| Room 519-B | Sexuality across the Lifecycle Tuesday, July 12, 2005 Time: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM |
Teenage Sexual Culture in Russia - Invited Paper.
Kon, Igor*,1, 1 Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, Russia
ABSTRACT- Objectives. Overview of the changing sexual values and behaviors of Russian adolescents since 1990, on the evidence of sexual surveys and qualitative interviews Main body. Longterm trends of adolescent sexuality in Russia are more or less the same as in Western countries (earlier age of sexual debut, growing acceptance of erotica, premarital sex, homosexual experiences and so on). The liberalization of Soviet sexual morality, which started back in the 1960s and 1970s, was continued in the 1990-th. In 1993 25% of 16 years-old urban girls and 38 % of the boys had coital experience; in 1995 the respective figures for comparable samples are already 33% and 50% ( Chervyakov and Kon, 1998, 2000, Kon 2001). In 2002 the percentage of Moscow boys with coital experience is growing from 6.6 % in the 7-th grade to 55.4 % in the 11-th grade, for the girls, respective figures are 2.5 % and 35.4 % (Sobkin et al., 2004). According to an international comparative survey, in 2001/02 40.9 % of Russian 15-years old boys and 16.4 % of the girls already had coital experience (Ross,Godeau,Dias 2004). These figures are quite comparable to the US and West European. Yet in Russia the changes are occurring very rapidly, and Russian youth has inadequate information about sexuality and sexual health (Ketting et al. 2001). The main sources of formation about safe sex for Moscow teenagers in 2002 have been TV (38.8%), advertising (31.9%) and friends (26.1 %) (Sobkin et al., 2004).Russia has an extremely high rate of unwanted pregnancies, abortions, STD and HIV spread (Kontula 2003, Kon 2004). Until 1997, Russian public opinion was in favor of sex education. In all national public opinion polls since 1989, from 60% to 90 % of adults, depending on their age and social background, strongly supported the idea of school sex education, with only 3 to 20 % against it (Kon, 2004). Yet in the 1996 the Communist Party, Russian Orthodox Church and nationalistic organizations, supported by US fundamentalists, initiated a militant anti-sexual crusade. This campaign is openly nationalistic, xenophobic, sexist, and homophobic. Everything traditionally Russian is represented as pure, spiritual and moral, and everything Western as vile and dirty. Sex education is depicted as a devilish attempt of US secret services to undermine Russian national security and to depopulate Russia. Previous attempts to introduce sex education in schools have been blocked. There are no educational programs neither on TV nor at Internet. Sex research is also under permanent attack. Conclusions. General trends of Russian teenage sexual culture are part of a global historical process. Sexual attitudes and practices of Russian teenagers are highly diversified according to age, gender, educational, regional, urban/rural, ethnic, religious and social background. The administrative control over adolescent sexuality is impossible. Politically motivated anti-sexual campaign has extremely dangerous epidemiological, public health and demographic consequences. It is also widening already yawning generation gap.
Key words: Adolescence, sexuality, education, politics, health