How young women think about SEX
by Alyssa Quimby, MD
Last week we talked about 3 societal messages about sex and how damaging these can be. If you missed it, check it out here! Today I want to talk about how these messages and others translate into the lives of teenage girls. Not only is this just generally of interest, but my hope is that it can be motivating for all us moms as we work to raise our children to be more sex positive and hopefully avoid some of the damage we’ve had to face.
If you haven’t heard of Peggy Ornstein – let me introduce you. She’s a wonderful author who devoted several years of her life to interviewing girls 15 to 20 about their experience with sex.
She wrote the very well-known book Girls and Sex. And then went on to write Boys and Sex among others.
Her TED talk, “What young women believe about their own sexual pleasure” has been viewed over 6 million times! It’s excellent and will serve as the framework for our discussion.
So what do young women really believe about sexual pleasure?! Let’s get into it!
1. They are entitled to consent to sex but are not entitled to enjoy it.
We are doing a great job raising our girls to be strong, independent, free thinkers. They know about consent and its importance. But unfortunately, this doesn’t translate into equality in pleasure when it comes to sex. And I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time we change this. Which means we should be having conversations with our daughters about the pleasure of sex. And how their enjoyment is just as important of that of their partner. This is how we buck the medical message. Remember from last week? This is the message that tells us sex is only going to get us pregnant or give us a disease. It’s not the message that sex is for pleasure and connection to ourselves or another human. This is what we have to explicitly tell our daughters and other young people. And I know many of us cringe at this idea and may worry conversations like this may encourage them to have sex earlier – but thankfully the data really doesn’t support this! In fact, the opposite is true – when teens are taught about pleasure and connection as part of sex, they actually wait longer to have sex and have better experiences when they do!
2. It’s more important how their body looks to someone else compared to how it feels to them.
An example of this is pubic hair removal practices. It’s estimated that 80+% of teen and college age girls remove some or all of their pubic hair. And when asked about this practice, most respond that it’s to make the area look more clean or “less gross”.
Even further, there has been a dramatic rise in surgical alteration of the labia among this age group. The procedure known as labiaplasty (which is advised against by ACOG, the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, ie, our main governing body), rose 80% among teens between 2014 and 2015.
What a sad state that our teens are still buying into the negative messages surrounding female genitalia!
So how do we fix this?
First by referring to our genitalia by their proper names (vulva, vagina, etc) and encouraging our daughters to do so as well.
By using phrases like “down there” or other pet names, we send the message that these are secret or inappropriate words. When instead we should be in awe of the vagina for all its amazingness and celebrating what it means to be female.
3. They are more likely to use their partner’s sexual satisfaction as a measure of their satisfaction.
When asked how to gage if sex was good, most young women responded that if their partner orgasmed, then they were satisfied. Another determination of sex being good was if it didn’t hurt. Unfortunately 30% or more teens/young people have pain with sex, but sex without pain is a pretty low bar for sexual satisfaction.
Which tells me we need to have more conversations with young people about sexual pleasure. This is evidenced further by a Dutch-American study that looked at early experience of sex. Dutch parents were more likely to talk to their daughters about balancing responsibility vs joy. Compared to American parents who were more likely to talk about negative consequences like disease, pregnancy, and regret. And not surprisingly, the study found Dutch teens to overall have more positive experiences (better communication with their partner, feeling prepared for the experience, and enjoying the experience) and fewer negative consequences compared to American teens.
All of this to say, our deeply engrained societal messages are impacting not only our sex lives but those of future generations. And I hope this serves as a wake up call to all of us to encourage more conversations about sex, and more sexual positivity in our own lives but also in the lives of our children.
