A friend of mine had his 13 year old suspended from school recently because he accepted oral sex from 2 of his classmates (who were also suspended). When questioned about it, he was genuinely perplexed for 2 reasons:
He didn't think it was sex
He didn't see a problem because "everybody does it"

My own discussion with doctors in this area suggest this child's thinking is not uncommon and oral sex is seen as a commodity to be traded. Somehow it has become disassociated with intimacy, and is not sex in their eyes. Therefore, they are doing nothing wrong.

Sounds very much like a very high profile politician a few years ago...

Seems like Middle School is really getting very informative and exciting these days. All the more reason for parents to make sure and have a frank discussion very early with their children about their "commodities" and what to do with them (or not do) - And hopefully before they get it from their peers whose info (and demos) may be slightly distorted.

We've heard about some shocking middle school moments where my son goes to school. A few years back, there was a group of boys and girls who habitually went to a house at lunchtime when no parent was home during the day. They were having orgies!!!...And, a few times, adult campus supervisors would turn a corner on a building and find a girl on her knees giving oral sex!!! You are right, Karen, the mindset with these kids is that it isn't sex. Hummmm...well then, what do they think it is?!? What part of the phrase "oral sex" doesn't mean it is sex?!?

Educate and prepare and keep educating and preparing...then educate and prepare them some more!!!!

I am going with Brian on "harm reduction". If we can vaccinate all the boys and girls against the cancer causing HPV virus, then we can have a discussion on sexual mores. I'm old and to me, oral sex is most definitely sex but I wish the Guardisil vaccine was mandatory. Colleges all require menigitis vaccination, realisically the chances of a college student having oral sex are much higher than getting menigitis, yet the HPV vaccine is not mandatory. Give the usual religious exemptions and move on, please. Sorry, I know I am preaching to the choir here at OCF.
Keep the Faith
charm

I suppose the good news with the kids described above is that the likelihood of stigmatisation is lessened if they don't even equate oral sex with sex. If it is no big deal, it should be easier to convince them (and their parents) to have the HPV vaccine.

Don't know if you having the same problem in the US but according to the manufacturers in Australia approximately 1/3 of the people who get the first needle complete the course. We need education around THAT as well.

I can see why kids may not consider oral sex as sex. They probably feel that it is more like mutual masturbation (hope I can say that!) And everybody says that's ok, unless you find yourself in "polite" company, of course.
Re the "first needle", my daughter's doctor told her that even if the second shot is way past the due date, the 2nd and 3rd needles can resume without having to start the series over from beginning.

The online magazine Slate has a column by Kent Sepkowitz, a physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, about the HPV vaccine issue as it relates to vaccinating boys. (He's for it.)

Does anyone have ideas on how information about the link between "risky behavior" and oral cancer can be presented in a school setting. The program I am working with here is interested in presenting information in an acceptable way - legally and socially.
If so you can reply here or send me a message
Thanks,
Malka

If the students read Slate, then they may challenge the predicate of your presentation. My thoughts on this are very similar to that in the article posted above in this thread from Slate and set forth below in an excerpt of Dr. Kent Sepkowitz of Memorial Sloan-Ketterings Cancer Center:
[quote]If the past is any indication, though, I suspect a more eyebrow-raising angle will overshadow this important public health story. Since the link between HPV and oral cancer was first floated 10 years ago, the media has tended to focus on just one aspect�the possible connection between oral sex and the rise in oropharyngeal cancers. However, there's no definitive evidence yet of a causal relationship between the activity and the disease. That's not to say that people shouldn't exercise a reasonable amount of caution when having oral sex. But when popular opinion (particularly in matters sexual), wags science, no one benefits.

It's easy to see why the notion that oral sex can give you cancer is so attractive. It makes for an irresistibly lurid headline, of course, and it appeals to the secret Victorian hidden less or more deeply in all of us. (Everything fun has a price�everything!) And to be fair, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. It's well understood that HPV is transmitted through other kinds of intimate contact, such as vaginal sex. HPV seems to grow quite well on mucous membranes, those nonskin tissues that line the mouth, nose, vagina, anus, and a few other anatomic areas, and which may touch quite a bit during oral sex.

As an explanation for the uptick in oropharyngeal cancers, though, oral sex has one glaring problem: HPV-positive head and neck cancer is, inexplicably, a guy's disease. If oral sex were driving the issue, wouldn't we see a commensurate rise in HPV-positive tumors among women? Unless the announcement was screened out by my workplace email filter, I don't think anyone has demonstrated that cunnilingus is being practiced more often than fellatio.

Furthermore, many people with HPV-positive head and neck tumors deny having had much oral sex. According to a 2010 review of several studies on the topic, more than half of such patients reported five or fewer lifetime oral sex partners, and 8 to 40 percent said they had never had oral sex.

Finally, the argument that oral sex is driving the rise in these cancers carries the implicit suggestion that oral sex patterns of recent years vary considerably from previous generations. Among the many things we don't know about our forebears, what they did and didn't do in the bedroom surely ranks near the top. And it always is a bad wager to bet against the likelihood that everyone, in every decade, was having all types of sex, and as often as possible. [/quote]
As I posted before on this thread, the time and energy spent on trying to convince young people not to have oral sex would be much better spent on getting them all vaccinated. IMO The real "risky behavior" is not to get the vaccine.
Charm

Leslie

Thanks for the link to such a relevant article for this thread. As you can see, I couldn't resist a little cut and paste on his oral sex remarks.
Charm