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Oral Sex Safe and Not Really Sex, Say U.S. Teens
(submitted by gekkogecko)
Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - One in five U.S. teenagers say
they have engaged in oral sex, an activity that some
adolescents view as not sex at all and certainly less
risky than intercourse, a report released Monday said.
The survey of 580 children with a mean age of 14-1/2
found 20 percent said they had engaged in oral sex,
compared to 14 percent who said they had engaged in
sexual intercourse.
In addition, one-third of the multi-ethnic 9th graders
surveyed said they intended to have oral sex within
the next six months and nearly one-fourth planned to
have intercourse during the period. It was more common
for boys to have performed oral sex on girls than vice
versa, the report said.
Previous studies and numerous campaigns aimed at
deterring teenaged sex have focused on intercourse,
but as many as half of adolescents experience oral sex
first, the report said.
The risk of transmitting infections, including HIV, is
significantly less with oral sex than with intercourse
but is likely underestimated by teenagers, said the
report in the journal Pediatrics.
Youngsters who engage in oral sex rarely used condoms
or dental dams, even though herpes, hepatitis,
gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis as well as the virus
that causes AIDS can all be transmitted orally, it
added.
"Given the suggestion that adolescents do not view
oral sex as sex and see oral sex as a way of
preserving their virginity while still gaining
intimacy and sexual pleasure, they are likely to
interpret sexual health messages as referring to
vaginal sex," wrote lead author Bonnie
Halpern-Felsher, a pediatrician at the University of
California, San Francisco.
"Adolescents also believed that oral sex is more
acceptable than vaginal sex for adolescents their own
age in both dating and non-dating situations, oral sex
is less of a threat to their values and beliefs, and
more of their peers will have oral sex than vaginal
sex in the near future," she wrote.
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