New teen sex study erases sexual assault

A new CDC study (PDF) has made a lot of headlines this week: It reveals that 40% of teens have had sex. Most (95%) have used condoms. And an increased number of sexually active teens (17%, up from 11%) are using the rhythm method — which has a 25 percent failure rate.

Also getting a lot of play (har har) is fact that some teens aren’t trying to avoid pregnancy. According to the study, 14% of females and 18% of males would be “a little pleased” or “very pleased” if they got (a partner) pregnant. This is interesting — especially because of its ramifications for sex education. I do think it’s possible for educators to teach teens about effective contraceptive use and the
difficult realities of young parenthood without stigmatizing young mothers.

But what I really want to focus on are the statistics about consent that aren’t getting a lot of media pickup. The study asked young women whether their first sexual experiences (and by that they’re narrowly defining sex as penis-in-vagina intercourse — but that’s a whole other post) were voluntary:

Among females aged 18-24 whose first sex was before age 20, 10% “really didn’t want it to happen at the time”, 47% had mixed feelings, and 43% “really wanted it to happen at the time”. This varied depending on the age at first sex. For those who had 1st sex at 14 years or younger, 18% really didn’t want it to happen, compared with 8% among those whose first sex was at age 18 or 19. On the other hand, more than a quarter of females aged 18-24 whose first sex was at age 14 or younger (29%) really wanted it to happen at the time. First sex with an older partner was associated with much higher percents of females reporting “really didn’t want it to happen”. Among those whose first partners were 3 or more years older, 19% reported that they didn’t really want it to happen at the time, compared with 5% among those whose first partners were the same age or younger.

I keep staring at those figures in boldface above — the young women who did not get to set the terms of their first time. I wonder if CDC researchers can explain exactly what the difference is between “really didn’t want it to happen” and rape? Because “really didn’t want it to happen” is just another way of saying “nonconsensual,” which is the defining quality of sexual assault.

We don’t know a lot about this 10% and 18% and 19%. Based on this study, we can’t say whether or not these girls verbally said no or otherwise resisted. We don’t know whether they personally consider what they’ve experienced to be rape or not. But that actually shouldn’t matter to the CDC. Lack of consent means it was assault, and it’s important that the CDC explicitly classify it that way. I know this is an old debate (one we’ve written a lot about, though typically about a slightly older demographic with regard to the idea of “gray rape“), and CDC researchers were probably loathe to wade into it. Yet the wording of this question leaves little doubt that the women who answered yes were actually raped:

“Would you say then that this first vaginal intercourse was voluntary or not voluntary, that is, did you choose to have sex of your own free will or not?“

Those that answered “no” should not have been categorized as having had “first sex.” If they did not make the chose of their own free will, it was rape.