Kerry Cohen - Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity

PHOTO BY HEATHER HAWKSFORD

KERRY COHEN is the author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity; the forthcoming memoir Seeing Ezra, about parenting her autistic son; as well as three young-adult novels, Easy, The Good Girl, and Its Not You, Its Me. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as in numerous anthologies and journals. She has appeared on Dr. Phil, Saturday Live on the BBC, and morning news shows to speak about the loose-girl issue, and she was featured on the WE Networks documentary series The Secret Lives of Women, about sex addiction. She is a practicing psychotherapist and writing teacher, and she lives with her family in Portland, Oregon. For more details, visit www.kerry-cohen.com.

1. What sorts of things do you think students learn about sex at school? In particular, what do girls learn?
2. How are sex-related issues currently addressed in your school? What needs to be addressed in a more effective way, and what needs addressing at all?
3. If abstinence is in your schools sex education curriculum, is it aimed primarily at girls? What is the message connected to abstinence at your school?
4. Are cultural messages and cultural expectations exposed inside your schools sex-education curriculum?
5. Are school counselors trained in how to deal with sex and relationship issues among the students?

1. Students should find examples of expectations for girls in their culture. They will likely find them in commercials, ads, magazine articles, and other media.
2. Next, students write up sentences: According to [the ad, the article], I need to be ______________ to get/have ______________.
3. Have students work in groups to design their own ad campaign to support girls self-esteem. Point to some of the ad campaigns already in existenceone example is Nike, or the Dove Real Beauty Campaign.
4. Have students design hypothetical organizations that they feel girls could use, such as ones that encourage girls in sports or science.
5. Students then should start over but go through the exact same process for boys.

Students write questions for a teen sex-advice column. They can be real questions they have or questions they would expect to see in such a column. Put the questions into a hat and have them each choose one. Then, they work in twos to answer each question as though they were Ms. X. Finally, discuss their Ms. X answers as a class, encouraging them to pay attention to the question, What about girls desire?

1. Discuss what counselors see from girls versus boys regarding sex and relationships.
2. Explore examples of what girls versus boys are taught via the prevailing culture (use magazine ads, round-ups of television shows, and so on).
3. Discuss in small groups adults own assumptions about teenage girls sexual desires and desires about relationships. Open this up to the larger group to share discoveries.
4. Share worksheets for dealing with loose-girl feelings and handling loose-girl behavior.
5. Hand out two or three cases of loose-girl behavior from a student and have counselors role-play how they would respond to the student and address the behavior.

1. Use simple, straightforward language. Know that your adolescent is intelligent, probably savvy, and well aware when someone is being dishonest or circumspect. Respect your teen as emotionally intelligent. Trust that she knows what she wants. You are only there to help her safely get what she wants.
2. Dont assume heterosexuality. Actually, dont assume anything about your teen when it comes to sex.
3. Avoid the talka onetime conversationand instead continue to be available for open communication about sex with your teen. This means being open to questions, asking her questions when you feel concerned, and talking regularly about the cultural messages in media that your teen sees and absorbs each day.
4. Learn about warning signs for as many issues as you can. In particular, know how to identify depression, anxiety, sex abuse, and self-harming sexual behavior. If you see enough signs to feel concerned, step in immediately. The sooner you acknowledge issues and get help, the better chance she will have.
5. Talk about safe sexboth physically and emotionally. Educate your teen about contraception. Take her to a gynecologist. But also talk about the fact that sex can create feelings you dont expect.
6. Talk minimally about your own experiences. Always consider before sharing a story whether the story will truly help her. In general, err on the side of silence when it comes to your own sexual experiences. Its a rare instance that your daughter needs to know anything about your past sex life.
7. Model self-care. Make yourself as conscious as you can of your sexual and relational behavior. Do your own therapy. Spend some time examining yourself. How much do you need, chase, and respond to male attention? How careful are you with your sex-related choices? What is your relationship with your partner? In other words, what are you teaching your daughter about intimacy? Do you have the sort of relationship you wish for your daughter? How do you treat the females in your world? What are you showing to your daughter about how she should feel about herself as a femaleabout what makes her worthwhile?

1. Do you often use sex to get somethingsuch as long-term love or a sense of worthfrom your sex partner?
2. Do you use other aspects of male attention to gain a sense of worth or desirability?
3. Have you often avoided all else in your evening out, your work, your life, in pursuit of that attention?
4. Do you feel that you are needy?
5. Do you feel that your neediness makes you unlovable?
6. Do you hold fantasies that romantic interests will save you from deep-seated pain?
7. Have you more than a few times had sex with someone you didnt want to have sex with simply because he wanted to?
8. Do you need every romantic encounter you havesexual or notto turn into long-term love, as opposed to consciously thinking about and making choices about whether the person is someone with whom youd actually want such a long-term relationship?
9. Do you often feel dissatisfied in your romantic relationships?
10. Have you given up adventures and self-betterment through travel, schooling, and so on, because you didnt want to be away from a romantic interest or the possibility of male attention?

If you answered yes to at least half (five) of these questions, you likely have loose-girl behavior.

Addiction experts have identified the following criteria. If you answer yes to all or most of these, you likely have addictive romantic behavior.

1. Loss of time with family members, hobbies, and friends
2. An experience of being high followed by secrecy and shame
3. Negative consequences (which may include health problems and financial problems)