By D.C. McAllister
Monday, July 17, 2017
“Teen Vogue is
garbage. The editors’ minds are in the garbage. The authors’ minds are in the
garbage. Don’t let your kids read garbage.” That’s what an activist mom said as
she burned a copy of the magazine in a Twitter video when she discovered an
article teaching 11- to 17-year-olds how to have anal sex. Enraged, she called
on parents to get Teen Vogue pulled
from the shelves.
Whether you agree with her choice to boycott and burn the
magazine isn’t the most important issue here. It’s how we got to this point:
the increase of anal sex among children and teenagers.
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I didn’t hear anyone
in my high school talking about anal sex. Vaginal sex? Yes, and lots of it.
Unwanted pregnancies? Yep. AIDS? Definitely. Oral sex? Yep. But anal sex? No.
Does this mean no one was having anal sex? I’m sure they were. Non-coital sex
is as old as time, but we’re talking about heterosexual teenagers and a sexual
act that was once considered deviant and taboo. That has suddenly changed. Anal sex is now
the new black.
Before I expand on this, I want to say up front, as I
often do whenever I write about sexual behaviors, that adults can do whatever
they want. I’m not dictating to anyone or judging personal sexual practices or
what people do in the privacy of their own homes. I don’t care what consenting
adults do in their bedrooms, and I don’t advocate government censorship of any
kind. Sex and mutual exploration is to be enjoyed—by adults.
Our focus here is on children,
adolescents in particular, who are still developing physically, emotionally,
cognitively, and psychologically. It is the responsibility of their parents and
civil society to promote beneficial values and practices that will help them
develop into healthy adults.
This Is Definitely
A New Thing
When I started writing this article, I asked my
77-year-old mother if 11- to 17-year-olds were having anal sex back in her day.
“No,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it certainly wasn’t
common or talked about. I knew people who had sex, of course, but not anal sex.
I certainly didn’t. None of my friends did. I never even thought about it
outside of homosexual relationships. Those were different times.”
Different times, indeed. As reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases,
researchers examining the prevalence and correlates of heterosexual anal and
oral sex in adolescents found an increase in the “prevalence of anal and oral
sex among opposite-sex partners.” A survey published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that anal sex has more than
doubled since the early ’90s among heterosexual women. In 1992, 16 percent of
women had anal sex. Today, it’s 40 percent.
According to Elizabeth Wildsmith and her study on dating
and sexual relationships, “between 2007 and 2010, 11 percent of male
adolescents and 13 percent of female adolescents reported that they had engaged
in anal sex with someone of the opposite sex.” Researchers at Bradley Hasbro
Children’s Research Center in Rhode Island have found that “anal sex is on the
rise among teens and young adults, particularly those who have unprotected
vaginal sex.”
Why are more young women and adolescents choosing to have
anal sex than ever before? Some say it’s because of virginity pledges within
religious circles. Girls, they say, are choosing to substitute oral and anal
sex because they want to stay “technical virgins.” In other words, “a culture
of purity is the problem.” This was the finding of a study by Peter Bearman and
Hanah Bruckner of Columbia and Yale universities that made a big media splash
several years ago.
Another Attempt at
Sex Without Consequences
Other researchers, however, have shown this study to be
inaccurate and flawed. Jeremy Uecker led a study on technical virginity and
found that, contrary to Bearman’s study, religious adolescents who were virgins
where “actually less likely to substitute non-vaginal forms of sex for vaginal
intercourse,” both for oral (63 versus 73 percent) and anal sex (15 versus 22
percent). Instead of religious motivations, Uecker found that the “most
compelling motivation for technical virginity among young people who have not
had vaginal sex” is risk-reduction.
While moral teachings and wanting to remain a “virgin”
certainly played a role for some, most avoided vaginal sex “because of the
risks it poses to their health, well-being, and future plans.” They didn’t want
to get pregnant or diseases that would derail their lives.
“Much is at stake for these individuals. They are more
likely to come from homes with educated parents and are subsequently more
likely to attend (or are already attending) a four-year college. For these,
vaginal sex involves too much risk—it could incur damage to their educational
and career trajectories, and thus it is replaced for a time by lower-risk
alternatives such as oral sex. Their behavior is reflective not of their
religious morality, but of their desire to live up to the expectations of their
family’s socioeconomic status.”
Laura Lindberg’s study on “noncoital sexual activities
among adolescents” confirms this demographically, finding that “teens of white
ethnicity and higher socioeconomic status were more likely than their peers to
have ever had oral or anal sex.”
What’s Driving
This Trend?
Let’s face it, girls have always been wary of sex because
of these socioeconomic and religious reasons, but in the past anal sex wasn’t
the go-to solution it is today. How, then, did anal sex become increasingly
popular?
I believe it has been driven by four social factors.
First is the general sexual permissiveness that has been increasing in our
culture since the sexual revolution—the ubiquity of sex, the acceptance of
formerly deviant sexual practices, and the effects of sex-positive feminism on
society. In the name of equality, women started acting like men, expressing
their sexuality in all the ways a man does. Past sexual mores vanished.
Uninhibited, emotionally detached sex became the norm.
Second is the exposure of anal sex in the media, hence
normalizing it. As Tracie Eagan of Jezebel.com told ABC News, “Anal sex is sort
of always considered the last frontier, pushing the envelope.” We saw this take
root in popular culture in the 1990s with “sex-laden MTV, documentaries on gay
lifestyles, and television shows like ‘Sex and the City.’”
What began in the ’90s has snowballed. Just consider the
awkward sex scene in “Girls” between Desi and Marnie in the kitchen, which Lena
Dunham described as Marnie getting her “butt eaten out”; the strap-on scene in
“Broad City”; and the gay anal sex scene in “How to Get Away With Murder.” Even
“The Mindy Project” went bottoms up.
Then, Of Course,
There’s Pornography
The third factor is pornography, where depictions of anal
sex are endless. Egan observed that “as with other sex trends, girls are more
open to experimentation because pornography has become so easily accessible on
Web sites like XTube and YouPorn.” While some research finds pornography has no
effect on the sexual behaviors of adolescents, this is not the finding of many
solid studies or of comprehensive research.
A study in the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association reported, “There is
agreement in the literature suggesting that adolescents can learn sexual
behaviors from observing the behaviors depicted in sexually explicit material.”
Pornography rewires
the brain, changing perceptions and behaviors: “When an adolescent boy
compulsively views pornography, his brain chemistry can become shaped around
the attitudes and situations that he is watching.”
Another study in 2006 found that pornography distorts
adolescents’ perception of sexuality. Researchers “extended these findings by
revealing that pornographic media conveyed expectations and demands regarding
what to do.” In addition, research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that adolescents who use
“sexually explicit material are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors
such as anal sex, sex with multiple partners, and using drugs or alcohol during
sex.” This finding was supported by another study in 2009.
Research on HIV prevention published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that
subjects “showed significantly elevated odds ratios for having engaged in
unprotected anal sex” that was associated with increased viewing of pornography
that depicted anal sex. A United Kingdom study bears this out, with male
participants saying they wanted to have anal sex with women to emulate
pornography, although this was only one factor.
A comprehensive study of all the
often-conflicting research on this topic also found a correlation between
pornography and sexual behaviors. Collectively, these studies suggest that
youth who consume pornography may develop unrealistic sexual values and
beliefs. Among the findings, higher levels of permissive sexual attitudes,
sexual preoccupation, and earlier sexual experimentation have been correlated
with more frequent consumption of pornography.
Researchers have had difficulty
replicating these results, however, and as a result the aggregate literature
has failed to indicate conclusive results. Nevertheless, consistent findings
have emerged linking adolescent use of pornography that depicts violence with
increased degrees of sexually aggressive behavior.
Informed by porn, young people are more likely to exert
pressure to have anal sex. A UK study found men are motivated not only by
curiosity and porn-fueled fantasies, but by competition. “Men in a group
discussion said anal sex was ‘something we do for a competition’, and ‘every
hole’s a goal.’”
Then There’s the
Acceptance of Homosexuals and Gay Sex
The final factor in the increase of anal sex among young
people is the impact of the homosexual culture on society. I admit, I can’t
back this one up with studies, so I’m presenting this as my opinion born of
observation and common sense. Just as the black culture became fused with the
broader culture in the civil rights era resulting in hip-hop influencing
everything from fashion to lingo, the normalization and acceptance of
homosexuality is having its own effect.
Unlike ever before, we are exposed to gay sex in
mainstream media, the gay lifestyle is written about and praised in schools and
popular culture, sex education often includes discussion of sexual preferences,
and homosexuals are freely expressive about their sexual habits and behaviors,
no longer silenced by social stigma. Homosexuality has undeniably influenced
fashion, film, television, the arts, education, and language through gay slang.
I believe this influence extends to sexual behaviors. In
the past, anal sex (or sodomy, as it was known) was primarily associated
homosexuality. Homosexuality was considered deviant, so its sexual practices
were considered deviant as well. With loosening of social norms and
normalization of homosexuality, sodomy lost its stigma and its name. Anal sex
became acceptable.
These four factors, I believe, have contributed to the
increase of anal sex among adolescents, who are forever being sexualized by the
culture. Should this concern us as a society, or is this no big deal? I’d say
when it comes to children, it’s a big deal.
Now, Let’s Be
Clear: Anal Sex Has High Health Risks
Anal sex is a very high-risk sexual behavior, more so
than vaginal intercourse and oral sex. As reported by the Medical Institute for
Sexual Health, a Guttmacher study found that 25 percent of the women they
interviewed had been forced to have anal sex. “Coercion and violence
notwithstanding, many participants reported pain and discomfort, including
emotional distress, during anal intercourse.” A study from the UK concurs:
“Young people’s narratives normalized coercive, painful and unsafe anal
heterosex.”
In HuffPo, Naomi Wolf said when she visited several
college campuses, “anal fissures were the number one health problem women were
having because everyone was doing anal when they were drunk and had just met,
which is not the best way to do anal. It’s a very delicate thing. So, the
scripts are being set by porn.”
Not only is it painful, it has other risks. It can
eventually lead to fecal incontinence, and the American Cancer Society reports,
“Receptive anal intercourse also increases the risk of anal cancer in both men
and women, particularly in those younger than 30.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated
that “Anal sex is the riskiest sexual behavior for getting and transmitting HIV
for men and women.” It “carries a risk 17 times greater than receptive vaginal
intercourse. Moreover, receptive anal intercourse even carries a risk 2 times
greater than that of needle-sharing during injection drug use.”
The CDC also reports that “in addition to the same
sexually transmitted diseases that are passed through vaginal sex, anal sex can
also expose participants to hepatitis A, B, and C; parasites like Giardia and
intestinal amoebas; bacteria like Shigella, Salmonella, Campylobacter, and E.
coli.”
Given the high risks, do we really want our children
having anal sex? Some might say it doesn’t matter as long as they’re educated
about the risks. Education, they claim, is key. Yes, education is very
important. But where should they get this education? In what social context?
According to which moral worldview? This is for parents, not educators, the
government, or Teen Vogue, to decide.
If parents forego their duty and let the world educate their children about
sex, that’s their prerogative. But they have no right to complain when all the
education in the world fails.
As beneficial and necessary as education is, it is best
when set within a strong moral framework, though admittedly this is not
full-proof, given our imperfect nature. This can only come from families and
other private associations. Kids are having anal sex today not because they’re
uneducated, not because they’ve taken virginity pledges, but because they’re
immoral.
Some will say they’re doing it because they’re typical
teenagers—raging hormones and all. If we were simply talking about normal
sexual development, I’d agree. But we’re talking about anal sex—a sexual
behavior that culture is imposing on them. Typical teenagers of generations
past who were free of this social pressure and influence seemed to refrain from
taking the back door when the front was closed. Why can’t kids today?
Our children are not just physical beings feeding their
animal appetites. They’re spiritual creatures, rational and moral. Our
education about sex of any sort is woefully lacking if it focuses only on the
physical. Children’s minds and souls need to be educated as well. That’s
something Teen Vogue is simply not
equipped to do. All it can do is perpetuate a materialism that debases our
children rather than elevating them by informing their minds and enlightening
their souls.
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