, by my definition, it is NOT a sexual organ and is NOT sexual intercourse.
Also, I feel that sex[ual intercourse] can only be sex if there is a possibilitiy of becoming pregnant. With the mouth this just is not possible (probably).
One more thing, I feel that the only way for it to be considered sex is if there can be the possibility of genital stimulation for two normal participants. If this is not possible, it is not sex, by my definition.
Why WOULD it be sex?