Evangelical Sex, wow, whodathunk

[Caxpax]

Hey, all I know was what I lived through, and what my close friends confided about their dating lives. I'm sure there were people who "had sex anyway, and then suffered for it," but I really knew of damn few in my Polish/Italian-Catholic/Baptist community. I'm hardly calling my teen years any kind of "golden age," but girls who chose NOT to be sexually active were not scrutinized and denigrated the way they are now.

Hane, maybe I'm misreading, but are you really saying that girls who don't have sex are scrutinized and denigrated for it? Because that doesn't jibe at all with my experience, as a somewhat recently young person. . I've heard fundies say that girls who don't have sex are looked down upon in today's culture, but I have never heard or seen anything to back that up.

[Joykins]

FWIW, though, my mom told me that, during WWII, many young women "kissed their boyfriends goodbye--and their morals at the same time." She told me she was horrified when she saw the condoms in my (sailor) dad's wallet during one of their dates. He told her that the guys weren't allowed off the base without them.

That's possible. There was a very strong movement to keep servicemen from exposure to STDs before penicillin. That sort of vigilance returned with HIV to some extent.

[Hane]

Hane, maybe I'm misreading, but are you really saying that girls who don't have sex are scrutinized and denigrated for it? Because that doesn't jibe at all with my experience, as a somewhat recently young person. . I've heard fundies say that girls who don't have sex are looked down upon in today's culture, but I have never heard or seen anything to back that up.

My bad--I should have meant "when I had a teen of my own." (15+ years is a much shorter time for a grandmother than it would be for you!) I got the impression, during the '90s when my daughter was a teenager, that girls felt more pressure to "put out" than they did when I was a teen in the '60s. Many TV shows, in the '90s, assumed that everybody, from teens on up, was sexually active, and that those who chose not to be were "looked at funny." I have no doubt that, in the most recent decade, attitudes may have become more moderate--I can't speak for teens nowadays, as I don't come into contact with as many of them as I did when my own child was in high school.

[Hane]

That's possible. There was a very strong movement to keep servicemen from exposure to STDs before penicillin. That sort of vigilance returned with HIV to some extent.

That was the exact reason! Dad and my uncles mentioned the extremely gross training films they were shown in the service, outlining all the damage STDs could cause, to scare the guys into either abstaining or using condoms.

[Joykins]

Hane, maybe I'm misreading, but are you really saying that girls who don't have sex are scrutinized and denigrated for it? Because that doesn't jibe at all with my experience, as a somewhat recently young person. . I've heard fundies say that girls who don't have sex are looked down upon in today's culture, but I have never heard or seen anything to back that up.

I remember high school. I remember groups of girls who were virgins and in no hurry to end that, and groups of girls who mocked others for being virgins. I went to high school in the 1980s and I suspect it is no different now. My school was large and diverse; it's probably harder in places where the whole school is more or less homogenous one way or the other.

[AlexIsAwake]

Premarital sex has always happened. Just ask your grandmother about the saying: "The first baby could come at any time... after that they take about nine months." It is present in some form in almost every culture, because it is true.

I agree, and that's a great saying. Very true.

My siblings and I were raised IFB, and the whole purity pledge thing was pushed in our church youth group. I think I was about 13 when I took it. At that age, I had no idea the implications of what I was pledging to do. I had no idea how my thinking and attitudes would change in the future. Educating teens about the potential negative consequences of premarital sex is fine. But just as important is acknowledging to them all the reasons they will WANT to have sex at some point in the not too distant future. Then tell them they are going to have to make a decision, and at least they will have all the facts. Getting kids, especially young ones, to sign a pledge is ridiculous. The first time I was faced with making the decision to have sex or not, that little piece of paper was the furthest thing from my mind. It was with a person I felt no emotional attachment to, so I used my good judgement and what education I did have to decide it wasnt worth it with this person to risk pregnancy or an STD, since I had no clue who else he had slept with. I was proud of using my brain to make that choice rather than just go by some blind faith belief in it being "bad," so don't do it. Less than a year later I was in a relationship with someone I cared about, and sex seemed like the natural next step in the relationship. I never felt guilt, shame, or regret over it (though I did come to regret wasting so much time with that person, but that's a story for another day), and once again.....the stupid pledge I took as a kid meant nothing to me.

On the opposite side of things, I have a sister who DID wait for marriage because it was the Christian thing to do. She started dating her future husband in high school, then once she was in college she wanted to wait until after graduation to get married. As a result, their relationship spanned 7 years before they made it to the altar. She has since told me that she wished she hadn't waited, and she would never recommend waiting to anyone. She said it caused all kinds of sexual problems in her marriage, partly because it's so hard to suddenly feel comfortable doing the forbidden things with someone when you've resisted and viewed it as a filthy sin for 7 years. I feel bad for her. Thankfully, I think they are doing a little better now, but she says they still have a long way to go.

Moral of the story: once you are an adult, not doing something simply because you've been told it's a no-no is a big mistake. It makes you a robot. Thinking critically and using good judgment and common sense is always preferable. And purity pledges are stupid.

[bananacat]

If there really are girls who are getting shamed for not having sex (I've never met any and I'm pretty young), then the answer to that is absolutely NOT to shame the ones who do have sex even more. I was in high school less than a decade ago and I can tell you that the girls who had sex or were perceived to have had sex were made fun of a whole lot more than the perceived virgins. I'm sure it wasn't as bad as it was a few decades ago, but it certainly isn't the complete reverse of what it used to be.

It's also much better for date-rape victims than it used to be, although still pretty dismal. In the 50s if a woman was pressured into sex by her boyfriend and got pregnant, she'd take all the blame for it and be an outcast, even if she objected to sex in the first place. I absolutely do not want to go back to that, but the Evangelicals sure are trying their hardest to get back to that system.

What we need to do is just be more accepting of people, including teenagers, who make their own choices. Can we please just stop shaming everyone who has either too little or too much sex?

And Hane, if your daughter was pressured into sex, it was rape which is illegal. That is unacceptable and while the police are often useless, it might still be worth reporting it.

[Letgo]

girls who had sex or were perceived to have had sex were made fun of a whole lot more than the perceived virgins.

At my kids' high school they made fun of the girls who got pregnant. Having sex was okay (although girls who did were talked about) but having a baby was not. I could never figure out how all these sexually active kids (they were the ones doing the majority of the teasing) felt it was okay to make fun of the girls with babies. This really upset one of my daughters becausee she couldn't see how they could be so mean to the girls when they were doing the same thing-but were apparently just more careful or fortunate. She never mentioned the fathers of the babies as being targets of the teasing. Double standards still exist, I guess.

Girls can be somewhat of a target if they are perceived as not being sexually active. I have a daughter who is not and says she plans to wait until marriage. (That is a nice goal, but she has also never had a serious boyfriend.) Other kids have talked about her and told her she needs to loosen up and find out what she is missing. They also bugged her becasue she did not drink before she turned 21. A few months after her birthday she decided to drink and then they were fine. I am not quite sure why other people care if someone does not have sex, drink, etc.

(Did not mean to single out girls, but was just thinking of girls because of the pregnancy thing. Boys can be targets, too. My son also did not drink before 21 and his friends were really hard on him. Now that he does drink, they don't pressure him.)

[Hane]

What we need to do is just be more accepting of people, including teenagers, who make their own choices. Can we please just stop shaming everyone who has either too little or too much sex?

I couldn't agree more!

And Hane, if your daughter was pressured into sex, it was rape which is illegal. That is unacceptable and while the police are often useless, it might still be worth reporting it.

Oh, God, no--that isn't what I said: my daughter was NEVER pressured into sex, and always knew that non-consensual sexual contact is illegal. In fact, when the father of one of her friends had a glass of wine too many and insisted on giving her a too-friendly hug she did not want, she called the cops on him.

[Joykins]

If there really are girls who are getting shamed for not having sex (I've never met any and I'm pretty young),

I've seen it done once, it was a 14-year old freshman talking to some older, rougher girls and they were making fun of her for not having sex with her boyfriend. I didn't interfere, because she was the one who decided to talk about her personal life with those people, and I was just nearby, not part of the conversation. And she actually held her own very well. But they were not her friends. Sometimes you need to learn discretion the hard way.

[fundiefan]

I've believed for quite a while that it is Christianity that took the natural, normal, healthy physical acts of sex and turned them into something to be ashamed of and abstained from. I don't mean that teens should go out and have sex as soon as the though first enters their head. I only mean that it is the most normal, healthy, natural thing every living creature does. Why are kids taught to be shameful of their physical and emotional growth and development? Why are Christians and other religions obsessed with NO SEX and purity and modesty and everything else? Why is the way we are made something worthy of shame?

I've always thought that teaching kids about their bodies and how normal and natural their instincts and desires are would go a long way. Shaming kids to keep them from having sex is a bad, bad thing I think. It makes them self conscious; hyper aware; obsessed with right versus wrong by someone else's standards and probably makes them immensely interested in that which is off limits - yet, something they're expected to participate in at some time in their lives. All of that instead of teaching kids to appreciate the awesomeness of their bodies and the power of sex.

[Joykins]

I've believed for quite a while that it is Christianity that took the natural, normal, healthy physical acts of sex and turned them into something to be ashamed of and abstained from. I don't mean that teens should go out and have sex as soon as the though first enters their head. I only mean that it is the most normal, healthy, natural thing every living creature does. Why are kids taught to be shameful of their physical and emotional growth and development? Why are Christians and other religions obsessed with NO SEX and purity and modesty and everything else? Why is the way we are made something worthy of shame?

But how do you manipulate them into your cult if you don't have them desperate to "cure" something that isn't wrong to begin with?

[emmiedahl]

I have to say, it feels weird and wrong when you find out your child is having sex. I recently found a condom wrapper in my son's pants pocket and had a mental freak-out. I talked to him later and shared that I am glad he is using condoms, but that they aren't 100%, and that he needs to dispose of them in a way that keeps it out of my face because it just makes me uncomfortable.

Remember, when fundie families feel squicky about something, they outlaw it.

[Deleted12]

When I was in high school in the 1990s, I don't remember anyone dropping out because they were pregnant and I don't remember any harassment of anyone based on their sexual status.

I had one friend who got pregnant and had an abortion.

There were no kids who were out, but I was friends with kids who came out shortly after school. There were a few kids and staff that there were rumors about, like the gym teacher and the chorus teacher. The chorus teacher became the advisor of the gay/straight alliance that started about three years after I left.

We had a massive, massive, massive amount of sex ed. Like, way too much sex ed. We all had to do reports on STDs, and there was an active peer-education group.

Free condoms were available in the nurse's office.

There was a tiny group of conservative Christians, some Catholics, lots of Christmas-and-Easter Protestants, lots of atheists, hella Jews, and one kid who became a conservative Muslim (who was friends with John Walker Lindh).

While I'm sure that there were people getting up to things that I didn't know about, I think that way too much sex ed beats none any day of the week.

[Hane]

I have to say, it feels weird and wrong when you find out your child is having sex.

Word. Like a moron, I wept and gnashed my teeth (at the time, I was a devout Catholic who strongly believed in premarital virginity) when one of my daughter's friends let it slip that my daughter was on the pill. But when I pulled my head out of my @$$, I realized that my child was 17, in a committed relationship with a kind young man who respected her and treated her well. She told me she was using her school's popular "Fort Knox" method: the pill AND condoms simultaneously.

[Austin]

I have to say, it feels weird and wrong when you find out your child is having sex. I recently found a condom wrapper in my son's pants pocket and had a mental freak-out. I talked to him later and shared that I am glad he is using condoms, but that they aren't 100%, and that he needs to dispose of them in a way that keeps it out of my face because it just makes me uncomfortable.

Remember, when fundie families feel squicky about something, they outlaw it.

Sounds like a good conversation. What did you tell him to do if a condom breaks (since you also pointed out to him that condoms are not 100% foolproof)?

[dirtyhippiegirl]

I went to high school in a very religious, conservative town. Youth group was a big part of many of my friends' social lives. As we grew into horny teenagers, youth group became the church and parent-sanctioned "wholesome" way to socialize with the other sex.

I think most of my church goin' friends actually lost their virginity during youth group-sponsored activities.

Also just got done reading a book about girls who got pregnant in the 1940s-1960s and were forced into homes and then to sign over the babies for adoption called The Girls Who Went Away. Definitely makes me (I graduated high school in 2004) appreciate the choices that are available today. Not eve necessarily adoption versus abortion -- despite the Roe v. Wade reference in the book's title, it seems like quite a few of the women the author profiled would have kept their children if that had been an option. As much as I support the right to abort...I can't imagine a world where the option of keeping the child you gave birth to isn't an option.

[emmiedahl]

Sounds like a good conversation. What did you tell him to do if a condom breaks (since you also pointed out to him that condoms are not 100% foolproof)?

I told him that his gf should be using hormonal birth control. I am not actually sure what to do in the case of a condom breaking except to STOP IMMEDIATELY. I considered offering to take her to PP (her parents are really traditional so I doubt they know) but I think it would be overstepping some boundaries.

It's a hard thing to deal with. He's turning 16 in days, a junior in high school, and they've been dating for quite a while. I kinda knew this would happen eventually, but I worry about someone getting pregnant or a disease. I'm trying to be all cool about it, the way I always swore I would be, and so far I think I've been successful.

Obviously I do not make a big deal about virginity, I don't think I have ever actually said the word to one of my children or stepchildren.

[Austin]

I told him that his gf should be using hormonal birth control. I am not actually sure what to do in the case of a condom breaking except to STOP IMMEDIATELY. I considered offering to take her to PP (her parents are really traditional so I doubt they know) but I think it would be overstepping some boundaries.

It's a hard thing to deal with. He's turning 16 in days, a junior in high school, and they've been dating for quite a while. I kinda knew this would happen eventually, but I worry about someone getting pregnant or a disease. I'm trying to be all cool about it, the way I always swore I would be, and so far I think I've been successful.

Obviously I do not make a big deal about virginity, I don't think I have ever actually said the word to one of my children or stepchildren.

Stopping immediately is a good start! Srsly, some people might think, "well, that horse is already out of the barn. . ." but it's best to stop and wash up with warm, soapy water (this can reduce STD risk a little). If the condom is the kind with a spermicide, then that cuts the risk of pregnancy a great deal. The best thing is for the female to take an emergency contraceptive if she's not using another BC method. All girls are not prepared for this, obviously, and many of their parents would not help them obtain it. But a girl of 17 or older can obtain the morning-after pill over the counter - no prescription necessary. Still, not all are willing to go purchase it because they may still be afraid their parents will find out or whatever, and sometimes pharmacists give them a hard time. This may sound crazy but I actually have a dose in my house and have told my sons this. That way, if they ever find themselves in that position, if the girl wants to take it, she will have no problem obtaining it. It is kept in a cabinet in the downstairs bathroom and the young couple can take care of things without me knowing a thing about it (except that I will notice if it needs to be replenished).

This is a good site that gives all the info a new condom user needs to make sure things turn out okay:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health ... -10187.htm

Of course, STD testing is in order if a broken condom situation occurs.

While these conversations are sometimes awkward, I believe in expressly instructing teens on these things. We cannot assume that they will know what to do in a contraceptive emergency. Being that so many parents (not you) have so many hang ups and are just content to bury their heads in the sands, I do not trust that the girls my sons may become intimate with are necessarily well-informed. They may have no one to turn to for that information when they need it. So all we can do is prepare our sons as best as possible.

[Joykins]

It's not necessary to take emergency contraception if the woman / girl is not at the right time in her cycle to become pregnant, as the high doses of hormones are harsh on the system. This would be the first step, to see if this can be determined. If she's really regular and expecting her period in a few days, for example, there would be no need for E.C.

[Austin]

It's not necessary to take emergency contraception if the woman / girl is not at the right time in her cycle to become pregnant, as the high doses of hormones are harsh on the system. This would be the first step, to see if this can be determined. If she's really regular and expecting her period in a few days, for example, there would be no need for E.C.

Many teen girls have very irregular cycles or do not keep track of their cycles very regularly or accurately. And sorry, but "harsh on the system" is a relative issue. It certainly isn't as harsh on the system (not to mention their entire lives) as an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy.

[antifundie]

I took E.C. and I didn't find it harsh at all. I felt just fine. And I'd guess that a few days of nausea or what have you (common side affect) is a whole lot better than 9 months of pregnancy as a young teenager.

May I humbly suggest buying some Plan B to have in case of emergency? It's not cheap (ok, well, it was $20 or so as I recall, which is expensive for a teenager.) Maybe to give to your son in case his gf wants it?

Also, I'm not a doctor, and I have NO IDEA if this would work, but this website tells you how many/much of certain brands or BC to take if you have that handy and want to use it as EC.

http://ec.princeton.edu/worldwide/default.asp

[Joykins]

Many teen girls have very irregular cycles or do not keep track of their cycles very regularly or accurately. And sorry, but "harsh on the system" is a relative issue. It certainly isn't as harsh on the system (not to mention their entire lives) as an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy.

Certainly, the first step is to see if it can be determined. If not, off to the pharmacy. But hormones meant to prevent ovulation/implantation are unnecessary once a woman is close to getting her period. I am not a big fan of administering unnecessary medications. Of course it is up to the person it is happening to, what they want to do, but IF the person is regular and it CAN be determined, this is very reliable.

[emmiedahl]

I might buy some EC and tell my son I have it JIC. It's a good middle ground. I have really been going back and forth on offering to take the girl to PP if she is not already going there, but that is probably not even legal and certainly a moral gray area. On the other hand, I don't want them to deal with an unplanned pregnancy so part of me thinks it would be sparing them a difficult situation. Kids... whaddaya gonna do? We'll definitely have the what-to-do-when-a-condom-breaks talk, though.

[bananacat]

It's not necessary to take emergency contraception if the woman / girl is not at the right time in her cycle to become pregnant, as the high doses of hormones are harsh on the system. This would be the first step, to see if this can be determined. If she's really regular and expecting her period in a few days, for example, there would be no need for E.C.

I've been taking hormonal BC since I was 15, before I ever even starting having sex. It's not harsh on everyone's system, and I love it. I have no bad side effects and lots of good ones. Of course I also knew one girl who had to smuggle them in her purse and take them with lunch because otherwise they would make her sick. My point is that everyone reacts differently so you shouldn't make such generalizations. I also don't know how old you are, but if you are familiar with BC pills from the 70s and 80s, the hormone levels have been reduced in recent years so side effects are less common.