Being a Teen (5 page)

It’s in your best interest to avoid being tricked by the media. Take a step back when you read or watch these sorts of messages in advertising, movies, television shows, and YouTube videos, and when you hear the lyrics in many popular songs and see what’s posted on social media sites. These are distorted messages that do not really represent the way teenagers and young adults interact with each other. For most of you, relationships and sex are not nearly as casual as these messages would make you think. Remember that they’re playing with your mind and start resisting the influence.

Double Standard

What can be very confusing, especially for girls, is that we live in a sexualized culture, yet there is a double standard. The media encourages girls to look and act sexy, but society, in general, expects them to remain “virtuous,” “virginal” “good girls.” Look sexy but don’t act sexy. It isn’t easy to know who you really are as a sexual person in the midst of these conflicting messages.

As I write about in
Chapter 11
, this can cause a girl to ignore or hide her sexual desires; to disconnect from her own body and its feelings. This is called “disassociation.” Disassociation can be dangerous because when a girl doesn’t feel her own desire within her body, she may do sexual things just to please someone else. Girls who are very clear about what they feel and want are more able to say “no” and mean it. If you
can’t say “no” and mean it, you can’t say “yes” and mean it, either.

Pornography

Pornography (sometimes called “porn”) is also part of the media. Its job is to make money, and it makes billions of dollars a year. There are many concerns with pornography, especially if it is your main source of sex education. You risk learning from porn how to be in a sexual relationship, what is sexy, how to look and act. Boys may end up only wanting partners who look like porn stars. Girls may think they need to agree to have sex with another female in order to please a man.

The sex portrayed in most pornographic films is without caring, trust, or intimacy between the partners, the very things that can make sex wonderful. Further, it focuses only on the physical parts of sex and ignores the emotional and mental parts.

If, by some chance, you do watch porn, try to remember that it is not real, not a documentary. There is a script and editing. Don’t confuse the impersonal, staged behaviors you see there with how sexuality ought to be in real life: loving, intimate, and mutually satisfying.

Step back from mainstream media and see which are the good parts and which are not. Doing this is sort of like getting vaccinated against the negative parts of the culture.

Resources

For Girls

• Rookie: An online magazine for girls and teens that covers a wide range of topics from music, movies, technology, love, sex, and more from a progressive, feminist perspective.
http://rookiemag.com/

• V-Girls: “A global network of girl activists and advocates empowering themselves and one another to change the world, one girl at a time. Inspired by Eve Ensler’s bestselling book
I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World,
V-Girls is a platform for girls to amplify their voices and ignite their activism.”
http://www.v-girls.org/

• The Dressing Room Project: “A girl-powered rebellion to free girls and women from the bonds of media-imposed standards of beauty!”
http://www.thedressingroomproject.org/index.html

• The Spark Movement: “A girl-fueled activist movement to demand an end to the sexualization of women and girls in media.” They collaborate with hundreds of girls ages thirteen to twenty-two and more than sixty national organizations.
www.sparksummit.com

•
New Moon Girls:
A magazine written by and for girls ages eight to fourteen, with intelligent and fun articles about issues important to girls.
www.newmoon.com/magazine

For Boys

• Boys to Men International: Initiation weekends and follow-up mentoring for boys ages twelve to seventeen.
www.boystomen.org

• Boys to Men New England:
www.boystomennewengland.org

•
The Dangerous Book for Boys
by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, William Morrow, 2012.

•
100 Things Guys Need to Know
by Bill Zimmerman, Free Spirit Publishing, 2011.

•
Boys’ Stuff: Boys Talking About What Matters
by Wayne Martino and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Allen & Unwin, 2001.

¹
   Empathy is feeling others’ feelings, putting yourself in others’ shoes.

II

Your Body

4.

Boys’ Sexual and Reproductive Parts and How They Function

I’ve met lots of high school boys who didn’t have enough accurate information about their own body and its reproductive parts, which is why I’m including this information.

I believe it is important to know and use the correct names for your body parts. Calling things by their proper names helps you to honor and “own” them. It’s easier to give away that which you do not respect. This may also motivate you to protect and care for your own sexuality.

But perhaps you do know all you need to know about these things. If that’s the case, you can skip these next chapters and go on to
Chapter 6
.

Hormones

Puberty
¹
is caused by hormones. Hormones are made by different
glands
in your body that are part of the body’s
endocrine
system.
²
A gland is a group of cells that produce chemicals and hormones. Hormones act as messengers that travel through the bloodstream from these glands. Different hormones go to different glands and tell them what to do. By raising and lowering the levels of various hormones at different times, the endocrine system controls the body’s functions and makes sure that they run together smoothly.

The body has many kinds of hormones. The two most important sex hormones,
testosterone
and
estrogen,
are produced by both males and females, but, starting at puberty, girls make much more estrogen and boys make much more testosterone. Testosterone is made in a male’s
testicles,
³
or balls.

Male Genitals

With puberty, and because of all the new hormones that are being produced, the
penis,
⁴
testicles, and
scrotum
⁵
begin to grow.

The scrotal sac hangs lower and becomes more wrinkled. Its color begins to change: darker with boys who have dark complexions and reddish for fair-skinned boys.

The Penis

Hanging down over the scrotum is the penis, a spongy tissue filled with blood vessels and nerves inside a soft tube of skin. (There is no bone inside the penis!) The penis has two parts. The
shaft
is the longer part; at the end of the shaft is the
glans
or
head.
At the tip of the glans or head is the
urethral opening,
⁶
through which urine passes out of the body.

At other times, in ejaculation, a white, sticky fluid called
semen
⁷
carries
sperm
(the male reproductive cell) out of the
urethra as well. Urine and semen never come out the urethra at the same time. The connection to the bladder closes off just as the semen comes out of the penis.

Penises look different from one another in all kinds of ways:

• They can be different lengths, widths, and shapes. When erect, the penis may curve up, down, left, or right. All of this is normal.

• The tip of the penis can hang above or below the scrotum, or to the left or right of it.

• Some penises have veins showing on them, and others don’t.

•
The skin can have papules,
⁸
small, shiny pink bumps around the head of the penis, (the
glans
). Younger men, and men with darker skin, are more likely to have papules, which may disappear over the years.

Foreskin

All males are born with a
foreskin,
⁹
a loose sheath of skin that covers the glans. The foreskins of some boys are removed right after birth in a procedure called
circumcision.
¹⁰
When the penis is erect, the foreskin pulls back, exposing the glans. If you are not circumcised, be sure you get into the habit of regularly pulling the foreskin back and cleaning underneath it.

The male foreskin produces a natural lubricant called
smegma
¹¹
that helps it slide smoothly. If you let smegma build up under your foreskin, it can start to smell bad. The glans and foreskin lining are very sensitive and soap might irritate them. Just rinse off the smegma.

Circumcision

In Muslim, Jewish, and other cultures, boys’ foreskins are removed in the practice called circumcision. In some cultures (not in the United States), boys are circumcised at puberty as a rite of passage. Today circumcision is most often performed on newborn baby boys by a doctor or a religious person trained to do it properly and safely. About half of all baby boys in the
United States are circumcised. Most men in the world, however, are not circumcised.

Years ago doctors recommended circumcision for all baby boys because they believed that it prevented or cured some diseases. Some people feel that circumcision promotes cleanliness or health. Other people feel that there’s no reason to perform surgery on babies.

It doesn’t matter whether a man’s penis is circumcised or uncircumcised. For most men, there is no effect, one way or the other, on sexual sensation.

It is not recommended that circumcision be done once a boy is in his teens. It is painful and may lead to loss of sensation. It should be done only if there is a problem with the foreskin not moving over the head normally.