And then that one word that looms so large: SLUT.

And the smaller ones words that follow: she wanted it, she asked for it, dresses like a whore, I knew a girl once and she totally wanted it with all those guys in one night and I can prove it to you because her name is…

And this one: If a prostitute is made to have sex, is that rape or is it shop lifting?

I have heard all of these statements in my classes, and so I stand up in front of my students and read first person accounts from rape victims and prostitutes and girls who were called a slut in high school.  I tell these stories, occasionally tearing up during my readings, often seeing tears in my students’ eyes, so that my students will learn on a deep and integral level that women and men are hurt by these words and actions.  I have had many students ranging in age from twelve to thirty tell me that they had never really, thoroughly realized what pain is caused through rape and rumor until my classes.

It has been a painful week in the news for adolescent sexuality.  On Monday the New York Times published this top-notch piece about teen runaways, who often turn to prostitution to keep a roof over their heads and are then treated as criminals by the justice system that should be trying to help them.  And then last Friday a fifteen year old girl was brutally assaulted and gang raped outside her homecoming dance.

That link back there is to the AOL story.  Two of today’s recent comments are: “Is she hot?” and “Anyone want to bet this 15 year old girl knew some of these guys and hung around with this low life crowd by choice prior to this rape.”  I am so deeply horrified by this response.  I hadn’t written on these particular events because I assumed that it would be all over the news - which it is - and that the actions of the rapists would be roundly vilified.  I clearly have too high a standard for the general American public.  I read a post today from the Yes Means Yes blog called Bracing For The Rape Apology, and I thought it was an extreme post.  Clearly I was devastatingly wrong.

I live in a society where victims are blamed for being assaulted.  I challenge rape jokes constantly, reminding people that rape is not a joke and it is not funny.  The constancy of this pain in our lives is overwhelming, and we cause it, each and every one of us.  Clear sexual boundaries are not optional, both in actual actions and in our words and opinions.  We each carry this responsibility with us everywhere we go, to hold our fellow people to clear sexual boundaries in their words and jokes so that their actions are not thrown around as lightly either.

_____________________________

I had planned to write today on my morning college class, which was truly a delightful, soul-empowering, sexually-supportive class.  These extreme highs and lows that are possible in this field of sexual education are astonishing.  But the education has such extremes because sex inherently has the same extremes in our society.

I am delighted to announce that I will be moderating a panel called Negotiating The Parent/Teen Divide Over Social Networking at SXSW Interactive 2010.

I’m very excited about this panel as an opportunity for parents and teenagers to speak directly to the social networking companies about how they negotiate use within the home.

Now, this is a topic that parents vary widely on - some parents give their teenagers free reign on social networking sites, others dramatically limit what they can do, and some even require their teenagers to provide the parents with their passwords.  I will soon be creating a survey about how families negotiate social network use by teenagers, but I’m interested in hearing from my readers first in the comments section:

1. What are the rules in your house about social networking sites?
2. How well do these rules work or not work for you and your teenagers or your parents?
3. Have the rules changed over time?
4. How knowledgeable are your - or how knowledgeable are your parents - about social media?
5. And whatever else you think would be interesting or important to me!

I do, by the way, have my own opinions on these matters, and I’m sure I’ll be sharing them with you in more detail as I ponder my panel.  But for right now, I’m interested in what you have to say, so please share!

What I found in Spring Awakening was a portrayal of a deep understanding of the emotional lives of teenagers.

There are many points I could talk about from Spring Awakening, and I might go into all of these over time, but first I want to talk about the opening song: Mama Who Bore Me.  Listen to this song, it’s amazing:

And you can read the lyrics if you’d like.  Although it’s really no substitute for listening to this haunting song.

There are, of course, plenty of good reasons not to give too much good, comprehensive sex education too soon.  And as soon as that starts being a problem on any kind of large-scale here in the US I’ll start railing against it and begging parents and teachers to - for the sake of the children - wait until later elementary or middle school.

As it is, this is not often a problem.  Far more common is for parents to ignore their children’s development, both emotional and physical, and to leave these conversations until it is too late.  In Mama Who Bore Me, Wendla Bergmann asks her mother why she has not given her the critical information about sex that - later in the musical - might have kept her from getting pregnant.  While most young people today find out from a variety of means, if not their parents, what exactly causes pregnancy, plenty have no idea about condoms - most importantly how or where or even if it’s legal for the young person to access them.

Wendla begs her mother in a very straightforward fashion to give her more information, her mother tries her best, but ends up balking.  Most parents don’t have the pleasure of a child begging for more information - they have only silence and evolving winces and giggles between their child and his or her friends.

Sex education is not something that can be ignored in the family - it has to start there, even if the child has a really great comprehensive sexuality education program to attend out of the home.  Indeed, sex education both in the home and in the classroom are really necessary in order to fully and completely educate and support a young person in their sexual development.

Listen to that song again.  It is the pain of a young person who doesn’t have the knowledge she needs.  In the end, and through a botched illegal abortion, Wendla dies because of her lack of knowledge.  Sex education is a life-or-death matter, both emotionally and physically.  Our children need us - they depend on us - to teach them what they need to know.  I have never seen this dire reality portrayed as vividly or deeply as it was in Spring Awakening.  It is all the more disheartening that the original play was written in 1891, and yet we continue to fight the same issues - and in particular this one of parental neglect of proper sex education still holds so strong.

The one really good thing to come out of Glamour’s photo shoot? This really beautiful picture:

(Please ignore the apparently-slack-jawness of the two on the right, the one on the top, and the two on the left.  I have no idea why anyone thinks that’s a particularly attractive facial expression.  I far prefer the ones who are actually smiling or just have their mouth fully closed.)

As so often happens when we start listening to music on YouTube, we veered dangerously off track into talking about songs that have a different connotation now than they did at the time.  Two that jumped right to mind were Baby It’s Cold Outside and Every Breath You Take.  In the event that it’s been too long since you’ve heard these songs to hold a good conversation about them, you can read the lyrics from the links above or listen to them below.

Baby It’s Cold Outside was seen as playful banter, and Every Breath You Take was seen as a romantic ode.

But why?

When you look at the lyrics, they’re both excessively issue-laden songs that portray unhealthy attitudes about sex and relationships.  Baby It’s Cold Outside is particularly rife for deconstructing in a class on healthy sexual communication (as a negative example, of course).

I think it’s all about the tone of voice in the songs, which we pay excessive attention to over and above the creepy, inappropriate lyrics.  But this is one glaring place where children and preteenagers, in particular, get their crazy, messed-up notions of romance and dating.  They see us adults - or their older siblings - singing along with these songs, clearly enjoying ourselves, and the young people around us do listen to what we’re singing, they do integrate it into their sponge-like-minds as adult-approved relationships.  Even when we come back years later during comprehensive sex ed and teach that these kinds of relationships and coercion techniques are indications that the relationship is not healthy we simply can’t compete with the years of singing along that have come before us.  And that’s when teenagers get the kind of sexuality education that they need - for all of the young people who never have a conversation about the “wrong-ness” of what’s portrayed in these missives, there is a glaring misunderstanding left standing.  These stories are just so integrated into our society that it takes an immense effort to help young people fight against the flow.

More recent songs are rife with meaningless, gratuitous sex.  This stuff gets into people’s heads, regardless of what they say about blocking it out.  And everyone who comes through my classes claims to be above being influenced by the content of the music they listen to.  Who do they think they’re fooling?  Half the time they haven’t even noticed the inappropriate nature of the lyrics of their favorite songs - they just sing along, thoughtlessly.  And without analysis, how can they be “above” the influence?

Before I bid my computer a good-night, one more song.

Through our Internet musical wanderings, I was introduced the following song, which I’ll leave you with, along with a short Wikipedia history:

(And as a side note, how tired am I of the story in the “new” Taylor Swift song below?  Oh that’s right, I’m really, really, really freaking tired of it.)

A new book hit the bookstores on Friday, and it is very well worth the trip to buy it. Laid is a collection of first person accounts of sexual experiences written by teenagers and young adults. The book tells real stories of real people. There are stories that are essentially good, bad, and mixed. There are stories about sex, there are stories about making-out, and there are stories about not having sex.

I see two primary reasons to read Laid.

For parents, reading Laid will give them entrance into how young people – today’s young people – think and feel about their sexual experiences. These things really happened to the people who wrote them, and the stories allow for the full nuance of the good and bad that most experiences have in mixed quantities. This will not, of course, necessarily give you insight into how your children, teenagers, or young adults feel or have felt or will feel in a given situation. But it will open your eyes in beautiful and fascinating ways.

For young people, this book will allow them to see how other people handled situations that they might find themselves in. It will give them a starting point to either thinking about or talking about sexual decision making, sexual feelings, and understanding and interpreting other people’s words and actions. The stories are gripping, fast reads, and are followed-up by question-and-answer sessions, quizzes, and other missives from the editor and the authors. Laid is a fun, easy entrance for teenagers into the world of thinking realistically about sex.

And of course, for sex educators, the ways to use Laid in the classroom are practically endless.

There are a few shortfalls in Laid. First, the book could use more male voices. Last, the book could use more diversity in gender and sexual orientation. I hope that Shannon Boodram, the editor of Laid, will follow up with these missing voices and bring us another book!

I caught up with Shannon Boodram, last Friday. Speaking to her on the day her book was released was quite an honor, and I am pleased to be able to share with you some of her thoughts, intentions, and motivations behind Laid.

Karen: What do you like about Laid?

Shannon: I love the fact that it’s about positive sexual education. I think it’s one of the few books – I’ve read so many sex ed books that are negative – and this one is just like, do what’s best for you. There’s no lecturing, no putting people down, just people finding themselves in their own way, and no one’s lecturing them or being condescending.

K: How did you come up with the idea to bring together a series of voices in this way about sexual experiences?

S: When I was around 16 or so, I lost my virginity, and then shortly after that, because of a series of events, I became promiscuous, at a cost to myself. It was very rare that I wouldn’t meet a guy that it wouldn’t come to that. And I thought I was this strong woman, that I was in charge. But I wasn’t happy. And I didn’t even know about the physical anatomy, so I wasn’t getting the enjoyable benefits that I should have from my sexuality. But I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know where the clitoris was, I thought it was inside the vagina.

So when I was 18, I went away to school in Baltimore. And I met this guy, and we liked each other, and the first time we hung out together, we had sex. And because I was away form my family, and there’s this superficial relationship between girls, I wasn’t getting honest sexual conversations from anyone.

But eventually in school I met all these girls who were in different places, one was a mom, one was HIV positive, one was bisexual, one was a lesbian, and we talked really honestly about our sexual experiences. And when I came home after I was through with school, I missed that conversation, that honest dialogue. So overnight I just decided to continue that conversation in some way, and then my sister came up with the idea and name for the website, saveyourcherry.com.

We just wanted a catchy name that would make people stop and think. It wasn’t abstinence based, but just about stopping and thinking about it before you have sex. And teenagers are just sponges about sexual topics, they just want things that are honest, real, and educational and I didn’t see that anywhere. I wanted to make something that was good for teenagers, and that got their attention through the drama that you get with conversational, day-to-day stories. So I decided to take all these pieces and turn them into a book. I had to be selective with what I choose, because I wanted it to cover a wide variety of sexual standpoints, race, and age, but still be relate-able to the teenagers.

K: What do you hope readers take away from Laid?

S: The mission for me, in all honesty, is helping teenagers answer the questions: “What sort of sexual person do you want to be? How do you want to celebrate your sexual life?” So by reading all of these stories, you can see what you think is a path that you for you or what wouldn’t for you. Every story isn’t written for someone else, it’s written for you to either find yourself or not find yourself in.

I think your sexuality is a huge part of your life. You have it with you your whole entire life, and I think we don’t put enough attention on that. We put more attention on professional life and work, but we should really think about our sexuality in the same way.

K: And this is closely related: How do you hope Laid is used (or not used) in sexuality education settings?

S: I think it should be used as a conversation starter. If everyone in a class got it, great conversation could come of it. There’s one story called “His drip for a tear drop” where this fourteen year old girl is forced to have sex with a bunch of older guys. The thing about it is, the guy who original brought her into the situation, she was in a relationship with him and had consensual sex with him. And she didn’t physically say no, because the guy who brought her in said, “Don’t do this to me, don’t embarrass me in this way.” But she did cry, and she just laid there. So that wasn’t really consensual, but there are some people who would say that it was. Talking about these things is really good for teenagers because it gives them some experience in analyzing situations.

K: Do you think these topics (teenagers having sex, rape, HIV, teen pregnancy, etc.) will be new or surprising to teenagers reading the book?

S: Teenagers know about these topics, they’re not hidden away. I grew up in the suburbs, and when someone had sex in grade 8, that was a huge deal, but in other schools that’s the norm.

All of this is so available on the internet, so there’s nothing new or particularly shocking in the book to most teenagers. Your kids are going to have access to anything they want to see, and you won’t necessarily know about it. So I think everybody could benefit from reading Laid, because I think it calls you to analyze yourself more and analyze others more, because you’re fed so many lies that I think it’s so great to have something that’s real and honest.

K: What was the most surprising thing to you as you were gathering and reading these stories?

S: The prevalence of date rape. For sure. I never knew the definition of date rape until I started reading other people’s stories. And it was really good for me, because I had that experience [of being date raped]. And I think the more that we have an awareness that “rape” happens in natural, comfortable settings and isn’t just the stranger jumping out at you the better we will be at preventing it. You hear the statistics that 50% of college age girl s have had some sort of nonconsensual experience an you think it’s not true, but it is. It is absolutely true.

K: What is your favorite question someone has asked you about the book, and how did you answer it?

S: My favorite question is probably “What’s the best thing to come out of it?” I get so many messages from my friends on Facebook or on e-mail where everyone feels so comfortable talking with me and telling me these really personal things about testing positive for HPV or whatever. That people feel comfortable to share that with me and not judge them is a great honor. People feel comfortable talking with me about their very deepest feelings on a very touchy subject and there’s not many people who have the privilege of that kind of honesty.

K: Thank you for your time, Shannon.  I am so excited about Laid - I hope it gets into many hands!

So why, dear readers, would you care what color my hair is?

Well, six months ago I didn’t really think you would, which is why I didn’t post about it.  But it has come to my attention that people do care what color my hair is.  My hair color has been interpreted as a statement of my political leanings, my age, my sexual promiscuity, my seriousness, and my educational attainment, among other things.  Apparently I still look straight, but that’s about the only thing that strangers assume that purple-haired-Karen has in common with brown-haired-Karen.

I work at a college, and I admit I was concerned that my students wouldn’t handle it well.  When I dyed my hair my students at the time loved it.  My students who have since met me with purple hair were a bit surprised, but took it in stride.  Working as I do in the deepest bowels of adjunct-professor-hood, I don’t really have colleagues to comment on it one way or another - except for other adjuncts who I meet in the elevator.

Here’s a common elevator conversation between me and another professor:

Me: “Hi, how’s your day going?”

Them:  (Looks surprised that I am beginning a conversation.) “Fine.”  (Blinks a few times.)

(Awkward pause.)

Them: (clears throat, and then in a condescending tone) “So, what are you majoring in?”

And here I have a choice.  I can either take the high road and answer in kindness, pretending that my colleague had asked about my field of study:

“I teach Human Sexuality.  What about you?”  (Heavy emphasis on the “teach.”)

Or I can be snotty about it:

“Well, I received my Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 2007.  Were you asking about that or making incorrect assumptions based on my physical appearance?”

This is a particularly callous thing to say at my college because many of the professors have M.A.s or M.S.s rather than Ph.D.s, and there’s something of a pecking order based on educational attainment.

I tend to go with the first one, in order to maintain an internal air of superiority that I’ve taken the high road while they’ve put their foot in their mouth.  Besides, my colleagues generally recognize that they’ve made a poor choice of awkward elevator conversation anyway, and try to cover it up by going on and on about how “youthful” I look.

I know that my purple hair makes a statement about me to people.  I keep it purple because I think it’s really pretty, and I like colorful things, not because I adhere to - or don’t adhere to - the statement it makes.  I know that parents are surprised when they meet me and are considering having me teach their middle or high school students.  I suspect that some of them are hesitant to have me teach their children because of my hair color, and that saddens me.

But common, people.  Purple hair is fun.  Seriously fun!  So let’s not get bent out of shape about it anymore, okay?

• Yes, it can be problematic, as can almost any form of communication.
• Texting is (currently) a ubiquitous communication method, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, so as parents, teachers, and caring adults, we have to make our peace with it.
• Texting about relationships and sex isn’t going anywhere either.
• There are serious and substantial legal issues tied up in minors taking and/or exchanging nude or sexual images of themselves.  Teenagers (and everyone, really) needs to be aware of the legal ramifications of their actions.

Basically we need to educate ourselves about (1) texting as a means of communication - it’s not all bad, and (2) the legal ramifications of a minor taking pictures of him or herself and passing them along.  Then we need to move along to having conversations with children about the potential legal ramifications.

What we do not need to do is unilaterally and without instigation take our children’s cell phones away, remove their texting privileges, or lecture them about morality and modesty.  We need to listen far more and talk far less about sexting, just as we do about so many topics.

If you want to learn more, or are looking for places to send your kids to gather more information, here are a few other places to read more about sexing:

• Wikipedia article (or, The Basic Overview)
• Scarleteen.com (a great place for teens to learn more)
  
• Textual Misconduct (on Slate.com)
• Yes Means Yes blog (I can’t go on enough about this one!  It’s really great.)

Yesterday I wrote about sexting, in the original, text-based sense.  Today I get into those terribly troubled waters when teenagers send sexual images - either stills or video - of themselves.

I’m hesitant to write about this topic, which is perhaps telling in and of itself.  I write about a lot of controversial issues (like when I suggested teenagers should have vibrators if they want them, oh and here too!).  But there are few topics where people are as full of vitriol as they are on the topic of pictures of teenagers that in any way imply a sexuality or sensuality.

My first position holds regardless of age: Sending a sexual digital picture to anyone opens the potential of that image being spread online.  Frankly, it is almost as likely to end up online if you just hand over a hard copy of a sexual picture .  Images are simply too easy to replicate, digitize, and spread.  Some people are fine with that potential outcome, but many more have simply not considered the implications that parents, teachers, siblings, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, and the waiter at the local coffee joint might recognize you in you those pictures.

But that’s a pretty extreme and unkind act of your partner to spread those images – even if the two of you have had an unhappy breakup. Far more likely for teenagers is that their partner’s cell phone will be confiscated by the principle and the principle will stumble on a naked picture.

Which leads us, in short order, to the legal issues. Even if that picture was taken in the context of a loving, supportive, mutual sexual relationship in the best way possible, if the person in the picture is underage, it is considered child pornography. Here is the worst-case scenario:

A teenage girl takes a picture of herself naked and e-mails it to her partner. Her partner puts it on his or her cell phone. The cell phone is confiscated and the picture is found.

The girl could be charged with the creation and distribution of child pornography. Her partner could be charged with having child pornography.

The legal repercussions for this have the potential to be dramatic and life-long, including being labeled as a sex offender for the rest of their lives.

I am not opposed to teenagers taking pictures of themselves naked in theory. I think it can be good for us in this media-obsessed culture to see what we actually look like naked in a picture rather than from the perspective of looking down or into a mirror. But the American legal system has no tolerance or willingness to look at situations involving pictures of underage naked models on a case-by-case basis. And not many teenagers are aware of how dramatic the reactions and fall-out that could come from this innocent series of events.

We need to educate our young people on legal ramifications. We also need to push for a change in the laws. But until that change occurs, teenagers who are under 18 need to be very careful that any picture they take of themselves falls into appropriate boundaries. Particularly, that they are not naked or engaging in any sexual behavior beyond kissing.

Next week I’ll talk more about how parents can have conversations with young people about the legal and relational ramifications of sexting.

I’ve been asked a number of times in recent months what I think about sexting. So finally: my long-awaited response!

There’s two different kinds of “sexting” that need to be addressed, and the issues are so substantially different that they need two separate conversations. So today I’m going to address text-only texts, e-mails, and other electronic communication. Tomorrow I’ll weigh in again on pictures, movies, and image-based electronic sexual communications in general.

Communicating via text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or any other electronic means has its benefits and its pitfalls. In general, adults tend to focus on the negative when it comes to assessing adolescent relationships without allowing for the balance of the positive. This tends to be true regardless of what aspect of the relationship is being discussed, so it’s no great surprise that it’s true about communication methods too.

Here are some concerns that some adults have about teenagers communicating about their relationship and their sexuality via electronic means:

· It is easy for teenagers to move more quickly online or via text than they would in person.

· Teenagers can’t see or “read” their partner’s vocal cues or body language to put what they are saying in context.

· When someone is not having a conversation face-to-face, it is easier to imagine a kind of anonymity, which can lead to saying hurtful things because they are physically distanced from the other half of the conversation.

There are , of course, many other concerns, but these seem to be the ones that parents repeat the most often to me. And they are absolutely all true, good places for someone who is communicating via electronic means to be concerned about regardless of the topic of conversation, sexual or relationship or otherwise.

Here are some ways that electronic communication can be good for adolescent relationships:

· It forces communication. In person teenagers can cover an awkward silence or an evident lack of personal connection with sexual activity. Not so with electronic communication.

· No STD or pregnancy protection required, the physical distance supplies it in great quantities.

· When a situation becomes too intense one person can step back, take a moment, and think before responding in a way that can’t happen as easily in face-to-face interactions.

As with the pitfalls, there are other potential benefits, these are just the few that jump to mind immediately.

So there are both good and bad aspects to electronic relational and sexual communication – as there are both upsides and downsides to every form of communication. As adults we may be particularly uncomfortable with electronic communication because we haven’t grown up using it. But this is a generational issue that is not new. When telephones were first becoming common, the older generation was horrified that the young people were using phones as a part of courtship. Texting, etc, is our generation’s telephone. It can be used in good ways or bad, but at the end of the day it has it’s benefits and we need to acknowledge that.

Tomorrow I’ll leap into a discussion of that much-more-issue-leaden-water of images. The legal issues are highly problematic, particularly because many teenagers are unaware of them.