Uneducated Sex:Having Sex to be Sexy

I'm sure many of you have heard this before, and it stands true. So many young girls are doing things to disrespect themselves because they think it's "sexy". I've heard countless times of girls getting sent home from school for getting caught performing oral sex on a boy on the school bus, or in the bathroom. I find this really disturbing and disgusting because I'm not just talking about high school kids(even though that would be wrong too)but I'm talking about really young girls in anywhere from 5th to 8th grade! I read a really appalling statistic in The Courier News that stated that at least 1 in 4 teenage American girls have a sexually transmitted disease, that's about 3 million girls nationwide!

Who's to blame for this? I know that naturally people will be quick to point the finger at the parents. I'd say a portion of the blame goes to the parents, but not all of it. I feel that parents should be instilling better values in their children. Teaching girls how to treat their bodies as temples, and not tickets to acceptance. And teaching boys how to respect their own bodies and respect female bodies as well. The main thing to blame for this is, I feel, ignorance. Although this is 2008, and technology has come so far, society is still not advancing. Sex is still a taboo topic and as a result of that, teens and pre-teens are afraid to talk about these issues and go exploring and finding out for themselves. They shouldn't have to be learning the hard way.

Sexual education classes give them a general idea of how sex works, how to have protected sex, and that sex will eventually lead to pregnancy. It's just a reality check telling them that hey there's no such thing as the stork that delivers babies, this is how it's done. I feel that schools need to start educating on the real facts of sex at an earlier grade. Tell them about pregnancy and STDs and encourage abstinence. They shouldn't have to go out into the world possessing such ignorance to the topic and suffering for it.



We can all play a significant part in preventing this from growing. I'm the oldest of 6, with two brothers and 3 sisters. Those are five lives I can influence and help by giving them the facts and advice needed to help them prevent themselves from becoming statistics. If you're a sister, brother, aunt, uncle, mom, dad, teacher, friend, godmother, godfather, in-law, cousin, or anything to a pre-teen or teen, educate them! Don't look at it as someone else's responsibility, because that someone else could be doing the same thing. I encourage everyone to pull their loved ones aside and address this issue. It's a sensitive topic, but wouldn't you rather deal with feeling uncomfortable but still talk about it than find out that your loved one has contracted an STD or became pregnant or worse? I don't know about you, but I'd be devastated.

My best advice to talking to them about this would be to not sugar-coat anything. Tell them the horrors of each STD and ask them if they feel it would be worth all that? Ask them if they know that some STDs can lead to cancer, infertility, and even death? Or that there are some that cannot be cured? Make them aware that pregnancy isn't the only thing to worry about. Encourage abstinence, but tell them that if they do decide to have sex, that they can talk to you first so that they can do it responsibly and safely. Also many teens have said that they think intercourse is the only form of sex. Educate them on this as well. Inform them that they can still contract diseases in their mouths and from the mouths of others as well.

I thank you for reading this, and I hope that you are motivated to be one more person to do your part in ensuring that this alarmingly high rate does not increase. I understand that we all have a free will and we can't watch over them all the time. Sometimes just knowing that someone cares enough to sit down and educate us, knowing that someone values us enough to do that for us, makes us value ourselves a little more and we may make educated decisions because of that. Thank you.