The following is the reaction of a girl having been picked up by a slightly older
boy and propositioned to have coitus.
I didn't know exactly what he meant, but I had an idea and I knew
it wad wrong. I found myself struggling and finally getting my way
with a later, very embarrassed boy. I had done nothing, but I felt
dirty, cheap, and almost most like a "woman of the world." I went
home, went to bed, and cried myself to sleep, in hopes that God
would forgive me.
Of the following two cases, the first is reaction to male aggression and the second
is reaction to male lack of aggression.
I was startled when he made an attempt to unbutton my blouse,
and then I slapped him good. I felt I was right in doing this because
my morals are high, and this was no way for a decent boy to act if
he plans to keep dating a girl. This was the last date that I had
with this boy, and I realized that his goal for dating was to get
sexual satisfaction.
It could be that he was too nice. Women, you know, are funny
things, They want the opposite sex to treat them with kindness, but
they also want a challenge in the boy they date.
Outcomes of Adolescent Sex Education from Peers
Over and over again, studies in the United States and in other countries indicate
that peers are a major source of sex information and attitudes. Lynd and Lynd (1929,
p. 146) wrote as early as the 1920s that sex instruction by parents was still far from
universal. In their sample, they found that 42 percent of the boys and 22 percent of
the girls stated that they had received most of their information from boy or girl
friends. Twenty years later, Wolford (1948, p. 108) found that over half of those
interviewed reported that their friends had been the chief source of sex information.
They indicated that they found it easier to obtain information from friends than from
their families. Less than half the students interviewed had received sex information
145 from either parent. Surveys of sources of sex information over and over again
substantiate that peers are a major source of information; parents are at best a
secondary source (Sorensen, 1973).
What about this sex education from peers? Is it good, adequate or otherwise? The
following cases throw some light on these questions.
I remember one of my friends defining petting as sort of like petting
a dog, except that it meant only from the neck downward. I didn't
understand what pleasure petting could involve.
Six of us kids about the same age (fourteen years old) got together
one time. Through dirty jokes and crude rhyming stories was how I
learned about the sex act itself, and it wasn't a pretty picture. My
cousins (boys) later on tried to talk me into an exchange of
information and looks at various parts of the body, but something
inside said "no."
Regarding the influence of my male peers, so many of them had
attitudes regarding sex and the body that I would now regard as
relatively unhealthy and unwholesome, to say nothing of the
uninformed aspect. And those associates who were better informed
and more realistic in their attitudes concerning sex and the body
were all too often puritanically silent.
Most of the information I picked up about sex was from my friends.
I have always wondered where they got their information. It was
restricted mostly to dirty stories, pictures, and other things that
gave rather a distorted picture of sex relations as they really should
be seen. Big breasts, etc., became the ideal of what a real woman
should look like and be. Learning these things set most of us on our
own to see if real satisfaction could be achieved through these ends.
I became very interested in trying out some of the methods that I
had been hearing so much about.
Myself, I would have preferred learning it from a more authoritative
or recognized manner, but the opportunity would not present
itself. The reasons, I cannot say the group was too sex-minded, for
under such circumstances it should be expected.