Sex Text 2: The Myth of the “Oral Sex Epidemic”

Bill Maher once said that abstinence-only sex-education was creating girls who would say no to sex but yes to any other type of pornographic behaviors. This was during the end of the 1990s, when there was a craze going on that believed that the youth of our country was obsessed with oral sex, and saw it as a way to get off without losing innocence. The basis for this argument is completely wrong and was mislead by word of mouth and the media.

Many rumors went around which were completely false, but sparked a panic mode in the minds of the mothers of this country. Could our perfect children be giving head to boys in an assembly line like fashion? (In case you have never heard the story, a mother claimed that she walked downstairs during one of her son’s birthday parties to see boys lined up on the wall and the girls going down the line giving head to each guys). According to an Oprah Winfrey special on the subject, this could be true. Unfortunately, the data behind the belief point 100% to the other direction.

The Guttmacher Institute just released a study of people ages 15-19 that dealt with this subject of oral sex and its relationship to vaginal sex. The study found that around half of the studies’ members had given or gotten oral sex. OK. This is still pretty high, but in relation to the 45-50% of people in the same age group who have had intercourse, this throws up a big message. If only 5% more of people partake in oral sex than intercourse, this means that there is no “oral sex epidemic”. It is basically stating that an overwhelming majority of those who are giving oral sex don’t care anything about their innocence and chastity in the first place. What a shocker!

I found this study very interesting because of the arguments against abstinence only sexual education. Although no-one used this argument in my first Sex Text blog (it wasn’t labeled as Sex Text because I didn’t know I was going to start multiple blogs on it, but it is labeled as Comprehensive Sex Ed), many of the media’s arguments against abstinence-only sex ed is that it creates a belief system in the nation’s youth that as long as you’re not having sex, everything’s good. However, because of this study, we all know that this is no longer true.

So please, Oprah Winfrey, let’s have a show about the real epidemic going on in our nation’s youth: actual sex. 45-50% is way too high!

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