RISHON LEZION, Israel — Teenagers here are much more, well, Puritan than their Western counterparts:
The rate of Israeli high school students having sexual intercourse has risen steadily over the past few years, especially among female students, a new study published in the official journal of the Internatioanl Academy of Sex Research suggests…
According to the survey, over a third of 12th-grade girls and half the boys in the 12th grade engage in full sexual relations…
The research team points out that Israeli teenagers would still be considered nearly puritan by modern Western standards. In the UK, 63% of boys and 64% of girls under 18 say they have had sexual intercourse. In the US, 75% of boys and 63% of girls reportedly do the same.
In a prior post in my Letters from Israel series, I discussed the paradoxical nature of sex and feminism in Israel. While Israelis are much more open about sex than people in the Western world, they are generally not as promiscuous.
The longer that I live apart from American culture, the more I realize how sexualized the United States has become. Now, when I am with friends in a bar that shows MTV, I am embarrassed by what I see. It is little wonder that Israelis — along with most of the world — stereotype American, female, tourists as naive sluts. When I lived in Jerusalem, I liked the fact that nearly everyone dressed modestly. Girls rarely wear miniskirts and revealing tops even here in the center of Israel, where people are generally secular. And do not forget that it is extremely hot in the desert in the summer.
I read somewhere that societies tend to become more socially conservative during economic downturns. Perhaps the recession will help the United States in more ways than just encouraging people to rediscover thrift and not pursuing happiness through materialism.
