Young people, sex and relationships

The overarching messages from the papers in this journal issue are that: 1) adolescents and young people want and need sexual health information and health care, provided with a sex-positive approach to sex, sexuality, sexual identity and relationships; 2) those providing it need specialist training; and 3) adolescent and youth leadership and involvement in policy, activities and programmes are crucial. Adolescents and young people want to know about HIV, STIs, pregnancy, abortion, contraception, sexual and gender identity, communication in relationships, menstruation, sexual violence and coercion, stigma, bullying, discrimination. But above all, they want to know about sex and bodies. Remember surging hormones? Long before they ever have sex, they want to understand and be able to talk about these issues with family, friends, peers. If you read this journal issue from cover to cover, and I hope you do, you’ll feel pummelled by these messages, as I did, by the time you reach the end, and you deserve to feel pummelled; we all do. So it was a real boost for me to find the photograph for the cover of this edition of RHM, because the papers were really getting me down. I thought if I had to edit one more paper about the extent of sexual harassment, violence and abuse experienced by adolescent girls and young women, and the pressure on them to have sex whether they wanted it or not, I didn’t know what I would do. The fact that the pressure on them was coming from fathers, relatives (including women at times), teachers, employers, sons of employers, neighbours, boys in the street, almost beggared belief. The silence and complicity of parents was the most upsetting of all. But why was I surprised? The article about eve-teasing in Bangladesh in this issue, for example, isn’t just about the patriarchal culture of Bangladesh. It’s happening here in London too (see Twitter @everydaysexism and #EndStreet Harassment). The rapes of young girls in India and South Africa, and the sexual abuse of boys and girls, including by gangs and priests, that have hit the news in recent years – these are global phenomena

Sociology · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · Gender Studies · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · Medicine · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Psychology