Adolescent sexuality.

• Author: Long, Monique

the question of one's sexuality transcends religious, racial, and cultural differences. Irrespective of skin colour, gender, gods worshipped, or how different cultures portray it, people everywhere explore their sexuality. Especially during adolescence, in a bid to discover and embrace who they truly are, questions such as "what is sex?" and "who am I as a sexual being?" plague the minds of young women and men as they struggle through the years between childhood and adulthood.

Across the world, adolescent sexuality is an important social and medical topic. Statistics show that most boys and girls become sexually active at around the age of fifteen or earlier. (1) Many interpretations of adolescent sexuality can be examined in the way that different cultures adopt the practices of abstinence and contraception.

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ADOLESCENT SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

In 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) examined sexual trends among fifteen-year-old students from thirty-five countries. The study showed that while the percentage of boys who engaged in sexual intercourse was often higher than that of girls, there were emerging trends indicating that as many or more girls than boys were sexually active when they turned fifteen. (2) However, while this changing trend was registered, the age at which most boys first had intercourse remained younger than that of girls, showing that gender can influence adolescent sexuality. The study also indicated that the median age of first intercourse in most countries was sixteen to nineteen years for girls, and seventeen to nineteen years for boys. In Chad girls have their first sexual intercourse at 15.9 years, and boys at 18.8. Sub-Saharan Africa presented similar statistics that contradicted those gathered by WHO in which all countries recorded girls as becoming sexually involved at the same age or at an older age than boys.

How could this be? In parts of Africa, the prevalence of rape and the custom of early marriage regulate sexual activity. In South Africa, for instance, 116 in every one hundred thousand women have reported being raped; and in the rest of Africa, 42 per cent of women between fifteen and twenty-four years of age were

GEDALIA: I wanted to have the opportunity to talk and discuss things, not in order to reach an agreement but to reach an understanding while remaining true to my own ways and beliefs, and to achieve mutual harmony. I think the goal needs to be understanding and acceptance...