Heart breaking reality of a teenage girl's sex life

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9669443/Heartbreaking-reality-teenage-girls-sex-life.html

This leaves me speechless to think that this is the experience for so many girls. No wonder so many of them are rejecting being a woman.

@LuckyWookie

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 agree that some of these things have been commonplace for years but it's spreading to middleclass. I have experienced being grabbed, groped and many of what she says. In many cases it was merely swept aside as normal back in the day. At least people don't view it as 'normal' now to be groped and suggest it is ok

Phones and easy access to porn on the internet doesn't help.

@Thecatonthemat

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.

I agree this could protect girls. But would boys learn anything from it or would it reinforce these behaviours?

I could cry reading that. How utterly depressing.

@LuckyWookie

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.

When I was young it was the entitled posh/rich boys and young men who were the worst, something they carried on through university, where young women were regarded as a novelty there for their recreation by male students and staff alike, and on into careers like the arts, a very middle/upper class field where it's always been 'open season' on young women.

Very distressing to read that.
I have two teenage daughters, younger only 14 and not interested in boys yet, elder 16 and hasn’t yet been on a date. I am actually dreading them starting to go on dates.

@FindTheTruth

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

Are there any feminist organisations doing this?

There are many organisations that schools can pay to come in to deliver SRE. One I had in mind was 'It Happens.... Let's talk about it' The Women's Aid go in to schools and do sessions on healthy relationships in my local area.

Recently my mother told me she had been chatting with two of her friends and these friends had bought books for their young teenage grandsons on the back of what had come to light about abuse in schools during March this year. These grandmothers asked their children if they talked to their sons about these things (any thing sex related!) and they didn't. Schools are mistaken if they think that parents are A) aware of the issues and B) Addressing the issues.

This is just horrific. I mean we all knew it went on. But any discussion always ends in NAMALT and any call for single sex groups spaces or lessons just leaves people acting as if we are calling their husband ir sin a rapist personally.

The complete lack.of ability to join the dots or look at the big picture without taking safguarding as a personal attack is so frustrating.

its horrifyingly common. my yr7 dd was accosted by 3 boys from yr8 who were dawdling after a PE lesson and they told her that one of them wanted anal sex with her.

she reported it, and i strongly suggested that the school have a conversation with their pupils about consent and language around sexual harassment... i was pretty much brushed off.

@LuckyWookie

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.

You're going to need to provide some stats to back that assertion up.

This charity goes into schools to talk to young people about problem with porn and what sex should be about. Looks really good.

@Cailin66

I could cry reading that. How utterly depressing.

Same.

When you think how much money and effort so many schools have put into their Stonewall (etc) “training” and the whole narrative that “transgender” pupils are the most vulnerable, marginalised, bullied etc etc of all, and meanwhile the very real and prolific problem of sexual harassment and abuse of girls has been going on right under their noses, unchecked for years and years… no money or effort whatsoever going into educating girls around their rights and the reasonable expectations they should have, nor into teaching boys that being (or enabling other boys to be) predatory misogynists isn’t ok.

All we’ve seen in the last decade or so is the endless erosion of girls’ boundaries, their rights and access to single sex spaces (and my god, does this survey ever show exactly why girls need single sex spaces so much), the constant pressure on girls to put the feelings of male children ahead of their own.

Combined with the ubiquity of really vile, damaging porn and the power and constant presence of social media, it’s a perfect storm. These poor girls. This is the other pandemic, and it feels like it’s just raging out of control.

@LuckyWookie

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

I sort of agree. I left school in 2000. Rumours, name calling, people being labelled as 'slags' and 'bikes' groping in corridors (in fact our drama studio was known as the place couples went to do heavy petting, not full sex but not far off!) all commonplace at my school. Not in a deprived area, in a 'nice' affluent area.

We did not have to deal with nudes, extreme porn and social media. Which is a huge extra problem to deal with. Porn when I was at school was the boys having a dirty magazine. No one did nude photos, no one. Social media didn't exist so you didn't have that aspect at all.

So yes, you might have your bra felt in the corridor, get fingered behind a bike shed and be labelled as a slapper forevermore or be shown some graphic centrefolds 20 years ago. Also completely unacceptable. But it's a much bigger problem now and it frightens me for my (2 and 5 year old) daughters.

i;m 40, and while the mobile phone/photo thing wasn't about when i was at school, the rest certainly was... the demands for sex, rumours, pressure, name calling...etc

I've younger friends in their 20s and they talk about this stuff going on during their school years too.

It's disgusting, and terrifying. The things boys are being exposed to at such young ages actually alters their brain development, as in their teens their brains are highly plastic. We are looking at a generation of addicts, predisposed to sexualise and objectify girls and women, and girls conditioned to "perform" the pornification, often with a diminished understanding of what they are actually being perceived as.

There needs to be a massive crackdown on underage porn use, proper intensive education about its consequences in schools and comprehensive information on consent. There is a whole paradigm of behaviours that need to be shifted, and I think porn is the most important place to start.

"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"

No, it wasn't. Not at all. I grew up in a deprived area and was a sexually active teenager 25 years ago. Of course, women have always experienced sexual abuse and have always experienced misogyny. Since the start of time.

I grew up in an area where grooming gangs are finally being prosecuted, they caught a few girls I knew. I wasn't middle class.

In 1995 we were not routinely sent or shown photographs of our classmates penises.

In 1995 teenagers of both sexes weren't watching porn daily. In fact it was either in magazines or on VHS. It was top shelf, not streamed into teenagers bedrooms 24 hours a day via phones and iPads.

In 1995 porn wasn't mainly made up of violence and the utter degradation of women.

In 1995 anal sex wasn't routinely used as a contraceptive. Even in the shit hole I grew up in. It was seen amongst my peers as dirty.

In 1995 a third of sexually active girls weren't having sex before being kissed. In fact it almost always started with a kiss.

In 1995 it was not normal for a boy to take photographs of his sleeping girlfriends genitals.

In 1995 images weren't shown or sent to children unsolicited, whilst supposedly safe in their beds 24 hours a day.

Yes, children were abused, women were disadvantaged and exploited by men. But don't make out as if this is how it has always been when it hasn't.

"i;m 40, and while the mobile phone/photo thing wasn't about when i was at school, the rest certainly was... the demands for sex, rumours, pressure, name calling...etc"

Of course. But can you not see that it is the "mobile phone/photo thing" that is leading this? Sex is being turned into the utter deprivation of women. Sexual violence is being normalised to our children because of these items that just didn't exist when we were teenagers.

@KeepingTrack

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.....

I left secondary teaching in 2014 but I remember trying to deal with a comment in class (right in front of me so heaven knows what he said out of earshot of a member of staff) about a girl. I told him off and said I would report it. At the end of the lesson the girl approached me and said not to do anything as she wasn't bothered. I was worried because obviously she was concerned about repercussions but I did report him to the pastoral head for his year.

He made another comment (different girl) the next lesson (pastoral head hadn't had chance to see him). I kept him behind and tore a strip off him again and this time he made another sexual (less flattering ) comment about me. I reported him again for these and he was put in seclusion for a period and then moved to a different RE class. I just felt it was considered as just low level behaviour problems in class but I didn't know how else to deal with it.

So yes, you might have your bra felt in the corridor, get fingered behind a bike shed and be labelled as a slapper forevermore or be shown some graphic centrefolds 20 years ago.

Bra felt? 30 years ago the boys were sliding their hands up our skirts in lessons, cornering girls and groping their breasts in lessons... I was assaulted twice. If you fought back you were the freak and unreasonable.

Spot on from @lavenderlou

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.

We can teach our daughters what to / not to accept, hpw to keep themselves safe etc, but to be proactive there needs to be a huge emphasis on teaching boys how to behave. I have teens, one of each. My DD gets it drummed into her to take no shit, my DS gets it drummed into him to have respect.

@denverRegina

"i;m 40, and while the mobile phone/photo thing wasn't about when i was at school, the rest certainly was... the demands for sex, rumours, pressure, name calling...etc"

Of course. But can you not see that it is the "mobile phone/photo thing" that is leading this? Sex is being turned into the utter deprivation of women. Sexual violence is being normalised to our children because of these items that just didn't exist when we were teenagers.

i didn't say i didn't see, i was pointing out that aside from the social media aspect, the culture of victimisation/sexual harassment of girls in school isn't NEW.

"My DD gets it drummed into her to take no shit, my DS gets it drummed into him to have respect"

and that's the crux of it @Overdueanamechange. As parents that's exactly what we need to teach.

Girls: This shit is not ok, and not only do you not accept it, you stand up against it
Boys: You don't do this shit in the first place, and you also stand against it, not tolerating it from your peers

It needs to be made deeply unfashionable and frowned upon for boys to be misogynistic and disrespectful to girls.

Sadly, all parents do not teach this! If they did, we wouldn't have this problem.

The issue isn’t that much whether it was happening 30 years ago or not.
The fact that sort of stuff was happening doesn’t make what is happening now any worse or better.

I do think that access to porn and SM has changed stuff.
Before you had gossip going on but that was much more self contained than a photo on the web. Once it’s there it’s impossible to retrieve and can be a nightmare fur those girls many many years later. More people are been made aware etc....

Porn has been a game changer re expectations. What is ok or not ok
It also emphasise a one way transaction - the make getting their release (good) and little on women pleasure, usually the woman is either portrayed a slut or it’s more like a game (Can I make her come in a visible le/spectacular way).
There is NOTHING about intimacy, love, respect that are the basis of a relationship.

There are some discussion to be made of what ‘having sex’means tbh.

One of the saddest parts was where girls talk about giving blow jobs to boys yet never sharing kisses.
How have we ended up here? Such a failure on the part of adult society.

Heartbreaking. It adds a whole new level of what we need to do to keep our kids safe.

The awkward conversations about contraception that parents always had to have now extend to having to discuss with our kids exactly what kind of sex they're having. Excruciating but necessary.

As the mother of boys, I find this really scary. How do we raise our sons to not be entitled little shits manipulating their peers for sexual gratification? Because whilst undoubtedly some of those boys have useless parents, I'm sure many of them BELIEVE their raising enlightened boys who will grow into respectful men