Girl talk

Teens do have sex -- about half of all girls in the United States will lose their virginity by the time they're 17, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health issues. It's a statistic that troubles many, considering the 1 million teenage pregnancies and 3 million cases of sexually transmitted disease diagnosed in teens (of both sexes) each year in the United States.

But while millions of teenage girls are engaged in the confused and confusing bumping and grinding of adolescence, most Americans would rather sweep the whole notion of girls' sexuality under the carpet. In 1999, female sexuality is still subject to a shocking double standard; popular culture continues to portray girls' interest in sex as threatening or just plain wrong, while boy's sexual pursuits are treated as a completely natural phenomenon. Take, for example, the Washington Post headline earlier this month, "Parents Are Alarmed by an Unsettling New Fad in Middle Schools: Oral Sex." The story described a neighborhood's horror when it learned that its teenage girls were performing oral sex on boys, but ignored the question of the boys' equally premature sexuality. The school went so far as to call in the parents of the girls who were performing oral sex, but not of the boys who were on the receiving end. Then there's the case of "Coming Soon," a relatively chaste movie about three teenage girls' quest for orgasms, which was originally slapped with an NC-17 rating and has had difficulties finding distribution; in comparison, "American Pie" -- a paean to the teenage penis -- was given an R rating and became a box-office smash.

"It's been hard for girls to get good information about sex -- it's not something that many people are comfortable giving to girls; people are scared by female sexuality," says Esther Drill, executive editor of the popular teen site gURL.com and coauthor of an upcoming book about teen sexuality, "Deal With It!" gURL, which draws hundreds of thousands of teens every month, offers girls frank information about their mental health, body issues and sexuality. With the resources available to them on the Net, Drill says, "I would hope that girls would be more comfortable talking about sexuality; that they would be more comfortable with their own sexuality and able to make more informed decisions."

Anecdotal evidence suggests they are using the Net to talk, express their feelings and make new friends. Simply witness the flood of teenage girls who lurk in online communities like Razzberry, Chickclick, gURL, theglobe.com -- not to mention the AOL chat rooms, instant messaging services and bulletin boards. And wherever teen girls may gather, discussions about sex ensue.

On Razzberry, young girls have talked frankly about masturbation. On gURL, they have discussed how to give a blow job. On theglobe.com, they participate in conversations about the advantages of various sexual positions, or the pros and cons of phone sex. On Estronet (disclosure: I co-edit a women's webzine called Maxi, which is part of the Estronet women's network), they can debate the age-old question "does penis size matter?"

Although there are many girls who say that they are more comfortable talking about sex with their trusted friends offline, the majority of the dozen girls I interviewed said the Internet has become the primary place where they talk about sex. The anonymity of the Internet, they say, makes it a natural place for them to go when they are just too embarrassed to look someone in the eye and ask them a question. As 15-year-old Lizzy puts it, "I do some things online that I would never, ever, ever do off. The person on the other end of the computer doesn't know you, so you feel more at liberty to talk about insecurities and your fantasies about sex."

Others find it easier to elaborate their thoughts on a keyboard. "I feel kind of better not having to say things out loud -- I'm more of a writing person, you see," explains 16-year-old Angela, who lives in the Philippines and spends a lot of time online at sites like theglobe.com, Teenzworld and Estronet. "And there's that advantage over the Net -- not just anonymity, but the fact that the person you're 'talking' to over the Net doesn't see if you're blushing. You can always just brush off embarrassing situations or moments by a simple word or two. Plus, it makes stuff a little less personal, more objective. More conducive to ask-all-you-feel-like-asking."

Catherine Delett, the founder of Razzberry, an online community for teens that boasts 95,000 monthly visitors primarily between the ages of 14 and 16, observes frequent conversations about topics that have historically been taboo. She recently witnessed a thread about masturbation, she says, that surprised her with its maturity. "I couldn't imagine myself sitting around at that age talking about masturbation. I think the anonymity of it really helped them be a little more open, and didn't require them to hide and say, 'I don't do that.'"

Ironically, the Net is also making it easier for non-virtual friends to talk about sex. Kathryn, a 19-year-old who just graduated from a Toronto high school, explains that her friends rarely discussed sexual issues with each other until they discovered the Net. Now they use e-mail to talk about their sexual fantasies, exchange advice and giggle over who they might like to see naked. "You can write it, read it over and rewrite it -- take your time," she says. "They know these things about me now, but I'm not telling them face to face."

Next Page: Does talking about it make girls want to do it?

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