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Free-sex seminar decries teen habits

Published on Nov 17th, 2002, Bangkok Post

Young women `too fond' of tight shirts

Anjira Assavanonda

Loy Krathong night is a good night for sex, according to teenagers polled by Abac.

A poll conducted among 1,330 high-school and vocational students in Bangkok on Oct 18-Nov 8 says 7.5% of respondents plan to have sex on Tuesday night, while 10.4% said they planned to stay in with their lovers.

The poll was released at a seminar on free sex and the views of Thai teens, held by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation.

It also showed that 31.3% of young men polled, and 9.9% of young women had already had sex.

The average age of Thai teens having sex for the first time was 16 years, with most viewing sex as a ``common and natural'' thing. Only one-fifth had used condoms.

The poll said that in three months, 20% of respondents had had sex 6-10 times, 24.5% 3-5 times, and about 40% no more than two times.

Reviewing the result, a psychiatrist and education lecturer warned Thai society to prepare for the worst.

Sompong Jitradub, a Chulalongkorn University education lecturer, said free sex has become the most critical problem among Thai teens.

``In the past few years, drugs were the most serious problem among our youngsters, but sex problems are now rising to the point of crisis, with abuse of internet likely to emerge as a big factor,'' said Mr Sompong.

Free sex had come from western culture, but Thai teens had adopted only part of the message. In the west, sex usually came with responsibility that lead to people setting up families, but what happened in Thai society was different.

``Western people generally stop their sexual relationships when they have found the right person, but Thai youngsters think free sex means they can sleep with whoever they want. It also leads to evil things such as drugs,'' he said.

He raised concern about the latest fashion among women university students who liked to wear extraordinarily small and tight-fitting uniforms to attract the opposite sex.

``I guess at least 50% of students follow this trend. Earlier, they wore 3S shirts (smaller than S). Now they have come up with a 5S which fits their bodies more closely than you've ever seen,'' he said.

The internet had become an important tool for leading young people to sex. According to Mr Sompong, there are 400,000 pornographic websites worldwide. Thailand still had no legal mechanism to handle them.

``Learning from those websites, young people have gone too far, while adults are still arguing how sex education should be taught at school. We will never catch up with them,'' he said.

Udomsilp Srisaengnam, psychiatrist at Theptharin hospital, said children as young as eight are curious about sex. Many said they learned from the movies.