Is teenage sex wrong?

Parent Cafe
41

<p>Clarification…when I state romanticize vs hormonal I am talking the heat of the moment.</p>

<p>I do agree girls do place romance into the sex equation more than guys. For many girls their 1st time in their mind is like Prom or Wedding, they envision the outfit they will wear, the setting, the mood, the emotional tie. For most guys their planning entails picking up the condom.</p>

<p>Again, if you can’t understand how the sex of the partner ( F or M) plays into this than you are not ready.</p>

<p>I am 45, and I can say that every single female I know remembers their 1st time down to the small details, such as how warm or cold it was that night. They remember the name of their first partner, where it happened, when it happened, how it happened,what they were wearing, EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING… no exaggeration when I say everything…</p>

42

<p>I agree with Baelor’s statement in post 34, generally.
However in post 18, Baelor posed this question- "is it ethical to use someone else for the purpose of pleasure (as would sexual intercourse with the intent of pleasure and nothing else), even if they consent? "</p>

<p>This question differs from the generality of post 34. This question specifically says both parties consent to intercourse for pleasure and nothing else. So in this particular question the instrumentalization is specifically linked to consent, because it was in Baelor’s premise.</p>

43

<p>^ What are you talking about?</p>

<p>Baelor’s clarification in #34 was not different from his post #19, it was merely making explicit an implied premise of #19, that “consent” and “instrumentalization” were not mutually exclusive. If they were, then #19 would have been an incoherent question. And I don’t think anyone denies that it is possible for a person to consent to being used instrumentally. That’s why I thought I had to except prostitution from my critique of his question. Assuming that at least some prostitutes are capable of consent (i.e., are not being coerced, and are not psychological invalids), it looks like, in return for payment, they consent to being used for someone else’s sexual pleasure without any other kind of reciprocity in the relationship. And their customers pay them precisely to get their consent without any uncertainty about whether they will give it or any misunderstanding about the nature of the transaction, and who is getting what out of it.</p>

<p>Short of that, though, I don’t think there are many real-world consensual pleasure-only encounters. You have the cliche of Don Juan or Casanova, but they are explicitly engaging in fraud to obtain consent (when they bother to obtain consent), and they are implicitly concerned with power, not pleasure. So you can’t call that seeking pleasure, and nothing more, with consent, since there’s no effective consent and there is plenty more being sought.</p>

<p>Back in the real life being lived by me and my children, where one does not interact with either hookers or comic-book pornographic fantasies very often, girls AND boys, women AND men are emotionally engaged, or at least potentially emotionally engaged, even in the briefest of sexual relationships. They may not be on the same wave-length, page, whatever; they may not be looking for the same things, exactly. They may not be looking for positive things all the time. Those are all shoals and hazards of sex, at any age. But, at least in my opinion, it’s never pleasure and nothing else, even if the “something else” is the mere affirmation provided by someone else’s freely given consent, the click of recognizing “mon semblable, mon frere”.</p>

44

<p>I really don’t think most people are ready to take financial and emotional responsibility for the potential consequences of sex until they are in their mid to late 20s and in a long term, stable relationship with stable careers that provide living wages (this means the possibility children will be born from any intimate encounter). It really isn’t fair to any child who could be born of the union. I felt that way when I was a young person decades ago and still feel that way, as I have shared with my kids. I do “walk the walk.”</p>

<p>I have never heard of any “birth control method” that is 100% foolproof, then or now. </p>

<p>Sex always involves significant risk–of pregnancy, communicable disease and more. It also has huge emotional costs that aren’t apparent when you’re young and “in lust.”</p>

45

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<p>See, on college campuses (which may be exempt from “the real world”), this claim is false.</p>

46

<p>Perhaps I live(or lived) in a different world. When I was a full-time dj yrs ago, I saw many many young adults meet and choose sex without any money exchanged or long-term expectations; and without trickery. Yes, I joke that “my life was in bars” but by that I do not mean I was a drunken patron. Bars were my primary source of income.
If JHS believes the only time such “just for fun” sex goes on in the real world is in prostitution or porn flicks, then I’d say Jhs’s view was limited. I am no longer a dj, but I suspect such “just for fun” hookups still exist. The right or wrong of it is a different issue; I only point out that it does exist.</p>

<p>What I was talking about in post 42? I completely agree with your Don Juan example, but that wasn’t what Baelor asked. In my own words, Baelor asked(in 18) is it wrong to have sex just for the pleasure if both parties consent to it? In that question in 18, the stated premise is that there is no Don Juan trickery, where one is tricked into consenting. In that question, it is 2 people that consent to sex just for the pleasure.
Post 34 Baelor says instrumentalization independent from consent, but in the question posed in 18 the 2 were linked. It is that specific question that I addressed; not all consents. By no means would I say they are never linked or that they were always linked. But in that question he posed they were linked. Haben Sie Sinn?</p>

47

<p>Younghoss, they were not linked. Were they, I would not have needed to include the final part of the questions – that consent is there. In other words, the question itself included the belief that instrumentalization and consent are uncorrelated.</p>

48

<p>I didn’t (and wouldn’t) say that “long-term expectations” are involved in every sexual encounter between college-age kids. I did (and would) say that emotional engagement is involved, on at least one side, 99.9% of the time. I spent plenty of time in bars, too, during what now appears as a brief interregnum between universally available birth control and the advent of HIV; that’s what I learned then. Not that people weren’t always up for trying to have purely recreational sex, or that there wasn’t a persistent fantasy about it, just that generally people failed.</p>

<p>The one place where that sort of wasn’t true – where people really did sometimes have purely recreational, no-emotional-connection sex – was in the gay men’s community in the period just before the AIDS epidemic. Obviously, it helped that only male psychology had to be involved – I’ll argue that men do get emotionally engaged in sex, but I won’t argue that they get MORE emotionally engaged than women, on average. And even there, I think it was way more the exception than the rule, and very much a consequence of the weird social dynamic of repression and coming out. So . . . from my standpoint, not so much evil instrumentalization of others as a response to having been evilly treated by others.</p>

<p>What I’m saying boils down to this: I believe that even when they are being most frivolous and/or predatory, when people opt for seeking consensual sex (versus, say, prostitution or handling things oneself, or simply getting too wasted to care), they are looking for connection with other people, some element of friendship and intellectual intercourse, affirmation of their own worth and attractiveness, appreciation of beauty, the experience of another person’s response, a glimpse through someone else’s eyes. And, of course, often a great deal more than that, but at least that. Not just “pleasure”.</p>

49

<p>What I’m saying boils down to this: I believe that even when they are being most frivolous and/or predatory, when people opt for seeking consensual sex (versus, say, prostitution or handling things oneself, or simply getting too wasted to care), they are looking for connection with other people, some element of friendship and intellectual intercourse, affirmation of their own worth and attractiveness, appreciation of beauty, the experience of another person’s response, a glimpse through someone else’s eyes. And, of course, often a great deal more than that, but at least that. Not just “pleasure”.</p>

<p>I agree- if pleasure was all they wanted- they could have that many different ways-
without involving someone else physically.</p>

<p>From my perspective- I have seen people " hook" up casually and then part.
But in order to keep from " getting involved" they have to quash their feelings and emotions, so deep that they may have trouble retrieving them later.</p>

50

<p>I don’t understand how you can say your conditional question didn’t link “use” with “consent”, given that in your question, the “use” was wholly dependent on the full knowledgable consent of the 2 parties. The sex act would only occurr, in your question, if both consented and having full knowlege that it was “just for pleasure”.
But in any case, if I have misunderstood your question, then my apologies.</p>

51

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<p>Exactly. The fact that that connection had to be articulated is by construction indicative of a lack of inherent link. I artificially linked two completely separate issues. So, yes, they were linked by construct, but not by nature (which is significant).</p>

52

<p>To the OP’s original question…What do “normal” parents think of Teen sex? Is it wrong?</p>

<p>Teens experiment with sex. They did when I was a teen, when my parents were teens, all the way back. I fully expect that sometime before adulthood, my teens will become sexually active. However there are many varieties of “teen” sex. Committed, monagamous, in love, with PROTECTION, when teen is mature sex is very different from drunken 14 year old girl/guy providing other drunken teens with oral sex just because sex. This version of sex is “wrong” to me, my family, and I believe to my teens. </p>

<p>To me sex under the influence of (insert drug of choice) is wrong. As a parent it is the scariest kind of sex due to lack of inhibitions, decision making, and thinking. In the high school my children attend this type of sex appears to be on the rise and is very much a way that freshmen (ie-young teens) come of age. Scary and wrong in my opinion.</p>

53

<p>I have one word for you—abstinence. I believe that teenagers are not emotionally ready for it. It also often has very negative consequences, physically and mentally. So wait. Focus on your priorities.</p>

54

<p>Teenagers should NOT have sex in any circumstances. </p>

<p>I personally think that sex belongs in marriage…and only in marriage…at least in the absence of truly extenuating circumstances,e.g., illegal aliens who cannot wed. </p>

<p>I told my offspring that this is what our Church teaches and is the opinion I believe in. However, as I explained to them, a lot of people whom I consider good, decent moral people disagree with that. It’s an individual choice. I agreed to respect the choice my offspring made, AS LONG AS THEY WAITED UNTIL THEY WERE ADULTS TO MAKE IT. Nobody whose opinion I respect thinks teens under 18 should have sex. </p>

<p>I live in NYC. The age of consent here is 17. In California it is 18. I don’t mean to offend anyone who lives in the other 48 states, but these are to my mind, the most sophisticated states in the nation. And they have decided that 17 or 18 is the outside legal limit for consenting to sex. Maybe these states, both of which deal with too many teenage hookers and young teens who have sex with an older male who promises them the moon (usually but not always help with a career in the performing arts) understand how immature a young teen can be. </p>

<p>You have to be 18 to buy a cigarette legally; 21 to drink; 18 to vote. In all honesty, I think it requires more maturity to engage in sex than it does to drink, smoke, or vote. </p>

<p>Lots of kids have the mistaken idea that having sex makes you mature. I told my offspring that was analogous to thinking that the 14 year old who got drunk and puked his brains out was “more mature” than the 14 year old who said no when he was offered booze. Which requires more maturity? </p>

<p>I’m very proud of what happened way back when my D got in a discussion with some fiends about sex. One of her friends was surprised when my D said 17 was the age of consent. Her older college student boyfriend had reserved a hotel room for her 16th birthday. When she told him what I had said, he checked. He learned I was right and canceled the room reservation. He was history long before her 17th birthday. Frankly,I think that if she had really been ready to “do the deed” she would have kept her mouth shut. The fact that she TOLD him that the age of consent was 17 means to me that she really didn’t want to have sex but had a hard time saying no. I gave her an excuse. </p>

<p>Again, sex is an adult activity. Wait until you are an adult to have it. If you can’t do that…at least consider your motives. Don’t let anyone bullying you into sex or make you think that you’re “immature” or “acting like a baby” if you say no. </p>

<p>And a girl should NEVER ever do it to “keep” a guy. As I told my D, if all you had to do to keep a guy is have sex there would be a lot fewer divorces.</p>

55

<p>OP–as the posts indicate, “normal” American parents’ attitudes run the gamut from total teenage (or even unmarried adult) abstinence to “its just sex” so take precautions against pregnancy and STD’s.</p>

<p>Seems that for American parents on CC, the issue of teen “sex” can send them to the barricades of agendas pro and con, triggers reactions in many bordering on fear and loathing and generally gets them a dither.</p>

<p>Non parent reaction on CC seems to fall along the lines of those who are abstinent tout abstinence and those who aren’t don’t.</p>

<p>I have not seen many posts on CC by teenagers or early 20s who personally recount that they have been “used” sexually in the process of having consensual sex. This seems to be a large issue with some parents who apparently believe that this is an everyday occurrence for many young people.</p>

56

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<p>At least as I have articulated the issue, being “used” doesn’t depend on the person in question acknowledging it, nor does the moral problem lie solely with (no pun intended) that same acknowledgment or sense of violation.</p>

57

<p>Baelor–I am pointing out to the OP that there does not appear to have been any poster who has related a personal experience with this. As I read your posts, you very definitely have not been “used.”</p>

58

<p>Teenage sex isn’t “wrong”, in fact it’s very normal, but it is irresponsible, because the two parties aren’t mature enough to handle the consequences.</p>

<p>Pregnancy, STD’s, and even emotional trauma (I suppose more for girls) are very serious and teenagers aren’t mentally developed for it yet.</p>

59

<p>Jonri has sure aroused my curiosity referring to what are apparently his/her church teachings.
I am surprised Jonri’s church teaches it is ok for unmarried people to have sex if one is here illegally.
I would not have guessed that the church would have said unmarried people having sex could be right or wrong, depending on their legal resident status. It’s ok for unmarried people to have sex if one is here in violation of federal law? I think that odd. I would love to see the Biblical reference for that. Further, I would have guessed the church would teach that people here illegally should immediately file for legal status or go home, given the “render unto Caesar” part of the Bible.</p>

60

<p>I have not seen many posts on CC by teenagers or early 20s who personally recount that they have been “used” sexually in the process of having consensual sex. This seems to be a large issue with some parents who apparently believe that this is an everyday occurrence for many young people.</p>

<p>First off, I don’t think teens are posting those issues here on CC. That’s something girls tend to tearfully tell their girlfriends. I think posting that on CC makes a kid too vulnerable.</p>

<p>Secondly, if these posts do exist, they probably exist in the CC forums that parents aren’t really looking at…like all the threads in high school life.</p>

<p>Thirdly, I have 2 boys in college, they would say that there are boys who are just looking for sex and will use booze or whatever to make hooking up easier to happen. Yes, my boys find that behavior disgusting, but obviously there’s nothing they can do about it besides not being friendly with guys that behave that way.</p>