Trigger warning for brief mentions of rape and abuse.
I recently came across (possibly via Scarleteen) this awesome report about male adolescent sexual health within the primary care setting.
According to the study, male sexual health is quite often overlooked within the clinical setting. Pediatricians are three times more likely to take sexual histories from female than from male clients and twice as likely to counsel female clients on the use of condoms. This is particularly bad, because male adolescents cite health care providers as one of their most important sources of sexual health information.
The other primary sources of sexual health education for adolescent boys are also falling down on the job. Both mothers and fathers have difficulty discussing sex with their sons, according to the paper. However, sons whose parents talk to them about sex report being closer to their parents, more comfortable talking to their parents in general, and more open about sex with their parents. In particular, gay male teens who have a supportive home environment during the coming-out process have much better psychological outcomes: without a supportive environment, they’re at risk for isolation, flunking school, substance abuse, depression, suicide, stigmatization, and a host of other negative consequences.
Sex education and HIV/AIDS prevention information is also important: it has been linked to more consistent condom use. However, as I’m sure everyone is reading this blog is aware, in America certain political forces have been waging a war on evidence-based, comprehensive sex education that says such controversial things as “if you have sex use a condom”; true sex-positive sex education that centers pleasure, enthusiastic consent, and sensible risk management is not even on the radar. Sex education is vitally important, because approximately three-quarters of male teenagers have engaged in some sexual behavior (including manual or oral sex) by graduation.
For adolescent men, puberty presents several important issues. Diseases like Klinefelter’s or Marfan syndrome may not be identified until adolescence; other issues, like gynecomastia (which occurs to between forty and sixty-five percent of male teenagers) or testicular torsion, may not appear until adolescence. Earlier-maturing boys tend to take more risks; later-maturing boys tend to be less confident and more likely to experience bullying, depression, and substance abuse.
Many young men engage in risky sexual behaviors: a quarter have used alcohol or drugs before last sex; 16% have four or more lifetime partners; 8% initiated sex before the age of 13; 28% reported no condom use at last vaginal sex; 11.1% had anal sex (which is at higher risk for STIs than PIV sex) with a female partner; 5.6% reported having sex with a sex worker or person living with HIV or often or always being high during sex. It is important to note that none of these are, in and of themselves, destructive choices; sluthood can be an awesome and fulfilling part of life. However, young men who make these choices require more guidance from sex-positive sexual health sources to make sure that they’re managing their risk and that it’s a level of risk they’re comfortable with.
But unfortunately many men are not actively choosing to participate in sex. 82% of men have experienced pressure from their friends to have sex; virgin-shaming is alive and well among men. More than half wish they had waited longer to have sex and more than one-third did not really want sex the first time it happened or had mixed feelings about it. Approximately 1 in 12 (higher for black men and those who had sex under the age of 15) were coerced into first-time sex, mostly by a female. (The percentage of men who were raped wasn’t discussed within the report.)
Men suffer from other risks. Although they only account for a quarter of the sexually active population, adolescents and young adults account of half of all new STI cases and 30% of new STI infections. Young people age 13 to 24 are estimated to account for 10% of undiagnosed cases of HIV. 7.2% of young men who have sex with men have HIV (people of color generally have higher rates than whites).
Being a survivor of dating violence is slightly more common among male (11%) than female (8%) high-school students. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but abuse and domestic violence are far more gender-equal than we think, and when we raise awareness of abuse we have to raise awareness of all kinds of abuse, not just the male-on-female kind we think of.
In addition, 1 in 8 male adolescents who have had PIV sex have impregnated a partner, and 4% are fathers. Because of lacking or inaccurate documentation of paternal age on birth certificates, the percentage might actually be much higher. Teaching adolescents pregnancy avoidance methods is a clear necessity.
The use of condoms by adolescent men, particularly men of color, is rising, with 70% reporting condom use at both first and most recent sex. However, less than half report consistent condom use. Barriers include embarrassment while buying them, reduced physical sensation, incorrect use, and inability to plan or discuss it with one’s partner. 10% use the withdrawal method which, while better than nothing, is not protection as good as a barrier method or hormonal contraception. Only a quarter use two methods (i.e. condoms with hormonal birth control). Young men are less likely to use condoms if the male’s partner used a contraception method, if the man is an older adolescent, and during a casual first sexual encounter. Adolescents who discuss contraception before sex, use dual contraception methods, and wait longer after beginning a relationship to have sex are more likely to use condoms. Men and white teenagers are less likely to discuss contraception and STIs before losing their virginity than women and people of color are.
Adolescent men experience many barriers to getting proper sexual health care. After losing their virginity, many men do not think about preventative care; traditional masculine beliefs preclude young men from seeking care even if they have symptoms. Young cis women tend to get reproductive health care from their gynecologists; young cis men do not have access. Shame, denial, fear, stigma, lack of social support, lack of confidential services, lack of health care, and not knowing where to go for care can place significant barriers in front of men getting treatment for STIs.
About ozyfrantz
Enthusiastic consent has troublesome aspects and I think Hugh Rustik comment mentions some of the troublesome aspects. That’s the reason why I didn’t mention enthusastic consent in any of my comments, but replied to one specific example you mentioned where you said having sex with someone asleep (or half asleep which is a term which cover a wide range of awareness) is not rape. I pointed out one example where it would be rape and one where it wouldn’t.
The absolutely minimum requirement in my book is that a person is given the opportunity to stop any sexual activity if they don’t want it. Having sex with someone who is sleeping is rape if they did not give consent ahead and given that they don’t really have any opportunity to stop the act if they don’t want to (until they wake up) then having sex with someone who is sleeping and who have been given consent in advance does in fact carry a risk that the person in that situation will feel violated – even though they said “Yes” in advance. One possible scenario is if they were sexually abused as children and have repressed it and they experience a flashback when they are woken by a sex act. Noone foresaw that would happen, not your partner when she consented in advance and not you when you performed the sex act – but the damage is still done – she is still hurting and feeling violated and the fact that you can’t be called a rapist is a small comfort for her or for you if you care about her.
If you want to have sex when she’s asleep you should ask ahead and in any way you must carry that risk – your partner carries that risk as well since they consented.
If you want to do so safely you can ask your partner to pretend to be asleep when you get back from the bathroom for instance.
What you can’t say to the other person is: You can’t be hurt by this because I didn’t intend nor expected to hurt you.
In reply to your example:
However, if the man told the woman when she started to blow on it that she should stop and she doesn’t then she’s either violated him sexually or possibly raped him (I don’t know what blow on in means: as in literal blowing on it without contact or blowing air between the foreskin and glans which might hurt if she blows hard enough). Trying to slip in anally when doing a woman from behind and not stopping when she says no is also rape – no matter how enthusiastically she was about the sex act you originally did.
I am arguing from a point of how can I ensure that both my partner and I have an as pleasant as possible experience.
Agreed. And I think Mens Rea has a lot to do with the distinction. It’s not rape unless there is Mens Rea.
I’m honestly not going to live my life worrying about stuff like that. What if I bake a cake and she’s allergic to vanilla but nobody knew because she never had vanilla before and she dies? What if I send her flowers and a bee flies out of them and bites her? What if I take her on a cruise and the boat hits an iceberg and everybody dies? In general I have this impression from the gendersphere that people talk about sex like it’s playing with fire next to explosive on the railroad tracks with an oncoming train. Is sex really that big of a deal? I am sex positive. I think of sex as something positive, like baking a cake or giving someone flowers. Yes, things could go wrong even with nice things that you do. But in general if you are doing nice things for nice reasons because you want other people to like you and respect you then there’s nothing wrong with you.
Incidentally, and bringing this conversation back on topic, that is the sort of thing I have always found to be a problem with the way our society educates men about sex and sexual health.
First of all, the most important thing is, there is no focus on what’s good for the men, because the first thing that anybody ever things about is how these guys could totally screw everything up for someone else. So the approach to sex ed is to teach men all about how dangerous they are as males. You give them long lists of things to look out for in case you accidentally rape someone. You tell them how even if someone maliciously compromises a condom and it results in a pregnancy, it’s still your fault because you have the original sin of being born male. You then turn around and tell the women about how they can protect themselves from these males. You teach the women about condoms because they need to protect themselves from all the stupid boys who don’t know how to wear them. Two guys having sex? Well, who cares about that right? Doesn’t even compute. I think that’s really where the reproductive health for men gets lost.
In fact, about the only thing I still remember about reproductive help from sex ed is a really awkward, embarrassing video of some kid who walks up to his dad and says, “Dad, do you think that my testicles should be about the size of grapefruit?” and his dad says, “No son, how long have you had that for?” and the son said, “Well dad, I had this for years now, but I was too afraid to ask!” I remember watching that thing and cringing at how awful it was. The kid in the video was made to sound like a total idiot, as if boys are supposed to be helpless buffoons who don’t know how to talk about sex the way the all-so-perfect girls do. Every video we watched about girls showed the girl giving herself a proper breast exam, walking into her doctor’s office and having an erudite conversation with him where she used big medical terms like “huh, so pray tell me Dr HaufBrauWeizer, what are the chances of me as a 12 year old requiring a mastectomy within the next 2 or 3 years of my life? I need to know so that I can make appropriate college plans before my high school sweetheart and quarterback for the football team asks me out to the prom…” Okay I’m kidding, just to get my point across. It wasn’t that bad, but the difference was nevertheless pretty damn stark.
And when men talk about their experiences, they aren’t believed. For example, The_L:
Not only does The_L discount my experience as a one-off, she tells me I’m lucky for it, because being exposed to an extremely sexist, anti-male curriculum makes me “lucky” somehow. Or maybe I just took it the wrong way and it wasn’t even that bad. Because we all know that men need to have their experiences re-interpreted for them by a qualified feminist on a blog… Okay, I’m getting a little carried away because The_L didn’t mean it that way, but you know what I’m getting at here… there isn’t a lot of “listening” going on in our society when men voice their concerns.
Also from the report Ozymandia42 refers to in the original post(page 6 in the PDF zie linked to):
Continuing to only frame prevention programs directed at youths as initiatives to end violence against women and girls is in my view sliding closer and closer to being considered enablement as more and more research starts to show a totally different picture than the programs paint. Will the programs change? I hope so.
I feel like a lot of this is chicken-and-egg stuff tbh.
This is a great post, very useful information, especially as a parent of boys, but why on earth is an MRA being allowed to troll and derail?