Sexual Health Today: Sex is Rarely About Sex
By Karen Young

On July 5, 2006 I arrived at the Chicago Westin River North Hotel in Chicago for the Sixth National Meeting of the Medical Institute entitled Sexual Health Today: Sex is Rarely Just About Sex.

The Medical Institute was founded in 1992 by Dr. Joe McIlhaney an obstetrician/ gynecologist and infertility specialist. The Institute headquarters is situated in Austin, Texas with offices in Washington, DC and El Paso, Texas. The mission of the Medical Institute is ‘to provide scientifically accurate information that will guide individuals and society in making choices that lead to
optimal sexual health and overall wellbeing.’

The Conference opened on Thursday night with Mary Flo Ridley, a mother of three children from Dallas, Texas. She joked that at a conference laden with medical professionals with many acronyms, hers were missing – MDTS, Mother Down The Street! The focus of her talk was how to prepare parents to answer their child’s early questions about sex with confidence and establishing yourself, the parent, as the sex expert for your child.

She suggests that parents begin educating their child about sex by the age of five. Yes, that’s right, the age of five!!! Obviously not in great detail. This means giving body parts their proper names, a body part is just a body part for your child and it does not come with all the sexual baggage these words come with for us. It means that a baby grows in mommy’s uterus and not mommy’s tummy. It may also mean the odd awkward moment in the grocery store, but a few awkward moments when a child is five might mean far fewer awkward moments when that child is a teenager.

So, why five? That is the age most children go to school. Her theory is that a child is as old as the oldest child at home. Therefore, if you have a sixteen year old and five year old your five year old will know about as much as the sixteen year old. You might be sending your oldest child off to kindergarten, but they might have a friend at school who has a fourteen year old sister, which means your child will be educated on the play ground by that fourteen year old, five year old. Educating
your own child before the play ground means what friends say at school will not have as much influence on your child.

Mary Flo also pointed out that young children are naturally curious and when they see pregnant women or see their mom pregnant they ask many questions. How did the baby get there? How is the baby going to get out? Her suggestion is to answer these questions, use language they can understand, don’t give too much detail but answer their questions. By doing this you set yourself up as the expert so the next time your child wants to know something they know where to go for answers.

After learning how to shape your child’s sexual character, conference attendees were led down history lane by Dr. Gary L. Rose. He discussed the changing attitudes and behaviour towards sex over the past century. From1943 – 1999, the age at which young women first had intercourse dropped from 19 to 15 and from 18 to 15 in young men. The percentage of sexually active 15 year olds rose from 13% to 47% and approval of premarital sex increased from 12% to 73% for women and from 40% to 79% for men. Dr. Rose also pointed out that 50 years ago, sexual activity began in college not in junior high or high school.

With young people engaging in sexual activity at an earlier age, STIs (sexually transmitted infections) are also striking earlier. According to a 2004 study, half of all new cases of STIs occur in 15 – 24 year olds. In North America alone there were 19 million new cases of STIs in 2000 and many of the most common STIs were viruses. A virus, while it can be treated can never cured, in fact Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is one of the most common STIs today, with 5.5 million new cases each year According to Dr. Kristen Plastino STIs are asymptomatic; thismeans they have no outward symptoms. 90% of those with HPV have no outward symptoms; including the two most deadly strains of this virus which can lead to cervical cancer.

Another common STI is Chlamydia with over 2 million new cases each year in North America. Chlamydia is a bacterial STI which means that it can be cured, but 75% of girls, and 50% of boys have no symptoms. Chlamydia is one of the number one causes of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) in women. The result of PID is scar tissue in the reproductive organs which can cause infertility and ectopic pregnancies. Another startling fact is that most STIs are transmitted by skin to skin contact in the genital area. This means that using a condom to prevent STIs is mostly ineffective, yet according to Dr. Patsy Sulak, most young people falsely believe that condoms are 100% effective at protecting them against pregnancy and STIs. Birth Contol pills provide no protection from STIs and even if used correctly approximately 8 sexually active women out of 100 using the pill for one year will get pregnant. Dr. Sulak went through each of the types of birth control available, explaining how they work, failure rates and side effects. At the end of the day using contraception of any sort to protect against pregnancy or STIs is NOT 100% effective and the only method that is 100% effective is not engaging in sexual activity.

The earlier onset of sexual activity has also meant that young people today are engaging in riskier sexual behaviour. In one study it was discovered that one is six high school students had engaged in oral sex and 50% of them did not believe that oral sex was actually sex, yet every known STI can be contracted through oral sex. The new phenomenon of ‘Rainbow Parties’ is gaining increasing popularity (a party were a number of girls wearing different coloured lipstick perform oral sex on a boy) and should also be of great concern to those interested in the health and well-being of young people.

The effects of the media should also be a significant concern even though to date no studies have been done on how the media affects teen sexual behaviour. We do know that the ‘average teen spends 3-4 hours per day watching television and 83% of television programming contains some sexual content, that includes 6.7 scenes per hour that include sexual topics, 20% of which explicitly or implicitly portray couples engaging in sexual intercourse.’ We also know that 2/3 of the movies put out by Hollywood each year are R-rated. Today’s youth are also exposed to the internet. In fact, children ages 9 – 17 spend an average of 4 days per week on the internet and spend almost 2 hours online at a time. 14% report ‘seeing something they would not want their parents to know’ and 60% of youth report accessing chat rooms and websites, mainly alone.

So, what is the solution? In a recent study conducted by the Medical Institute, ‘93% of teens wanted to receive a strong message of abstinence from their parents and 90% said that it would be easier to delay sexual activity and avoid teen pregnancy if they could talk openly and honestly about these topics with their parents.’ The important message in all of this for parents is that teens want to talk to their parents about sex!

After a grueling day of discussion on the current situation with regards to physical sexual health, including several hours worth of talks on STIs and the HPV vaccine it was time to turn to other issues in the area of sexual health.

The first speaker Friday morning was Dan Powers, a licensed Clinical Social Worker who talked to us about the consequences of sexual abuse. He began his talk by explaining that the motivating factor in most cases of sexual abuse in not sex, but is rather the need for power and control. He also explained the many myths surrounding child sexual abuse including the misconception that ‘total strangers represent the greatest potential sexual abuse threat to a child when in fact only 4 – 8% of children are sexual abused by strangers.’ This means that 92 – 96% of children who are sexual abused are abused by people they know. Another misconception is that ‘sexual abuse occurs most frequently in lowsocioeconomic, uneducated, non-white populations, when in fact sexual abuse happens everywhere and to anyone.’

When it comes to child abuse, every 10 seconds a child is abused, the rate of child abuse is 10 times the rate of cancer, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18 and 1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet. In dealing with these facts, Dan pointed out that these are the cases that are known, but when it comes to child abuse the actual numbers may never be known. Why? When it comes to reporting sexual abuse we are asking children to come forward and tell an adult they are supposed to be able to trust a most embarrassing sexual experience when most often the very person who abused them was someone they were supposed to be able to trust implicitly. Even in a room full of adults no one volunteered to share their most embarrassing sexual experience, yet it is the very thing we ask of sexually abused children.

Once a child has admitted that they have been sexually abused, often the mothers response to that abuse, especially if they do not believe the child, is more traumatic then the abuse itself. The consequences of sexual abuse are devastating, from depression; eating disorders; using sex as a tool to get things, control people or to feel special; drug and alcohol use; inappropriate sexual behaviour; as well as criminal behaviour. If children do tell and are believed there is hope! With appropriate therapy and treatment these children can live happy, whole lives.

The next speaker was Pamela Paul, a current contributor to Time magazine and author of the book Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families. Pamela’s research on the topic of pornography included over 100 extensive personal interviews with mostly men who were users or past users of pornography. In her book, she asks five main questions: Do all men look at pornography, why do men look at pornography, does pornography have an effect on users, does pornography have an effect on those around the user and finally does pornography have an effect on children. The answers to these questions were quite sobering. In fact, much of her talk I will not get into, but I will leave you with a few facts.

For most of the men she interviewed the reason they looked at pornography was because the women never say ‘no’ and were submissive; there was great variety and it was easy to find. In fact, 2/3 of men who view pornography do so on the internet and most without the knowledge of their spouse. 68% of the men who used pornography said it either harmed or affected their sex lives. For most the more they watched the more they needed to watch and the more graphic and violent the material they watched needed to be in order to experience arousal. Pamela’s talk without a doubt underscored the need for people to start talking about the effects of pornography on society and families.

So, from STIs, teenage pregnancy, pornography and sexual abuse the sessions at this conference were without a doubt very informative. They also instilled a certain sense that our young people are in trouble and at great risk and although we can’t lock them up until they are in their twenties or force them to live a certain way, we can and must make our youth aware that when it comes to sexual health they do not have to choose to be sexually active. There IS another choice, waiting until marriage to engage in sexual activity.

Karen Young is the office manager at LifeCanada