Secret lives of S'pore teens- sex survey by Straits Times
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Publication Date : 2006-03-26. Straits Times
Claire is an outstanding academic performer, who went to a top secondary school and junior college and just scored five distinctions in her A-level exams.
But the 18-year-old is also hiding an intimate secret.
Since she was 15, Claire has been sexually active. Every weekend, she heads to her boyfriend's house, where they have sex in his bedroom.
She has had two different partners and admits that there have been times when she did not practise safe sex.
Her story is indicative of a hidden but apparently widespread culture among Singapore teens, one recently put into the spotlight by the case of 'Tammy', the 17-year-old Nanyang Polytechnic student whose explicit cellphone sex video found its way onto the Internet.
The clues had been there for some time, in the form of explicit blogs or Internet journals and rising numbers of teens with sexually transmitted diseases. But the Tammy saga finally blew the lid off the myth that local youth are repressed, prudish bookworms.
As other copycat X-rated clips made their way - intentionally this time - onto the Net, parents and schools were suddenly forced to sit up and notice a phenomenon many have long tried to ignore: their otherwise normal teenage children are having sex.
After interviewing 20 sexually active teens - 10 boys and 10 girls - The Sunday Times made some surprising discoveries.
Firstly, if the small survey is anything to go by, today's teens are completely nonchalant about sex.
Half of those polled had sex before they turned 16, the legal age for sex. Of the 20 teens, 13 said they did not need to be in a relationship in order to sleep with someone and, most alarmingly, only four always insisted on using protection. Not surprisingly, none of them has ever told his parents about his activities.
Granted, these liberal youths are still in the minority. Last November, an informal survey by The Straits Times of 60 teens and a 2003 Nanyang Technological University study of 350 students found that one in five had had sex.
A survey by Aids awareness group Action For Aids of 500 teens around the same time reported that one in four had sex.
But youth counsellors fear the ratio is only going to go up.
'Saving themselves for marriage just doesn't seem to matter anymore,' said Mr Jerry Ong of Focus On The Family, a pro-abstinence group which has conducted sexuality workshops for some 17,000 students to date.
Indeed, of those who have gone through its workshops this year, only 40 per cent said they felt the right time for sex was after marriage.
An October 2002 study of 2,659 teens by welfare organisation Fei Yue Community Services revealed the same proportion.
The numbers add up to a picture of a young population for whom pre-marital sex is perfectly acceptable. While the average marrying age in Singapore is 30 for men and 27 for women, the latest Durex global sex survey indicated that Singaporeans have sex for the first time on average at age 18.4, among the youngest in the region.
By and large, most teens do not appear to take sex too seriously, even though some say they are pressured into it, either by their sexual partners or by the desire to fit in with their peers.
More than half of the 20 teens in The Sunday Times survey said they would sleep with someone they were not attached to and eight teens confessed to 'experimenting' with things like threesomes, fetishes and taking pictures or videos of themselves.
Only five, all of them girls, thought oral sex could be defined as 'having sex'.
'It's a sexual act, but oral sex is really quite the norm. I think you'd still be virgin after oral sex,' said Andy, an 18-year-old JC student, who said he has had seven sexual partners since he was 14.
Teens seem to be equally indiscriminate when it comes to venues. Some have sex at home, even while their parents are around, others booked into short-time or transit hotels like Hotel 81, while two confessed to having sex in a public toilet for the handicapped.
But most worrying of all was the cavalier attitude towards protection. Only four insisted on condoms every time. Others offered excuses like 'my boyfriend is shy to buy' or 'it is really inconvenient'.
Claire recalls being mortified when a condom tore during sex. Joan remembers breaking down when her period came late.
'I nearly killed myself. I really did not know what I would do if I got pregnant,' said the 17-year-old, who admits that she has hardly ever had protected sex.
Their complacency is worrying in light of mounting statistics on teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Even as the Health Ministry reports around 1,500 teen pregnancies a year, figures at the DSC Clinic in Kelantan Lane show the number of patients aged 10 to 19 has more than doubled from 238 in 2002 to 565 between January and November last year.
Youth counsellors blame the apparent moral decline on a host of factors, from media exposure to an absence of parenting.
The director of the youth development centre at the Singapore Children's Society, Ms Carol Balhetchet, said: 'You have the media and movies showing sexual content.
'You have fashion that is very revealing. You have celebrities who are glorifying sexy dressing. Sex has become cool, abstinence is not. And when you see parents now working longer hours, it all adds up.'
Mr Ong of Focus On The Family agreed. 'We seem to have let our values slip away, but I'm not giving up. I sense that many people still believe in abstinence. All is not lost.' -
Was claire from ACJC?
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Lol...As a guy...I havent experienced this kinda thing yet...so i dont know... Me not one of the "lucky" ones..
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Originally posted by ditzy:Was claire from ACJC?
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Where to find all these teens?
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Haiyo.
This kind of thing so common liao.
Just that people refuse to face up to it, and educate youths ABOUT sex, instead of telling us to abstain. -
you very stupid leh.Originally posted by ditzy:Was claire from ACJC?
RTFA la.. it says Top JC. that is HCJC or RJC la.. -
must pracice celibacy... or else all the chaboh's become like community soup like that...*shivers* uuurgh....
on a side note..
Like the Fire n Ice feeling?
DUREX TINGLE! The newsest sensation condom with a minty feeeeeeeel.... try one today to spice up ur sex life. Who says u get no feel in condoms.. TRY DUREX TINGLE NOW! satisfaction guranteeeeed.
visit ur local pharmacy , 7-11 or sex shops NOW! -
its not so lucky when u get herpes bro..Originally posted by Seth35:Lol...As a guy...I havent experienced this kinda thing yet...so i dont know... Me not one of the "lucky" ones.. count urself lucky now. -
How old is this article?
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singaporeans are always not truthful when it comes to surveys
tsk~ -
i think that there is no such thing as love anymore, only lust.
community soup? thats quite a creative way of putting it. myself, i prefer to call them commodities, spend a little money and time, then fire at will.
plainly put, lots of them are just high class wh*res, who go for the highest bidder, so as to speak.
it seems that no one can stop this downward spiral of morals, but hey, if anyone tell them to stop it, they'd be branded as "old timers" or people who "just cannot understand that the love that they share is special".
so, just f*** away, while they are still young and fresh, and most importantly, easily pleased; ie to say, dun have to spend a lot of money to get to the f***ing stage.
can u imagine marrying one of these decadent wh*res??
the person you loved so deeply was just another f*** toy for others who are only interested in wat is in between her legs. PLUS, its FREE!!
the lover whose lips u r kissing actually f***ed thousands of guys before.
argh, i can just imagine wat the future advertisement for Listerine would be like if this keeps up.
f***ing f***ed up.
can u imagine loving somebody, but being after being branded as a "good guy" by her, she went to go n f*** lots of "bad guys" who just wanna shoot her? wtf. sick sh!t, definitely.
i expect repercussions from this post, i predict that many of those act innocent sick sh!t would queue up all the way to JB, or even KL, to throw stones at me. so, before that, i'd like to tell those people to go kill themselves first, sh!t. -
How...? Next time if you guy how to find a virgo..? If you lady how you find a trusty guy...?
Do you believe all fair beauties are already snatched away before you get to know her..?
*SiGh DeEp...*
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well these are extreme cases.
most singaporean teens are still quite conservative..
the most they'll do is rub rub in the clubs..
as usual SPH blowing up small things to sell their paper. -
Yeah loh I believe, if 20% of teens surveyed have premarital sex, in fact it is 50%, so not truthful...Originally posted by FireIce:singaporeans are always not truthful when it comes to surveys
tsk~ -
I'm happy that my other half isn't like this.
Hint: She's not S'porean.
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Just ask for her birthday, she's a Virgo if it falls from 22 August to 23 September.Originally posted by Fire Star:How...? Next time if you guy how to find a virgo..? If you lady how you find a trusty guy...? -
Originally posted by OO_OO_OO:well these are extreme cases.
most singaporean teens are still quite conservative..
the most they'll do is rub rub in the clubs..
as usual SPH blowing up small things to sell their paper. i find it hard to believe. rubbing = intent. people dun rub when theres no intent. the matter of fact that theres an intent means that things can escalate.
its up to u to believe either one.
- such things do not happen.
- u r missing out on a piece of action that probably lasts for about 30mins.
for myself, i believe in the latter. -
Why don't they do stories on the secret lives of those who don't have sex? -
And Ristar, the boys are not any less guilty.
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well, at least boys dun act innocent and act high class and all that f***ing nonsense.Originally posted by Kuali Baba:And Ristar, the boys are not any less guilty.
smlj "gan qing". laughable. everyone also got "gan qing". wahahahaha
he yandao, she chio, ai shio gan, say ai shio gan, dun say need feeling and sh!t. knn....
these young and dumb people profane the very definition of the word "love". -
I doubt the accuracy of these so-called surveys. Could always be fabricated and the results manipulated. Were the interviewees under oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Wad if their answers are all lies? Most teenagers like to either tok big or tok cock wan.....
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those kids lie about having sex to fit in!
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I am a teen.
And basically like 60 percent of the teens I know has had sex.
Singaporeans...
Don't delude yourselves anymore.