When I look up from my desk, there's a camera phone in my face. I can tell it's set to "video" by the way they're snickering. "Lauren, can we ask you something?" they begin. I tell them of course, they can ask me anything. From a sea of teenage giggles comes the question, "Do you approve of penis sucking?"
It's mid-November and I've just started working as the coordinator for a teen peer educator program. The regular health educator, a woman with whom they have built strong bonds of trust, has recently had a baby and left this goofy group of kids under my care. They are trained to facilitate presentations and workshops about sex, drugs/alcohol, peer pressure, healthy relationships, and more with other teens in their community. The program is associated with lower teen pregnancy and STI rates. These kids are smart, but they are also teens... that is, they have dirty minds and they love to say weird shit.
"Approve?" I ask. "As in, do I approve of other people doing it?" More giggling, plus nodding. "Okay y'all. What do we talk about here? If it's consensual and safe, I 'approve' of pretty much anything."
Roaring laughter. "ANYTHING?!?!" They can barely contain their excitement, basking in the belief that they have "tricked" me into opening the floodgates. Tricked my ass. This was intentional.
What follows is a series of questions about whether or not I "approve" of a whole host of weird things, at least as "weird" as the unseasoned teenage mind can conjure. It is at this moment I realize I am, at my heart, cut out for this kind of work. I don't flinch, even when in my mind I may be making my best "WTF?" face. The same goes for my work as a doula. When a multiparous mama said she "wanted pressure on her anus" to relieve some unnerving sensation during second stage, I didn't flinch... I wrapped a tennis ball in a nitrate glove, slipped one on my own hand, and held the thing to her anus until her baby started to crown and the visibly-confused OB told me to get out of the way. It wasn't weird to me. It was intuitive and matter-of-fact, and it made her birthing experience more comfortable.
But back to the teens. While the "penis sucking" question became a running joke, the conversation that started it all established a culture of trust between myself and these particular teens. During my tenure as their coordinator, several of them would return privately to ask intensely personal questions. Questions that they weren't about to ask their parents, HCPs, or even close friends.
Now consider how the "penis sucking" question would have been met within the school system. An educator would either have to espouse some state-scripted AOUM crap, or (more likely) would chastise the inquirer for being "inappropriate." If there was an educator on the taxpayer's payroll telling kids that they "approve of pretty much anything," can you imagine the resulting shitstorm? That would be 24/7 news material, and of course the context would be completely absent from the discourse surrounding the controversy.
Towards the end of my job coordinating the teens' program, an intern remarked at how comfortable I was being completely honest about my private sexual life. The initial question of "do you approve of ______" had turned a bit more personal: "Do you ______?" "Have you ever _____?" "Why do people like ______?" "What's the safest way to ______?" These conversations were generally humorous yet serious, and I felt that by providing answers using my own personal experiences, I was furthering the trust and rapport that would reassure the teens that they could really ask me anything. I reminded the interns that they absolutely did not have to answer questions about their personal lives if they didn't want to, but that I did because I felt that it normalized sexuality and reaffirmed that sex was a universal and enjoyable part of being human. And always, I reminded them about our two best friends, consent and safety.
I'm sure some parents (and maybe my bosses) would have raised an eyebrow if they knew what kinds of things I'd shared with my teens, but kids need this kind of blatant honesty, especially when they're so obviously not getting it elsewhere. Teen sexuality is, in our society, something we're supposed to cringe at, something that's bad and can only be bad. Hell, the most anti-sex right wingers even believe that the only reason teenagers even think about sex is because they're "told to" by the media and allegedly "anti-morality" feminists. A recent video put out by the American Life League accused Planned Parenthood in particular of getting teens "addicted" to sex, apparently using masturbation as the "gateway drug" (can't make this shit up). While this all fits nicely into the religious right's crusade against positive sexuality, it does absolutely nothing to offer teenagers realistic and factual information about their bodies and their sexual lives. When messages that paint sexuality in a positive light are so absent, teens - especially teen girls - have two choices: they can either adhere to the conservative principle that sex is a commodity to be used in exchange for a husband, or they can follow the media's insistence that sex is a commodity to be used in exchange for social clout. (Consequently, these two camps decry the other to boost their respective "profit margins." They also both reaffirm the message that a woman's sexual life is not her own. That teen girls can use their bodies for whatever purpose best suits their own desires is tragically absent from almost any mainstream debate about sexuality.)
The American Life League would surely accuse me of exposing my peer educators to some vague form of "pornography," but in reality all I ever did was answer questions honestly. We see childhood as this protected period, and in so many ways it absolutely should be, but we forget that kids are just young humans. In their own way, kids are sexual creatures just the same - anyone who's had to have "the privacy talk" with their toddler can tell you that - and while it doesn't mean they should be going out and expressing those tendencies with other people until they reach a certain level of maturity, it does mean that we need to have these blatantly honest conversations early and in an age-appropraite way. The religious right wants us to forget that, to equate masturbation - surely the safest and most self-affirming sexual practice there is - with deviance and dangerous promiscuity. But they do this to maintain a power structure which is not conducive to one's best possible sexual health. Sure you can point at the fact that lifelong-monogamous couples aren't likely to contract an STI, but how often does this really work out, and when such a lifestyle decision comes from a culture of sexual repression and not one's autonomous desires, what else is being lost? It may seem simpler, but in the long-term, is it even worth it?
I suggest a frankness about sexuality. An openness. Such an approach does nothing to encourage teens to be "promiscuous," no... time and time again, research shows that comprehensive sex education results in fewer STIs, lower instances of unintended pregnancies, heightened self-esteem, healthier and more egalitarian relationships. I also suggest parents quit freaking out when "someone else" talks to their kids about sexuality. "Someone else" teaches them about almost every other thing, so why not sex? Especially when that "someone else" is a trained educator who can answer questions that parents may not know the answer to (or may not feel comfortable answering honestly). Sometimes it's hard to release that kind of control, but parents need to remember that, when it comes to sex education, "someone else" may very well be the best possible option.
Unless of course parents are willing to be the ones on the other side of a video camera, being filmed while their kid asks them a question about "penis sucking."
