By Peggy Orenstein

Parents often say that if they try to have the sex talk with their teens, the kids plug their ears and hum or run screaming from the room. But late last month, those roles were reversed: After a workshop for high school juniors at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School promoting critical thinking about online pornography, it was parents who flipped out. Some took to the media — The New York Post, Fox News, The Federalist and other like-minded outlets jumped on the story — accusing the school of indoctrinating children.

While I don’t know the precise content of that presentation, I can say this: Refusing to discuss sexually explicit media, which is more accessible to minors than at any other time in history, won’t make it go away. As far back as 2008 — basically the Pleistocene era in internet terms — a study found that more than 90 percent of boys and close to two-thirds of girls had viewed online pornography before turning 18, whether intentionally or involuntarily.

I’ve been interviewing teenagers about their attitudes and expectations of sex for over a decade. When talking to boys, in particular, I’ve never asked whether they’ve watched porn — that would shoot my credibility to hell. Instead, I ask when they first saw it. Most say right around the onset of puberty. They not only learned to masturbate in tandem with its images but also can’t conceive of doing it any other way. “I have a friend who was a legend among the crew team,” a high school senior told me. “He said that he’d stopped using porn completely. He said, ‘I just close my eyes and use my imagination.’ We were like, ‘Whoa! How does he do that?’”

Curiosity about sex and masturbation is natural: good for girls, boys and everyone beyond those designations. And I am talking about children here, many of whom have yet to have a first kiss; adult porn use is a different conversation. One could also debate the potential for sexual liberation of ethically produced porn, queer porn or feminist porn, but those sites are typically behind a pay wall, and most teenagers don’t have their own credit cards.

The free content most readily available to minors tends to show sex as something men do to rather than with women. It often portrays female pleasure as a performance for male satisfaction, shows wildly unrealistic bodies, is indifferent to consent (sometimes in its actual production) and flirts with incest.

The clips can also skew toward the hostile. In a 2020 analysis of more than 4,000 heterosexual scenes on Pornhub and Xvideos, 45 percent and 35 percent, respectively, contained aggression, almost exclusively directed at women. Black women have been found to be the targets of such aggression more frequently than white women, and Black men are more likely than white men to be depicted as aggressors. In other words, teens are being served a heaping helping of racism with their eroticized misogyny.

Boys I interview typically assure me that they know the difference between fantasy and reality. Maybe. But that’s the response people give to any suggestion of media influence. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psych to know that what we consume shapes our thoughts and behavior even — maybe especially — when we believe it doesn’t. Any troll with a Facebook account could tell you that.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that adolescents who frequently use porn turn out to be more likely than others to believe its images are realistic. They’re also more likely to try out some of its dangerous moves like choking a partner during sex (a potentially lethal behavior), which, like heterosexual anal intercourse, appears to have been on the rise among adolescents.

Among college men, pornography use has been associated with seeing women as disposable and, for both sexes, a stronger belief in rape myths — such as that a woman “asked for it” because of what she wore or how much she drank. The combination of exposure and perception of porn’s accuracy has also been associated with an increased risk of sexual aggression, which was defined as pressuring someone into intercourse who has already refused.

To be fair, though, mainstream media use is associated with many of the same beliefs and behaviors, so even if you could block all the triple-X sites on the internet (and good luck with that), it wouldn’t be enough. Nor am I suggesting that viewing porn will turn a tenderhearted teen violent, though it could validate existing impulses among some.

Parents tend to underestimate their children’s consumption of explicit content, perhaps because the only thing ickier than thinking about your mom or dad watching porn is thinking about your daughter or son doing it. So, sorry to be the one to tell you, but teens watch significantly more porn and more-hard-core porn than their same-sex parent. Boys ages 14 to 17 have been found to be at least three times as likely as their fathers to have seen such things as double penetration, gang bangs and facial ejaculation. The differential between girls and their mothers was even higher.

Now consider that a nationally representative study released this year found that among 18-to-24-year-olds, pornography was cited as the source of the “most helpful information about how to have sex” — edging out talking to your partner.

It would seem a little education is indeed in order.

Pornography use is one of the issues teens most wanted to discuss in our conversations, and since I was often the first adult they felt they could talk to candidly about it, they had questions. They wanted to know how real, in fact, what they were seeing was and whether the behavior depicted in video clips — or some version of it — would be expected of them someday. Boys often asked about dose: How much was too much? They wanted to know whether their porn habits would affect their predilections, their desires, their performance, their satisfaction with a partner. Regarding that last concern, the answer may be yes: Frequent porn users (those who watch it once a month or more, a metric that made boys I met either burst out laughing or blanch) may be less happy than others with real-life sex.

“Porn literacy” may sound salacious, and it certainly makes for sensationalist headlines. But like other media literacy courses (including those aimed at reducing teen use of tobacco, drugs and alcohol or offsetting damaging messages about body image), when they’re done right, the aim is to reduce risk, help identify and question the incessant messages that bombard teens, encourage them to hone their values and give them more agency over their experience.

Emily Rothman, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University and the author of the upcoming book “Pornography and Public Health” (for which I provided a jacket quote), found that after taking a nonjudgmental, science-based course that she developed with colleagues, teens were less likely to believe that sexually explicit media was realistic, an easy way to make money or a viable form of sex education. They also better understood the legal implications of sending nudes when underage. And they weren’t more likely to watch porn — that is, just as comprehensive sex education does not prompt sexual activity (in fact, quite the opposite), talking about porn does not appear to motivate teens to seek it out

Adults who balk at such lessons often declare that children’s “innocence” is at stake, but one has to ask who is ultimately protected — and who is harmed — when we censor open discussion of healthy sexuality, bodily autonomy, pornography, sexual harassment and assault. Consider that a week after the Columbia Prep ruckus, parents at the Dalton School, where the same educator was the director of health and wellness, also took to The New York Post to protest an evidence-backed curriculum for first graders that suggested they should have a say in who hugs them and used anatomically correct names for body parts — crucial to preventing abuse.

And earlier in the school year, parents at Greenwich High School in Connecticut petitioned to have an adaptation from my book on boys, sexuality and masculinity removed from the 10th-grade curriculum, claiming it was too graphic. Among other things, I’d quoted the precise sexually degrading language that groups of male high school and college students used to describe their female classmates. Different ostriches, same sand.

Dr. Rothman’s porn literacy curriculum doesn’t include explicit images, though the language can sometimes be direct. Its larger mission is to build healthy relationship skills. “Teens need information about how what mainstream porn shows is not necessarily what is going to work in their sexual and dating relationships,” she told me. “It’s not a how-to manual. So we get them to be more skeptical of what they’re seeing and not accept it at face value.” Without that counterbalance, she added, they may develop expectations about sex that are, at the very least, unhelpful and often hazardous.

Honestly? I’d rather we didn’t have to talk to kids about explicit media, and I wish pornography weren’t, for so many, their first encounter with human sexuality, that it didn’t arrive so early to hijack their imaginations with its proscribed fantasies. But given all that, parents and educators need to work together to help kids develop a critical stance — to help them understand what’s untrue and what’s missing from those images — to ensure that, here in the real world, they proceed with consent, mutual respect and authentic intimacy. Awkward as it may be, we can no longer afford the luxury, or the false comfort, of silence.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

By Tracy Clelland

The hugely successful “Keep It Real Online” video aimed at getting parents to talk to their children about pornography has gone viral and been praised around the world. But my 16-year-old son asked an interesting question when he looked at the campaign website:

Why does it say talk “to” your child? Shouldn’t it be “with”?

This is why I always ask his opinion about how he makes sense of the world. As a sexuality educator for over 30 years, a university lecturer and mother of two teenage sons, it has been my privilege to listen to people’s stories of sexuality and the impact on their lives.

Some have been uplifting and some are simply heartbreaking. Either way, young people and adults generally want to reflect on the complicated, messy and often irrational nature of sex and relationships. They also want to talk about joy, pleasure, intimacy and love.

Young people want better sex and relationship education

So any discussion of pornography inevitably leads to a broader conversation – much like the one we imagine is about to take place in that viral video.

In case you haven’t watched it, two naked porn actors arrive at an ordinary home to talk to a boy who has been watching them online. The mother who answers the door is understandably surprised and a little lost for words. But in the end she tells her son they need to talk about the difference between the online and real worlds.

The video provides an excellent starting point for parents and children to have conversations about our understanding of sex, relationships and gender.

As the research continues to show, young people want better sexuality education from the adults in their lives. But what does better sexuality education look, sound and feel like to young people?

Before parents can talk with their children, they first need to reflect on how ideas about pornography are in turn shaped by broader socio-cultural values and attitudes towards young people, sex, relationships and the digital world.

Too often, parents’ anxieties about the loss of childhood innocence make them feel they need to be the expert who talks to their child about the dangers of pornography.

You might define this as a fear-based approach, and it can lead to young people having feelings of shame and guilt for being curious about sex. Very often this can be the end of the conversation.

Listening rather than explaining

It’s not easy, but parents should try not to let their own worries about pornography override their capacity to talk with, rather than to, their children about all aspects of sexuality. By doing so they will also help young people explore and develop their own critical thinking and media literacy.

My current research explores how 56 New Zealand parents understand and experience sexuality education with their children. Embarrassment and feeling unprepared continue to make it difficult for parents and young people to talk about sex, let alone porn.

If they do talk about pornography, we’re finding it is challenging to shift from being the parent who knows and explains to the one who asks open questions, listens and invites their child to share their world view.

But the fact is, as extensive research from the New Zealand Classification Office has shown, many young people have already seen pornography. The top two reasons they give are curiosity and that they found it by accident.

As adults and parents we need to remember that young people are sexual beings who are curious about sex. They often report that parental messaging doesn’t match their own feelings and experiences.

Letting young people lead the conversation

For those reasons, a conversation about pornography as a social, cultural, personal and highly complex issue can be a way into a deeper discussion.

From there we can explore what it means to navigate the bumpy roads of sex and relationships. Sexuality education by parents sometimes tries to smooth out those bumps with information and advice rather than shared discussion. Yet it’s through the emotional wrestle with social and cultural expectations that our sexual selves develop.

We need to allow young people to narrate their own lived experiences. At the same time, we should foster their ability to critique the wider moral landscapes in which they live.

Embrace sexuality as messy, complex, irrational, emotional and part of being human. Don’t look for the “right” answers from young people. Allow them to explore the emotional complexity and joy of sexuality. In this way, online access to pornography becomes just another intersection on their sexuality journey.

That is the beauty of the “Keep It Real Online” video – it’s humour allows us to ask young people open-ended questions. What should adults really be saying to young people? What do they think about pornography? What do they think constitutes a healthy relationship? Who is advantaged and disadvantaged by the porn industry?

Most of all, pause, breathe, don’t judge. Young people are far more insightful than adults sometimes give them credit. They are constantly watching, learning and working out how society expects them to behave.

Sometimes parents need to be open – but keep their mouths shut!

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!