Sometime last year, a friend and I visited a mutual friend’s daughter’s secondary school. Our friend’s daughter had come home to tell her mother that boys in the school were asking the girls to do perform oral sex (blow jobs) on them
Those who refused were taunted, abused, and at times coerced to comply. These acts were being carried out in creative and daring ways in the classrooms during prep, the toilets, the fields and sometimes with or without staff in attendance though not with their knowledge.
The acts included masturbation, vaginal fingering, cunniligus and anal sex (on both females and males) and several girls were giving in so they could be seen as cool, mature, worldly and not to be labeled as being standoffish.
Our friend’s daughter also told her mother that she didn’t want her mother to come to the school so she wouldn’t be accused of being a snitch. The mother couldn’t keep quiet so we went in her stead in order to conceal the daughter’s identity. We felt that with our friend being an education consultant and I, a lawyer, we could pass a strong message across to the school.
We met with the Principal and gave her the details but from the way she spoke and her countenance we knew nothing much would come out of it.
On the way home, my friend, the education consultant, regaled me with several stories of indiscriminate sexual behavior amongst our children especially those in the secondary schools and I was assured that the story is the same in secondary schools the length and breadth of this country and it didn’t matter whether the school has a religious background or whether it was elitist or public. In fact, the school we visited had Christian in its name.
It wasn’t the first time I would be hearing such stories, I had heard whispers from my children but most of those acts were done in private homes and allegedly with the consent of both parties.
However, sometime in 2018, the story broke on Twitter about sexual harassment in our secondary schools and girls who were, then, either in university or had started work came out publicly to name their abusers. It was later discovered that some of the boys whose names were mentioned were innocent but a good number of them had several girls naming them and some giving specific details. I recognized some names on that thread and knew from what my children and their friends had told me that some of the stories were true.
Our secondary school children are experimenting with sex and are more sexually aware and active than we can ever begin to imagine. They are especially sold out on oral sex because it’s less invasive (no penetration) there is no risk of becoming pregnant, it is relatively safer than normal sex and they can rightly answer in the affirmative when asked if they are virgins. This is especially true even when they have been experimenting with anal sex.
The attitude of our children to oral sex is different from ours, whilst we would indulge in it in close relationships, they are very causal about it. The boys see it as being helped out whilst the girls feel they are in control of the act as opposed to vaginal sex where the boys take control, as a result girls don’t count it as an infringement of their rights or even rape when they are forced to perform the act.
Both boys and girls see it as a better alternative to vaginal sex with the advantage that they don’t have to be intimately or emotionally attached to their partners to perform it and that it is at best a growing up rite. As far as they are concerned oral sex is not sex.
Late last year, the video of the girl who had sex with her boyfriend in the hospital where he was being rehabilitated for drug abuse went viral and the thing that horrified most adults viewers was the causal look and boredom on her face as they had sex and the expertise with which she gave the guy oral sex. They were like porn stars in a porn film, – no emotion, deadpan faces and I dare say desensitized hearts. It was as if they were carrying out a mundane bodily function.
It is true that the teenage years are the years for experimenting and I know that some of the people my age started having sex early in secondary school but for the majority of us our sexual exploits started in university and in relationships. It is not so with our children, they are exposed to and identify with a lot of sexual practices that we don’t even know exist.
Blame social media and the immediacy it offers.
There is a sexual epidemic on our hands but unfortunately most parents don’t even know what is going on right under their noses. We hear about these things happening to other people and rather than talk to our children, we enrol them in schools owned and operated by religious bodies in the belief that the school would enforce strict measures. The truth, however, is that our children will be tempted to indulge in sex. They will hear a lot of information from their peers and social media. It is our job as parents to engage them with the understanding that the information they have will be skewed and incomplete.
Today, have a conversation with your children especially those in secondary schools, ask questions in a nonjudgmental manner, inform them that oral sex is sex and that sex consists of several behaviors and not just one act, let them know that pregnancy is not the only ill of having indiscriminate and unprptected sex and that oral sex is not a completely risk-free activity for there are studies to show that being in contact with genitalia and body fluids increases the risk of being infected with sexually transmitted diseases like human papillomavirus, herpes simplex virus and hepatitis B and that gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia and cancroid are among the bacterial infections that can be passed through oral sex.
Help them to navigate and understand the sexual information being thrown at them through their peers, the internet and social media.
You will be surprised at what they know.