Oral sex has become an activity of choice for girls, said Damion Wilson of Pittsburgh's Family Health Council, because "they can maintain their virginal status and they can't get pregnant."
Still, many younger teens are clueless about the ramifications. "They don't know they can get STDs [sexually transmitted diseases]," said Wilson, 25, a Bloomfield resident who has worked for the council since 1999. He supervises "peer educators" between the ages of 17 and 24 who visit local schools and present sex education programs.
Programs like that, some local teens said, were the first and only place they heard that oral sex can cause sexually transmitted diseases.
After learning about STDs in eighth grade at her former high school in Union City, Erin Sparks, of McCandless, said, "I was so scared to even get near my boyfriend." Now 17, she's a senior at North Catholic High School, where, she said, there is no sex education.
So most of what kids know about oral sex, they pick up from each other. And one thing they've picked up is that oral sex is something girls do for boys, and not the other way around.
Some teens reason that "you don't have to take your clothes off," said Krista Roman, 17, of Spring Hill. "You don't have to be the best-looking person, and you'd still get attention from a guy."
Among teens, oral sex "seems to have less emotional involvement," said a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. "If you break up with someone that you [had oral sex with] then it's not as harsh as breaking up with the guy you lost your virginity to." |
