It's Official: The HPV Vaccine Will Not Turn Girls Into "Sluts"

@RHRealityCheck

On October 15, the New York Times reported that adolescents who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) aren’t more promiscuous than those who don’t get vaccinated. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that raises the risk of some cancers. It’s not surprising that a vaccine has no effect on adolescent sexual behavior. What is surprising is that fear of “sluttiness” is the number-one reason parents decide not to vaccinate their kids against HPV.

Put another way: A large proportion of parents in the United States are more afraid of their kids having sex than they are of their kids getting cancer.

In fact, “slut-shaming” and negative messaging about female and non-straight sexuality could themselves be compared to a viral infection. A study published in November 2011 found that nearly half of students in grades seven through 12 experienced sexual harassment, and that most of the harassment is directed at girls for being either “slutty” or “prudes” or against kids who are suspected of being gay.

Seeking to shame someone because of her or his real or perceived sexual activity and desire is prevalent among teens and constitutes a type of bullying that is extremely damaging. The 2011 study noted that students reported being particularly negatively affected by slut shaming. Research consistently shows that LGBTI youth have a much higher rate of suicide or suicide attempts than the general population, with a strong correlation between depression or self-harm and gay bashing.

But teenagers are not solely responsible: Slut shaming and gay bashing originate with adults. I don’t mean just adults who tell children that all sex outside marriage is bad or consign LGBTI kids to celibacy, or banish them to hell. I mean adults who refuse to have a real conversation with teenagers about sex and all that comes with it—good or bad. The sex-negative culture we have created by not having real conversations about sex and relationships affects everyone.

Here’s how:

When we tell adolescents that sex is not something they should desire or like, we are telling them to set aside their own experiences in favor of a lie. Spoiler alert! A study looking at trends in premarital sex from the 1950s until now shows that the majority of Americans have sex before marriage. One of two things happens next, and sometimes both simultaneously:

On one hand, adolescents stop listening to the adults who tell them scare stories, because they see for themselves that the adults are wrong. Not everyone who has sex before marriage gets pregnant, contracts AIDS, or dies. And sex can feel amazing. When the adolescent-adult relationship is breached, children can lose their lifelines to trusted adults, who could have guided them through the mess that is puberty.

And some kids start doubting their own instincts. When we tell them that something that feels good to them is “bad,” they start thinking they, themselves, are bad. In this sense, slut shaming creates a culture of self-hatred in which girls in particular are only too willing to see themselves as deserving abuse.

It‘s crucially important that we teach children to trust their own feelings about sex and relationships. Instead of telling teenagers not to have sex at all—a completely outlandish notion in a post-post-Madonna world—we need to acknowledge that sexual desire exists, and that consent, not shame, is key. Only a teenager who is taught to respect and acknowledge his or her own feelings will know when touching feels wrong, and therefore when they need to say no. This is one of the few things my parents got right. My mother told me more than once that the only rule about sex in our house was that I should never have sex I didn’t want to have.

Slut shaming and gay bashing come from the same place: adult discomfort with sex. This can translate into adolescent date rape, teenage pregnancies, and sexually-transmitted-infection rates that are through the roof for those under the age of 24. Shaming someone for having sex that he or she wants to have constitutes bullying and teaches teenagers to ignore their own feelings about sex, potentially pushing them to unprotected and unhappy encounters.

In short: The sex-negative culture that has parents denying their children access to cancer prevention is the same culture that may expose these children to a sexually- transmitted, cancer-inducing virus. It’s time to get real about sex.

Teenagers Have Sex: Deal With It

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This week, a two-year-old program allowing New York City schools to distribute emergency contraception (EC) in high schools finally made news, and not in a good way. Though schools allow parents to “opt out” of the program, some parents say they should have been asked to “opt in.”

This would make it even harder for kids to access EC (sometimes known as the “morning-after” pill). This is a serious mistake. I don’t think parents should be asked at all. They should be informed when their child enters high school that EC is available, and again if or when their daughter needs it. The health professional should also have the option of not informing parents at all, if the child expresses compelling reasons not to do so.

First, some context for how the program was conceived and implemented.

New York State has the eleventh-highest teenage pregnancy rate in the nation, with almost 60 pregnancies per 1,000 girls, ages 15-to-19 each year. Thirteen percent of U.S. teens have had sex at age 15, and about 70 percent by the time they are age 19. In New York State, approximately 40 percent of high-school students are sexually active. While 85 percent of teenagers say they use contraception during their first sexual encounter, contraception has been known to fail (and teenagers have been known to exaggerate.) Then there are the remaining 15 percent (plus) who don’t use any protection.

Clearly, high school—and potentially middle school—is ground zero for prevention. New York City has stepped up to the plate in recent years with the morning-after pill program and a city-wide sex-education mandate.

The teen-pregnancy rate in New York and other states with similar rates is not likely to drop anytime soon. A month ago, a New York Civil Liberties Union report on sex education in New York state revealed how little and how poorly students are being prepared for the sex they are having. And at what cost. Those under the age of 19 account for approximately one-third of all newly diagnosed sexually transmitted infections in the state. And not surprisingly, teen mothers are much less likely to graduate from high school than their peers who are not pregnant.

Here are a few other thoughts on why comprehensive sex education should be mandatory, and the morning-after pill available to all high-school students, regardless of where they live.

• Many teens have sex, whether you tell them about it or not. And telling them not to have sex definitely does not work. Abstinence-only sex education has been proven to fail time and again. My devoutly Catholic adoptive mother, a lifelong education professional, told me more than once that working in middle schools made her want to stand in the hallways and hand out condoms.
  
  
  
• The majority of teenagers, especially younger ones, do talk to their parents about sex. Those who do not usually have good reasons not to. Studies have shown that kids are very good at predicting their parents’ reactions. Even those who do talk to their parents don’t always get the full picture. More than three-fourths of teenagers don’t know how to bring up sexual-health issues that their parents haven’t already addressed. If parents do not bring up the morning-after pill or any other contraceptive option, teenagers may have to depend on piecemeal (and often incorrect) information from peers.
  
   
• The morning-after pill safely prevents pregnancy after a condom has broken; after a sexual encounter in which the partners were too embarrassed to ask about contraception; after rape; or in any other emergency. But the morning-after pill is effective only when used within a narrow time frame. If EC is readily available in schools, it can speed up the process.

The fact is, I can't imagine what would possess a parent to prevent his or her child from accessing information or health care they might need.

More important, I don’t believe parents have the right to do so. Children are entitled to be heard, and to have their interests protected. If there is anything I have learned from interviewing teen mothers across the Americas, it’s that we cannot assume that parental decision making in the area of sexuality is always in the child’s best interest.

I am not a disinterested party. My daughter, if things go as planned, will be a New York City high-school student in five years. Statistically speaking, she is likely to have sex at some point shortly thereafter. I want her and her classmates to be able to negotiate safe, consensual, and enjoyable sex. I want her to have access to the morning-after pill as soon as possible, should she need it—whether at school or over the counter at the pharmacy.

The real news flash of the week should have been: Teenagers have sex. Deal with it.

In Europe, Same-Sex Couples Face High Barriers to Parenthood

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There was big news this week for same-sex couples who want to have kids, especially if they are trying to figure out where to have them. Europe, it seems, is not the place, despite a reputation as the world's most gay-friendly continent.

On Wednesday, the French daily Le Figaro published an article titled, “Shrinks Warn against Adoption,” referring to a legislative proposal to allow same-sex couples to adopt. Also on Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights heard from the Austrian government that its adoption policies are based on the biological principle that a child has one father and one mother, and that this is to secure the child’s well-being.

Meanwhile, Australia granted gay parents the same rights to paid parental leave as those granted to straight parents. In contrast, same-sex adoption is legal only in part of that country.

In truth, gay parents make some people uncomfortable. This discomfort is at the root of opposition to same-sex marriage. Opponents of marriage equality often argue that reproduction is the main purpose of marriage. As many have pointed out, if the point were to reserve marriage exclusively for couples who can biologically reproduce, the institution would be off limits to the elderly and the infertile, as well as to same-sex couples.

Of course, that's not the point. The point is to prevent same-sex couples from having children through in vitro fertilization or adoption. In many countries, these options are available only to married couples. France, for example, refused to allow a lesbian to adopt her partner's biological child whom she had cared for since infancy. The couple were told earlier this year by the European Court of Human Rights that France’s refusal did not constitute discrimination. After all, the court said, straight unmarried couples would also not have been allowed to adopt each other’s children. But a straight couple could have remedied the situation by getting married, a route that is not open to same-sex couples. This was irrelevant to the court.

It is, however, relevant to same-sex couples who wish to be parents, and to the children many of them already have.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of children grow up in same-sex households or with parents who are not straight. In the United States alone, an estimated 2 million LGBTI people are interested in adoption, and one-quarter of same-sex couples are raising children. These children are adversely affected by laws and policies that exclude their de facto guardians from legal protections and privileges that straight parents enjoy. Such protections might include the right to make medical and other crucial decisions, the right to support educational decisions, and the right to bequeath property.

Most opponents of marriage equality, adoption, and parental benefits would object to any implication that their position hurts children—though that is the inevitable consequence. Many of these opponents would say that they are trying to protect children against the “dangers” of growing up with gay parents. The belief that gay parents are not as capable as heterosexual parents of raising well-balanced, healthy, and happy children is a common, and damaging, stereotype. It is constantly contradicted by studies on the well-being of children in same-sex families. Study after study shows that the welfare of children closely correlates with parental support and love, not with the parents’ sexual orientation or gender expression.

In deliberating adoption by same-sex couples, the European Court of Human Rights and the French legislature should focus on children’s rights and dignity. If they do, they will quickly conclude that children deserve parents who love and care for them. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with a parent's capacity to do just that.

Why Boys Are Inclined to Under-Achieve and Girls Lose Self-Esteem in Early School Years

As the new school year starts, schoolyard lamentations about boys’ academic underachievement resurface. And the worry is real: girls most definitely do better than boys at school.

But as the mother of a girl (and a women’s rights advocate), my first reaction, when fellow parents complain about their boys’ needs being ignored, is: hmmmm, sure. For those of us who, like me, are the mother of girls, the school year means we might be dealing with the sudden loss in self-esteem most girls apparently experience right about middle school, brought on by the pressure to be sweet and beautiful (or worse: sexy) rather than strong and smart.

And both with regard to boys’ academic under-achievement and with regard to girls’ self-erasure: how does that happen?

For most children in the United States, school is definitely the place where they spend the most time. What adults they see there, and how those adults behave and expect them to behave, is therefore likely to be a significant influence on their lives.  

Another big influence in entertainment media, including video games. Studies show that, on average, 8-to-18-year-olds spend more than 53 hours a week on entertainment media, and that girls and boys play video games to an almost equal extent.

From even a superficial look at each of these key influences in turn, it’s clear that something is askew. There are a distinct lack of male role models at school and a dearth of empowered female role models in video games. This bias is exacerbated for children of color: African American men are seriously underrepresented in the teaching profession, and good luck finding a strong black female character in a video game.

The question: Does any of this matter?

Teaching, in particular in lower grades, has been considered a woman’s profession for more than a century. Likewise for the notion that boys can’t sit still or that classroom learning is not designed for male style learning: while it is potentially true that some boys are less used to sitting down and concentrating on a book-ish task than some girls, the sit-down-and-learn style of schooling is nothing new.  

In other words: there is no reason that the lack of male teachers or the prevalent teaching philosophy suddenly should affect boys’ academic performance negatively.

It is also not unusual that boys and men are the main characters in whichever narrative media format kids are into at any given time. Most fairy tales and folk stories have male protagonists, or depict women as dependent on male initiative and strength. It is this bias—reflective of societally accepted gender roles--that carried over in early children’s literature and now video games. And don’t get me started on superheroes…

That said (and a lot could, should, and has been said about gender bias in literature and children’s narratives) the prejudices that led to this bias have been around for a while.  

In other words: the dip in girls’ self confidence around middle school age which psychologists began to document more systematically in the late 20th century has likely existed for a long time. In fact, younger girls have not been encouraged to think of themselves as individuals or protagonists until very recently. It is therefore possible that what is new is the higher levels of self confidence and esteem in early childhood rather than the later dip.

Does this mean that biased gender representation in teaching and video games are not a problem?

I don’t think so. There is quite a lot to be said for providing a concrete example that children might project themselves onto. Filmmaker Spike Lee has repeatedly made the case that the recruitment of black male teachers in the United States might motivate more black boys to stay in school for longer.

And while male superheroes, on and off the screen, can provide a moral compass for boys, girls have preciously few models to lean on. A new documentary on the legacy of Wonder Woman shows how important, and at the same time insufficient, this one prominent female superhero has been for girls growing up during the past several decades.

Fortunately, times are changing slowly, at least for white girls. The popularity of the Hunger Games and  similar narratives shows that there is a growing appetite for female leads. But the minor furor that erupted when moviegoers realized that one of the most likable characters in that dystopic setting is black shows that there is still no real openness to narratives that represent all of us.

So the next time a parent corners me in the school yard to comment on boys lagging behind in education, I will know what to say. Let’s work together to get a better gender and race balance in our schools and on our screens. Let’s not expect all boys to be noisy and all girls to be neat. Let’s not assume that all heroes are white. It may not be directly related to exam scores, but it is pretty darn close.

The 2012 Global Family Planning Summit: Will Issues Be Adequately Addressed?

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In mid-July, world leaders will gather in London to discuss a real and urgent need: increased funding for family planning. Over the past 15 years, the United States—one of the largest foreign aid donors in the world—has cut its funding level for family planning by at least 25 percent. Meanwhile, the demand for modern contraception and family planning information has only increased. By most accounts, an investment of approximately $6.7 billion is needed annually to meet current needs for family planning.

The summit documents, which is co-hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development and supported by the US Agency for International Development and the UN Fund for Population Action, link the dearth of contraceptives and health services to poverty: women in “rich countries” have what they need, whereas women in “poor countries” don’t. This notion is supported by the fact that over 99 percent of maternal mortality happens in so-called developing countries.

This vision is not so much wrong as it is incomplete.

In early 2010, the medical journal The Lancet published new research on maternal mortality and morbidity. The research showed that improvements in maternal health — a good indicator for women’s access to health services overall — depend on 4 key factors, only one of which has to do with family planning: 1) lower fertility; 2) higher education levels for women and girls; 3) rising per capita income overall; and 4) access to skilled birth attendants.

Importantly, both the Global Family Planning Summit and research published in The Lancet potentially obscure the fact that adequate access to contraceptives and health services is a question of income rather than geography. To be blunt, a wealthy woman in a poor country is likely to have better access to care than a poor woman in a wealthy country.

Just as importantly, all four drivers of healthy motherhood depend on women’s ability to exercise their human rights, including the rights to quality health care, non-discrimination in education and health, and economic empowerment through job creation and protections for equality in the workplace.

But perhaps most to the point, the much-needed infusion of extra cash to development aid budgets for family planning is a means to an end. For the organizers of the London summit, that end is the provision of family planning services to poor women in the developing world. But even this very laudable objective is also a means to an end — or at least it should be.

Almost two decades ago the world’s governments for the first time promoted an understanding of individual empowerment as a vehicle for better policy outcomes on population growth, through the 1994 Cairo Declaration on Population and Development. The measures set out in this declaration supported the, at the time, radical notion that if individuals are empowered to make their own decisions about their family’s size and growth, these decisions, in the aggregate, will make for healthy and balanced societies. This notion departed from previous decades for population control through central planning and imposed government targets for fertility.

Of course a piece of paper is one thing. A real commitment to change is something else.  In the 18 years that have passed since the adoption of the Cairo declaration, few governments have shown a sustained commitment to actually empower all individuals, equally, to make decisions about their families.  

Some impose limits on family growth, punishing all women for wanting to have larger families than the government mandate. Others seek to limit the fertility of specific individuals within their population who for some reason or other are deemed unworthy parents, usually because of their color, class, family status, or gender identity. Still others force women to have larger families than that might have wanted through demonizing contraception, encouraging (or ignoring) early and forced marriage, and by perpetuating a culture where women without children are seen as somehow incomplete.

None of these situations promotes the kind of autonomy in family planning envisaged by the world community in 1994. And neither will merely stockpoling contraceptive methods.

The latter, however, will help. Here’s to hoping that the education, economic empowerment, and equality needed to ensure real family planning won’t be far behind.