1.) the sexualization of teenagers is bad.

2.) the de-sexualization of teenagers is…also bad.

don’t get me wrong, an adult absolutely should not be looking at a 15 year old and thinking ‘god i wanna fuck that.’ that’s creepy as fuck. grown adults should not be regarding minors in a sexual light, full stop. see point number 1: the sexualization of teenagers by adults is bad.

but at the same time, we really need to stop this trend of infantilizing teenagers and stripping them of their sexuality. we need to stop shoving abstinence down their throats. we need to stop telling them that they’re ‘too young’ to know their sexual orientation or to read about sex and sexual relationships until they reach an arbitrary age. we need to stop taking the locks off their doors and installing spyware on their computers in hopes of catching them jacking off or looking at porn so we can punish them accordingly. we need to stop censoring any and all mentions of sex and sexuality from the books teenagers read or the shows they watch. we need to stop equating two teenagers having consensual sex with rape or equating a 16 year old with a 6 year old. 

like what the fuck do you think your teenager is going to do when they actually arebeing raped, groomed, or abused? when they get pregnant? when they’re worried they might have an std? they’re sure as fuck not going to tell you about it just so you can ground them, berate them, laugh them off, kick them to the curb, or take their partner to court in a fit of stubborn puritan rage. 

teenagers deserve the chance to safely explore their sexualities without fear of punishment, ridicule, or adult involvement. they’re also going to be sexual whether you approve of it or not and if you’d rather dedicate your life to obsessing over and controlling teens’ sexualities than keeping them safe, you guys are just assholes and creeps.

(maps/pedos fuck off)

GOOD ADVICE INTERLUDE: Help, My Friend is 15 and Pregnant!

Readers won’t stop sending the Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

A reader writes:

Hey uh if you’re still doing the good advice interlude, advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy? She’s 15, with a boyfriend two or three years older. They had sex and she clearly really enjoyed it. It’s resulted in her being pregnant. She wants to keep the child, and I’m obviously going to support her decisions, but I don’t know what’s best to do to support her. She’s in the hospital regularly (chronically ill), and I don’t know how to ask if she’s looked into the risks that giving birth might provide for her. I don’t want to come across like I don’t want her to do what she wants, because I do, but I’d like to be reassured she’s prepared for that, because I think mostly she’s thinking about how excited she is to be a mum. Which is great! I’m glad she’s excited! I’m excited! But yeah how do I ask if she’s prepared for health risks both in that and the fact that in general regular hospital visits with a small child aren’t ideal (I speak from experience there lol). I speak from experience because I’ve been visiting the hospital regularly since I was a small child because I have an array of health issues and always have done. Friend & I have bonded over this a little.

Hello! Thanks for writing in! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to write a Good Advice Interlude, so this is very exciting.

You sound like a lovely and concerned friend! However, and this probably is gonna land with a big-ass thud: your friend’s pregnancy isn’t about you and she doesn’t have to make you feel better about her decision to become a parent.

Right out of the gate, you say you’d like “advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy.” Okay! A good instinct! But when we get into the details, what you really seem to be asking for are some ways for youto feel okay about your friend’s decision to carry her pregnancy to term — you talk about what you need to be reassured about, and what questions you need to make sure your friend is grappling with so that you can help her. But it’s not clear whether your friend has asked for your help or your advice or your recommendations on how to do her pregnancy! So let’s back waaaaaay up, because the top way to not help a person going through some big life shit is to burden them with your own personal misgivings about it.

Reading between the lines, I sense that you want to be a kind, good friend who does the right thing, and you know that the right thing is to support your friend who has decided to become a parent at a younger age than most people do these days. I sense that in your heart, you know the right thing to do is to support young people’s reproductive autonomy and not to judge or shame people for making decisions that you wouldn’t make for yourself, or that are outside the norm in some way. I also suspect that in your heart, despite this, you also feel judgy and frustrated by your friend making a decision to become a parent at age 15 when she has all this other medical stuff going on, and you’re trying to overcompensate for that, because it probably doesn’t feel great, so you’re trying to cast your concerns for you friend as just! looking! for! how! to! be! enthusiastically! and! cheerfully! supportive!

But let’s be real: we live in a complicated cultural milieu wherein we internalize beliefs — whether we want to or not — about young people’s sexuality and pregnancy and parenting that have been shaped by literally the worst fucking people of all time.

Teen pregnancy and teen parenting are massively stigmatized — at least, they are where I live in the United States, and I bet they are where you live, too. This stigma is so prominent that there’s a whole repro justice-oriented, intersectional campaign around respecting young people’s reproductive autonomy called #NoTeenShame, and I strongly encourage you to check it out and share it with your friend if she’s open to it. (For more on the subject, I extremely recommend Natasha Vianna’s work for some contextual reading on parenting while teenaged, plus more hereandhereandhere on shame, stigma, and teen pregnancy and parenting.) We don’t have a lot of positive cultural narratives around teen parenting, and we have a whole fuckload of horror shit show stories about how becoming a teen parent ruins your life forever period the end full stop.

So how about … just owning that those narratives affect you, too? You could explore those feelings on your own, or try unpacking them with another friend who is not at all even a little bit involved with this situation. Examine where these pressure points come up for you — what parts of your friend’s decisions make you feel uncomfortable, angry, frustrated, judgmental, anxious, worried? What parts trigger a need to be kind of patronizing toward your friend? (Such as, for example, assuming that she doesn’t know how to navigate a medical establishment — when bonding over your shared experience with the medical establishment is already a big part of your friendship!) Sit with those feelings and acknowledge them and don’t try to cover them up with being friendly and helpful, because they will only fester, and eventually they’ll taint your actual experience with your friend, and you’ll really, really not be able to be there for her in a genuinely supportive way.

You don’t say how old you are, yourself, but maybe you know a thing or two about parenting at a young age, and maybe you’re hoping to save your friend from going through some of the same bullshit you’ve had to deal with in your life? That can definitely be a kind and loving instinct, but it can also be incredibly patronizing, and even infantilizing — especially if it’s coming from a place of you needing to feel better about something an entire other person is doing with their entire other body that has absolutely nothing to do with you in the most practical and literal sense. You’re not your friend’s parent, and you’re not your friend’s partner — your investment in your friend’s pregnancy is many degrees removed, which means you have a wonderful opportunity to be a cheerleader, and not yet another person in her life asking her “what about” questions as if her pregnancy has actually rendered her incapable of being both excited and nervous or scared or apprehensive at the same time, which is how folks often treat pregnant teens (and, frankly, pregnant adults, too, because misogyny is the fucking realest). You can certainly suggest: “Hey, I went through something similar, do you want my advice about this?” but only if you’re willing to take “Nope! I got this!” for an answer.

Anyone planning to become a mom at 15 years old is going to have plenty — P L E N T Y — of people in her life treating her like she doesn’t know her own mind or her own body. She is never going to lack people who are afraid at her all the time. She is going to mostly be surrounded by people telling her she’s making a dangerous and bad decision, and that she’s being irresponsible toward both herself and her future kiddo. The vast, vast majority of people — including her medical team, unless she has a radically progressive provider setup — who she encounters are going to be naysayers, and many of them are going to be concern trolls, and even the really well-meaning ones who love her a whole lot and only want the best for her are never going to stop asking her if she’s thought of this and that, if she’s read about the risks and the dangers, if she’s got a plan for A, B, and C, if she realizes that parenting and pregnancy are hard, if she wouldn’t rather do X, Y, Z so that she can do whatever it is people think you can’t do while parenting as a young person: go to school, have a career, enjoy your friends, have fun, etc.

And yes, raising a kid while you’re young is really hard. But it’s hard because many of our cultures mostly shame and stigmatize young people who choose to parent instead of offering them the support and resources they need to be happy and healthy. Teen parenting isn’t a scourge, but the way we treat teen parents certainly is. You can break that cycle right now!

Good luck to you both, and congrats to your friend! Sending all the great universe vibes for a safe and healthy pregnancy, and a long and happy friendship for y’all.