"Sexual Freedom is Damaging to Students"

Great op-ed at the Wall St. Journal today by Danielle Crittenden. Crittenden writes about Unprotected, a book written by a psychiatrist at the student counseling center of a major American university.   The  author insists on remaining anonymous, because of a "campus atmosphere of intolerance" to what she is saying.  The author maintains that the current college atmosphere that encourages "safe sex" and sexual freedom causes a lot of suffering to women, and she provides numerous case studies.   

Unfortunately, the young women described in Unprotected have fallen victim to one of the few personal troubles that our caring professions refuse to treat or even acknowledge: They have been made miserable by their "sexual choices." And on that subject, few modern doctors dare express a word of judgment.

The author meets patients who cannot sleep, who mutilate themselves, who exhibit every symptom of psychic distress. Often they don't even know why they feel the way they do. As these girls see it, they are acting like sensible, responsible adults: They practice "safe sex" and limit their partners to a mere two or three per year. They are following the best advice that modern psychology can offer. They are enjoying their sexual freedom, experimenting, discovering themselves. They can't understand what might be wrong. And yet something is wrong. As the author observes, surveys have found that "sexually active teenage girls were more than three times as likely to be depressed, and nearly three times as likely to have had a suicide attempt, than girls who were not sexually active."

And should all this joyous experimentation end in externally verifiable effects--should girls find themselves afflicted with a disease or an unwanted pregnancy--then (and only then) do their campus "women's health" departments go to work for them. They will book the abortion, hand out a condom or prescribe a course of antibiotic treatment. And then they will pat their young patients on the shoulder and send them back into the world, without an admonishing word about the conduct that got them into trouble in the first place."

The author notes the disconnect in the attitudes from health professionals on overeating , smoking, drinking, and sexual activity:

"When Stacey avoids fatty foods she is being health conscious. . . . When she stays away from alcohol, she is being responsible and resisting her impulses. For all these she is endorsed for keeping long-term goals in mind instead of giving in to peer pressure and immediate gratification. But if she makes a conscious decision to delay sexual activity, she's simply 'not sexually active'--given no praise or endorsement."

"Given no praise?"  I'm guessing that students today who aren't sleeping around are considered emotionally repressed if not ridiculed.  Sounds like an excellent book here, maybe a good one to slip to your daughters and nieces before they go off to college. 

Comments

[Ruthie]

I'm glad someone else noticed this phenomenon.

Promiscuity is considered a good thing now, by the way. People forget how empty and unfulfilling it is. Every since Nelly Furtado recorded that song "Promiscuous Girl," I've been seeing girls even wearing T-shirts that read "Promiscuous Girl."

[Meghan Grizzle]

The amazing thing is that the author, as a campus physician, is barred by her university from giving prescriptive advice to students about their sexual activity, even though her silence could cause them harm. (In contrast, doctors are free to scold students about their eating habits, amount of exercise, and drug and alcohol usage.) For the past few years, I have been trying to point out to the Harvard campus--to both students and administrators--that their efforts not to "judge" the sexual activity of students is actually harmful to students. Thus I can't wait to read this book!

Like Danielle Crittenden, I find it unfortunate that the author of Unprotected has chosen to remain anonymous, for I believe she could lead the fight from within the community. Still, I am grateful that she has written this book at all, and I hope my university takes note.

Here a few publisher's notes on what the book includes:

"How the PC agenda on college campuses is endangering millions of students
Radical social agendas have taken over campus health and counseling, and it’s making students sick. Dr Anonymous should know: she’s treated over 2000 students at a prestigious university, and seen first hand how the anything-goes, women-are-just like- men, “safer-sex” agenda harms our sons and daughters. After years of hesitation, she’s speaking up.

In Unprotected you will learn:

* About an Ivy League university’s health website that okays risky behaviors including S&M, “swinging”, and bestiality

* How campus health centers hound students to stop smoking, eat right, get enough sleep, and wear sunscreen, but tacitly approve of promiscuity, and whitewash the consequences of sexually transmitted infections

* How HIV education is distorted, causing hysteria among students who are at no risk for infection

* How campus counselors focus on sexual orientation, abuse, molestation, cigarettes and caffeine, but neglect to ask students about abortion

* How ideology-driven health services lead young women to believe they are just like men – and to pay a high price for it.

* How, despite strong evidence of significant health benefits of church attendance and faith in God, psychology remains anti-religion -- an irrational, out-dated prejudice Dr Anonymous calls “theophobia”

Parents, educators, and health providers are all disturbed and mystified by the epidemic of sexually transmitted infections on our college campuses, as well as the rampant depression, suicidal behavior, eating disorders, and cutting. Dr Anonymous has seen it all. The solution, she contends, is not Zoloft or condoms.

Instead, she urges her colleagues to stop feeding students platitudes about diet and exercise and misinformation about “protection”. What campus counselors and health providers must do, she argues, is tell uncomfortable, politically-incorrect truths, especially to young patients in their most vulnerable and confusing moments."

[Dean]

I've written about topics related to this post here:http://deanabbott.typepad.com/notes_and_meditations/2006/12/the_plight_of_t.html

[anon]

I'm going to have to play devil's advocate on this one. As a scientist, and someone who works on HIV/AIDS, I am sceptical by nature, and very much in support of measures that promote safer sex. I have not read the book in question and I do not mean to condemn it or the article in their entirety, but there are a few points in the article that particularly bothered me.

The first thing I would like to note is that the article makes no distinction between "sexual freedom" and "sexual licence" when there is a huge difference between the two. I have many friends who are sexually active, but none of them "sleep around" or have "friends with benefits" like the girl mentioned in the article. As for the finding that sexually active teenage girls are more likely to be depressed, this does not support that one is the cause for the other. I for one am inclined to think that there is a host of third factors that result in both precocious and promiscuous sexual activity, and depression/ anorexia/ mental health issues in general. Much of the mental health issues, I suspect, also have to do with the high-pressure environment of the "prestigious" institution where Dr. Anonymous practices. Doing away with safer sex education measures would not in my opinion solve any of these problems.

If health services give out information on "transgressive" sexual habits, it is because it is more beneficial to educate people on how to behave in ways that will cause them no physical harm rather than ignore their behavior. A lack of education on safer sex will not stop people from doing what they do, and doing so in ways that will harm them physically. What is sorely lacking, however, is a discussion of sexual abstinence as a viable option. There is an overwhelming lack of balance in discussions of sexual behavior in our culture, where abstinence is not even considered a "sexual choice" and, in my opinion, true "sexual freedom" must include the option of no sex at all. The medical community is naturally more focused on physical health, which explains the emphasis on diet, alcohol use, exercies, etc...but it is evident that mental health problems cause tremendous, though often invisible, harm.

Finally, I almost feel like this book is preaching to the choir, catering to people who already decry the atmosphere on college campuses but not to the students who are actually harming themselves with promiscuous behavior. I think what is really needed is a book that appeals to young people and really promotes responsible sexual behavior (including abstinence) as an integral part of a healthy lifestyle.

I know a lot of you disagree with me, but I guess that's what discussion is for, and I would love to know what you think.

[Christian Garcia]

I read this article when it appeared in the WSJ. As a medical student who daily faces this, frankly, hypocritical attitude in the medical community, I was extremely interested to see it. Physicians constantly speak of motivating behavioral modification when dealing with patients. As has been already pointed out, we strongly emphasize lifestyle change as the only effective way to curb obesity, and smoking is essentially considered immoral. But sexual behavior? Have fun kids! sigh...

[Heather Carson]

About four years ago I wrote an article dealing with this very phenomenon. See http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/h-carson1.html

I felt compelled to document my experiences with the rampant sexually irresponsible behavior I witnessed on my own college campus and how I backed away from it all to embrace courtship.

Thank you for pointing out the article and book, Unprotected. I will certainly take a look at them both!

[An Amy]

"I'm guessing that students today who aren't sleeping around are considered emotionally repressed if not ridiculed. Sounds like an excellent book here, maybe a good one to slip to your daughters and nieces before they go off to college. "

When I was in college (a state university) approx 10 years ago, many of my female "friends" insisted that I must have been repressing or hiding past sexual abuse because I wasn't sexually active. I can only imagine it's gotten even worse for girls who chose to not have sex.

[Jane]

actually, speaking as a current college student, most people who know im a virgin think its great. some of them wish they still were. its interesting, there is a hierarchy of sexual activity. monogamy is good, sleeping around is sketchy, virginity is good for girls, but not as good for guys.

[wendy]

Heather, your essay is much appreciated. I really hope a lot of young people and parents see it. Particularly the "Isn’t our daughter cute…isn’t she popular…she’s dating now!" type of parent.

Jane, do you mind if I ask where do you go to school (or whether it is a state school or a liberal arts college)? I also experienced the modest girl being vilified (but also, like "An Amy," 10 years ago). But my sense is that the tide is really turning among young people, which is great.

I have to read the book but from the comments I see above, I would guess that the author is 55+-- for if she were 30 or 40 she would have surely recognized that delaying sexual activity carried a very strong stigma, as women in that age group experienced when they were in school (and some continue to experience). That she wrote it is "given no praise" means to me that she is either very young, like 19-25, which is pretty much impossible given her position, or that she is a sensitive lady of 55+.

I would guess the latter. Just a little theory, as naturally I am so curious to know her identity.

Who knows, perhaps writing such a book anonymously will have more of an impact.

Having to do so certainly speaks volumnes.

[Jane]

I attend the University of Michigan, which is a state school that costs vast sums of money.

[wendy]

I have a theory that state schools are more tolerant than liberal arts colleges... because of the sheer number of people there's bound to be more diversity within the student body.

I don't mean the sort of diversity supported by university "awareness weeks" but the diversity that's harder to find, diversity of lifestyle choices.

All of which is to say: kudos to Jane!

Anon, sorry I missed your comment first time around. You raise a lot of interesting questions but I feel I would have to read the book to be able to address them intelligently. Will try to get back to you, though.

[serena]

Wendy and Kelly, I really think that a lot of it has to do with geographical (read: red state/blue state) location of the college. I went to college in the Dakotas, and the sexual conversation is much, much different than I have gathered from other peoples' experiences at liberal arts colleges even in Minnesota or Iowa, and my own experiences at grad school at a public university in Iowa. Sex happened, but I surely wasn't in on the conversation. There were no "female orgasm" classes, and women's studies was an infant department.

[WTF]

Perhaps the topic of "Promiscuity" is considered new but an entire decade starting the mid-60s was much wilder versus anything avaiable today.

[L.B.]

I recently visited my campus women's health provider, and was amused that the nurse practitioner began with the assumption that I am sexually active, and asked questions based on that viewpoint. Granted, I do take birth control pills for medical reasons, but I thought that was fairly common. Maybe not here (at a flagship state university in the Northeast.) A virgin at 25, I have always been treated as an anomaly by medical professionals, and an anomaly to be treated and cured by mental health professionals.

A group from my school worked on a Habitat for Humanity project with students from a Protestant liberal arts college in the midwest, and we had a bit of culture shock when we learned that they had to sign guests staying in their dorms in (!) and that overnight visits were not allowed in the single-sex dorms. At our school, overnight guests (from on or off campus) were common, and our hallways, suites, and bathrooms were coed.

What I saw in college was a significant amount of pain when two people engaged in a physical relationship failed to understand each other's intentions. Hook-ups served as auditions for boyfriends and girlfriends; when a pair clicked, they would get together officially. Some of these couples are now married. Problems always arose when one partner was only interested in a friends-with-benefits situation, but the other thought that it was leading to something more...and the partner wanting more can be either male or female, in my experience.

Apart from that pain and frustration, which so many of my friends went through, this led to other problems. When your "friend with benefits" goes on to publicly date someone else, it leaves you feeling like you have failed some sort of very twisted job interview or audition. I went through this years ago...though fortunately no sex was involved.

[Emily]

Hmmm. I have to say, that as a school PSYCHOLOGIST, of COURSE she is going to get the extreme cases of young women who have trouble with the environment of generalised sexual permissiveness on the campus. There are presumably many others on the campus- who don't have as much of a problem- ergo, they don't end up in the anonymous psychologists office. Extrapolating from her patients to the campus at large seems erroneous.

HOWEVER- there is no doubt that those who would prefer to be modedst w/r/t their sexuality face the likelihood of being ridiculed. Um, make that certainty of being ridiculed. That's not right, either.

I have a friend, a former co-worker, who is into the swinging scene, running parties at a nightclub aimed at that end. Good luck to her, they're all consenting adults free to make their own choices (bad choices, in my opinion, but theirs to make all the same). However, why do their parties have to be advertised heavily, as they are and as is so much of the porno-industry these days? Why does it have to be so IN YOUR FACE. A tram (streetcar in most peoples countries) I got on the other day had a huge advertisement for a strip club on it. No nudity, as that would be against the law, but ladies with come-hither stares and a Revlon factory's-worth of makeup, hovering over suggestive slogans. I'M IN THE BLOODY STREET WAITING FOR A TRAM, do I really need to have to look at this? Leave me alone!! Do we need this imagery bandied about ubiquitously like so much hamburger advertising? SEX SHOULD NOT BE A COMMODITY!!! I am offended when it is treated as such and it messes with my mojo, frankly.

Sorry this wasn't terribly coherent. I'm really, really pissed off about this societal trend.

[Ken]

A bud of mine in Southern Pennsylvania told me horror stories about Gettysburg College, the big-name "party campus" of the area where Mommy & Daddy are paying five/six figures so their "student" can basically get drunk, get high, and get laid. All the time. (Like South Park's version of Paris Hilton, but without her ten-figure trust fund.)

He said that college has a really high student-suicide rate.