Nothing liberated about it
Someone once suggested that the rule of law is based on consent – impossible laws won't be respected if the majority think they're stupid.
So the news that nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds lost their virginity below the age of consent comes as little surprise.
Limited research has been done on the relationship between age of consent and onset of sexual activity with a partner, but there have been suggestions that the higher the age of consent is set, the earlier young people will start sexually experimenting.
Or put another way, the UK has the highest age of consent in western Europe – 16 – and the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and single mothers.
The lowest age of consent is in the Netherlands (12 between peers and 14 generally). Guess what? The Dutch also have the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy and single motherhood in western Europe.
The US too suffers from high levels of teenage pregnancy, yet has high ages of consent in some states and a government that is committed to a failing policy of abstinence.
Some provisional research has suggested that young people in countries with a lower age of consent actually start experimenting with a partner much later. Perhaps it's to do with a high age of consent maintaining a sense of the 'forbidden' – and therefore the daring – surrounding sex.
But the behaviour of teens in the UK has nothing to do with genuine sexual liberation. It's a peculiar by-product of the commoditisation of sex without our culture, together with the left-overs of puritanism and Victorian prudery.
It's the case that certain 'newspapers' can print editorials bemoaning the rate of STDs in young people, but the rest of the paper is full of topless models, kiss 'n' tell revelations (one recent example actually saw a woman who 'kissed and told' gaining a TV role as a reward – what's the message there?) and salacious gossip and scandal. The hypocrisy is dazzling.
Children are increasingly sexualized by the teen magazine market – pre-pubescent girls worrying about boys, make-up and the like – while female pop performers, from Britney to TaTu, make money by aping sexualized images of schoolchildren for older men. In the latter's case, they even claimed that they were under age lesbians.
And another sign that liberation has nothing to do with what is going on is one of the other findings of the BBC Radio 1 poll: some 38% of young people do not always use a condom with a new partner, with drunkenness cited as one of the most common reasons.
Little wonder that STDs are rising fast too.
Sex education seems to remain patchy, despite all the promises of government. In many schools, it's still limited to the strictly biological.
And the chance of getting a debate about the age of consent and all the rest of these issues? Remote; not least because Tony Blair's government not only remains wedded to religious schools, but even to increasing their numbers.
Still, after changes to the national curriculum that come into effect this September, more children will be able to discuss Creationism in their science lessons, even if they can't be told how to put on a condom in any other class.
What a sense of priorities!
And how thoroughly depressing.
So the news that nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds lost their virginity below the age of consent comes as little surprise.
Limited research has been done on the relationship between age of consent and onset of sexual activity with a partner, but there have been suggestions that the higher the age of consent is set, the earlier young people will start sexually experimenting.
Or put another way, the UK has the highest age of consent in western Europe – 16 – and the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and single mothers.
The lowest age of consent is in the Netherlands (12 between peers and 14 generally). Guess what? The Dutch also have the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy and single motherhood in western Europe.
The US too suffers from high levels of teenage pregnancy, yet has high ages of consent in some states and a government that is committed to a failing policy of abstinence.
Some provisional research has suggested that young people in countries with a lower age of consent actually start experimenting with a partner much later. Perhaps it's to do with a high age of consent maintaining a sense of the 'forbidden' – and therefore the daring – surrounding sex.
But the behaviour of teens in the UK has nothing to do with genuine sexual liberation. It's a peculiar by-product of the commoditisation of sex without our culture, together with the left-overs of puritanism and Victorian prudery.
It's the case that certain 'newspapers' can print editorials bemoaning the rate of STDs in young people, but the rest of the paper is full of topless models, kiss 'n' tell revelations (one recent example actually saw a woman who 'kissed and told' gaining a TV role as a reward – what's the message there?) and salacious gossip and scandal. The hypocrisy is dazzling.
Children are increasingly sexualized by the teen magazine market – pre-pubescent girls worrying about boys, make-up and the like – while female pop performers, from Britney to TaTu, make money by aping sexualized images of schoolchildren for older men. In the latter's case, they even claimed that they were under age lesbians.
And another sign that liberation has nothing to do with what is going on is one of the other findings of the BBC Radio 1 poll: some 38% of young people do not always use a condom with a new partner, with drunkenness cited as one of the most common reasons.
Little wonder that STDs are rising fast too.
Sex education seems to remain patchy, despite all the promises of government. In many schools, it's still limited to the strictly biological.
And the chance of getting a debate about the age of consent and all the rest of these issues? Remote; not least because Tony Blair's government not only remains wedded to religious schools, but even to increasing their numbers.
Still, after changes to the national curriculum that come into effect this September, more children will be able to discuss Creationism in their science lessons, even if they can't be told how to put on a condom in any other class.
What a sense of priorities!
And how thoroughly depressing.
posted by Amanda Kendal at 10:49 pm
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