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.

@redheadonascooter

"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.

Tbh I can e hard to teach that the teenage boy. By experience, my teen boys tell me that what I describe isn’t their reality so they basically don’t believe it’s as bad as I say it is. On the other side, they are bombarded with people’s reactions around them that are deeply mysogynistic. Look at the reaction of schools and teachers to sexist comments or sexual harassment. How do you want those boys to believe their parents more than what society tells them in a regular basis? So yes patents have a role to play. But I is hills are probably the biggest game changer there, just because of the amount of time teens spend there.

@denverRegina

I agree with your points. But want to add that it's not just the phones it's society too....the images people see on TV are so different to 95 or even 2000.....

When Big Brother started - there was a girl who painted naked - and that was a massive thing. Now fly on the wall TV shows regularly show people having sex, in rooms with other people....yes it might be under a sheet, or may only be the sounds....but we have bought up a generation that think sex is not a private act. Not a special act between people that love each other, and is something to be shared as a badge of honour. It is so mainstream that sex has no value.

@redheadonascooter I agree with you. But as the parent of a teen and other kids coming up to being teenagers how do we best do this? My teen switches off whenever I try to tell him something....he accuses me of lecturing/moaning. I really want to be sure he recognises the importance of respect, consent, etc etc What can I do?

So schools are overstretched and underfunded, the young people’s voluntary organisations are too and have been captured by gender ideology which is too sexist and all about boundary pushing to benefit anyone except for those pushing boundaries, the sexual health and rights organisations for young people like Brook Advisory and FPA are too politically led to advocate on this because they’re having to chase the funding and so are focusing on gender stuff. There’s women’s groups like Object! Who are great but have a wide remit of issues and their constituency is women. Where are the boys and young men’s organisations in all this? As parents we can individually do our bit but not all parents can/will. Which leaves us apparently to massive swathes of our culture just being handed over to multinational social media companies to develop according to whatever is most profitable for them at that time. We need a new approach to this.

How do we get the consensus to form nationally/globally that women are actually people too?

Mumdiva99
It's hard isn't it as they get older because parents (and our fears and lectures) are exactly what they want to reject.
I do think waiting for the right moment can help. Finding time to do things together that we all enjoy and then slipping in the occasional conversation at a time when we're more relaxed. But my lot always saw that coming. "Here she goes with her little lectures" " Don't try that reverse psychology on me" Sigh..
It's one reason why schools having good RSE programmes is essential and it was depressing to see that young people all dismissed these when Ofsted asked about them.

I’m raising my sons not to be arseholes. They’re only primary school age at the moment but the older child already knows about the basics of sex. When he is old enough to start thinking about sex I plan on showing him the tea video that explains consent and explaining to him that drunk girls cannot consent to sex and discuss coercive behaviour and I guess porn as well. He’s going to roll his eyes at me a lot but I don’t care, I think this stuff needs saying.

I think it's easier to raise with girls as we're already used to talking about their periods and contraception (which is still very much a females responsibility!). Starting the conversation with a boy is much harder

How do we get the consensus to form nationally/globally that women are actually people too?

I wish I knew!

That's an interesting point copperpotsalot One thing that we haven't got right is to tackle the harmful impact of female socialisation. The Ofsted report mentioned above highlights how many girls fail to report harassment & abuse aimed at them for all sorts of reasons. If they don't report it, then adults can't support them and tackle it. And of course, if adults don't tackle it effectively then no wonder girls don't report it.

When I was in year 9 in the mid 90s the boys in my year created something they called the ‘frigid test’, where they would, basically, sexually assault one of the girls, and if we protested we were frigid and if we allowed it to happen we were sluts.

In the end our school instigated a ‘50cm rule’ preventing any physical contact between boys/girls.

The thought of those boys having access to mobile phones and social media to be able to continue that harassment is grim. At least we got to walk away. It wasn’t being perpetrated remotely wherever we were at all hours of the day and night.

No wonder there’s been a 4000% increase in adolescent girls wanting to be boys over the last decade.

@justanotherneighinparadise

I’m raising my sons not to be arseholes. They’re only primary school age at the moment but the older child already knows about the basics of sex. When he is old enough to start thinking about sex I plan on showing him the tea video that explains consent and explaining to him that drunk girls cannot consent to sex and discuss coercive behaviour and I guess porn as well. He’s going to roll his eyes at me a lot but I don’t care, I think this stuff needs saying.

Yes, it's not just parents of girls who are appalled at the sexual harassment that goes on in school. I have DCs including a teen boy who I have been talking about consent (in a general way) for ever now but it's become more focused on how he should be behaving around girls. We have a wide range of conversations about social media, gender roles etc. The main point is we have a non-judgmental attitude towards his views and mistakes (although screaming on the inside, obvs!) and an open invitation to talk to us about anything, no matter how embarrassing, cringeworthy or worrying. So far, so good. My hope is that it continues.

Sounds exactly the same as when I grew up in the late 90's, just with new technologies.

I don’t know what the answer is. Wish I did. We have to keep looking for one though. And having individual conversations is much better than having none.

Just feels really impossible to turn around the tanker when we have a bloke in power who won’t even let it be known how many kids he’s got, but then it’s not like any of the other leaders have ever made any effort in this area either. It will need money and time and attention and power to build a message that cuts across economic and social boundaries and all the practical legal restrictions and protections to go with that. So it has to be grassroots AND governments AND private companies.

Presumably the focus would need to be (like with peer on peer knife crime) on prevention. Though there needs to be back up and support better than is available now for girls and women who have already been abused and manipulated.

It needs a national/global cultural conversation about why all this is happening. Once the widespread patterns are pointed out they will be visible to everyone. Social media means issues can be highlighted globally. Influencers could influence. Organisers could organise. It takes a lot to resist though because pretty much every single area of our private lives is now monetised and subject to a digital presence that wasnt there a generation ago and this has massive social effects.

It would be a good starting contribution though to have basic things in place like age checks on porn sites. Not least establish the idea globally that this is the job of states to provide limits of this kind as a protection to its citizens. I think a lot of people don’t currently agree with that role of the state. I think it could be a first step restorative action of promoting fairness towards women.

I feel like this age check, as one example, could be a fruitful area at the moment because the Tories like to see themselves as disruptive and as digitally-minded and they want to be globally impactful and seen as ‘leaders’ after Brexit. The results they’ve announced so far like with the new global multinationals minimum tax proposals recently aren’t the silver bullet to that problem but look like a step in the right direction. (Saying all this as a lifelong Labour voter!)

And, back on that one issue, a Tory, Nick Fletcher MP is at least remaining active on that one issue of age verification on porn websites. The Tories’ manifesto said they would take action on in 2015 and they still haven't done so in successive governments.. this is worth a read: www.conservativehome.com/platform/2020/10/nick-fletcher.html

There’s clearly more to the thriving of porn culture than the existence of porn and access to it though, bigger questions that need to be asked. Like why does porn flourish across the world? What/whose needs is it meeting? Why is it so profitable? What can be done about that? and there are yet more fundamental questions.

Why do some men think their own sexual pleasure legitimately overrides women’s consent? How do they come to view women in order to think that way? .. but at least it’s good to chip away at some of the more obvious immediate problems, just to take the small practical wins if we can get them. It’s for my own interests/peace of mind too. I hate the idea of just leaving generations of kids to navigate and struggle through this, while we, the adults, knew it was happening to them and we did fuck all about it.

@copperpotsalot

I think it's easier to raise with girls as we're already used to talking about their periods and contraception (which is still very much a females responsibility!). Starting the conversation with a boy is much harder

That’s why you start early. You make sure you have already had some decent dialogue with them as we know once puberty hits it’s going to be a series of grunts and not much else.

The main point is we have a non-judgmental attitude towards his views and mistakes (although screaming on the inside, obvs!) and an open invitation to talk to us about anything, no matter how embarrassing, cringeworthy or worrying. So far, so good. My hope is that it continues

I said the same to my son recently. I want him to talk to me about anything. I said he cannot shock me, I don’t care what it is, if it’s bothering him and he doesn’t know what to do I want him to come to me and we’ll try and figure something out.

One issue that doesn't seem to get much recognition is that a lot of modern porn has very little to do with actual sexual activity.

Instead, it's often a display of painful acts committed against a presumably consenting adult. It verges into violence and often torture.

Strangling someone is just not sex, no matter how anyone tries to argue for kink.

Maybe the key is to rename what this industry actually is because "porn" has now become a very misleading label.

Why is society still so utterly male focussed? Porn is basically the male view of sex. Why is it so dominant and women have to go along with it? Pretty sure 99% women don’t want the type of sex porn shows.

My young teen girls are at a state single sex school. This is not an accident.

I had this exact experience. A boy asked me for oral sex and I literally said to him ‘you haven’t even kissed me!’ I was only 14, he was 15. He then told me he fancied my friend.

Of course lots of this went on in the past. However, porn, phones and social media, and an increasingly anything-goes attitude to sex has made it worse in many ways. If kids see much porn it will affect them, even nice kids, because that's what it's designed to do. A

And also the emphasis on consent is maybe itself causing problems, because the implication is that if someone consents, it's ok. But culture tells young people what is normal and what kinds of things they might reasonably consent to. Once you introduce the idea that we should be always second-guessing consent the model starts to fail - but the truth is that lots of young women will consent to things they aren't sure about, or which really aren't good for them. Teenage boys don't necessarily have the experience or insight to probe what's really going on there even under ideal circumstances, they are as confused as the girls in a lot of cases.

The problem with schools teaching all this is that I don't really trust their judgement.

I think there is also another phenomenon going on.
If you read threads on MN, you’ll find lots of people saying that it should be ok for women to have sex, just sex, no emotions involved etc...
That saying ‘making love’ is 🤮🤮 and it’s just ‘having sex’.

Well that’s what having sex means when it’s totally stripped from feeling, intimacy etc.... it’s penis in a vagina/mouth/arse. That’s it. No kissing (that’s when you are in a relationship/love someone right?), nothing, just sex.
The big issue is that it completely defies female anatomy that needs TIME (and kissing, caress and whatever other stimulation) to be ready. That’s wo talking about what is needed to actually have pleasure/orgasm.

So yes, wo,en shouod be able to have ONS etc.. wo being judged.
But at the same time, we need to redefine what ‘having sex’ means. Because the one that is now becoming preponderant is the porn definition of sex. 3 holes, one penis. That’s it.

And also the emphasis on consent is maybe itself causing problems, because the implication is that if someone consents, it's ok. But culture tells young people what is normal and what kinds of things they might reasonably consent to. Once you introduce the idea that we should be always second-guessing consent the model starts to fail - but the truth is that lots of young women will consent to things they aren't sure about, or which really aren't good for them. Teenage boys don't necessarily have the experience or insight to probe what's really going on there even under ideal circumstances, they are as confused as the girls in a lot of cases.

YY.
Probably made even worse by the fact porn has normalised some behaviours (eg anal sex) so now girls feel like they have to say Yes because it’s everywhere so that’s ‘the norm’ right?
And of you feel like you dint quite like it, then it’s you who is abnormal/has an issue/is uptight.

@KeepingTrack

I think there is also another phenomenon going on. If you read threads on MN, you’ll find lots of people saying that it should be ok for women to have sex, just sex, no emotions involved etc... That saying ‘making love’ is 🤮🤮 and it’s just ‘having sex’.

Well that’s what having sex means when it’s totally stripped from feeling, intimacy etc.... it’s penis in a vagina/mouth/arse. That’s it. No kissing (that’s when you are in a relationship/love someone right?), nothing, just sex.
The big issue is that it completely defies female anatomy that needs TIME (and kissing, caress and whatever other stimulation) to be ready. That’s wo talking about what is needed to actually have pleasure/orgasm.

So yes, wo,en shouod be able to have ONS etc.. wo being judged.
But at the same time, we need to redefine what ‘having sex’ means. Because the one that is now becoming preponderant is the porn definition of sex. 3 holes, one penis. That’s it.

I think that grown, sexually experienced women having NSA sex that's just sex is very different to what young teenage girls need to be experiencing

Yes, the idea that we can all negotiate sex freely is just not accurate. We all get our idea of what sex is and what might be expected, what it would include, from the environment around us. One culture can have very different sexual practices than another, and it's not because someone sat down and thought about it. It's just what we absorb from what's around us.

So if we are negotiating within a set of boundaries that says - whatever you can think of is potentially ok - guess what you get?

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.

Yes that would be wonderful. Although you’d get men barging in nowadays.

I was a teenage feminist in the late 1970s when women-only consciousness raising groups were still a thing. I think girls and young women today should have that same liberating experience of being in a woman only (and I mean natal females) group. It’s truly empowering.

I know that sounds hokey but I think we’ve lost sight of that dynamic a bit. And of course, there’s now the difficulty of keeping men out of such groups …

Frankly if this carries on women should just opt out of dealing with men entirely. What’s in it for us? All women should refuse to be in their vile films and have absolutely nothing to do with the boys and men that treat us badly. One can dream...

I think that grown, sexually experienced women having NSA sex that's just sex is very different to what young teenage girls need to be experiencing

I think there has almost always been some kind of recognition around that. Seducing a young unmarried girl was typically seen as much worse than having a fling with a widow.

I don't know f you've ever read Tom Jones, it has kind of a high view of the virtues of womanhood that's typical of that time, but there's a real difference in attitude to Jones when he seduces the young woman who is a social inferior to himself - he's seen as having done her a wrong - compared to where he becomes the kept man of an older rich widow, which is taken more as a sign of his moral weakness.

But what I'm not sure of s how you create a culture that gives the girls a really different message about what sex is about while maintaining a widespread belief that it's actually about something else. And not just with porn, because in a way that's partly an effect, rather than a cause, of this attitude. But even with things like sitcoms where people hop in and out of each others beds at the drop of a hat, or that consent is all that is important.