Heart breaking reality of a teenage girl's sex life

Jesus, are we actually going backwards now? Did feminism never actually happen?

Hideous but not particularly surprising.

Christ. I kind of knew but reading it all spelled out is horrific. Thank god someone is writing about this even if it is the sodding Mail.

Girls watch porn as an instruction manual, so sad.

Ofsted’s questionnaire found 81 per cent of girls experienced rumours about their sexual activity

While this might seem like one of the lesser issues (compared to physical assault and photo sharing), I had this happen to me and it really affects me to this day.

I told something one person that I thought was a friend while drunk at a party and soon the whole school knew. When I confronted the person about it, they said that I hadn't told them it was a secret and stormed off, essentially victim blaming. I never told my parents or any teachers about it because they were all unapproachable and because of the shame. On top of that, the person who spread the rumour and the other person who bullied me the most over it were the two highest achievers so I had to watch them repeatedly being lauded for being the best in the school while secretly suffering.

Thankfully it wasn't long before the end of school but I dropped contact with everyone not long after. I haven't been able to discuss it with anyone I have met since. Only recently, over a decade later, have I been able to put it in perspective and realise that while I might have showed poor character judgement, getting inappropriate sexual comments in person for months and others left on my social media for everyone to see was unwarranted and not my fault. It really affected my self worth and gave me a "dirty" feeling for something that in perspective is very vanilla.

Interestingly, the person who spread the rumour now regularly posts about how difficult the bullying they received was and how horrible bullies are while the person who left comments has no social media

So one taken away from this is that it is an investigative piece from the Daily Mail.

So perhaps maybe drop the "Fail" because frankly aside from some excellent journalists in other publications they've been instrumental in bringing attention to this issue.

As a parent of two pre-teen girls I find this deeply worrying. Parents of both boys and girls need to be open with their DC about how to expect to be treated in a sexual relationship and how to treat others. The onus shouldn't just be on teaching girls that they can say no - they shouldn't be facing these pressures in the first place. Schools are going to have to play a big role too, as so many parents find these conversations too difficult to have.

The DM prints a lot of sensationalist crap that I don't agree with but they are doing a good job highlighting this issue.

I'm a parent of one teen girl and guardian of another and this horrifies me. It doesn't surprise me though. Although it focused on entirely the wrong things, since the decline of religious teaching in school, there is no one putting an alternative view or counteracting the commercial reach of porn. Standard sex education isn't cutting it that's for sure.

As someone who has gone from being cripplingly shy and lacking in self confidence as a teen and is now fairly confident in their mid-fifties, I would love to be able to counsel young women starting out and give them the benefit of my experience and just talk to them about how things work in RL. It makes me want to set up a women's group which has the sole purpose of talking to teen girls, reminding them of their self worth, boosting their confidence, telling them it's ok to say no, giving them knowledge and tools which they can use to develop their own autonomy and independence from men. They are being left to stumble through this maze of conflicting expectations on their own, ill prepared and lacking in knowledge At that age you feel so alone. There is just so much that isn't being said or discussed. Simple things like it's ok to expect basic respect and affection and it's ok to walk away if it's not forthcoming, to how to negotiate sexual encounters and create and stick to your own boundaries.

However, my current experience tells me that teen girls and young women would run screaming from a bunch of fifty year old women trying to tell them, as they would perceive it, what to do. We are probably the last people they want to hear from. It needs to be done peer to peer.

Are any young people's groups or organisations doing this?

I meant to add there that while there is so little public discourse defending and highlighting the rights of young women, and educating young men, the casual acceptance of values and norms lifted from porn is everywhere, from the shop floors of clothing stores (even in brands aimed at tweens) in supposedly 'light' Netflix series, in TV ads for chocolate, through to how girls themselves pose on their Instagram pages. It's insidious and someone has to challenge it's influence.

on the BBC now
Sexual harassment normalised among children, warns Ofsted
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57411363

it quotes women's groups - what are their stances on sex-based rights? 'Everyone's Invited', 'NSPCC and End Violence Against Women Coalition

They covered this in some detail on ITV news at 10 last night.

It's frustrating not to see the government pulled up more over this as a report 5 years ago highlighted these issues. Then again, headteachers must have seen that report and could have done more internally within schools - although I suspect they need more funding and guidance to truly make a dent.

I had to beg my DDs school to get an external organisation in to address the year groups who had received no relevant SRE and weren't going to be there when the new compulsory SRE came in. What they did in the end was a token gesture to appease me. I think it is only in the last few months they've really taken inboard the issues facing their students.. And even then they talk in gender neutral terms, and resist the F word (feminism) even when 6th form girls want to start such a club.

This is all too little too late. We warned that this would be the consequences of a pornified society and smartphones have sped it up.

Am I alone in saying it’s time for a group such as SSA becoming more prominent in schools to make sexism, misogyny, porn and misuse of social media the main focus of PHSE?
Not by becoming grifters in the model of some orgs that have pushed one part of the Equality Agenda so hard but the FWR and MN have proved how they can shift the debate

I had to beg my DDs school to get an external organisation in

Are there any feminist organisations doing this?

I'd happily garden for any feminist organisation tackling this in schools. The next generation need help

I must say however, this was fairly normal 25 years ago when I was young. It’s not a new occurrence.

@LuckyWookie no it wasn't

I’ve always said the lack of decent sex education in schools is one of the major issues, I mean yes, parents should be doing it but in reality there many many who aren’t. So who do kids learn about sex from? Porn, sex websites etc and so on. Porn is a huge issue because all genders are watching it and learning from it and we all know the way people are treated in porn isn’t “real life” so to speak, and a lot of the sex acts are unrealistic and degrading to the regular woman.

It’s causing a LOT of issues in teens today, it’s worrying. We need a decent sex education program in ALL schools. And these free porn websites need regulating much much better, wasn’t there some stuff flying around about closing them off unless you could prove your age with ID? That seems pretty sensible to me.

I've heard from a someone in the NHS locally of them seeing a big increase in oral and anal sexually-transmitted infections and injuries in teenage girls, things that they had not encountered until recently. And in the last fortnight I've heard from friends of two young women they know, one still at school, seeking 'non binary/trans' mastectomies, and of others who 'hate their parents' for not allowing it. One can't help feeling so much of this 'trans' trend is being driven by a desire to 'identify out' of the pressures put on them by misogynistic porn-addicted boys and young men. This is causing real-time, life long physical as well as emotional damage to young women and I wish there was an anti-misogyny and harassment version of 'kick it out' and 'taking the knee' amongst young sportsmen.

We need to raise our sons correctly. I have two boys. I have spoken to them a LOT about porn. I’ve told them not to watch it and why. We have spoken so often about consent that my eldest jokes that he’s terrified to even speak to a girl at school. I will keep talking to them and I know it’s making a difference as he has dropped friends for being ‘incels’ in his words.

LuckyWookie no it wasn't
It was. Perhaps not as widespread. But certainly in deprived areas like where I grew up, it was commonplace. It just appears to have spread to naice kids now, that’s why people are worried.

I have two boys and I’ve talked to them about sexual harassment etc... we’ve talked about consent.

But I’ll be honest, I know it often falls onto death ears. The idea that 90% of girls are sexually harassed just doesn’t compute. Because they don’t see it. They are horrified at the idea that a guy could look at a girl 1 or 2 years younger than them so the idea that an older man would do that to a teen girl seems far fetched basically.
You can talk about sexual harassment as touching bobs and bum and the answer is that boys get it too (and I suspect my own ds did experience that - even though he never explicitly said so).

I wish that sex education was actually much more crude and actually spelled out all of this very clearly.
Instead they get washed down Incl they’ve heard many times and just don’t listen.

When the tactics used to groom girls into sexual activities that lead to full on exploitation are now commonplace, we should be thinking about the importance of single sex education being some protection against the worst of it. I know parents do their best but the prevailing culture is too strong, and we have to really clamp down hard on porn, macho behaviour and punish any kind of assault severely , while educating and protecting girls and boys separately.

Also from that article,
It’s time teachers are taught how to handle pupils re sex.
I’m thinking how to handle sexual harassment happening right in from off them, pupils telling them of coercive behaviour, or basic sexual assault (anyone remember the thread about the school who told a girl she is needed to accept boys playing with bra strap to try and undo them?).

As for saying we need to be careful to not over criminalise teenagers around sexual assault/harassment/sharing sexual images/coercive behaviours.....