You Can Have Oral Sex And Be A Virgin

Ten years after Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky's relationship made oral sex a mainstream topic, there's still plenty of debate over whether oral sex is really sex.
"There's not only confusion; there's fighting over it," says J. Dennis Fortenberry, a physician who specializes in adolescent medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "People disagree fairly vehemently."
The latest fuss is spurred by new federal data that found that more than half of 15- to 19-year-olds have received or given oral sex. Although the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not ask the particulars of these encounters, research conducted in pre-Clinton times, along with more recent studies, suggests that teens largely fall on the "it's not sex" side.
"Some adults say it is a form of sex, but kids don't really see it that way," says Natalie Fuller, 19, a sophomore at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Calif.
"For most teens, the only form of sex is penetration, and anything else doesn't count. You can have oral sex and be a virgin."
Fuller was 16 when she, her brother and her mother co-wrote the book Promise You Won't Freak Out, which includes discussion of teen oral sex.
The report released last month by the CDC shows that one-quarter of teens who have not had intercourse have had oral sex. The survey questions, administered via headphones and computer for maximum anonymity, clearly defined the actions to eliminate any ambiguity about the meaning of the term "oral sex."
"The implications are that teens who define themselves as abstinent may be engaging in oral sex," says Jennifer Manlove, a senior research associate with the non-profit group Child Trends, which analyzed the federal data.
Kyle Tarver, 17, a high school senior from Pikesville, Md., who was among an informal USA TODAY focus group of Maryland teenagers, says most teens who have had oral sex think of themselves as virgins.
"If you were to ask someone if they were a virgin, they wouldn't include that they had given or gotten oral sex," he says.
A study published in 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical Association examines the definition of sex based on a 1991 random sample of 599 college students from 29 states. Sixty percent said oral-genital contact did not constitute having sex. "That's the 'technical virginity' thing that's going on," says Stephanie Sanders, associate director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University and co-author of the study, which the researchers titled "Would You Say You 'Had Sex' If ...?"
"There is not nearly as much conversation between two people and as much thought put into engaging in oral sex. That, in my mind, makes it a lot different," says Michael Levy, 17, a senior from Owings Mills, Md.
What constitutes sex tends to be defined in a culture and varies with the times, Fortenberry says.
"In certain times in the history of the world, certain kinds of kissing would be considered sex," he says. "Not too many years ago, a woman would have been considered a 'loose woman' if she kissed a person before marriage."
from USA Today