Posted 1:54 PM by Floyd

There are some subjects newspapers just shouldn't write about. An example is in today's San Jose Mercury News: AS EARLY AS MIDDLE SCHOOL, YOUNGSTERS MAY BE HAVING ORAL SEX.

I don't know what the Merc expects to accomplish by publishing this article. I'm not being prudish, just practical. That teens experiment with sex isn't exactly news. There isn't any hard news value in writing about underage sex experiences, because you can't name names and any statistics are wild-assed guesses at best. (This brings to mind a flaw in social science studies that I have never seen addressed: How can researchers assume that the subjects of their surveys tell the truth about their behavior?)

The worst problem with this sort of article is that it's impossible to be honest. If you are realistic and honest you offend both the straight-laced and the feminists, and if you try to make them happy then everyone else just rolls their eyes. The Merc article is an example of this well-meaning, unreadable bullshit; its tone is of approval for only the correct sort of sex acts. For instance:

Many adults think oral sex is one of the most intimate acts two people can experience...

An expensive dinner, a rose, and a blow job. It's what's for Valentine's Day.

``Middle school is the time when you're really tracking your sexual fantasies and laying the groundwork for your sexual life,'' said Dr. Lynn Ponton, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco, and author of ``The Sex Lives of Teenagers: Revealing the Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls.''

``If you begin with sex that doesn't involve intimacy, you're not going to develop a healthy attitude about your sexuality.''

Or a healthy attitude about your sexual partners, for that matter. Although some young students said they engage in mutual masturbation, the prevalence of girls performing oral sex on boys is reviving old sexual stereotypes, placing boys in the dominant role and young girls in the role of servers or sexual objects to be used.

Ponton would certainly make an interesting parent. "Hey you kids, are you having oral sex? I'm going to come back in five minutes and I had better see Johnnie on his knees putting out! And no more doggie style sex! If you're going to have sex under my roof, you had better be in a position where you can see each others' faces!"