Under the sheets

Not much science attracting my attention this week, so it's back to the bedroom. Or car or playground, or where ever it is teenagers engage in an activity at too young an age:

The survey of 8800 year 10 and year 12 students in 300 schools around Australia was taken in three snapshots between 1997 and 2008.

The proportion of year 10 boys who had had sex rose slightly from 23 per cent to 27 per cent between 1997 and 2008, while for year 10 girls the rise was more significant, up from 16 per cent to 27 per cent.

In year 12, the number of boys who reported having had sex dipped slightly from 47 per cent in 1997 to 44 per cent in 2008, while the rate for girls rose from 48 per cent to 61 per cent.

Regardless of what you think about teenagers and sex (although my readership is probably unlikely to include hipsters without children who like to say "well, what's wrong with teenage sex anyway. As long as it's safe and done responsibly, I wouldn't mind my teenager ...etc,) surely everyone would have to be a bit puzzled about figures suggesting that the rate of school age girls reporting sex is much higher than for boys the same age.

And of course, the other thing is that they are not doing it so responsibly anyway:

Condom use had not increased since 1997, with 51 per cent of respondents in 2008 reporting they always used condoms.

Study co-author Anthony Smith said the increase in the proportion of students who had had more than one sexual partner potentially posed serious public health risks.

And back to The Age's version:

One of the authors of the La Trobe University research, Paul Aguis, said the lack of condom use was worrying because sexually transmitted infections among young adults had risen dramatically in the past 10 years and the survey showed only moderate knowledge of the infections. He said the rate of teenage pregnancy in Australia was also among the highest in the developed world. ''The notifications for chlamydia have risen year on year for the last decade and show no real sign of slowing,'' he said.

Meanwhile, if you want a highly detailed account of current sexual practices in America, William Saletan has a somewhat salacious article on it in Slate.

What's most surprising in it is the extent to which it would appear that sexual experimentation is indeed on the rise, and that bisexual experience is more common than I would have expected. As Saletan notes:

Apparently, a lot of people try gay sex, but only about half stick with it. By ages 18-19, 10 percent of men say they've performed fellatio. That number drops among men in their 20s and 30s. But among men in their 40s and 50s, 13 percent say they've done it, and 14 percent to 15 percent say they've received it from another man. Meanwhile, 11 percent of men aged 20-24 say they've received anal sex. For unknown reasons, that number declines in the next higher age bracket but then steadily rises in succeeding brackets, leveling off at 9 percent among men in their 40s and 50s.

I don't know, but those figures seem a bit suspicious to me. Are we sure there was even the correct understanding of the question here?

If they are accurate, I guess the other thing they mean is that, if Americans are like the English, few of them having the occasional same sex encounter would class themselves as "gay". It's probably a case of score one for Foucault, I think. (See the summary of his position in this interesting article by Keith Windshuttle.)

UPDATE: reading The Guardian's take on that American survey, I'm even more suspicious of some of the figures:

Of the 14- to 16-year-old boys and girls surveyed, only around 10% said they were engaging in any kind of sexual activity with a partner – whereas 62% of boys, and 40% of girls, in the same age group were happy to admit to masturbating on their own during the last year.

Oh come on. The true figure for that age range of boys who masturbated in the last year would easily be double that. That's right - 124%. (Female readers may be surprised by the figure, but if so, you're underestimating teenage boys.)

In the other direction what about this?:

Nearly 15% of women in their 30s, for example, reported having performed oral sex on another woman at least once in their lifetime, while 13% of men over 40 said they had done the same to another man and 50% of men aged 50-59 said they had received it.

Half of the men who were teenagers in the 1960's say they have received it from a man? I remain deeply skeptical.

I wouldn't mind betting that this has something to do with it:

(rather than through face-to-face interviews, the new survey was carried out online, a method believed to encourage more open and honest responses)

It's also easier to brag, misunderstand, or not pay attention.