In the January/February 2006 issue of The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan reviews a book of fiction, “Rainbow Party” by Paul Ruditis, and attempts to come to terms with the hysteria surrounding the prevalence of oral sex among teenagers. “Rainbow Party” is about two high school sophomore girls with the intent to improve their social standing by inviting popular boys over for blow jobs. If this is actually happening, it needs to be discussed. But why would anyone in their right minds think young women would act in this manner?
Manufactured story lines aside, there may actually be cause for concern. Flanagan cites a survey done by the National Center for Health Statistics in September 2005, which reported that about a quarter of 15-year-old girls had performed oral sex on a male, and more than half of 17-year-old girls had. This would seem high, considering the lengths to which American culture tries to suppress the sexual growth of its teenagers (MTV, movies and, um, everything in our culture aside).
So what purpose does oral sex actually serve for these young women? It would be surprising to discover, for example, that it was actually a plot of the patriarchy to create more sexually accommodating women, what with the successes of the women’s movement in recent decades. But the act must serve some purpose.
A 1999 episode of the PBS show “Frontline” seemingly fomented the understanding of this cultural issue with a piece titled “The Lost Children of Rockdale County.” It mixed two stories: one about a few girls from very troubled families that would meet for sexual acrobatics with groups of men, the other about children trapped in the emotionally disconnected American family structure so common these days. Flanagan writes that these latter children “have developed a dull, curiously passionless relationship to their own sexuality, which they give of freely. The girls seem sad that their easily granted sexual favors (including oral sex) have not earned them boyfriends, and completely unaware of how they could have negotiated the transactions differently.”
This should be our first indication that these latter girls are not sexual misfits, but rather are searching for something they have not been equipped to find: emotional intimacy. By inappropriately associating the first group of girls with the second, Flanagan marks this broadcast as a major catalyst in scaring suburban parents into unfairly stigmatizing their daughters’ struggle with a flawed cultural system. Despite its characterization in popular culture as a problem of sexual promiscuity in loose women, it seems to me that the issue smacks more of a death of emotion rather than morality.
Flanagan cites many influences that helped wear down the sexual resolve of young women throughout our lifetime, chiefly among them explicitly sexual rap music that glorifies women servicing men in a less than fair and equitable manner, and the mainstream acceptance of pornography.
Despite the simplicity of these claims, she not unfairly concludes that young women participate in no-strings-attached oral sex to protect themselves from American culture. I believe that these young women are guarding their emotions in a fair manner, all the while searching for connectedness to men in a commonly glorified manner: through cheap sexual activity.
It is not the fault of the uninitiated to know that these acts end up providing no emotional sustenance. Instead of being something young women should be blamed for, it is something the wider American community should be ashamed of for allowing to happen.
Instead, the blossoming sexuality of young women is shoehorned into high school abstinence courses, starkly contrasted with a background of young men trained to think the most uncommon sex acts as likely to occur as vaginal intercourse, and pharmacists with the moral high ground from which to pick and choose which contraceptives to dispense and which offend their personal taste.
Flanagan’s conclusion is sad but well defended: “The modern girl’s casual willingness to perform oral sex [.] may be her desperate attempt to do something that the culture refuses to encourage: to keep her own sexuality – the emotions and the desires, as well as the anatomical real estate itself – private, secret, unviolated. It may not be her technical virginity that she is trying to preserve; it may be her own sexual awakening – which is all she really has left to protect anymore.”
By refusing to help our girls safeguard themselves and their emotions against a hard life and difficult men, American culture is ultimately trading mature, stable women for the titillating scandal of a “teen oral sex crisis.” Our immaturity seemingly knows no bounds.
Joshua is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.