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Dr Trevor Stammers, a tutor in the department of general practice at St George's Hospital Medical School in London, caused a number of eyebrows to raise when he addressed the press on the subject of teenage sex. 'Abstinence in teenage years is a good preparation for fulfilling sex in later life', he said.
| This seems to make as much sense as saying that refusing piano practice is good preparation for playing a concerto, or arguing that the best drivers are those who have never had lessons. But as Stammers is a leading spokesman for the Family Education Trust, an organisation that rails against contraception, divorce, promiscuity, pornography, and so on, such an outlook is to be expected.
| There are two approaches one can adopt when it comes to sex: 'practice makes perfect' or 'you don't miss what you haven't known'. I favour the former. I have never understood the attraction of being the only woman a man has ever 'known' -- far better for a man to come fully trained - and I have always suspected that people who felt strongly about marrying virgins were worried about unfavourable comparisons between themselves and past lovers. Dr Stammers, on the other hand, believes that couples who have only ever had sex with each other are more likely to be contented and secure.
| You have to wonder what he makes of the latest news from the USA, which suggests that ingenious youth have found a way to enjoy sex while conforming to abstinence advice. A new report published in the journal Family Planning Perspectives, describes an increase in 'noncoital' sex among teenagers.
| Oral sex is apparently the in thing right now. The article suggests that teens who have come of age in the time of AIDS considered oral sex 'to be a far less dangerous alternative, in both physical and emotional terms', than vaginal intercourse. The issue has been under discussion for some time. Earlier this year, the New York Times quoted a Manhattan psychologist as saying that oral sex was 'like a goodnight kiss to [middle-school students]'.
| | Sexual health professionals are now concerned that teenagers are confused about what constitutes sexual activity and what is meant by abstinence. Forty percent of teens surveyed by one young women's magazine did not consider oral sex to be sex, while 18 percent of girls in another survey said that oral sex was 'something you did with your boyfriend before you are ready to have sex'. Some commentators blame the Monica Lewinsky scandal for confusing national dialogue on this subject, pointing to President Clinton's denial that he perjured himself by denying 'sexual relations' with Lewinsky, on the grounds that vaginal intercourse was not involved.
| Given that, in many US states, schools have to adopt education programmes that promote sexual abstinence, concerns about what the definition of 'abstinence' actually is have quite an impact. The nature of such programmes was explicitly intended to get teens to delay having sex,- not to encourage them into experimenting with acts that are considered by many in their parents' generation to be even more intimate than a quick fuck.
| The Family Planning Perspectives report certainly encourages us to look at Dr Stammers' advice in a different light, and suggests that I could be wrong in dismissing his comments. If British kids follow the lead of their American peers, in the future they may just make up for the lack of coital practice by giving a great blow job. Abstinence leads to fulfilling sex? Maybe, just maybe!
| See a report on the American survey on oral sex here
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