“The Talk” w/ Peggy Orenstein

been incredible. From Janette Freeman who helped deal with teenagers and addiction, Harold Koppowitz an anxiety in our teens, which during a pandemic has been off the charts, Jessica Leahy, Stephen Russell who talked about growing a trans or gay teenager in a pandemic, Logan Powell looking at the landscape of applying to college in a pandemic, my friend Brooke Shields who came on to talk about the sexualization of girls in social media, and so many other amazing guests.

I thank you all so much, and now onto our final topic for the season. I want to discuss positive sexuality for girls and boys today because we're trying to grow teenagers in a pandemic today. I'm very excited because I have read her books and she has been an integral part of my parenting technique. Peggy Orenstein is here. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Boys and Sex, Girls and Sex Flux and Schoolgirls.

She is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine. Peggy has also been published in New York, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and other publications. Her Ted Talk has received over five million views. She lives in northern California with her husband and daughter. It's a lot of accomplishments, Peggy. I've accomplished taking it during it's weird because during COVID like all that just sort of dissipates, right, Yeah, Yeah,

We're just I'm just sitting in my house. I know, I know, I know, in the world just seems to be going by. Um. I have two teenage daughters, so there's a lot to discuss. But also I grew up um never talking about sex in my family, never talking about sex. In fact, when I say the word masturbation, I still get a little pinch to my stomach, like that's something bad's going to happen to me, so, UM, I have a lot of questions for myself so I can redo my own childhood sexually, but also for all

the girls and boys out there. And I want to start almost chronologically, which is the early body messaging, particularly with girls. So as babies we name boys, genn tell you, but not girls. Now why is that? That's in research? That's what they find with UM parents that we tend to you know, at least you'll say here's your pep. You'll say like something. UM, we do such a number on girls, and we perform a kind of you know, in America psychological clitterodacty man our girls. We just are

silent about UM sex and pleasure for them. So that starts early on when we don't name their body parts. And then they go into you know, around fifth grade or something. They have puberty education, right, and they learned that UM boys have erections and ejaculations and girls have periods and unwanted pregnancy, which is not the same UM. And they see that, you know, that diagram looks kind of like a Georgio o'keith painting or something like a

steers head right of the internal women's reproductive system. And then it grays out between the legs. So we never

say volva. We never say clitterists. You know, no surprise, god never, never, I'm going to say the M word now, Ali, Fewer than half of girls fourteen to sevent have masturbated even once, and then they go into a partnered experience and somehow we believe that they will magically think that sex is about them, that they will magically know how to express their wants, their needs, their desires, their limits.

We really set girls up at best for a reduced experience in pleasure and at worst for accepting unwanted behavior or being subject to assault harassment. So wow, okay, so let me let me ask you this. So do you think that parents shouldn't have let's say, they don't say vagina to a toddler, but they call it something else. I mean, we had a babysitter and she called my daughter's vaginas peck peck, So it was always like peck peck.

Did you watch your peck peck um? And so do you think that parents should initially always call penis and vagina um even at a young age, or are you allowed to have a nickname but then you need to kind of you know, get rid of it and start calling it by a clinical label. You know, all the research and best practices are that we should use the names, like you would not use some weird old name for somebody's elbow or their knee or something. You know, it

seems specific to this body part. And also ali, um, i'd say vulva, kind of like if you only named boys testicles and didn't name their penis. It's a weird thing to do. So um, I think it's hard for us to say the word, you know, as hard as it is to say vagina. It feels it's like in the masturbation camp to say volva. But um, we really

should try like naming these things. And I mean I do remember having a toddler who would walk around town yelling vagin avagin avagina, and I had to do a certain amount of like, you know, oh, that's her name, right, that's her name. Um, but you know it's it's it's better. And similarly, when we talk about I mean, I think about things like a masturbation right to you brought up

this whole episode about masturbation. Why not good for the girls, good for the boys, good for everybody in between, and beyond when I wasn't setting in a puberty education class at one point the teacher had the diagram of the external genitalia of the volva, and what she said was, this is the clearterest it's for making good feelings. Wow, that was enough, Like you don't have to go into, you know, super big detail to a ten year old.

Why do we think of female pleasure as so taboo and like something that we shouldn't tell girls about, that they shouldn't know about, that boys shouldn't know about or should only learn. I mean they what's so what do they learned? They learned porn? But um, that's where they that's where they're learning what female pleasure is. And you know that's not optimal. Um doesn't it start with Barbie?

I mean Barbie is you know, it was the first thing I played with, and she had she was speckled ship, she had no genitalia and by the way, looks like a porn star. Yeah. Well she based on a sex doll. Actually, the um woman who created Barbie based her on a German sex doll. I know, weird things. I love that, and I think the sex doyle's name was Lily. I even know that they well they changed the name for patent and reasons. Um. But it's interesting because I didn't

want to give my girls Barbies for that reason. And also a few years ago I had written a paper on anal bleaching, and a lot of the anal bleaching stemmed from obviously pornography, and that stemmed from Barbie, Like don't we don't want to see anything. We don't want to see hair. Everything has to be pink and plastic.

And and I know that at one point you had talked about, you know, the image of Barbie and the image of girls not having any genitalia is what leads to laby a plastic right, Yeah, I mean, I mean to be fair, Barbie now is not very popular, but um, but that kind of dollar yeah, laby a plast He has been the fastest growing form of plastic surgery um among women and particularly actually among young women. Um. And that is when they cut off the folds of the

labia to make them less prominent. And there's nothing about it that is in fact, it may impede pleasure, It may um numb um the area permanently. And how do they know to do this surgery? What is it? What kind of messaging are they getting that they that's what they see in pornography. And and then on top of that, the style that is asked for the most is called the barbie And yeah, I mean what does that mean somebody? You know? It means it's fused and and the same

on a much you know, lower scale. Um. The kind of trend to remove all pubic hare, which too older you know women of a certain age, feels kind of often like, um, you're trying to make them look like a child, which is so ikey to me. Yeah, but two young women and girls, you know, the removal of the pubic hare or the uh, the laby of plasty is all about, um, opening the most intimate part of your body to the idea of public scrutiny and to being what's important about it is how it looks to

other people, not how it feels to you. Yeah, exactly. Um. It's so when I talked to my daughter's about masturbation, um, and again, I've had very light conversations about it because I'm still trying to get comfortable with it. Because the one time I asked my mother about masturbation, we were I was twenty one and we were decorating the Christmas tree, and I said, how came we never talked about masturbation?

And a Christmas ornament dropped to the floor, and for like two minutes we all we heard was the role of the ornament down the wood floor. And then she said, well, it's self indulgent. Oh wow. So that was my messaging. And obviously I don't want to have that messaging with my daughters, but I still find it hard to bring up because they and embarrassed too. So how do how do you even approach it? How do you do you say to them, you know, have you given yourself pleasure?

Like without them going like, oh my gosh, shut up, get out of my room. Um, well, and they might, you know. And and I'll tell you, um, speaking as somebody who had very opposite messaging as a kid. Uh, my mother. My mother had this deep fear so I'm Jewish speaking of Christmas ornaments. Um. And she got it in her head that, um, gentile women don't like sex. She's kind of right, She just got it in her head.

And she was so worried that I would absorb that message, um, that she would constantly tell me how great her sex life was with my dad. Um and like, really, I did not want to hear that. I mean, she didn't go into the graphic detail or anything. She just would say, you know, it's really important to enjoy sex. Okay, this is this is really important that you're saying this, because I say that to my daughters and they see it. With my husband, we are, you know, after twenty years,

it's still hot for each other. And there have been times when I have gone on TV shows and stuff where I've written in my books about the fact that my husband and I are still high for each other and like people would give me a really hard time about it, like I shouldn't talk about sex. And I remember I was about to go out do Good Morning America and Chris Rock said to me, he was like, let me tell you something, Ali. What you're doing is great.

You're going out there and you're saying I'm married and I have great sex with my husband. You know, it's kind of time for married couples to get a little you know, good publicity in terms of that. Um so, so in other words, with my kids, they know that and they see that, and so that is one area I feel pretty healthy about. But it's the the idea of my daughter's being able to Aran's pleasure to understand it. Um. As they go into dating and then having relationships and everything,

I want them to be uh. I wanted to be mutual. I wanted to be satisfying for them. I mean, I don't know that you have to be necessarily explicit about masturbation if that makes you uncomfortable, but saying, you know, it's really important that you understand your own body, um before you interact with another person. The best way to have a good experience is to, um, have a sense of your own body. And I would say, honestly, I really wrote Girls in Sex not just for parents, and

and it's not read just for by parents. It's read by girls themselves. And I get and the Ted Talk too. I get so many emails, um from teenage girls and college age girls all around the world who have watched that Ted talk UM or listen to an interview, and it's been revelatory for them in a way that every single time surprises me because I keep thinking, oh, you know, this must be all fixed by now right. I mean, everybody understands all this stuff by now right. I mean,

like every time I can email. I just think, wow, Wow, you too grew up with you know, with zero information. And here's the thing, Ellie, is that it's not like

they're not getting information. They are bombarded by media, you know, in an unprecedented way, and that media is highly sexualized and a lot of times, you know, there's a few things that are really great, like shows like Big Mouth or sex education, UM, but so much of it is so toxic, um and just you know, gives the messages that are so distorted and wrong that if you're not getting in there, um talking to them in this day and age, you're kind of throwing them to the wolves.

I mean, do you think that sort of mainstream media is as destructive as pornography to our teenagers? You know, I really do, and I talk a lot about porn and I think it's important to um. That is, you know, demonstrably where young people are turning for sex education now, which is disturbing. Well, porn Hub, I mean porn hub, the YouTube of at the first the front page, and and think this is how they're learning about sex and is that the message you want them to get? And

how do you need to correct for that? And um, what has changed about pornography and parents need to understand this too. Is porn Hub dropped the paywall. It used to be that all hardcore porn was behind a paywall, and now it's completely free, completely accessible, completely anonymous. UM. And that was the game changer. And this generation of kids are guinea pigs around that. So Peggy, wait, I'm asking you this because I don't know. I really don't know.

When you go on porn hub, you don't have to pay to see this stuff. It's free. No, that's why kids can do it. Otherwise I have to have a credit card, so everything is free. That was what changed everything. Two seven was the dividing line. UM. So you know, anything you can think of and a lot of things that you can't, and nobody wants to think of. Um at at the touch of a mouse, everything is there.

What I hear from girls a lot is the way that that behavior does seep into the bedroom, whether it's you know, sticking fingers in the mouth or um, you know, hands around the throat or various things UM jackhammer, intercourse, you know, as as somehow the way you're supposed to do it. UM. What girls will say they learn from porn is UM self presentation and um. Also it encourages the kind of spectator ing it's called in in sex where girls, um, it's like you're floating above the experience

and watching yourself from the outside. And I remember talking to a girl who was saying, you know, I think about when I'm having it. It's fine when I'm kissing, and then there's like a certain point where it flips and I'm thinking, you know, how did she have her arm? Um? What would she do with this? And She's like, I don't even know who this she is that I'm thinking about, but I think it's a woman from porn, you know. Um. And the other thing girls will say is that they

use it to see what guys want. Um. And you know, that's a whole different thing. So as a teaching tool, as a teaching tool against sex education, So you have the whole porn thing, and obviously we could talk about that for the next hour, but you know, kids also talk about mainstream media and it's impact, and mainstream media has been heavily influenced by pornography. At this point, Um, it's more and more explicit to grab eyeballs, right, that's

a great way to grab eyeballs. UM, whether you're talking about you know, Netflix or UM YouTube or Instagram or UM music. I remember a voice saying to me that he thought music had a big influence on how guys learned to treat girls. Because when you're I can cuss in your podcast, right, yes, UM. You know you're driving around your car all day with your friends and you're hearing funk that bitch and leave her four or five,

ten times UM in a day. You know, it starts to affect your mindset, and especially when you're hearing too

like tap it, hit it, fuck it, throw it. You know it's and we just went to a whole you know, we've been having this whole national discussion, or at least some of us have, about the impact of media messaging on our beliefs and thoughts and the way we see the world and our politics and how we vote, and how easy it is for things that are untrue, that are fake, that are distorted UM to become our truths

with with repetition. Even if you start out not believing that UM media affects our beliefs and our thoughts and our behaviors, even when we think it doesn't. I think, you know, the tsunami of media. We're we're always up against it as parents and trying to find ways to help our kids have critical thinking. Look, you know good

media literacy UM and really understand things. And when we don't say a word about pornography or about misogyny in mainstream media or sex in mainstream media, you're not saying anything right because you're what embarrassed. We're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back. Welcome back with more.

Go ask Alli. You know my other question is I did a I did a podcast and we were talking about UM, which I'm a sort of big participant in helping kids with mental health issues, and we were talking about pornography and I said, you know, my children haven't asked me about pornography or anything, but I would. I would actually sit down with them and I would explain to them, you know, this is not a natural act. What you're seeing right now is a performance. And this

I mean, maybe go through it with them. But maybe that's the wrong thing, because then all of a sudden, you know, I saw I was in you know, us Weekly saying Ali Wentworth watches porn with her children. But I was I was trying to actually figure out in time. Is that helpful? I mean, I don't know that I would sit down. I mean, if you have that relationship with your kids, great, but I think most people aren't able to do that. You know what I did as

a parent was right. UM. A chapter in Boys, Boys and Sex has a lot more about pornography than Girls and Sex did UM. And there's a whole chapter in there that talks about what is true and what is not true about pornography and the research around pornography and voice thoughts about pornography and allows them to reflect UM and read it without feeling like they're being shamed or blamed.

And I think the first thing is to say it is too for children, adolescence, whatever, to understand that curiosity about sex is normal, that masturbation again UM is crucial

and great for everybody, regardless of gender. So if you can't do that, UM, at least you can provide some resources, you know, or at least maybe there's another person, an aunt or an uncle or a cousin or an older sibling or something that you can you know, ask to have that conversation, these conversations with your child, or you can UM make sure that you have resources around the house.

There's like, um, uh, well, one great book for parents I think is Safia's a Loom This book and I know you're not gonna remember her name, but you'll remember the title is called Sex, Teens and Everything in Between. And I think that's a great book to help with sort of a more scripted way or ideas on how

to talk to your child about all these issues. Um. The other book I always think is really great to have for your adolescent is Heather Corina's book UM I always forget to tell it's s e X something like an All you Need Manual to get you through your teens in twenties or something like that. She's the she's the person who does the website Scarlet teen, which is also very good and really helpful for young people to know about. I think everybody should read this. There's one

essay UM called an a Modest Proposal. Also if I Heather Corina, who who does Scarlet teen, and it is about um first intercourse, and I can't I sort of can't go through the whole thing, but she lays out the scenario that sounds like what most of us would think of would be a positive first time for a girl and then she breaks down why it's not good enough?

Um And I think that in that conversation, in that essay, it brings up so many questions that would start conversation or start a girl thinking about what, you know, what she can have, what she should have, what she should be able to ask for. And so I think there's there is an aspect, even if you're not willing to or don't know how, or to embarrass or whatever, to have the conversations at the very least, UM, you need to provide your child with um a countra narrative somehow.

So now I'm gonna swing the pendulum from pornography to virginity. How do we change the optics of virginity? I I will say to my kids, you know, your virginity is

not something that you give to a boy. This is not a gift for him, um And and I hammer that in their heads because it's just a thorn in my side when people say, oh, you know how great she gave her virginity too, Timmy and I just I don't want that Timmy took it or that Timmy took it so um, that danged Timmy kind of Timmy dickted to porn that, Timmy, So, how do we have a conversation with their girls about virginity and take out these kind of old fashioned ways of saying it. Virginity is

a social construct. Um uh so, I mean I think that's true, though, And why do we even define it the way we define it. Why is the virginity defined as penis vagina intercourse? Why do we think that that is the ultimate thing, because you know, for the one thing it's it's not going to you know, feel that good to most girls. Um. By the way, Peggy, should we tell girls that there are ways to make it to help you know that they're like lube is your

best friend kind of thing. Being actually ready as a you know, knowing your body and knowing when your body is aroused and receptive is going to make it easier. Um, because a lot of times that's not the case when they when they're having intercourse for the first time. Um. So not only that it's going to hurt, but that it doesn't necessarily have to. Um, it's helpful. But I think the bigger conversation is we think of that as

this line in the sand intercourse between childhood and adulthood. UM, and that is ends up being such a disappointing thing for for girls, right, Like it's something that you know, usually doesn't feel like good for them. Um, it's kind of like something they want to get over with. Right. It's the way that we constructed so that it's this race to the goal and that's the goal is so um unfair and inappropriate for most young women. So one

thing I thought a lot about was UM. I thought a lot about that when I interviewed gay girls in particular, UM. And I remember talking to one of the girls and she UM, had only had sex with other girls, And I said, so, how did you know anywhere to virgin anymore? And she kind of laughed and she said, you know, I had that question too, And so I googled it and at least at the time, Google did not have

a very good answer for her. Um, they should get on that, and uh so she she kind of she said, well, so for a while I thought was the first time somebody put their hands in my pants? But then I decided that wasn't it. And she thought about it. She finally said, you know what I decided it was. I decided I wasn't a virgin anymore. The first time I had an orgasm with another person. Oh that's interesting, right,

Like what if that was the definition. I mean, it's not that I want to put Sometimes girls can feel intense pressure to be orgasmic with partners, and that shouldn't be either. But but it shifts the idea a little bit too. Sex as a pool of experiences. Um, that that is about sensuality and intimacy and pleasure and orgasm and all these other things, not just about somebody sticking to penis into her vagina and then suddenly you're a

changed human being. We're still kind of living by this incredibly ancient idea of you know, a man demanding his wife be a virgin and be right, and then somehow that is what is gonna um make a woman, you know, like purity and all these So it's really, um, it's an offensive concept, hope or girls who think, oh i'll have a sex, yeah, and then that makes those things

not sex. I mean, there's a couple of things that first of all, I was just going to finish that thought was that I think that we should think in terms of virginity. S if we're gonna think, you know, for you know, like things like having different experiences and like all the things being sort of waited differently than

we wait them now. And one of the issues is that that I found with with oral sex in particular, was that it had become it was they that kids didn't think of it as sex, and so the problem was and and it's it's actually the biggest change in American sexual behavior, UM is the eyes of oral sex and that it has become less intimate than intercourse. Whereas until really, um that changed in the nineties, so sort

of before then it was considered more intimate than intercourse. UM. So girls in particular would talk to me about it and they would say, oh, it's no big deal. Like it was like they all read the same Instagram post or something. You know, it's no big deal. Um. But only when it was girls giving oral sex to boys. UM. The other way was a big deal. So they were using blow jobs as a way to um, you know, improve a relationship, to satisfy a guy, to um gain status.

I started saying to girls, what if you know, what if every time you were alone with a guy he told you to get him a glass of water from the kitchen, but he never got you a glass of water. You know, you would never stand for that, and that's called a marriage right, And they said, you know when you put it that way, Um, it was like, why wouldn't you put it that way? Why would you be more willing to perform a non reciprocal sex act and get somebody a glass of water from the kitchen? You know.

So when we allow all these other things to be not sex, um, it opens the door not only to that sort of you know, distorted and unreciprocal thinking, but to risky behavior and to disrespect. It's interesting My um now eighteen year old daughter years ago came home from school and she said to me, um, Mom, can we talk about a blow job? And I thought, oh, I'm gonna have to explain it to her. Um. And I was about to explain it, you know, what it was and the mechanics of it, and she said I don't

get it. And I said, well what you have to do? And you know, I all but took out a banana and she said, UM, no, I don't get it. What's in it for her? And I said what do you mean? And she said, well, it's something that you know a girl or a boy would do it to a boy, But then how is it reciprocated? And I thought I never thought that way as a teenager. Yeah, it was. It was fascinating and encouraging, at least for me, it

was excellent. Yeah, you talk about intimate justice in your work, Explain what you mean by That's a phrase that was coined by Sarah mcwelland, who is a psychology professor at University of Michigan. And it's the idea that, UM, sex has political implications as well as personal implications. UM Just like right, who does the dishes in your house? Right? And or or who's vacuating the rubber, who's doing the childcare?

All those things are political as well as personal, and just like those things, it brings up issues of economic inequality and violence and mental health and physical well being. UM. So in intimate justice, McLean says, UM, we ask questions like who um is allowed to have a sexual experience, who's the primary beneficiary of that experience? Um? How does each partner define good enough, who's allowed to have pleasure? All of those things? Those I think I think that's

gonna be really tricky questions for adult women to answer. Frankly, UM, but I felt like when I was talking to girls in particular, that you know, I just kept coming back to this idea that I didn't want their early sexual experiences to be something that they had to get over. M Oh, yes, absolutely. Um. In an interview with seventy women between fifteen and twenty, you found that the young women realized that they were expected to please their sexual partners,

but did not expect it to be reciprocated. Yeah, that's a lot and and that's and that's true. Um, that's true in research that you know, women are more likely than young men to measure their satisfaction by the yardstick of their partner's pleasure. So they'll say, um, if you know, if he's satisfied, that I'm satisfied. This is a straight women in particular. Um, and there's a really interesting difference

with women who have sex with other women. Uh. Men, by contrast, straight men and gay men probably do are more likely to measure their um sexual satisfaction by their own orgasm. So and and especially in you know, for young people right now when they're in college in a sort of more hook up culture type of situation. UM, that is not a culture that values female pleasure and female orgasm. So there and and you know, going back to what we were talking about before, we don't name

any of these things. We don't tell our daughters that they UM are capable of orgasm and pleasure. We expect them to find out in some kind of I don't know way, UM, So it's not surprising that they don't

feel that. And it's not only an issue frankly, of UM sexual equality, it's also a safety issue because the only UM program that has been found to reduce rates of assault among college girls, it's this program in Canada, and it has been shown to reduce assault rates among girls by encouraging refusal skills and practicing and UM a kind of awareness. And they found that when they pair all of that with sex positive sex AD that the

rates of a cell go down even further. The reason is because assault often starts with a kind of low level verbal coercion, and when girls are more aware of their own bodies and their own needs and wants and limits, they're more likely to see that more quickly and to potentially be able to UM get out of there. And so rather than saying, oh, well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, or maybe it's just me or you know,

maybe you know I should this is what people do. Um, they're more likely to be able to say, um, I don't want that, and and to get out. And you know, again it's not young women's fault if they can't do that or don't do that, but we do want them to have every tool at their disposal if possible, to help keep them safe. And I talked about this in Girls and Sex um when they would talk to college women and say, you know, can you tell a guy no? Uh? And they would say, well, yeah, I don't have a

problem with that. But then they would put them in a kind of simulated experience with an actor, and even at really low level stuff like somebody asking badgering them for their phone number, they would just collapse. They couldn't do it. Um. And and when it got to a more um aggressive situation they had they had a very very hard time because girls are so socialized to be polite, even girls who are assertive and powerful and educated. I mean, we know it, right, we're adult women. We know that

it's true. You know. One thing that um uh I read was that saying telling your daughter, you know, honey, you don't have to stay in a conversation with a guy, just to be polite. That's a big thing to say to a girl, just that, you know, just letting them know. You don't have to stay in that converse. You don't have to make that person feel good, you don't have to take care of that man's feelings. You can walk away, really practicing the muscle of saying no, I don't want

to say that. If you don't get out of there, that that's on you, and in no way is it. But um, but if it's possible, gee, I would want my child to be able to recognize and get out of a potentially dangerous situation well before it escalates, or even I mean even in a non dangerous situation, you know, just the idea that. And I'll speak for myself. I think I was programmed young to just facilitate pleasure to

the other person. So yeah, if I if I actually had to listen to my body, which at that age I had no idea how to do, I wouldn't even know if I wanted to, you know, make out with this boy or not, because I was so shut down. So I mean, I think, you know, obviously the worst case scenario is assault, but but even in an okay scenario, feel your body? Does this even interest you? Right? And to me it was so important. All the consent stuff

obviously is crucial. But that's where our conversation these days in the modern era UM is stopping. It used to be that we would talk about birth control and pregnancy, pregnancy and disease protection, and UM think that we've done our job. Now we've added consent, and we think that we've done our job. But all of that is about risk and danger, and we are not doing the other part of the job, which is what happens after yes.

You know, how do we how do we help our daughters to be able to advocate for themselves UM in a sexual situation when they do say yes, so that it's not they're not just looking at it from the perspective of it's about the other person's pleasure. And one thing I will say about that though I I said earlier that UM that girls who have UM sexual encounters with other girls things left. UH. In those situations, UM,

girls continue to focus their attention on their partner. That doesn't change, But the what shifts is that both people are doing it. So UM. The orgasm gap that you see between heterosexual men and heterosexual women. Disappears and women climax at the exact same rate as heterosexual men. My god, I know think I'm about to leave my husband for enough, right I know? Now A quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go ask Gali. Let's get back to

the discussion. I love the fact that you when you went and spoke to so many boys for your book on boys, that they were dying to talk, and they were dying to open up because you know, we classically thank boys are just going to go in their room and shut the door and we don't have to deal with them because there you know, I I initially really resisted doing that book. Um you know, readers and girls and boys and my editors were like, do a boy booked boy? And It's like, I don't think so. The

boys aren't going to talk to me. I don't want to do with that. But they totally did. And I think in some ways it was an advantage to be a woman because they if they're going to open up, they're more likely to open up to a woman. What

surprised you the most? That actually surprised me the most, to be honest, it surprised me how willing they were to talk and how much they had to say UM and how and what what good narrators they could be of their own UM lives and and one of the surprises to was the non consensual stuff with guys and UM that came up a number of times again before I could really hear it, and I ended up writting a chapter about it around the story of one boy in particular, UM, who had been drunk at a party.

He was not really himself religious, but he came from a religious family, so I think that was part of it for him, but not all of it, because other boys didn't say that UM, and he UM was really drunk, and this girl UH kind of led him into a bathroom, I think, and had intercourse with him. And he kind of only has hazy memories of it. But he woke up the next day and thought, wait, what happened? And he texted her and said, did we have sex? And she said yeah, And he said I did not want

to do that. I did not consent to that. He had never had intercourse and that wasn't what he wanted. And she said, you know, there's no such thing as a guy who doesn't want to have sex. And and he really spiraled in exactly the same way that girls spiral in those situations. Um. And he was you know, he was not um stereotypically like emotive boy or anything. And he had a really hard time. And and I actually ended up writing that chapter one as a as

an article for New York magazine. And um, and I got all these emails from boys saying it happened, they had these experiences. Yeah, and and they didn't know how to understand, like sometimes it was confusing. Usually it wasn't that troubling to them. I mean a lot of times when I talked to boys and I'd say, you know, you have you had unwanted you know, unwanted experience, usually they would say like it was kind of funny, or they just kind of brushed it off, so it didn't

really affect them for the most part in the same way. Um. But I think that we have to recognize that it goes both ways, because both ways, and that that this idea that boys aren't allowed to say no, who aren't able to say no, is unfair to them and robs them of agency. And you know, and that's enough. But in addition, to that. How can somebody who isn't allowed

to say no really hear no from somebody else. Yeah, and also, uh, you know when I think about sort of boys dealing with consent on this other side, you know, and you you do hear the with girls as well, but particularly if he had an arract action, that immediately says to people, well, you were into it. You know. It's like it's like a girl who's raped and has an orgasm. You know, it's it's well, you have you had an erection and you had sex with her, So

what are you talking about? I mean, I can see that being a very complicated thing just because of you know, the optics of it all, you know what I mean. And erections are not consent and orgasm is not correct you know that that's um, that's just the body like that's just a physiological response, and it's you know, you can't you can lubricate, Yeah, during an assault. You can have an orgasm during an assault. You can get an erection when you know, to something, you can get a

direction in the middle of a math class. You didn't want to get that erection. You're not turned on, you know, it just like happened um, And actually I mean not to totally circle back to porn all the time, but I think it's actually an important you know, one important lesson that I learned, um about just the mechanics of how our bodies work is that there is a big gap between what physical response and turned on feelings. Emily Nagaski,

who does work in this area, likens it. Tom. If you're tickled by somebody you don't like like, you might laugh, right, but it doesn't mean you're enjoying yourself. So yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's a really actually a great metaphor because everybody understands that, right, Yeah, everybody said that happen. That's just the body being the body. We're having a physiological response of laughing, even though you want to punch

that person in the face. Exactly when talking to adolescent boys and girls, do adolescent boys care if the girl I'm talking about heterosexual, If the girl has an orgasm or has pleasure, did you find that and be do adolyst and girls fake it again in an attempt to please her partner? Oh yeah, you know that answers, Yes, I know. I just want to hear it out loud from your mouth. Actually, what was funny was that that a fair number of boys did too. I was like,

how does that work? Um, but they did too. Yeah, well they probably can. Teenagers could probably they can, sure they can. But it's kind of another thing that kind of hadn't occurred to me. But they talked about. The boys talked about that to get out of a situation. They you know, if they just didn't want to be there. Um. And but the girls, Yeah, so it's contact specific for the most part. Um what what guys would tend to say?

And this is not universal, but you know, it's it's the it's the tendency both among the boys I talked to and in research in general, that they care in a relationship, They care about their partners pleasure very much in a relationship. In a hook up, in a one off, no, they would say, I know this sounds terrible, but I just don't care. So you know, if if you're um, that's what you know, if you're in a in a college or a high school context, that that is a

hook up culture. Um, that is not what that is there for. It is not there for female pleasure and female orgasm. I think what what? And And that was really important to me in the books to really and it's the one thing where there's a big overlap in both books is discussion of cook up culture from the girl's side and from the boys side, because and and the boys side was kind of surprising at how ambivalent they were about it. I didn't know. I didn't really

know that. But the girls, um, you know, the lack of reciprocity was pretty much presumed. It's not my job to say you should never. That's not my you know, And relationships can be toxic and abusive and stuff, so you know, there's issues with everything. But um, you know, in a hook up you're likely to get a warm body and and for girls, you know, an adrenaline rush, a war story. That's a big one. I mean, the

whole thing about the hook up. The main I think aspect of a hook up is that you're going to go back and report to your friends. That's the story I got t yep. And um, if you're a guy, you know you might get an orgasm you probably want if you go, but well, you're not going to get in a hook up is good sex. And what you're not going to get are the tools that you need in order to create either a positive, you know, a

satisfying sexual experience or emotional intimacy. So so hook up from my understanding for my daughters is it can be anything from making out to having sex, which as a parent, it's a little bit terrifying when I hear them talking the next morning and they're like, oh my god, Sally hooked up with Timmy. Amusing Timmy again that Timmy and I'm telling me he's the worst, He's a bad seed that to me, and I say that I'm trying to be cool, but I'll say, like, what do you mean

hook up? And they'll say like, oh, they hooked up, And I go, what does that mean? Right? It doesn't mean anything, and it's it's it's a totally ambiguous term. And it can mean kiss saying, it can mean growing, it can mean oral sex, of community, storce, and and it allows young people to over estimate what their peers are doing, which can lead to you know, engaging in sex that you don't want to engage in so that you can keep up with the jones this kind of thing,

or are pushing harder than you might otherwise push. So what we know in terms of research and is that in at the college level, of hookups involved intercourse, another ten to fifteen pcent involved oral sex, and the rest are kissing and groping. And that of college students never hook up once in their entire college careers, about ten to fifteen percent UM hook up more than ten times UM.

And you know, in some combination of those activities and the rest, the average number of partners over four years is seven. So it's not exactly the fall of rome. Um. What the other piece, though, is so there's the hook up, but then there's also the phrase hook up culture and hook up culture is something else and that with that, and college students will say, Um, this research is always done on college students because they're over eighteen and they're

all in one place. What that college students say that hookup culture predominates on their campuses. And what that is is the idea that physical intimacy should precede emotional intimacy rather than be its product, and that hooking up is the pathway to a relationship, um, even though most hookups

won't lead to relationships. So that that's what has really shifted, is that you know, rather than being like you know, you ask somebody out on a day you've got to coffee, you move towards seeing if you like them, and then you start getting physical with them. You first get physical and then you decide if maybe you might like them. But it's hard to do because part of the script of the hookup is that afterwards you're supposed to be

um kind of less friendly with the person. So that makes it really hard to figure out how to establish some level of emotional connection, UM, when you're sort of not supposed to do that. That's part of the part of the deal. So what's the difference between a one night stand, which was my generation, and a hook up? What's the difference? Um, nothing, necessarily, they didn't invent casual sex, but I think in your era. In my era, UM, that was typically the exception was that you would have

a meaningless one night stand. It wasn't you know that It was sort of like I remember we used to my friends and I used to call them transitional men. You would be in a relationship for a while, the relation and then you'd have like the transitional guys who you would just like, you know, sleep with for three months or something or I think usually wasn't one night but sometimes but you know that that you knew what we're kind of temporary and you were just kind of

blowing off steam and having a good time. Um, but it's just it's a different orientation that young people tend to have. Now, if you had to as a as a parent wandering in the desert of teenage sexual discovery, are there which I am, which I am as well, Um, what would you say? And I know this is like a hard question, but what are the three things the most important things that we could say to our daughters. Well,

that's tough to say. I mean I think that you know, we do have to talk to them about knowing their own bodies. Um, we have to talk to them about having a friend of mine always says they need to have a strong yes, and they need to have a strong now. And and I think that that's really wise.

And I think that we need to provide them with the resources that they need, um to reach that understanding, not only our own voices, but um books or websites or whatever they need that can help them self educate, because it is hard as a parent. Um, you know, if you're really into like you've got a young child and you want to like get them into the best sex education ever. Um, you should check out the Unitarian Church, our whole lives. That's like having a little bit of

Holland in America. They do such a fabulous job with UMA, with all kinds of sex and relationship education. They're they're like the gold standard. UM. But but for parents, I think it's starting. Those alogue said are about sex, but not you know again, not just about sex. But Americans when we talk to our kids, we tend to frame all our conversations in terms of risk and danger, and the Dutch frame them in terms of responsibility and joy.

And for me as a parent, that shift was enormous. Yes, I would have added consent to the um discussion of uh birth control and disease protection, but the other you know, the idea of joy, I don't think so. And I have really tried to you know, whether she likes it or not, and a lot of times she doesn't. Um. Make that shift. Yeah, I think that's such a great point. It really is. I feel like I've been sort of

parenting from a fear based position. We all do, right, we all do, because it's terrifying to be a parent and you have, you know, this child walking around you don't want them to be hurt, and you don't want them to you know, you want to wrap them in bubble wrap. I will say that for me, a lot of the pandemic has been about that. When I've been forced to UM because I travel a lot for work, and I have been home for a longer period than

probably since my child was a toddler. UM, and it kind of forces me to think about the conversations we've had and haven't had, and how we've had them and what that means. And um, you know, we're stuck in the house together talking all the time. So that has been some days, you know, really hard. But it's also, um, I think created some real opportunity that absolutely, I mean, if there is any upside to the pandemic, it would be something being able to have conversations we probably wouldn't

have time to have or extend them. And absolutely, um, Peggy Orenstein, this has been a pleasure. Thanks too, Yes, and um again I'm going I can't speak highly more highly of what amazing books you have. Whether you have a girl or a boy or a princess, Um, all your books are so helpful because I do find when I talk to other parents. This is the area we are most uncomfortable about about talking about about understanding UM, mostly as I started this podcast with because of our

own upbringing in the subject. So exactly, I actually don't want to perpetuate some of the same things. I want to change them for my children. So UM, thank you so much. Uh my great pleasure, Allie, and I hope to speak to you soon. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate those incredible messages Peggy offered. Know your bodies have a strong yes or no and provide resources. I hope this insight has been helpful to our listeners out there. I know this conversation has helped me. So

that's it everyone. We are wrapping up for this season and we will be going on a brief hiatus, but do not fear. I'll be back in for season two and when I return, I will be diving into our next topic, how to grow a relationship in a pandemic. See you in Thank you for listening to Go ask Ali. Remember to subscribe to go ask Alli and follow me on my social media Twitter at Ali e Wentworth in Instagram.

The Real Ali Wentworth. Go ask Ali is a production of Shonda Land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.