The Answer, My Friend...

Several media outlets -- including The Atlantic Monthly and Slate -- are writing about an "epidemic" of teenage oral sex. Apparently young girls barely into puberty are performing the act that Linda Lovelace made famous on a shocking scale -- witness the story that Caitlin Flanagan relates in her article in The Atlantic, "about a bar mitzvah dinner dance on the North Shore of Chicago, where the girls serviced all the boys on the chartered bus from the temple to the reception hall." I can't help but think that this story, which she relates secondhand, is apocryphal -- otherwise footage of the incident surely would have made it to You Tube by now.

Why is this happening? Theories abound. Some say it's the impact of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, ignoring the fact that today's 12- and 13-year-olds (the ones who are ostensibly performing these acts) aren't really old enough to remember the whole Lewinsky incident and the impeachment crisis that followed from it. For them, it's ancient history.

Some are claiming that it's the impact of parental notification laws, making it more difficult for teens to get an abortion without their parents finding out about it. "When it becomes more troublesome to get an abortion," writes Tim Harford in Slate, discussing the research of Thomas Stratmann and Jonathan Klick, "teenagers seem to cut back on unprotected sex." That thesis will get a reality check very soon, when the so-called "morning after" pill hits the market and becomes available without a prescription. While it will be technically unavailable to those under 18, how much do you want to bet that kids will be getting their hands on the pill in large numbers? I plan on purchasing several cases which I will be handing out at Junior High School playgrounds like Tic-Tacs as a public service.

But I don't think it'll matter much. I think the so-called epidemic in oral sex (by which I mean young girls performing fellatio on boys their age or perhaps slightly older) can be understood by taking into account the following factors:

Girls Want Attention
Never underestimate the insecurity of young girls -- or the extent to which young boys can (and will) ruthlessly exploit that insecurity. A lot of girls this age will do anything -- and I mean anything -- to be noticed by the opposite sex.

The second factor flows from the first:

Boys are Pigs
You'll notice there isn't an epidemic of cunnilingus going on here -- this appears to be a one-way street. Girls are servicing boys, not the other way around.

Blowjobs are Power
This also follows from the first factor. There's nothing that gets a boy's full attention like a girl's taking his manly member into her mouth. As long as it's in there, she owns him. In an odd way (and it's a way that will be heatedly disputed by the girl's mother, unless she has a long memory) performing fellatio is somewhat empowering.

It's Easy
Think about it. To have intercourse, you have to find a place to do it. If you do it in one or the other of the kids' room you run the risk of discovery. And where else can two kids find a place to get naked together for a protracted period of time? By comparison, oral sex only requires that the boy unzip and the girl get on her knees for five minutes at most -- and if she thinks they might be discovered, all she has to do is stand up.

Everybody's Doing It
We live in a hypersexualized country -- why should we expect that our kids will be immune from it? Unless you're Amish, it's pretty hard to keep your kids away from sexually explicit material, assuming that they're curious about it. America has become The Pornographic Society, and teenagers (whose hormones are exploding anyway) are caught up in the undertow. If you have any kind of porn in your house, I can guarantee you that your kids will both find it and watch it. Remember when you found your old man's stash of Playboys and whacked off to them (or, if you're female, if you wondered what it might be like to pose nude)? Now imagine that your kid is sitting in the basement of some friend's house watching a gangbang video they pinched from someone's older brother -- because they could be doing just that right now.

Is this something we should be concerned about? I guess it depends on where you're situated -- if you're a parent you're horrified, and if you're a pedophile it gives you hope. If you're neither, and can afford to be somewhat philosophical about it, you end up being somewhat surprised at how rational kids can be, given the draconian way that society is trying to clamp down on their natural sex drive.

And then you ask yourself -- where the fuck were these chicks when I was 13?

But that's a story for another blog item.

Tom Moran