oral sex in middle school

I know there is a debate whether oral sex is really sex, but regardless of one’s opinion on this I’m confident almost everyone can agree that a middle school is too young for it. Despite that, on any given day one can hear blustering, bargaining and planning sessions in the school hallway, phone and IM conversations of 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Unfortunately it also seems to go beyond talk. In one school several kids were suspended for “smoking in the boys’ room”. It always seems to be the boys harassing the girls for or receiving a blowjob. In another school this discrepancy even carried over to the administrators who only called the parents of girls to come in to discuss “a situation” that their children were involved in.

It’s bad enough that these children are thinking oral sex is OK at their age but where did this for the boys only attitude come from? I don’t mean to imply that I want 12 year old girls on the receiving end but both boys and girls need to know that when they are old enough, sex should be mutual and not just a thing girls do to please boys.

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An observation of kids in high school :
Funny thing is for the kids I know in high school this is no longer an issue. There may be more vaginal intercourse but it is at least somewhat in a pair bonding mode. The middle school oral sex fascination seemed to go with all the other awful middle school behavior. They are so evil to each other at that age.

Aversion to early sexual encounters is a cultural bias that is by no means universal. A most extreme example is The Sambia tribe of New Guinea where boys from 7 to 10 fellate older boys regularly as part of their spiritual education. Just because adults in Western civilisation didn't engage in oral sex when they were in middle school doesn't automatically dictate that their children should not as well. The only thing you can conclude is that children who do not engage in oral sex are more likely to grow up to be like adults who didn't engage in oral sex.

Why might it be beneficial for children to engage in oral sex?

• They will delay intercourse in favour of oral sex, thereby lowering incidences of unwanted pregnancies and STDs¹.
• They will gain a better anatomical understanding of genitalia.
• They will improve their oral sex techniques thereby enabling them to give pleasure to those they love in later relationships.
• They will become more comfortable with others' and their own bodies.
• They will place less significance in sex; which may or may not be good.
• They will make better White House interns.²

But I must agree with momomom, for the next generation to enjoy these benefits, both genders must learn to give as well as receive.

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1: Oral sex is usually considered a low risk activity for the transmission of HIV. This fact alone (independent of other STD rates) makes it clear that oral sex is preferrable to intercourse as far as STDs are concerned.

2: Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)

I am strongly pro-sexuality, but even more strongly anti-coercion. That said, when I was in high school (11th or 12th grade), an incident took place at my middle school that shocked and disturbed the whitebread suburban town where I grew up. Several sixth and seventh graders had been found in a group behind said middle school. A seventh-grade girl was fellating a sixth-grade boy, and two more boys were waiting their turn, as several girls looked on.

Turns out the girls were a gang initiating a new member, and three blowjobs, witnessed by her would-be peers, satisfied a membership requirement. The others? Shoplifting and fighting (some kind of ritualized hazing beatdown kind of thing).

What am I trying to say here? I'm not sure. All I know is that by seventh grade, I had learned to masturbate and did so avidly and often, accompanied by a rich fantasy life that probably would have justified these kids' acts. I would've used Clintonesque logic to do so, I'm sure; in high school my second sex partner and I maintained plausible deniability by eschewing vaginal intercourse. Which is not to say that anything I've described so far is wrong or right, only that I was not mature enough at twelve to take responsibility for sex acts that involved anybody but myself. Hell, I probably wasn't at fifteen, might not be now. But I did think myself pretty grown-up.

Here's what I do know: oral and anal gonorrhea rates are at an all-time high among U.S. middle-schoolers. A recent study in the Washington, D.C. public schools showed no statistically significant difference in pregnancy rates between students given abstinence education and those who received no sex ed at all. The highest office in the land has passed from a man who denied a blowjob counted as sex to a man who rejects his Surgeon General's report for suggesting it might be good for students to be educated enough to make informed and hence somewhat more responsible choices about their bodies and health (not to mention those of their sex partners). None of these are good news.

That, and I'm bummed to still feel sure there aren't any gangs of boys devoted to eating pussy.

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Update, 26 September 2001: It's more than a little embarrassing (both for me and for what this reflects about the database) that this is my highest-rep w/u. Sigh.

Update, 21 March 2002. Quizro says re oral sex in middle school: It's the last sentence that makes it impossible not to upvote. One of the great classic E2 line.