Please refresh the page and retry. W hen I was a teenager there was a routine to getting laid. It was never long before someone went off with a boy. Half an hour later or less. I might have been too sensible, too argumentative and too right-on to join in, but I had a front row seat to the drunken sexual shenanigans of my friends. So when I saw new research from WHO which suggests that English and Welsh girls are the only ones in Europe who are more likely their male counterparts to get drunk and have sex , and far more likely than other European teens, I was unsurprised. W hy is making a teenage mistake or behaving badly considered to belong to one gender? And why is male behaviour the yard-stick for girls to be compared against anyway? It belongs to an out-dated idea that boys want adventure, sex, drugs and booze, and girls just want to be amenable.
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Eliza, 17, Liverpool
The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, appeared at Ballymena Magistrates Court on Thursday via video link from Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre where he was remanded previously on 21 charges. The charges include rape, engaging in sexual activity with a child, blackmail, distributing indecent photos of children, possessing such photos, inciting children to take incident photos, disclosing private sexual photos, harassment and unauthorised access to computer material. It is alleged that after a girl 16 had taken a pregnancy test the youth, grabbed her by the throat before raping her in a bathroom. A prosecutor said bail was opposed and a police officer told the court of other incidents including one were a girl 13 had been sent an indecent image by the defendant via Snapchat showing his private parts. In another incident, a year-old girl with a learning disability was contacted on Snapchat and sent a photo of the defendant naked. The officer said the defendant had a level of knowledge of the internet and knew how to access software. A defence barrister said his client denied rape and had insisted any sexual contact was consensual.
Co Antrim youth accused of 21 charges including rape and sexual activity with a child
It starts at school. Like most young people in the UK, I had sex education in secondary school. Mostly, sex ed consisted of PSHE days dedicated to showing terrified teenagers giant blown-up pictures of advanced venereal diseases and graphic descriptions of perineum tears during childbirth. I suppose our school was more progressive than some, because we saw a condom put on an intimidatingly giant dildo, rather than a banana, and the female orgasm was mentioned. Many schools leave that bit out. There are fluids everywhere.
When two clothing brands released graphic tees this summer with cheeky allusions to how many ex-boyfriends Taylor Swift has, they couldn't have known the amount of controversy they were about to cause. Fans pounced, claiming the companies were implying that Taylor is a slut. The outcry is a reminder that slut shaming—the act of making a girl feel embarrassed for her sexuality, whether she's sexually active or not—is still as much a force in as it was years ago.
