New Rules for Teen Love : Youth: A generation after the women’s movement, many girls ask boys on dates, insist they handle birth control and object strongly to sexual harassment. But the freedom brings problems that they never imagined.

Boy-girl relationships are not what they used to be. Ask 16-year-old Jennifer Dungee, one of the managers of the football team at Fairfax High.

If the guys in the locker room make crude sexual remarks, Dungee doesn’t hesitate to tell them to knock it off. If she likes a boy, she is not embarrassed to ask him out on a date. If she decides to get involved sexually, she is willing to tell her partner that he has to take the precautions--she might even insist he get a blood test first.

“I look shy, but I am really not,” Dungee said.

Dungee is not alone. Born a generation after the women’s movement took hold in this country, many of today’s teen-age girls talk and behave in ways their grandmothers and even their mothers never imagined possible.

“Clearly, there has been a revolution in dating etiquette and male-female relationships in general,” said Sue Lepisto, assistant principal for counseling at Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley.

Not only are they asking boys out on dates, many teen-age girls are making a host of new demands on boys, insisting that they handle birth control and that they be penalized every time they sexually harass a girl.

In the course of making these demands, however, girls are finding themselves with new social problems and pressures that they never anticipated.

As girls insist on paying their way on dates, for example, the economy has worsened, making that difficult. As girls become sexually active at younger ages, AIDS and other diseases have made sex far more dangerous.

Even as adolescent females have begun to assume it is possible to combine careers with marriage, skyrocketing divorce rates among their parents’ generation have made girls more skeptical about relationships in general.

“It’s not that girls have caused these problems, but they certainly are going to have to deal with them, and they will have to do so just at the time they thought they were free to make some choices of their own,” said Silvia Ivie, a former civil rights lawyer who is executive director of a women’s health clinic in Los Angeles.

One choice teen-age girls clearly have made is to have sex as freely--and nearly as often--as boys.

Studies show that nearly three quarters of girls 18 and 19 years old (74.4%) have had sexual intercourse at least once, compared to about 85% of boys. In the 1950s, only about a third of teen-age girls had sex. And in the 1930s, a quarter did. Those estimates, based on national studies done in the late 1980s, are included in recently released reports by the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Assn. and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a New York think tank specializing in issues of sexuality and reproduction.

Not only are more girls having sex, they are having it at an earlier age. And much of the increase has occurred among those who in earlier generations would have been the least likely to have had sex: white females and those from well-to-do families.

Historically, studies show, African-American girls were more likely to have sex during their teen years than were either Latinas or Anglos. But the gap narrowed during the 1980s as sexual activity among white females rose 18%, while that of blacks and Latinas has leveled.

Similarly, the number of middle-class and affluent females who lost their virginity during their teen years jumped 25% between 1982 and 1988, while the number of poor teen-age girls having sex during those same years rose only 6%.

Despite so many changes, one thing seems to have remained the same: The double standard is still alive and well.

“You think everything has changed, but it hasn’t,” complained Fabbi Infante, a senior at Taft who is originally from Brazil.

“Everybody says it’s OK for girls and guys to sleep together if they are responsible and careful, but when they do, the same still always happens: They come back to school the next day and the guy is a big stud and the girl’s suddenly a slut.”

Even if they are not having sex, girls are more willing to talk about their attitudes and behavior. Such openness has become a source of both embarrassment and enlightenment for many big-city teen-agers who come in contact with people from a variety of cultural, religious and economic backgrounds.

“Seeing so many people from such different backgrounds and talking so openly about those differences has altered the way many teens act and think,” said Elena Chavez, program coordinator at Youth in Action, a teen center in Santa Monica.

Consider the attitudes of Michelle Tarazi and her friends, Shirley Compton and Cynthia Carpenter.

Tarazi is a 16-year old Iranian student at Santa Monica High. She is vivacious and attractive, but refuses to date. “I intend to save myself for my husband,” Tarazi said, explaining the protective and rigid traditions of her culture.

Compton, who is African-American, is baffled and amused by her friend’s determination to keep herself romantically aloof from men. “She has the moral standards of a Vatican priest,” Compton said.

Like many American teen-age girls today, Compton has had many boyfriends. “I prefer one at a time,” she said. “But if they start giving me a hard time, I get rid of them . . . and ask someone else out.”

In contrast to Compton, Carpenter, a Latina, would never dream of asking a boy out. And, until she met Tarazi, she had never thought it possible for a girl to spend a Saturday night without a date--and still be happy.

“I grew up thinking, ‘If you’re not with someone, you’re nothing,’ ” Carpenter said. “Then last Saturday I went with Michelle to the movies. I couldn’t believe it. It’s fun to go out with girls.”

One way or another, money has become almost as major an issue today for teen-age girls as sex was in previous generations.

“Guys want to pay to feel good about themselves” but females want to pay “to avoid the appearance of obligation or subservience,” said Leslie Ivie, a senior at Harvard-Westlake School, a private school in North Hollywood.

Yet, as many teen-agers are quick to note, almost no one can afford to indulge their desires today, given the high cost of even the most modest forms of entertainment--$25 for a rock concert, $7 for a movie, $3 and up for fast food.

So “Dutch treat” has taken on new currency with today’s teen-agers. “Whether they like it or not,” Ivie observed, “nearly everybody goes Dutch now. It’s not the exception, it’s the rule.”

Not all boys look at it that way.

Jin Kim is a 17-year-old Korean-American who is student body president at Fairfax High in Hollywood.

Like many male immigrants, he has had trouble adapting to what he views as the aggressive ways of American girls. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “Most Koreans think guys should be the one to ask girls out. Especially on the first date, guys should pay. For Koreans, it’s an honor.”

Many teen-age boys say that if they marry, they assume their wives will work and continue to share expenses, which is not startling given that the vast majority of today’s mothers have jobs outside the home.

Even though his own mother does not work, Russell Brown, a student at Harvard-Westlake School, said he expects his wife “to have a job if she wants it,” and he anticipates “sharing the housework 50-50.”

In many ways, Brown is typical of today’s teen-age boys.

In comparison to earlier generations, most boys no longer think it “completely unmanly” to do household chores or even to do such things as “talk about their feelings,” said Joseph H. Pleck, a research psychologist who has been analyzing a 1988 survey of nearly 2,000 adolescent males sponsored by NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Still, Pleck said, the vast majority of boys want to be viewed as strong, unemotional and self-confident. And they never want to say or do anything that could be construed as “acting like a girl.”

That is perhaps the biggest disappointment today’s teen-age girls have had to face, said Susan M. Bailey, director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. Although girls have undergone “a dramatic transformation in their attitudes and behavior, boys unfortunately have not changed nearly so much.”

Observed Jackie Cyriac, a 15-year-old sophomore at Taft High, “Things should be equal but they are not.” Women have to assume more responsibility both in social relationships and within their families, Cyriac said, “because you can’t really trust guys.”

One thing that makes girls cynical is the nation’s soaring rate of separation and divorce. According to recent studies, half of the nation’s children live in broken homes during their teen years.

In a recent survey of nearly 20,000 teen-agers, Sassy magazine found that, largely because of divorce and domestic fighting, the vast majority of today’s teen-agers--63% of girls and 78% of boys--do not want relationships like those of their parents.

“I see what happened to my mother, and I’m not sure I even want to get married,” said Maya Harris, who is a senior at Santa Monica High. “She’s a single parent with five children. She works long hours. She’s always tired. She never has time for herself.”

As a result, Harris is reluctant to get too seriously involved in relationships with boys. Her reticence often shows up in the language she uses.

“No one talks bout ‘dating’ or ‘going steady’ or even ‘seeing someone,’ anymore,” she said. “If you go out, you usually go out in groups. You almost never go out as a couple. If you really like someone and he likes you, you say, ‘We’re talking.’ If you’re having sex, you say, ‘I’m getting busy’ or ‘I’m with someone.’ No one ever talks about commitment--unless they’re crazy.”

One way teen-age boys have become more responsible in their relationships with girls is in their use of birth control.

According to the NIH study, adolescent boys are three times more likely to use condoms than they were a decade ago. While only 15% of sexually active males used condoms in 1979, 58% were using them in 1988.

Yet even in this area, many girls are mistrustful of boys.

“They aren’t trying to protect us from getting pregnant. They’re just trying to keep themselves alive,” said an 11th-grade girl at Fairfax High.

“They’re worried about getting AIDS,” explained another. “But so are we. That’s why we all carry condoms in our purses.”

“Even I carry them,” said a 14-year-old girl, opening her purse to reveal a half-dozen prophylactics. “And I haven’t even slept with anyone yet.”

Beginning this year, Los Angeles school officials have made condoms available to students. Health clinics throughout the city offer free or low-cost blood tests for the HIV virus, and the number of heterosexual teen-agers making use of these services has risen dramatically, officials said.

“Increasingly teen-agers are coming (for HIV tests) before they have sex, to make certain their partners are not infected,” said Albert Aldrete, a counselor for the Los Angeles Free Clinic. Last month, the clinic opened a teen center and already has tested more than 40 youths for the AIDS virus.

Because many teen-agers are tested on an anonymous basis, no one knows for certain how many girls are demanding the tests as a precondition for having sex with boys, but it is “not enough,” said Dungee, the Fairfax football manger. Along with dozens of other girls, Dungee has volunteered at health clinics in recent months as part of a nationwide effort to warn high school students of the growing danger of AIDS.

Although the risk of becoming infected with the HIV virus is still remote for most teen-agers, the number of AIDS-infected adolescents is doubling every 14 months, with AIDS the sixth leading cause of death among those 15 to 24 years old, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

When the women’s movement spelled out new roles for females in the late 1960s, many experts predicted that adolescent males and females would become more similar in attitudes and behavior. In some ways they have.

One way has been for girls to adopt unisex clothing styles, such as wearing oversized pants and their fathers’ dress shirts.

Recent Smith College graduate Dana Green recalls shaving her head and donning combat boots in high school--a trend popular with some girls today. “My mom, who grew up an era of dancing schools and etiquette rules, could never (have) dreamed of doing such a thing,” Green said. “With me, all she did was wince.”

Some teen-age girls also try to use the kind of sexist language some boys use. “We can get away with slandering men, talking about their legs and bodies, in ways that men cannot do” without getting themselves in a lot of trouble, Green said.

In other ways, however, the war between the sexes has escalated into sometimes nasty struggles.

Just as the problems of battered women came to public attention in the mid-1970s and child abuse came to the fore in the early 1980s, dating violence has become an issue of the 1990s--and girls are no longer willing to be silent.

Official reports of date rape, for example, have risen steadily over the past decade. According to numerous medical and sociological studies, as many as a quarter of all high school girls have been victims of date rape or other forms of sexual and physical violence. Two out of three teen-agers say they know someone who has been raped or physically attacked on dates.

Teen-age dating violence does not appear to be a new problem, but one that had gone unrecognized, experts say.

Following the lead of Anita Hill, who publicly criticized Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas for his alleged mistreatment of her, many teen-age and even some preteen girls are speaking out on the subject of sexual harassment.

In some cases, girls have taken their grievances to court. Recently, Katy Lyle, a student at Duluth Central High School in Minnesota, won $15,000 from her school for “mental anguish” over what she said was constant sexual harassment from boys at her school. Legal experts said it was the first case in which a school has been held liable for failing to respond to complaints of sexual harassment.

Said Tom Huff, principal of Stephens Middle School in Long Beach, “I’m shocked at the new awareness. Last week, for example, we had a 12-year-old girl who was tired of being touched on the bottom by one of her classmates in P.E. class. The boy’s reaction was typical. He said he was just playing around; he honestly didn’t know what he was doing was wrong.”

Dungee is not surprised. “There’s a lot of things guys still don’t get.

“Take my current boyfriend,” she said. “When we’re alone, he’s OK. But when we’re in public, he refers to me as ‘woman,’ ” a term she finds both irritating and degrading.

But Dungee intends to change her boyfriend’s errant ways. “He’s about to come out of it,” she said, a determined look in her eye, “because I’m about to take him out.”