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Loading ...Study: Lesbian teens at higher pregnancy risk
12.17.2008 9:33am EST
(Toronto, Ontario) Lesbian, gay and bisexual teens are at a higher risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy than their heterosexual peers, says a new study.
The authors suggest the discrimination, sexual abuse and harassment that gay, lesbian and bisexual teens face may prompt them to indulge in more sexually risky behavior like having sex without using condoms, starting to have sex before the age of 14 or having multiple sexual partners.Lead author Elizabeth Saewyc said that a succession of surveys in British Columbia since 1992 show that in general, all teens are becoming more sexually healthy and taking fewer risks than they did when the survey was first administered.
But there are still disturbing differences between lesbian, gay and bisexual teens and their heterosexual counterparts, she suggested.
“One of the challenges is that although teen pregnancy rates are declining, although some of the risky sexual behaviors are declining for all orientation groups, gay, lesbian and bisexual teens still started at much higher rates than their heterosexual teens,” said Saewyc.
“There’s still a gap. For us, that is a concern that there still is this gap between heterosexual teens and gay, lesbian and bisexual teens.”
Saewyc is an associate professor in the school of nursing at the University of British Columbia and research director of the McCreary Center Society. Her study, which was published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
The findings are drawn from data compiled through the B.C. Adolescent Health Survey, administered every five or six years to between 15,000 and 30,000 Grade 7 to 12 students in schools across the province. Conducted by the McCreary Center Society, the survey gathers information on a range of issues including nutrition, weapons in school and sexuality.
This research article, which compares findings from the 1992, 1998 and 2003 surveys, showed girls who described themselves as bisexual were nearly twice as likely as girls who said they were heterosexual to have been pregnant. And in 2003 lesbian teens were more than 2.5 times as likely to have been pregnant at least once.
Male teens who described themselves as bisexual or gay were between three and four times more likely than heterosexual boys to have impregnated a girl in 2003 – which is actually a decline from earlier surveys.
Saewyc said it is a common misconception that gay boys don’t have sex with girls.
“We assume that sexual attraction, sexual behavior and sexual identity are going to be 100 per cent consistent for people. And that’s not the case. Especially not for teenagers,” she said from Vancouver.
“So they may know who they’re attracted to. They may identify. But they’re not necessarily only going to be having sex with their same gender.”
Gay and lesbian teens may have sex with members of the opposite sex for a variety of reasons. Some do it to hide, to deflect the abuse that they see inflicted on gay, lesbian and bisexual teens. They call it “camouflage.”
“For some, it may be that they’ve been told that this is abnormal and wrong and they may think: `Well, if I just have sex with enough opposite-gender people that will cure me,”’ Saewyc said.
“And for some, it is camouflage. It’s passing. For some, it’s curiosity – `Well, how do I know I’m really gay until I’ve tried and decided no, I really don’t like that?”’
David Wolfe, a clinical psychologist who has a chair in children’s mental health at Toronto’s Center for Addiction and Mental Health, said the way to address the elevated pregnancy rates among bisexual, gay and lesbian teens is to find ways to stop making them feel so stigmatized.
“The take-away (message) to me is we have to normalize in our education of teens around such sexual orientation,” Wolfe said in an interview from London, Ont. “It’s much like racism and sexism has always been – it’s still something that’s permitted to continue in the schools.”
He said there needs to be more openness in the education process about the fact that there are different sexual orientations.
“I’m not necessarily saying to normalize it by making Dick and Jane become Dick and Fred or something. But I think that in their health education, they have to understand the variability of human sexuality. …”
“Parents may look at it as saying that somehow we’re endorsing this behavior. … But what it’s really saying is that this is a reality. There are people there with different colored skin. There are people there with different sexual orientation. And you don’t try to meld them all together and pretend they don’t exist … and label them as somehow wrong.”
“We are creating our own problems by creating problems for them,” Wolfe insisted. “By not giving them a chance to have a voice in it. Then it becomes a bigger problem – and we blame them for it.”
More a coincidence of HPD, PAPD, and BPD and attendant character neuroses than discrimination, sexual abuse and harassment. Let’s look directly at the caretaker environment before addressing external factors. Borderline caretaker environments beget borderline children, regardless of the gender or socioeconomic status of the caretaker environment.
I don’t know what all those initials stand for but I do know me. I came from a strong and loving family, as did most of my friends. Our families had the regular biases against homosexuality that were to be expected in a working class environment thirty some years ago when I was a teenager. Some of us were gay but would not admit it because of the abuse that would have come our way. I played sports and had sex with various girl friends in order to pass as straight. I also had a secret life that included sex with men/boys. I was greatly tormented by religious beliefs and social pressures that told me I was sick and going to hell. None of that mattered and I still continued masking my real identity and indulging in furtive risky sex that then occassioned enormous guilt. I joined the Army to try and “make a man” out of me. I finallly ended up getting married as a consequence of unprotected sex. Not even marriage “cured” me. I am a happy well adjusted homosexual man in a committed relationship but that came at a great cost to me personally over many years. A way to understand what I was going through as a young man would have been a tremendous help.
Am I missing something? Lesbian teens getting pregnant?
i think i missed it too…
But what about Obama’s “affair” with anti-gay homophobe Rick Warren?
This is why sexual orientation and gender identity based on self-identification rather than “ACTUAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR and NATURE” is absurd!
Psychosexual Sex – when a person is sexually aroused by themselves, they are what they see themselves behaving as sexually in their sex fantasy with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Lesbian – a woman who sees herself as having sex with only women when sexually aroused by herself
Gay – a man who sees himself as having sex with only with men when sexually aroused by himself.
Bisexual – any person who sees themselves as sexually aroused by either sex when sexually aroused by themselves. The percent a bisexual leans towards homosexual or heterosexual is in exact proportion to the percentage of the time they are aroused fantasized with one sex versus the other.
Primary Transsexual – a person who exclusively sees themselves as having sex as a member of the sex opposite of their birth sex when sexually aroused by themselves
Secondary Transsexual – a person who does not or did not exclusively see themselves as a member of the sex opposite of their birth sex when sexually aroused by themselves. This enabled them to have sex with their pre-op sex organs with other people before getting a sex change operation.
Pseudo Transsexual (often referred to as a transgenderist or the oxymoron non-op transsexual)
Transgender – Any non-traditional form of outward gender expression regardless of psychosexual sex
Sociosexual peers – people who are social peers based on having identical psychosexual sex rather than peers based on identical sexual self-identification.
With this list of definitions, the Q or questioning can now be taken out of the LGBTQ since questioning is only the consequence of self-identifying with a label above that is different from the questioning person’s psychosexual sex.
Too many problems develop when organizations attempt to spread ideology at all costs. When these organizations try to spread ideology by passing only confusing information or misinformation to the public, they not only confuse the public but the members of their own community as well who desperately need accurate information.
LGBT organizations such as GLAAD are merely condescending to the level of the Christian Right when they do this. The LGBT community will suffer the same consequences as the Christian Community if the condescension does not stop.
How you comprehended reading this article is only the tip of the iceberg as far as consequences. Comprehending life in the LGBT community must feel like a person feels after reading this article for most people.
Pseudo Transsexual (often referred to as a transgenderist or the oxymoron non-op transsexual) – a person who lives completely as the opposite gender and has the psychosexual sex of their own sex. This is what enables them to be highly promiscuous while presenting themselves as a member of the gender opposite to their birth genitals
I think many replies missed the boat on the article. Larry got it right to the point. I too knew I was different than everyone else when I was younger but the only thing I ever heard when I was young was how “queers were *&%#*& perverts”. I spent my time trying to pretend I was someone else, straight. As a result I ended up not with just one unintended pregnancy but two. One ending in abortion that almost ruined my life and the other the birth of my daughter. Because of this experience I have become active in the prolife movement and have gone on to become president of PLAGAL- The Prolife Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. I share my story of how homophobia led me to pregnancy, abortion and how I came to the prolife movement to college campuses across the United States and parts of Canada. I offer a different message than most prolifers out there because I am consistant life (against war and death penalty etc), green party (can’t get to much more left than that), Buddhist/Hindu in my faith so none of the prolife stereo types apply. I have always known that pregnancy in the lgbt community was more wide spead than others knew because when I share my story many come forward to share theirs. For most of these individuals the only alternative to dealing with unplanned pregnancies that was ever talked is abortion. Abortion causes another bad can of worms to be opened up. If sexuality were discussed in homes and in school for what it really was, suffering of so many would be eliminated. The sad part is that many “religious” individuals just add fuel to the fire.
Are you f*ing kidding me???
Rick Warren and now this…
Ok. yes. the “risk” of rape and abuse is higher, but let’s turn that into higher rate of pregnancy?
Why don’t you idiot males learn to control yourself? EVER?
Clinton picked Maya and Obama picks Warren? I hope you foolish stupid gays that voted for Nobama are happy. Simpletons. Enjoy your CHANGE!
Being one of the teens that took this test: I can say that my whole class lied on every single question imaginable.
It’s not smart to trust data like this, since surveying a bunch of teens and asking them to answer truthfully is one of the hardest things, you’ll find, possible.
I think the article is just making the point that modern day kids feel under (often peer) pressure as ever to conform to being seen as straight, in our so-called liberal enlightened society. Look at the growth of anti-gay backwater religious communities and I think you’ll find more than a grain of truth in this article.