EVERY YEAR there are a couple of hundred accidental deaths resulting from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Most of the victims are young men.
But it's no good shaking your head at the recklessness COMMENT of youth when the Tory party has lost a respectable middleaged backbencher, Stephen Milligan, to this risky act. Clearly there is a severe lack of sex education across all age groups.
Now the government is compounding the confusion, with Education Secretary John Patten flying in the face of the relatively enlightened sex education policies promoted by the Department of Health, and insisting that school teachers must inform parents should any under-16s be unwise enough to go to them for advice on sex or contraception. Patten has already been forced to back-peddle from barmy plans to 'stream' kids for sex education according to how much they already know. Who would admit to knowing nothing?
We don't need a dead Tory MP and a huge media circus to tell us that sometimes sex can be dangerous. Unwanted pregnancies; irritating infections: life threatening infections; infections which. untreated can cause infertility.
Biologically speaking sex is a reproductive, viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic nightmare. What we need is knowledge about and access to the array of technology -contraception, abortion, condoms, antibiotics, fungicides - we can use to prevent of defeat most of what nature can throw at us.
But nature is not the only danger. Lots of teenagers are miserable because they dislike their sexuality -they loathe their bodies, they worry about their fantasies, their self-respect plummets when they fall in love.
And self-hatred is nothing compared to the hatred some other people have of your sexual desire and choices.
Especially if you're a lesbian, or gay; if you're a woman and you openly like sex for its own sake; if you're a man and dressing up turns you on; if you say no to someone who doesn't want to hear it.
The best sex education can't end the privileged position of the family which lies at the root of sexism and homophobia.
But is can give young people the confidence to make sexual choices in the face of prevailing social mores. It can create a lust for an end to sexual repression, coercion and double standards.
Some Tories talk of 'balancing' teaching about disease and pregnancy with education Sex education allows real choices in "family values' But the moral right are correct when they say there can be no such 'balance'. They need the coercive fear of pregnancy and disease - and discrimination against and criminalisation of young gay men - to shore up their twisted notion of sexual morality.
Sex education, contraceptives and latex barriers are not just a last ditch response to the fact that 'the kids are doing it anyway...' They are a precondition for genuine sexual choice.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.62, May 14 1994, Page 11