Friday, September 24, 2010

Never mind, teen sex is fine

So, today (shut up, shut up, it's still Thursday, shut up), as if in response to our criticisms, Dr. Wallace of Tween 12 and 20 is totally neutral about a teenage girl's plan to lose her virginity.
I'm 19 and my boyfriend is 22. We have been together for four years and are deeply in love. ... Our campuses are about two hours apart, so this makes it easy for us to spend time together. Believe it or not, I am a virgin, but that won't last long because we plan to get married after I graduate. I plan on becoming an elementary school teacher and he will coach and teach at the high school level.

Since it will be about two and a half years before I graduate, we want to start a sexual relationship. We will get married to each other, so we feel that a sexual relationship will only make us love each other more (no lectures, please).

My only worry is the possibility of becoming pregnant. We want children (three) after we marry, but having a baby nine months from now would put a serious crimp into our future plans. If I get on the pill and Phil uses protection, what are the chances that I would conceive? Of course, getting a sexually transmitted disease is out of the question.
Dr. Wallace says simply (this is seriously all):
If you're on the pill and he uses protection, you have a 99 percent chance of avoiding pregnancy. The odds for conception are very slim, but it is still possible.

Lulu: I love that in the face of her panicking about lectures, he's just remarkably blasé about the whole thing. So is 18 just the cutoff? Under 18, it's a travesty, over 18, of course you're having sex? She didn't get the memo either, I guess:

Ashley: Well, she thinks she'll get a lecture for considering sex before marriage.

Lulu: Oh. Right. Marriage. She mentions it, too, but it didn't even occur to me that that was a thing.

Ashley: East coast hippie liberal scum. It's weird that she's even writing in, especially considering the lecture she expects; she can't, you know, google that shit? Or ask her doctor?

Lulu: She sounds kind of repressed about sex, since she thinks she'll get a lecture for considering it at age 19, so she's not going to ask her doctor, but this information is all over the Internet. Planned Parenthood has a chart comparing all the birth control methods. She can also learn how to combine the probabilities of independent events, such as two different birth control methods failing. The actual probability of both failing is something like .04%, but only if both are used correctly, i.e. no forgetting two pills in a row then taking three in the same day. To pull a random example of misuse out of the air.

Ashley: Thanks for the PSA.

Lulu: I like, also, how he doesn't address the girl's weird control freaky vision of the future - I mean, I doubt she can be talked into chilling. Still, it seems weird not to even mention it. You want exactly three kids, huh? Good luck making life adhere to your plans. Also, good luck getting sex to "make you love each other more." No pressure or anything.

Ashley: It's important to have sex before marriage in case it sucks.

Lulu: And to expect it to suck the first time. I mean, results vary, I guess, but it seems like she's going to be really disillusions when it's awkward and odd. I wish I could tell her "It's really not that big a deal!" because I feel like her placing so much importance on it is going to bite her in the ass. Right now, to her, it's this monolithic, magical, pinnacle-of-human-existence, totally terrifying experience.

Ashley: That will automatically result in a baby.

Lulu: When she should know the karmic rule of "I want exactly three kids" is that you turn out to be infertile.

Ashley: Okay, here's my PSA: DO NOT use Lulu's karmic rules in lieu of medically-approved birth control methods.

Lulu: I'm Lulu, and I support that message.

2 comments:

  1. Dr. Wallace falls just shy of a "Let Me Google That For You" which I respect, especially when the LW demands that he doesn't give a lecture.

    Which is odd, when writing into an advice column, as most of those responses can be construed as at least a little bit of a lecture on what you should do in the questioned scenario. My finley honed advice columnist instincts tell me that somebody that out of touch with common sexual practice might be used to a life of lecture and secretly desirous of one!

    That's it, all my teen sex comments got used up on the last one.

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  2. I agree that she wants a lecture. People who have already made up their minds to do things, do things. Only people who want to be talked out of them go around announcing, "I have made up my mind to do this! NO LECTURES!"

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