New Sexual Revolution

Counterculture parents of the '80s, feminists, the entertainment industry and thinking people who wanted to change a culture that mistreats women unwittingly worked together to start a revolution. The result is a raging social trend that threatens our teens.

by Cecil Maranville

As much of the world rivets its attention on Iraq, hoping for or ready to force a revolution to overthrow the government, a different revolution is already underway in the Western world. It began when parents in the 1980s questioned every fundamental value, especially the traditional male-female roles. They passed their misgivings on to their children who are now teenagers.

Feminists in the 1980s added to the mix by pushing their agenda for female dominance, despising a culture dominated by males. Parents, teachers and other people of influence contributed by setting out to correct the wrongs of a culture that suppressed women.

It continued in the 1990s when the entertainment industry found that it could sell sensuality to preteens and young teens who had money and the freedom to spend it on the trend of the moment.

It is a sexual revolution— not among the college-age young adults like the 1960s parallel. This time it's among kids, children and young teens just entering puberty. Promoting crude sensuality isn't new, but what's happening in today's teens is— and it's alarming.

Two choices

There are two ways to go: with the new sexual revolution or with the purpose for which God created sexuality. God created sexual attractiveness. It isn't evil, nasty or wrong in any way; it's wonderful. He intends that it motivate young men and young women to build friendships, date, marry and have a family, in that order and all in due time. And that time isn't the preteen and early teenage years. But what's transpiring today is a weird, damaging and costly perversion of His intent.

Pop-teen idols are at the top of the list of influences that twist sexual attractiveness into crude sensuality.

Posters of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera adorn the walls of millions of teens' bedrooms. Their strong, talented voices pulse through the headphones of those same preteens and teens with messages of touching, kissing, holding and love. Their images and lyrics decorate the T-shirts that teens buy (at no small cost).

Aggressive female characters appear in television series and movies. It's popular for sensual women to dominate men even in confrontations with brute strength, martial arts or deadly weapons.

The TV series Sex and the City popularized female aggressiveness toward men in sexual themes. A teenage movie last summer titled Swimfan featured a reversal on the theme of a male taking advantage of a female. Its main character is a beautiful teenage girl who pursues, seduces, dumps and then stalks the teenage boy star of the swim team.

MTV portrays successful teen girls dressed in sexually provocative styles. Now teen clothing styles show lots of flesh. And it's a status symbol in middle school to be the first one dating.

The common problem with all these trends is that they disconnect girls from true relationships. Dating isn't an outgrowth of friendship. The "love" of the music videos has nothing to do with the type of love that leads to lasting marriages and the foundation of solid families. And preteen and teen illicit sexual activity is in a different universe from the way God intended sex— to express love between a husband and wife.

The tawdry results of the revolution

Capturing a niche in the market and proudly advancing the trend is the magazine Boy Crazy! It runs photos of 14-year-old boys to young men in their 20s on its covers.

Not stopping with the printed page, Boy Crazy! also sells trading cards (seriously!) with photographs and biographies of each of the "cover boys." Fans can E-mail the "cover boys" and buy Boy Crazy! products via the Internet.

The new sexual revolution resulted in girls being more assertive—shockingly so—about sexuality. What you are about to read is terribly distasteful, but unfortunately true.

John Bernard, 16, declares, "The girls are way more aggressive than the boys. They have more attitude. And they overpower guys more. I mean, it's scary" (Alex Kuczynski, "She's Got to Be a Macho Girl," The New York Times, Nov. 3, 2002).

Tabi Upton, a counselor at the Johnson Mental Health Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, relates that teenage boys often say the girls push them for sex, expect the boys to ask for sex or will bring it up if the boys don't ask. Says Ms. Upton, "There has been a shift where girls now see themselves sexualized and approach men with pretty much the attitude, 'This is all I have to offer'" (ibid., emphasis added throughout).

Dr. Linda Carter, a Manhattan psychologist, describes the present culture as if Sex and the City habits trickled down to 14-year-olds instead of 40-year-olds. "Watching Britney Spears—or who is that other girl, Christina Aguilera?—empowers them to be more aggressive. It started among young single adults with Sex and the City, and there has been so much talk and thinking about female sexual assertiveness that it has finally come to influence adolescents" (ibid.).

Generation SLUT

Marty Beckerman is writing a book titled Generation SLUT. ("SLUT" is an acronym for "sexually liberal urban teenagers.") He states, "There is a kind of machismo among girls now. They have the male-conquest attitude."

Beckerman continues, "All kids are scared of long-term relationships now. Our parents are all divorced, and we have never seen a successful long-term relationship. Girls don't want to think of sex as something which is about love because that will just come back and bite them later. The sex thing is just the most visible sign of the disconnectedness we feel" (ibid.).

Illustrating how disconnected from feelings, from true friendship, from genuine love, teens are, a study published by Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health showed that one third of the teens in the study group (out of 1,678) had sex by age 16. That's bad enough, but even more devastating is the fact that one in eight of those who had sex did so without ever even going out on a date ("Childhood Friendships Linked to Teen Sex," TheOmahaChannel.com, Nov. 15, 2002).

Often lacking the positive influence of proper parental guidance, the thinking of teenage girls is so detached from the way God intended them to react to sexual attractiveness that perhaps without realizing it they assume the mental attitude of prostitutes.

The news gets worse. The Centers for Disease Control's 2002 report on the sexual behavior of adolescents showed a decline in the numbers having sexual intercourse, from 54 percent in 1991 to 46 percent last year. A decline is good, isn't it? The statistics do not tell the entire story.

Please pardon the frankness, but they reflect only sexual intercourse, not a different, rapidly growing type of sex act. Due apparently in part to the widely publicized example of the previous U.S. president, teens engage in oral sex in ever-increasing numbers. Richard Trubo in "Best Way to Teach Teens About Sex" says: "To complicate the sex-education picture, some adolescents who are refraining from sexual intercourse are engaging in oral sex instead. Oral sex, according to some teenagers, is 'not really sex,' and is a way of protecting their 'technical virginity'" (WebMD, 2002).

Apart from the bare-midriff Britney/Christina look, away from the parties and the "game aspect" of the new sexual revolution, the painful truth is that HIV, herpes and other STDs are still transmissible through oral sex.

There are approximately 3 million STD cases in teens in the United States every year, according to the CDC. That breaks down to between 8,000 to 9,000 every day. "Diseases such as chlamydia, herpes and human papilloma virus (commonly called genital warts) can lead to reproductive cancers and infertility. More ominously, AIDS has become the sixth-leading cause of death during adolescent years" (Georgia East, "Conference Focuses on Teen Sex, Dangers," South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 17, 2002).

Where is this sexual activity occurring? Why, at home, believe it or not. More than half of teens who engage in sex did so in their own homes. Another 12 percent were at a friend's house. You might suspect that these sin scenes occur after school in homes without parents, but that's not the case. They take place at times when parents are likely home—between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. ("Study: Teens Most Likely to Have Sex at Home," TheOmahaChannel.com, Sept. 26, 2002.)

For lack of the right foundation

How did our society get here? Reformers and revolutionaries wanted to change perceived wrongs in male-female interactions. Each group went after change from a different point of view—some to promote radical feminism, some to make money from changing trends and some to sincerely make needed corrections. Why did it go so wrong, putting our teens at such terrible risk?

In a society that gingerly steps around the reality of an identifiable God, people did not base their agenda for change on the right foundation. As noted, the godly foundation is viewing sexual attraction in the context of drawing males and females together in friendships, then dating relationships, then marriage and then families. Where is sex in this picture? It comes in marriage and not before.

Teasing and pushing 12-year-old girls and boys into sexual thinking, wrapping the package as "promoting womanhood" or as "entertainment" or "correcting wrongs done by men" is so irresponsible as to amount to abuse in this author's opinion.

How difficult it is for teens to think clearly about this powerful topic when the world around them is in revolution about it. The sensuality of the Britney Spears of today is worlds away from the sexual attractiveness/friendship/dating/marriage/family at a mature age of God's design.

Tabi Upton, quoted earlier, tells the story of a 15-year-old girl she counseled. The girl saw and chose the "hot" way of life portrayed by MTV videos, movies, TV and the pop culture. She cast herself in the role of a tough vixen and had sex with several guys. Is she on the road to a fulfilling, happy life? No, she has an STD, and she is pregnant. She's "relatively certain" that she can narrow down who the father is to one of two guys. This is not a pretty picture— but it is reality.

Take a look at the top teen idols, young people. Do you remember the early pictures of them when they first hit the entertainment scene? They were sweet, innocent and clean looking. Now, compare how they appear to look now— arrogant, hard and angry. Are they models for the rest of your life or a tease for a temporary good time that leads to much pain and suffering?

Not all teens buy into the new sex revolution. When asked by a father why she did not have posters of the latest teen idol on her bedroom wall, one intelligent, attractive and athletic teenage girl replied indignantly, "I wouldn't put pictures of that slut in my room!" More power to clear-thinking teens like her!

Teens help themselves by seeking God and His way of life. It's enriching, wholesome and happy.

Parents can help their teens by being aware of the new sexual revolution. Who are your children's models, their heroes or heroines? Whose posters are on their bedroom walls? What are the values of their friends and their friends' parents?

Take stock of your own values. Do you know there is a God? Do you know how He expects you to live? Do you know how to communicate with Him? Do you realize that He cares about you and your family? Do you respond to His expectations responsibly? (Please request our free booklet Making Life Work for guidelines on dating, marriage and your relationship with God.)

When the answer to all these questions is yes, then transmit these values to your children. Studies show that teens often do not know what their parents think on these incredibly important issues. They don't know if you don't tell them.

Teens specifically need to hear what their parents think about the sexual revolution. Perhaps without realizing it, do you promote the idea of sex for the sake of sex, disconnected from warmth, love and health? Or, do you promote sex only within marriage, preceded by wholesome friendships and dating?

There are only two choices, but there are so many ramifications to both. Will it be God—or gaudy? We have a choice. God appeals to us all: "I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Oh, that you would choose life; that you and your children might live!" (Deuteronomy 30:19, The Living Bible paraphrase). WNP

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