Monday, April 04, 2005

Oral Sex in the Media

So today after reading an article in the NYT's on hooking up which I quite enjoyed, (I dimly recall a Cabal discussion about this.Article is interesting) I found this dissapointing article
Young teens say oral sex not really sex. And I was in SUCH a good mood after the Pope article.

About one in five ninth-graders report having had oral sex and almost
one-third say they intend to try it during the next six months, a small study of
teens at two California schools reports

The Press is clearly trying to terrify every parent of a highschool aged student because, especially fathers of girls. What, do you want all children grounded for life or something? (Over Easter I hung out with my sister and her friend, and her friend's parents were clearly PSYCHO they had her overmedicated, but were taking her anxiety medication away. I mean, I know teenage girls are rough, but come on! Let's not give psycho parents more opportunities to be psycho.)

And then let us examine the part of the excerpt that I have bolded. Not to go with the "people from california are crazy" motif, but, well uhm, California is not the same as the rest of the world, I'm sorry. Maybe if they did like 4 schools in different regions of the US. But 2 schools, both in California. What a completely worthless study. So what we've learned is that students at 2 schools in california think Oral sex is okay. This is NOT viable for the rest of the US population. AT ALL!

I also think that an important thing to examine in this study is who is having all this oral sex, is it the boys or the girls? Is it an even split? I tried to get to the study but I am poor and have no reason to subscribe to the journal of pediatrics. Anyway, there may be no difference, that would be interesting, any information along those lines would be interesting.

Bad Headline Award:Oral Sex Safe and Not Really Sex, Say US TeensABC News - 2 hours ago

This one was tough, because they were all about the same, but since ABC is so visible AND they imply in the title that it is all US Teens, they win. Congratulations ABC News. OO and they don't even mention how limited the study was. BOOOOO Reuters, you get an F.

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