Teenage Romance

[ambitious_wench]

Adolescent%20romantic%20network_reviseda
Originally uploaded by Ambitious Wench.

Interesting map of teenage romantic pairings. Read the entire articlehere.

Something was pointed out about this map--there seems to be only two same-sex pairings, one male/male, one female/female. Of those four, only one was mapped as only having contact with the same sex--a male. Both females had contacts with men as well as with one other female.

Lederhosen also linked to this image, and noted that stopping the transmission of STDs would be difficult to do in this sort of situation. Broad-based education is needed, and of course I favor comprehensive (both abstinence and condom use) education. But then, I'm firmly entrenched in the reality based community.

Comments

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Actually, what I noted was that stopping STD transmission by abstinence would be difficult, but methods that reduce the transmission rate in existing relationships (i.e. safe sex) would be far more effective.

*ponder*

[trick.livejournal.com]

Interesting as a basis...but scientifically, this seems to fall incredibly short. The fact that the study was ten years old notwithstanding, I find it odd that the study was limited to sexual partners within the school, and disappointing that it only covered a little over 80% of the school's population.

Eighteen months might seem like a long time - for an adolescent, it is an eternity - but I wonder what the chart would look like over a four-year term. I also wonder whether there was any control used to make sure that little teenage 'rules' didn't interfere with the statistics gathering. For instance, I knew certain people who went blindly under the delusion that oral sex or anal sex or just fooling around "didn't count". I knew others who dangerously never counted rape as a sexual encounter...and never did seek help (medical or psychological) for it, but later used it as a justification for promiscuity.

It is also hard to say what part ego played in the study, but I'm willing to bet there were more same-sex encounters than were accounted for, especially on the girl side.

I know that while I was still in high school I sat down with one of my friends and started with a simple diagram of the relationships within our little circle of ten or so (whose ages ranged from 16 - me - to 22). Our little diagram soon took up three sheets of paper, and looked rather a lot like the six degrees of separation diagram on The L word. And we were just charting physical relationships that we knew of.

....