Teenage Girls, Oral Sex, and the New Feminism

Actress Sharon Stone has some advice for teenage girls being pressured into unwanted sex from boys: Give them oral sex so they'll leave you alone.

Stone talks about watching a mother and daughter trying on clothing in a department store. The mother was concerned about the daughter showing her stomach in the outfit she wanted to buy. When the mother walked away, Stone approached the teenager and gave her some tips on sex and avoiding diseases such as AIDS. Her advice to teenagers is simple:

Young people talk to me about what to do if they're being pressed for sex? I tell them (what I believe): oral sex is a hundred times safer than vaginal or anal sex. If you're in a situation where you cannot get out of sex, offer [oral sex]. I'm not embarrassed to tell them.

This advice is astounding. Not because a Hollywood actress opposes Christian understandings of sexual morality. That is nothing new. What's astounding is how resigned this feminist activist actress is to a patriarchy of the most predatory kind.

Sharon Stone is everything the Glamour magazine wing of American feminism celebrates. She marches for abortion rights. She raises money for liberal, feminist-friendly politicians such as former President Bill Clinton. And she can do all this by portraying on the silver screen tough, aggressive women with perfect hair, pearly-white teeth, and the physique of a teenage girl.

And her advice to a girl pressured for sex is, well, to barter with the man for one form of sex to save yourself from a more "dangerous" kind.

There was a time when American feminism understood the sexual vulnerability of women. That's when activists such as Gloria Steinem insisted on tough sexual harassment laws and legislation against date rape. Feminists suggested that women familiarize themselves with the words: "This is sexual harassment and I don't have to take it."

What feminism never understood, however, is that the sexual dignity of women cannot stand by legislation alone. When a culture views women as pieces of meat, and when corporate executives make millions off of...say, images of Sharon Stone nude...then laws alone aren't going to turn that around.

So now, instead of "This is sexual harassment and I don't have to take it," the next generation of scared, pressured girls are learning a new mantra: "May I offer you a less-dangerous-for-me orgasm?"

Call that you will, but don't call it "liberation."