October 12, 2023 • 49 mins
Content Warning: this important episode contains talk about sexual situations, assault and rape. Resources for survivors are below.
It may not be anyone’s favorite topic, but taking care of business is empowering and this is the business, educating ourselves and, importantly, our kids and younger generations on how to be safe and considerate with our bodies.
It seems obvious that in order to clarify the lines of intimacy, words should be involved. But it’s probably true that many people don’t know what those words are or how or when to say them. That’s where Ellen comes in. Words are helpful always, but especially in even trickier situations of cross-cultural communications or neurodiversity.
Please share this episode with anyone and everyone you know who has sex or would like to one day.
Please rate, review, subscribe and share The Laverne Cox Show with everyone you know. You can find Laverne on Instagram and Twitter @LaverneCox and on Facebook at @LaverneCoxForReal.
As always, stay in the love.
Resources for survivors of sexual violence:
National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC)
Links of Interest:
Ellen Friedrichs Website: www.sexEdvice.com
Racial & Sexual Violence Pyramid | Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (PCAR)
Understanding the Manosphere and Andrew Tate (The Conversation)
Andrew Tate Suspected Pyramid Scheme (Vice)
Restorative Justice: Impact/Justice Project
CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey
The Body Keeps the Score (Book)
Ellen's Recommended Comedians:
Ellen’s Recommended Reading:
The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent by Dr. Betty Martin, with Robyn Dalzen
Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World by Jessica Valenti (Editor), Jaclyn Friedman (Editor)
Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity by Peggy Orenstein
Had it Coming: What’s Fair in the Age of #MeToo by Robin Doolittle
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Most men don't support sexual violence, but many men who
don't personally support sexual violence, I think they're in the minority,
But when you let them know that they're actually in
the majority, they're more likely to speak up and speak
out against it and less likely to commit hostile acts.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Laverne Cox Show. My
name is Laverne Cox. On the last season of The
Laverne Cox Show, I had the honor of interviewing Toronto Burke,
the founder of the Me Too movement, and we talked
about reclaiming what me too means, and I expressed my
(00:53):
hopes that in the post Me Too era, we could,
like you know, end a culture of sexual violence. And
we've had probably perhaps the opposite, an intense backlash against
all of that. And I think it's an important conversation
to continue to have. And that brings me to today's guest,
(01:15):
Ellen Friedrichs. Ellen Fredricks is a health educator, writer, and
mother of three. She is the author of the amazing
book Good Sexual Citizenship, How to Create a sexually Safer
World Her writing has peered in publications including The Washington Post,
Parents dot Com, Salon, and the Huffington Post. Ellen runs
(01:35):
a middle school and high school health education program and
teach us in New York's City University System. Please enjoy
my conversation with Ellen Friedrichs. This episode contains conversation that
may be difficult for some listeners. Your discretion is advised. Hello, Ellen,
Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's good to see you again. And I gosh, So
just a little background, I had Toronto Burke on the
podcast last season and the topic was reclaiming me Too.
I'd imagined after the Me Too movement that there would
be all these wonderful conversations about what constitutes consent and
(02:22):
what good sexual citizenship looks like. That has not. It
doesn't seem like that that's happened. And we're also and
I was really after the Andrew Tate. I don't know
if you're familiar with the person who following that. Yeah,
for those people who don't know, there's a there's a
social media influencer I guess named Andrew Tate who had
(02:44):
millions of young men following him, and he has now
been arrested for sex trafficking and it's been accused of
sexual assault by multiple women, and he's admitted as much
really in his work. And there's something very troubling and
misogynistic about his rhetoric that lots and lots of young
men are following. And I'm like, okay, how can we intervene? So,
(03:09):
I mean, it's I want to define good sexual citizenship.
But as an educator, as someone with children, when you
see a situation like Andrew Tate, what is your reaction
to something like that?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think I have a lot of a lot
of concerns. I think there's a backlash. I mean, you know,
post B two, every time there's social progress, we see
a backlash. We're seeing it right now in so many areas,
book bands, gender are from a care don't say gay
bills which are being introduced, attacks on sex education. So
we're seeing all of this regressive policy being thrust at us.
(03:48):
And that kind of is a perfect situation for somebody
like Andrew Tate to emerge. Right, He's preying on this
kind of collective moral panic, and that seems really appealing.
To people. So my my real kind of hope right
now is that we talk to young CIS hetero boys early,
(04:11):
that we intervene before they find somebody like Andrew Tte
that we're not talking to them. So many of our
prevention messages and our messages about consent are kind of
directed at girls. But I think what we really need
to do is bring boys into the conversation early, make
them feel invested in the conversation and in being, as
you said, good sexual citizens before they can be kind
(04:33):
of lured away by somebody really insidious and dangerous who's
telling them that all their insecurities are actually the fault
of women or the fault of the LGBT community, and
that you know, they want flash out in this way.
So I think that's one of the main thrusts that
I would like to see happening.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I've seen many conversations about a crisis that young men
are having right now. Sure seems to focus on white men,
but just straight men in general. This straight man and
there's a crisis, and they're lonely and they're unhappy, and
they don't know what to do, and they don't know
what their place is in the world. Have you seen
these conversations. Do you experience that as an educator in
(05:12):
the classroom or is it just something that may be
online and not in real life.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I mean, I certainly think that this is an issue,
but I think that that not that I don't care
about that, right And I have three kids, and I
teach students, and I care about children of all genders,
and I care about the different experiences that they are having.
And I don't know if you saw that. The CDC
just released their bi annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and
(05:37):
this is something that they started doing in the early
nineteen nineties. Every two years, they asked students in ninth
through twelfth grade about risk behaviors, sexual experiences, are using condom,
alcohol and drug use, violence at school, all these questions,
and mental health issues, sexual violence. So what just came
out was that girls and GBTQ youth of all genders
(06:02):
are experiencing massive mental health crises and horizon sexual violence.
So while I care about sins hetero boys deeply, I
also feel like that conversation is distracting from what we're
seeing on the ground, that it is other children, children
with more marginalized identities, who are the ones who are
currently in crisis and who I think need our attention
(06:24):
in a lot of ways. So, you know, kids are
doing with different struggles, but right now those numbers are staggering.
I mean, the CDC report found that one in five
girls in the last year reported experiencing an act of
sexual violence against them, and one in ten girls have
reported experiencing this in their lifetime.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What age group were we talking? White age?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
This is ninth through twelfth grade, so they ask high
school kids, and those numbers I think are up something
like thirty percent since twenty seventeen. So you're talking, you know,
what is going on? Me too? We're seeing this rise
in really, you know, in sexual violence. You know, in
(07:06):
cell culture has not been dismantled that I think kind
of those hand in hand with the andrew Tates of
the world, and there's a real problem going on.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
What is your take on the in cell phenomenon in
relationship to all this, I mean, I guess, but there's
that question. But then I'm thinking that, like, yes, we
should be concerned about folks who are survivors of sexual violence,
but then how do we keep perpetrators from being perpetrators?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Is like the thing I mean, so my goal as
an educator, as a teacher, and as a parent is
not to necessarily reach every single potential perpetrator out there,
because I just don't think I can do that. But
the people that I want to reach are the ones
who are reachable, and I think that more people are
reachable than we think. And certainly sexual violence of people
(07:53):
of all genders. Right, boys can be victims of sexual
violence as well as perpetrators. Right, girls and women can
commit acts of sexual violence. But when we look at
the data, you know there's a real disproportionate situation going
on where girls and folks of all genders or LGBTQIA
are more likely to be survivors victims and boys and
(08:15):
men more likely to be perpetrators. So I think if
we ignore the gendered experience of this, we're really not
going to undercut the systems that promote this violence. But
I also think that what we really what I want
to do as an educator is reach those boys who
maybe are on the sidelines, who maybe aren't actively perpetrating harm,
(08:35):
but who are promoting a culture or harm. Confessor, So
you know, we've done a lot of work. We know
that bystander intervention works. We know that getting people to
speak up to challenge those kind of underlying beliefs and
attitudes that I think can really grow into violence. I
think that's what I have been doing a lot of
work on in my classrooms and in my writing, is
(08:57):
to look at those attitudes, those comments, behaviors that are
so often written off as like, no big deal, just
a joke. You know, you're being so politically correct, stop
acting so woke like all of that. That when we
dismiss those what seemed like low level comments or jokes
or stereotypes, that really opens the door for escalating harm
because it's part of a process of dehumanizing people, right,
(09:20):
and then when we dehumanize someone, we just make it
easier to objectify them, to not treat them as equal
to ourselves, and then to commit acts.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Of violence and take away rights as well.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, and take away exactly. But we're staying right now.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I think the rhetoric around trans folks and LGBTQ plus
folks and state legislatures right now, with all the bills
banning gender from and care are able to pass because
we've been so successfully dehumanized as trans folks, so how
do you define good sexual citizenship? What does it mean
to you to be a good sexual citizen?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
For me? This is a term and it's used in
different contexts over the years. So it has been used
to describe the lack of rights, specifically, in some cases,
the lack of LGBTQ folks to marry partners. It's been
described as the lack of youth rights. It's been used
in the context of reproductive justice. But it's also being
(10:20):
used in the way that I'm using it in my
book and in my teaching practice to talk about this
idea that all sects that happens should be wanted by
all participants and enjoyed by all participants, and that people
should have the right to opt into a sexual situation
and to opt out. And you know, so often I
think people put their sexual desires on another person without
(10:43):
the other person's buy in or agreement. We objectify people,
we harass people, We physically put our bodies on people
in the way that we want. We have sex with
other people without any regard for whether they're enjoying it.
I mean, it can be consensual, but it can still
be a really unpleasant or lackluster at best. Experience. So
this is the idea, and I'm not talking about, you know,
(11:06):
some mind blowing multi orgasmic situation. Every time you have sex,
doesn't you like what you're doing. You're like happy enough
to be there, and it feels fine or good. We're
mind blowing. So it's opting in and opting out and
feeling safe to do that.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
All sex should be wanted by all parties involved and enjoyed. Yes,
I like that a lot, And it's so interesting how
murky that all gets for people. Many years ago, I
remember reading an article on a good men project on
this website and it was about a man who after
(11:44):
the fact realized he had committed sexual assault. And he
sort of talked about films when you know, a woman
says no but she means yes, and he had gotten
the mixed signals and then he had to flee the town.
And I was just like, okay, wow, Like so you
can have committed sexual assault and not realize that you
actually committed assault. And it was actually a moment too
(12:05):
with Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant, when he talked about his incident,
he said, after the fact that I understand now that
this woman didn't consent to sex I thought she did,
or I thought there was consent, but she hadn't. And
I wish we could talk about that without people like
(12:28):
sort of coming for cobD, like you're denegrating this man's memory.
But like that feels like a shift to me, Right,
I understand now that what I thought was consensual was
not consented to by the other person involved, Like, I
don't hear a lot of people say that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, I think, you know, here's the thing. I think.
I think he was one of the few people public
figures who actually acknowledged having committed that harm. I mean
in this kind of circuitous way, but I think most
people are in this kind of litigious you know, deflect
reflect I didn't do it, I know it was consensual.
And for him to actually say that was a departure
from I think a lot of the responses, I never
did this, it didn't happen. She's lying, right. There's a
(13:07):
big mythology about false rape claims. So in many ways,
actually that was a real different approach to I wouldn't
say complete ownership, but acknowledging the harm that was caused
to another person. And I think partly because we do
live in such a religious environment, many people really cannot
(13:28):
ever take ownership for harming other people. And that's tricky
because you know, there's a growing movement obviously in many
circles for restorative justice, and you know, I think research
has found that many more people who experienced harm would
be open to restorative justice practices where somebody who has
(13:49):
harmed them somehow repairs the harm rather than you know,
gets into the criminal justice system, in justice system, whatever
we want to call it, but we don't really make
a lot of space for them, either socially or interpersonally.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
And restorative justice actually means that you have to admit
that you did something wrong.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Right, and as soon as you do that, you're opening
up the doors for a lot of other potential consequences
for you.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
This is a good time to take a little break. Okay,
we're back. Let's break down some myths and some misconceptions.
I mean, I think around like what consent looks like
(14:37):
and when it's given and when it can be taken away,
And there was there was there was an interesting the
disease I'm sorry moment. I thought it was also an
opportunity missed to talk with a lot of nuance about consent, right, Like,
if you recall that situation, that was one of one
of the last stories I could read. I have to
stop reading all these stories because it's just too triggering.
(14:59):
But if the account is to be believed that she
had gone on a date with disease, she met him
in his apartment. They had a drink, and they went
to a nearby restaurant. They got through dinner quickly and
went back to his place, and she said that I
don't want to have sex, and he said, oh, cool,
and then ten minutes fifteen minutes later, tries to have
sex with her, and then she's like, no, I don't
want to have sex. He says cool, waits and then
(15:23):
tries again. It's almost as if she's still here, so
there's still a chance. I don't need, you know, it's like,
and then eventually they have sex and she it's just awful.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's awful. I remember that completely, so you know, obviously
I also only read the account.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yes, we don't know what happened, fully, right, we weren't there.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, but it sounds so familiar. It sounds so familiar.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
It sounds so familiar to me, and he's so familiar
to me, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And I think for so many people who read it,
we were just like, oh, yep, right, like this is
how this can go down so frequently, and does that
is that exactly the same as other instance of sexual violence. No,
but it's one form of harm that so many people
have experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And a lot of people would say that this is
not assault, right. I heard a lot of people say
that this wasn't sexual assault, this wasn't rape, and I'm
not sure I would say that it was. But I
think this is the kind of gray area we get
into where for me, as a woman and having I had,
(16:38):
I learned very early on that like I can't if
I'm in private with the man, I probably need to
be ready to have sex, right that I learned this
message in an unfavery, unfortunate way that like going upstairs
he hears sex, Like right, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Think that's a message that a lot of us get. So,
I guess, you know, you mentioned the term gray area,
and I think about this all lot. For me, I
guess I don't need to you know, whatever anybody wants
to name their situation. I think that is in one's
own space. And you know, I can't tell somebody what
crosses the line from harassment to assault to rape. But
(17:15):
I can say, like, these are awful, damaging, harmful, violent situations.
They're really upsetting. And you know, I'm not a prosecutor,
I'm not a litigator, and I'm an educator and somebody
who cares about young people and sexual safety. So I
guess I'm less worried about what we name certain incidents,
although I do think naming is important. And one thing
(17:36):
that came out of this that I was thinking about
with this we mentioned before CDC report this rise of
sexual violence, is that maybe actually post me too, there
has been more naming, and maybe that is positive. That
maybe the reason we have this thirty percent or so
rise is that we know that certain things aren't just shitty,
excuse crappy, bad experiences, but they're you know, this rises
(17:58):
to the level of violence. So I want to put
that in one container. And then also say, I can't
name other people's experiences because bad sex for somebody, an
unpleasant experience can really be sexual violence in somebody else's
understanding of those terms. But this great area is so tricky,
(18:19):
and I'll tell you what I tell my students about
that is that on the face of it, Yeah, I
don't believe a grey area really exists. Like you have consenter,
you don't, you have somebody who's really enthusiastic, and enthusiastic
again does not mean you're, like, you know, replicating the
hottest scene you've ever seen in a movie. But it's
like you're in it because you want to be there
and you like to be there and you're open to
(18:40):
what you're doing, so you have somebody's buy in or
you don't. But I also one hundred percent believe that
we live in a world that is so sex negative,
so uncomfortable talking about sex, and this makes it really
confusing for a lot of people who don't know how
to communicate about sex, so they're confused in those moments.
So it feels like it's a real gray area. You're
(19:01):
in this moment, you leave forward, you try to kiss them,
Are they kissing you back? Or are they not kissing
you back? You put your hands in their pants and
they step it up. Is that because they're turned on
or because they don't want you to do that? Right?
So it's like these confusing We're relying on body language
that means different things to different people. We're relying on
social cues which are often really really gendered. Still live
in a world where boys are often told work for
(19:23):
what you want, don't give up, you know, you just
got to keep trying, and girls are often told, don't
seem too easy, play hard to get. You want to
make him like you make him work for it. So
those outdated messages play in a lot of people's heads
when they're hooking up with someone, and that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Can mean So then with those messages that, I mean,
that's I think we still hear that right like you
guys go for get, girls play hard to get. So
where is the intervention? Then with that old, outdated how
do we undo that?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah? I will often tell students this, if you have
any doubt, just hold off. If you don't feel comfortable
checking in verbally and being like, hey, do you want
to keep going? Can touch you there? Do you want
to do this? Or do you want to take a break?
Do you want to go watch a movie? If you
don't feel comfortable in that, just stop, Just stop because
maybe the next day that personal text would be like
why did you stop? I was having so much fun?
I really wanted to hook up with you more. Then
(20:18):
you can text back and say, oh, I wasn't sure
want to go out tonight, and like, maybe you blew
your one shot to ever hook up with that person.
Maybe that experience will never happen again, But your potential
missed opportunity is so much better than a consent violation
than harming somebody if you were really in this kind
of muddled headspace where you just weren't sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And the communication piece too, how did we Because I
think about where situations where I've consented to one particular
sex sect, but I haven't consented to another one, right,
So that's the nuance of like communication, I'm not into this,
you know, you can't do that. And I'm pretty good
at this, like you know, as I've gotten older, I'm
(21:01):
fifty years old now, so I've gotten better at this
over the years, and I've gotten better at like not
putting myself in situations that could be dangerous. But then
I feel like this puts the onus on the potential survivor.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
But I think that's where we have to change our messaging.
You know, we so often and a lot of the
sex education still is really gendered, right, really binary, and
it's really saying to girls like put the brakes on,
stop the boy, tell them to stop. But I really
think we need to reframe that from day one and
tell people that if you are trying to move a
(21:35):
hookup sex act a little forward, if you're making out
and you want to go under somebody's clothes, right, if
you're having oral sex and you want to move into
a different form of penetration, like if you're the person
who's initiating or suggesting the next sex act or something
that you aren't already doing, like, then you should check in.
It doesn't need to be, you know, this lengthy conversation.
(21:55):
But I think that if people aren't comfortable, I mean,
this is easier to say to children and teenagers, but
you know, if you're not comfortable having that check in,
it's kind of assigned to me that you're not really
comfortable or ready to be doing this. And that's kind
of something I say a lot. It's harder to do
with adults who beens actually active for decades, but with
teenagers and college students, I really often say, like, if
the idea of talking to somebody about the kind of
(22:17):
sex you want to have is really off putting, like
just take a pause, maybe figure out how you can communicate.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What I would say to adults is if having a
conversation with the person about what kind of sex you
want to have or don't want to have feels uncomfortable,
they're the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, that's another part.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That's actually what I would say to adults, that if
you can't have that conversation, I mean, adults can have
trauma and regress into childhood. I mean, the body doesn't
know if a trauma happened twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So I think you recommended that book to me many
years ago. The body keeps score.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, so that in a certain situation, we're not an
adult anymore and we regress, particularly if we have an Unfortunately,
a dear friend of mine who experienced childhood sexual abuse
was in a situation recently and then that trauma. They
weren't an adult anymore. They were again the abused child
(23:11):
in a situation and it was it was it was bad.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
No, we certainly hold onto these physically, we hold onto
these memories. I think there's also another complication, which is
that you know, we live in a world with a
lot of neurodiversity, and so I do want to also
make space for people who communicate differently, and not everybody
verbally communicates or uses body language in the same way
(23:36):
or reads body language in the same way. So that's
that's another layer that it can You know, if you're
talking to somebody who just really isn't reading like really neurologically,
it is not reading signs the way that you assume
they are, or potentially comes from a culture where body
language is read completely differently, you really can have a
tricky situation where one person really thinks something is clear
(23:59):
and the person really doesn't. So I think we still
also need to do a lot of work because you know,
gender socialization certainly, but also cultural experiences and you know,
our diversity can all play into how we interpret messages
about sex and what is not okay for someone else.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I was just thinking about like the great relationship I'm
in now, the great sex I'm having now that is
consensual and hot and wonderful and I'm so grateful for
And then I think about situations in my past where
things were kind of iffy and murky, and I think that,
like what was going on for in those situations with
(24:41):
these men is that, like I was a conquest. Their
goal was to get me in bed by any means necessary,
and I wasn't a full human being, and so good
sexual citizenship I don't think can happen in the context
of us sort of objectifying someone the way in which
(25:03):
we see men talking about women in the man sphere, right,
just horrible ways and when like a person and I
think this is all genders can do this when we're
in the space of like this is a conquest that
doesn't foster an environment of I don't know. I mean,
I don't want to tell people. You know, maybe that's
hot a role player for someone, but like for me,
(25:24):
it feels like that is the difference between situations where
like even though I can sent it feeling just horrible
and awful and just yucky, and situations where I came
out feeling like embodied and seen and I had fun
and it was healthy. You know. I guess it's like
defining healthy sexuality being a good sexual citizen. What does
(25:44):
healthy sexuality look like? It's different for everybody, right, But
like for me, it's about feeling empowered in this situation.
I'm enjoying it that I've consented that I'm and I'm
feeling respected.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Like rough sex can be super hot sex. Different people
are in your step, we will play like different people
are totally into different things. But it really only works
when everybody's on the same page.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
But then it's like, do we need to talk about everything?
And I think is it hot to have a conversation
about everything you do before you go forward to and
remember being on a date with the guy and he
was just kind of like real squeamish about like even
kissing me or making any kind of move and he
was very like woke and very like progressive and it
was great, but I was just like, okay, like you know,
(26:29):
come on, you know, like let's do this.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So it's like way, But I think that you that
comes back to kind of what you were saying, like
maybe these aren't the right people, right, Not everybody gonna
have sexual chemistry with, not everybody you're gonna be able
to have these intimate physical experiences with. And I really
don't think that every sex act needs a long conversation.
But literally, if you put your hands on somebody's neck,
saying is this okay? Or literally even can I put
(26:54):
my hands there right? Or do you like this? Like
doesn't have to be a whole conversation and I think
that can go a huge way.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How does that feel? Is that hot for you?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Right? No?
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes? Stop? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
You know. It's funny because I was talking to middle
schoolers today about kissing and I showed a clip from
Frozen two where Anna and who is the sister of
the queen, and Christoph, who is the reindeer herder, are
in a moment and she gives him a present and
(27:28):
he gets so excited he says can I kiss you?
And she says, yes, you can, and then they kiss it.
It's adorable and it's cute, and I like to show
that because I juxtapose that with all these movie images
where normally man forcedly grabbing a woman and passionately kissing
her and she might resist, but then she might melt
into him.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I'm saying more more instances where women are initiating and
doing maybe in film and television.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Maybe. And I don't want to say that that's never appropriate,
but I also don't want to say that it's never
okay to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I love it when a man has asked me, is
that can I kiss you? Yeah? That's as you know,
I was a very grown woman, and then asking me
if he can kiss me, it's like it's hot. And I,
you know, I am a person who and my boyfriend
seems to love when I knowed she ate sex and
he you know what. I don't want to say too
(28:16):
much about our relationship, but we talked very openly about
a lot of things, and we talked about I was
telling him weeks ago that I was going to do
this podcast, and we kind of talked about consent and whatnot,
and he said what he does is he like, he'll
make a move and if he doesn't, if it doesn't
feel like she's responsive, he'll wait for her. He just
will stop and he'll wait to see if she makes
(28:38):
a move. If she doesn't, then that's it. And I
was like, okay, I'm like, not, man, I don't know what.
I don't know what you think about that, but like
that's worked for us.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a one size
fits all solution. I mean that sounds like, you know,
two grown ups who can figure out how to navigate this.
Plenty of people don't talk about sex and they have
perfectly consensual, intimate, positive experiences without actually using verbal conversation. Yeah,
I'm so often thinking about young people are so new
(29:08):
to this. So I feel like for young people who
are so new to this, you know, putting it out
on the table is often just the clearest way to
stay safe. But yeah, when I'm talking to my students,
it's a suggestion, right, like this might make you feel
safer and better. It's not going to work for everybody.
But if you're unsure, hold off use words, you know,
wait until you are sure. Maybe it's a sign you're
(29:29):
not comfortable, Like all right, is this really what the
other person wants to do? And am I really okay
with it? Also?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I love I love that, and I love kids talking
creating an environment work. It's okay for kids to like
communicate and say, maybe this isn't right for me, Okay,
it's that time again. We'll be right back. Let's get
(29:54):
back to it. So what is the balance between that language?
You know, language is also a place to struggle, to
quote Bellehooks as you do in your book, to understand
that language can contribute to a culture of violence, to
rape culture. But then to have those messages in a
(30:18):
way that people can hear them. I just feel like
there's but the backlash has been so effective, like this
anti woke and you're too woke, and the left specifically
wants to police everybody, and you can't say anything right now.
Comedians can't joke, you know. I was just on a
talk show the other day with the comedian. She was
just like, we can't say anything now, and so how
do we balance or how do we Maybe it's about reframing,
(30:41):
you know, the conversation to give people not to tune out.
I think it's the piece so that we can have
these conversations so that people could just be safer.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Sure. So I have another sex educator friend, Justine Fonte,
who has been sending me reels of comedians that I
actually think are really funny, entire all these issues in
a really funny way. So I know it's possible, totally right,
and I know it's out there, but I'm always nervous
about dehumanizing people in comedy or using somebody's identity as
the butt of a joke. And it's actually, you know,
(31:11):
I teach middle in high school health, right, so I
can say to my students, like, when we make jokes,
there are certain things that I'm gonna tell you I
don't feel are very funny. I don't think it's funny
to joke about something that somebody can't change, right the race,
their age, their ability. So those things to me feel
like too sensitive for the average interaction. I also tell
(31:32):
my kids that it's really different when two people who
share an identity tease each other about those identities that
if somebody from outside of the identity does so. I'm
Jewish and I'll sit around my Jewish friends and we'll
make funny jokes about Jewish culture, being Jewish, And sometimes
someone who is not Jewish can make those funny jokes
and it feels okay, but oftentimes it doesn't. So for kids,
I just think there's some good guidelines that we can give.
(31:56):
And maybe this does feel like it's too policing and
it's being too strong sured and censoring language. But at
least in some environments, I'm concerned about people feeling safe,
and I care less about how hilarious we're allowed to
be as opposed to how safe people feel.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
You know, it's so interesting because I think I sit
here and I think have I so deeply internalized the
narrative that we should let comedians be commedians, And I know
the conversation right now around the You know, there's a
several comedians who want to make anti trans jokes, and
the second a trans person or a group of trans
people have an issue with it, then it like seems
(32:33):
to feed them. It seems too a reaffirm that we're
too sensitive. But then there is still the harm, there's
still the like, I guess, it's like, how do we recenter? Okay,
I'm really processing this in real time. It's like, how
do we recenter the marginalized people? How do we recenter
the people who are having their healthcare taken away, who
(32:55):
are more likely to be victims of sexual assault, of
street harassment, steal. Transgender kids a g Listen report seventy
eight percent of them experience rass and are bullying in school.
Transcids the reality.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
So I grew up in Canada, I grew up with
anti hate speech laws, so when people talk to me
about I should be free to say whatever I want.
I feel like language is deadly Obviously there's anything can happen.
But if you think about an altercation between two people,
normally starts with words, right, normally starts with somebody using
a slur, saying something, doing something, then throwing a punch
(33:32):
but I think you mentioned something before that, you know,
how do we not turn people off this cause, how
do we bring people in? How do we not have
them say you're just policing what I'm saying. What I
really try to do is speak to people's underlying core
positive values and to kind of bring them in.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
For example, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
So there's this researcher named Alan Berkowitz, and he has
done a lot of work on something called social norms surveys,
and what he has done is kind of looked at
this idea and it started out with work on campus
drinking patterns. Why are you know so many students on
college campus has been shrinking? And he started doing this
(34:10):
work kind of looking at perceptions of how much other
people are drinking and how that influences one's own drinking.
He then started doing this work looking at sexual violence.
They started working with men, and he started looking at
you know, if men thought that other men thought sexual
violence was acceptable, would they be more likely to perpetuate it?
And he found that was the case. So some of
(34:31):
his research has found that most men don't support sexual violence,
but many men who don't personally support sexual violence. I
think they're in the minority, but when you let them
know that they're actually in the majority, they're more likely
to speak up and speak out against it and less
likely to commit hostile acts. So I really when I'm
talking to my students, I try to speak to them
(34:53):
as if we're all on the same team. We all
want everyone to feel safe and happy. I know that
they have good hearts. I know they can be empathetic,
they can be loving. I know that people of all
genders can be caretakers. Can you stand up for each other?
And I really do think that instead of berating people,
because I think there are so many phrases that I
think are I'm using this word inappropriately but triggering for folks, right,
(35:16):
and toxic masculinity right, it's it's lost all its power
because people get so defensive. Absolutely, So that's not a
phrase I use when I'm talking to boys now. So
instead I speak to positive qualities. We're all in this together,
Bring you on board. Most boys are good and caring,
and let's take that quality and bring it into the
larger world so that you can share your good, positive
(35:38):
qualities with your community and help make it safer for everyone,
which is something I know you want. I mean, that's
the message. And again, you're not going to catch everybody
in that net. But I'm hopeful that it is effective.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And there is that I mean, that's beautiful and it's wonderful.
But then that you're doing that work in a larger
cultural context of an Andrew Tate and a manisphere online,
and I wonder how you educating middle school, high school,
college students and the role of the internet and in
(36:12):
estelle culture kind of seems to be prevalent online. There's
an onlineness around completely a lot of this. I mean,
when you hear like a manisphere a person talk, they
like say all these like very misogynistic and essentializing things
about what men do and what women do. And so
you're having these interventions in your classrooms and with your students,
(36:33):
but then there's this larger culture that's reinforcing something very
different in I think the context of a backlash. What
do we do in the base of that.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is so tricky right
now because there, you know, we can't police everything that
young people are doing. Obviously that older people are doing too,
I think, at least for kids. I really, you know,
I believe in children's rights, and I believe in children
having privacy. I also think that parents need to have
a better idea of what their kids are doing online,
(37:04):
and that kind of flies in the face of my
belief in kids independence and growing up and being able
to find themselves in the world. But I do think
a lot of grown ups do not know those rabbit
holes that kids go down online, and we're going to falter.
And I don't want to constantly be spying on our kids,
but I think that's one thing. Know what your kids
(37:24):
are doing online. And of course lots of parents are
going to reinforce these ideas. We know that we see
what's going on around the country. I mean, the idea
of parents' rights to me is so unselling. Like as
a parent of three kids, I have a seven year old,
a thirteen year old, and a sixteen year old, And
here I am saying, these parents' rights groups are really
really problematic.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
In what way? How do you feel parents' rights groups
are problematic?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, most of them are the parents' rights groups who
are saying things like we don't think that children should
have the atonicity to make decisions about expressing their gender
identities or sexual orientations. We want to know exactly what
boks they are reading. Those values don't line up with mine.
As a parent, I really want my children to express
(38:08):
themselves in the ways that are true and honest for
who they are. But of course everybody's driven by their
own values.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, what do you say then, I mean, because I
know there's some attorneys who are arguing for parental rights
when parents do want to be supportive of their trans child,
and the state is Texas, for example, a state of Arkansas.
Mini states are saying that that parent can't be supportive
of their transgender child, that that is child abuse, that
they're threatening to take their child away, you know, if
they're supportive of their trans child.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think that is tragic. I think
it is tragic that the state is telling loving parents
that they might lose their parental rights for supporting a
child in a way that I believe honors that child
and is the safest, most authentic way to be a child.
I mean, you know, obviously just how at risk our
trans kids are for mental health issues, suicidal ideation, And
(38:58):
I often think back to two studies that were published
in the Journal of American Pediatrics and one study which
found that, yeah, there are significantly higher rates of depression
and suicidal ideation among trans kids. And then the next
that you found that trans kids who are supported in
(39:19):
their identities have developed mentally normative levels of mental health
concerns to cisgender kids, it is all about the support, right.
It is nothing inherently woven into a child's identity. It
is the world that they live in. So when I
see these things happening in places like Arkansas and Texas,
it's heartbreaking, terrifying that the state would see fit to
(39:42):
intervene in a loving household that is supporting its children.
So that's what I say when I'm concerned about parental rights.
And that's how the term I think I've seen it
used recently as parents saying, you know, it is my
right to deny my child this kind of intervention and
care that I personally believe they.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Need, and access to books and education. And sure, it's
a it's a really intense time right now. I want
to shift gears slightly. But as an educator, now, how
do you see the influence pornography and kids you know
obviously are seeing it very young, very early.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I mean, you know that there actually was just a
study that came out from an organization who I really
liked called common Sense Media. They look at lots of
media and they kind of assess it and what you're
going to see in it. But they just did a
study and they found that, not surprisingly, seventy five percent
of American kids had seen poor and by the time
they were seventeen, and the majority of them had seen
(40:38):
it by the time they were twelve r. So it's there,
It's out there. People are seeing it, and I think
most of the porn that kids are seeing is what
they can get for free when they google, and a
lot of those images are not necessarily what grown ups
want kids to be seeing. I mean, or it was
a great way to learn about sex. So I think
that's one of the problems. I think there's totally normal
(40:58):
for kids to be curious about what sex looks like,
especially if you're not getting sex education and this is
your only outlet. So I think it's grown ups. We
just really need to remind kids that parn't isn't sex education.
It's fantasy. You know, you watch Harry Potter and you
know that people can't really past spells or fly on brooms.
But I think a lot of young people somehow forget
(41:21):
that when they watch porn and might think this is
an instruction manual and there's been work done on you know,
what mainstream porn normalizes with kids. I think that the
wrong approach is to scare kids. This is going to
become an addiction. It's going to destroy sex for you forever.
(41:42):
A lot of states have declared porn a public health crisis.
Like I think that alarmist of you is not helping kids.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I think like a critical relationship to it. It's like
it feels like to me, it's like, how do we
have a critical relationship to any media that we consume, right,
so that we foster critical thinking and adults and children. Right.
So in the context of sex education, it would be like, Okay,
this porn is doing this is this is being represented.
But this could be an adult fantasy, it could be
(42:11):
a patriarchal fantasy. I mean, this might not be something
that feels good to you just because you saw it
in a video. Just developing some critical awareness around it,
I think it's the only thing we could probably do.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
And I think, like you said, like having that critical
lens for all media is super important. Yeah, right, we
don't want to just be a sponge. We want to
kind of analyze critique. So much of what you encounter
is really sending a message from one lens. But I
do think that there's just so much out there that
it's really hard to know how much kids are consuming
(42:43):
and the messages they're getting, and what they're looking at
critically and what they're integrating into their lives.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
What about social media? And you know there's studies that
Instagram is, you know, makes girls hate themselves more. I
think the internal research on Facebook, and I know for
me in my life, there was a relationship between how
good I felt about myself and how empowered I felt
to say no to situations that didn't feel good.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, much like kind of all the Internet, I feel
like it's such a mixed bag. I think social media
connects people. It helps you find your people. If you're
that quirky person who wherever you're living, you don't have
your people, this can help you fine you know that
group who really gets you and who sees you for
who you are. And like so many other things, there
(43:35):
are obviously the harmful corners. And just like you're saying, yeah,
we know that it can do a real number on
people's body image and self esteem. That it can you know,
when you're hiding behind the screen, you can say really
unkind things. So those two things, I think you know
can both be true at the same time. But certainly,
you know, revenge porn, sharing people's pictures, you know, using
(43:58):
AI to kind of digitally put somebody's face on somebody
else's body, having sex, like, all of that stuff is
really upsetting and scary for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, and just the whole AI of it, all the
deep fakes, that's a whole new sort of frontier that's happening, Like, Brian, Yeah,
there's so much more that we can talk about, but
we need to wrap up. I would really suggest that
folks read your book, Good Sexual Citizenship. There's so much
in here that I wanted to get to that we
(44:29):
didn't get to today, and they're wonderful ways that you
offer for us to think in a really complicated way
and educate ourselves and our kids. So I hope this
conversation will continue. I like to end the podcast with
(44:50):
the question that comes from my own trauma resilience therapy,
and this question is what else is true? And it
basically just means when the world is on fire, when
you are distressed, right that and everything seems horrible. That
can certainly be true. But there's something else that is
also true that is resilient and wonderful, something that can
(45:11):
get you through, something that is wonderful and amazing, and
that can be a resource in your life. So Ellen
freeddrikes today for you what else is true?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I will tell you what else is true. For me.
It's that when I graduated high school in the nineteen nineties,
sexual violence the past is normal. That didn't have names.
It was just an everyday thing. I think now we
have names, and now we have a lot more understanding
and support for kids who are being bullied, tormented, or persecuted.
(45:40):
I know, the outside world, like you're saying, there's so
much backlash against so many young people who are already marginalized.
But I also think of greater awareness and that some
of these things that passed is normal. We have passed
that point. And you know, I know that we are
in a two steps forward, hopefully not more than one
step back. But I think some of those steps forward
we are not going to lose.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's beautiful, that's wonderful, And I think it's what that
reminded me of is that even as the backlash is
coming ferociously, that it is so important to hold.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
On to.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
My narrative, to my values, and not allow myself. I think,
as a marginalized person, it's really easy to allow ourselves
to be defined by our pressors, by the people who
want to take our rights away, and let them set
the tone and the terms of the conversation. So much
of what I've been trying to do and media lately
is take back the conversation from those people who are
(46:37):
wanting you to take rights away and refusing to have
the conversation on their terms. Even as there might be
laws criminalizing bodily autonomy, that we must not allow them
to set the narrative. That there's a truer narrative that
we must hold on to and fight for.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
And I think, just like I was saying, I believe,
and research shows that more men are opposed to sexual
violence than not. I think more people are on the
side of maintaining rights for folks than pushing back. But
those people who are pushing back are so loud and
they're route organized. So I think, just like you're saying
you need to reclaim the narrative and push back against
(47:19):
the pushback, because there are more people out there who
want to do that, and they just need to have
a container in which they can.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah and feel and have language and have ways to
do it. I like a lot of people don't know how,
So that's what you're doing, and hopefully that's what we've
done today. And thank you so much. I'm so grateful
for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Oh well, thank you so much for having me on.
It's such a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I love that Ellen defines good sexual citizenship as all
sex should be wanted by all parties and enjoyed by
all parties. There's something really simple about that, and we
got into some really complicated, nuanced, tricky territory in that conversation.
(48:11):
But at the end of the day, all sex should
be wanted by all parties and enjoyed by all parties.
That's it. That's it. It is possible for survivors to
heal and to have wonderful, healthy sex lives. I'm so
grateful at fifty that I have one. And I love
(48:34):
what Ellen said at the end that now there's language
for it. There are ways now for us to have
this conversation that we didn't have twenty years ago. So
with open hearts and love and empathy, I hope that
we can begin to use this language, use these tools
(48:54):
so that we can have these conversations, shift our mindsets
and our behavior. Is an end a culture of sexual violence.
That is my hope, that is my prayer. Thank you
(49:16):
so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review, subscribe,
and share with everyone you know. You can find me
on Instagram and Twitter aka x at Laverne Cox and
on Facebook at Laverne Cox for reel. Until next time,
stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a
production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more
(49:40):
podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Most men don't support sexual violence, but many men who
don't personally support sexual violence, I think they're in the minority,
But when you let them know that they're actually in
the majority, they're more likely to speak up and speak
out against it and less likely to commit hostile acts.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Laverne Cox Show. My
name is Laverne Cox. On the last season of The
Laverne Cox Show, I had the honor of interviewing Toronto Burke,
the founder of the Me Too movement, and we talked
about reclaiming what me too means, and I expressed my
(00:53):
hopes that in the post Me Too era, we could,
like you know, end a culture of sexual violence. And
we've had probably perhaps the opposite, an intense backlash against
all of that. And I think it's an important conversation
to continue to have. And that brings me to today's guest,
(01:15):
Ellen Friedrichs. Ellen Fredricks is a health educator, writer, and
mother of three. She is the author of the amazing
book Good Sexual Citizenship, How to Create a sexually Safer
World Her writing has peered in publications including The Washington Post,
Parents dot Com, Salon, and the Huffington Post. Ellen runs
(01:35):
a middle school and high school health education program and
teach us in New York's City University System. Please enjoy
my conversation with Ellen Friedrichs. This episode contains conversation that
may be difficult for some listeners. Your discretion is advised. Hello, Ellen,
Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's good to see you again. And I gosh, So
just a little background, I had Toronto Burke on the
podcast last season and the topic was reclaiming me Too.
I'd imagined after the Me Too movement that there would
be all these wonderful conversations about what constitutes consent and
(02:22):
what good sexual citizenship looks like. That has not. It
doesn't seem like that that's happened. And we're also and
I was really after the Andrew Tate. I don't know
if you're familiar with the person who following that. Yeah,
for those people who don't know, there's a there's a
social media influencer I guess named Andrew Tate who had
(02:44):
millions of young men following him, and he has now
been arrested for sex trafficking and it's been accused of
sexual assault by multiple women, and he's admitted as much
really in his work. And there's something very troubling and
misogynistic about his rhetoric that lots and lots of young
men are following. And I'm like, okay, how can we intervene? So,
(03:09):
I mean, it's I want to define good sexual citizenship.
But as an educator, as someone with children, when you
see a situation like Andrew Tate, what is your reaction
to something like that?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think I have a lot of a lot
of concerns. I think there's a backlash. I mean, you know,
post B two, every time there's social progress, we see
a backlash. We're seeing it right now in so many areas,
book bands, gender are from a care don't say gay
bills which are being introduced, attacks on sex education. So
we're seeing all of this regressive policy being thrust at us.
(03:48):
And that kind of is a perfect situation for somebody
like Andrew Tate to emerge. Right, He's preying on this
kind of collective moral panic, and that seems really appealing.
To people. So my my real kind of hope right
now is that we talk to young CIS hetero boys early,
(04:11):
that we intervene before they find somebody like Andrew Tte
that we're not talking to them. So many of our
prevention messages and our messages about consent are kind of
directed at girls. But I think what we really need
to do is bring boys into the conversation early, make
them feel invested in the conversation and in being, as
you said, good sexual citizens before they can be kind
(04:33):
of lured away by somebody really insidious and dangerous who's
telling them that all their insecurities are actually the fault
of women or the fault of the LGBT community, and
that you know, they want flash out in this way.
So I think that's one of the main thrusts that
I would like to see happening.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I've seen many conversations about a crisis that young men
are having right now. Sure seems to focus on white men,
but just straight men in general. This straight man and
there's a crisis, and they're lonely and they're unhappy, and
they don't know what to do, and they don't know
what their place is in the world. Have you seen
these conversations. Do you experience that as an educator in
(05:12):
the classroom or is it just something that may be
online and not in real life.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I mean, I certainly think that this is an issue,
but I think that that not that I don't care
about that, right And I have three kids, and I
teach students, and I care about children of all genders,
and I care about the different experiences that they are having.
And I don't know if you saw that. The CDC
just released their bi annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and
(05:37):
this is something that they started doing in the early
nineteen nineties. Every two years, they asked students in ninth
through twelfth grade about risk behaviors, sexual experiences, are using condom,
alcohol and drug use, violence at school, all these questions,
and mental health issues, sexual violence. So what just came
out was that girls and GBTQ youth of all genders
(06:02):
are experiencing massive mental health crises and horizon sexual violence.
So while I care about sins hetero boys deeply, I
also feel like that conversation is distracting from what we're
seeing on the ground, that it is other children, children
with more marginalized identities, who are the ones who are
currently in crisis and who I think need our attention
(06:24):
in a lot of ways. So, you know, kids are
doing with different struggles, but right now those numbers are staggering.
I mean, the CDC report found that one in five
girls in the last year reported experiencing an act of
sexual violence against them, and one in ten girls have
reported experiencing this in their lifetime.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What age group were we talking? White age?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
This is ninth through twelfth grade, so they ask high
school kids, and those numbers I think are up something
like thirty percent since twenty seventeen. So you're talking, you know,
what is going on? Me too? We're seeing this rise
in really, you know, in sexual violence. You know, in
(07:06):
cell culture has not been dismantled that I think kind
of those hand in hand with the andrew Tates of
the world, and there's a real problem going on.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
What is your take on the in cell phenomenon in
relationship to all this, I mean, I guess, but there's
that question. But then I'm thinking that, like, yes, we
should be concerned about folks who are survivors of sexual violence,
but then how do we keep perpetrators from being perpetrators?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Is like the thing I mean, so my goal as
an educator, as a teacher, and as a parent is
not to necessarily reach every single potential perpetrator out there,
because I just don't think I can do that. But
the people that I want to reach are the ones
who are reachable, and I think that more people are
reachable than we think. And certainly sexual violence of people
(07:53):
of all genders. Right, boys can be victims of sexual
violence as well as perpetrators. Right, girls and women can
commit acts of sexual violence. But when we look at
the data, you know there's a real disproportionate situation going
on where girls and folks of all genders or LGBTQIA
are more likely to be survivors victims and boys and
(08:15):
men more likely to be perpetrators. So I think if
we ignore the gendered experience of this, we're really not
going to undercut the systems that promote this violence. But
I also think that what we really what I want
to do as an educator is reach those boys who
maybe are on the sidelines, who maybe aren't actively perpetrating harm,
(08:35):
but who are promoting a culture or harm. Confessor, So
you know, we've done a lot of work. We know
that bystander intervention works. We know that getting people to
speak up to challenge those kind of underlying beliefs and
attitudes that I think can really grow into violence. I
think that's what I have been doing a lot of
work on in my classrooms and in my writing, is
(08:57):
to look at those attitudes, those comments, behaviors that are
so often written off as like, no big deal, just
a joke. You know, you're being so politically correct, stop
acting so woke like all of that. That when we
dismiss those what seemed like low level comments or jokes
or stereotypes, that really opens the door for escalating harm
because it's part of a process of dehumanizing people, right,
(09:20):
and then when we dehumanize someone, we just make it
easier to objectify them, to not treat them as equal
to ourselves, and then to commit acts.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Of violence and take away rights as well.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, and take away exactly. But we're staying right now.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I think the rhetoric around trans folks and LGBTQ plus
folks and state legislatures right now, with all the bills
banning gender from and care are able to pass because
we've been so successfully dehumanized as trans folks, so how
do you define good sexual citizenship? What does it mean
to you to be a good sexual citizen?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
For me? This is a term and it's used in
different contexts over the years. So it has been used
to describe the lack of rights, specifically, in some cases,
the lack of LGBTQ folks to marry partners. It's been
described as the lack of youth rights. It's been used
in the context of reproductive justice. But it's also being
(10:20):
used in the way that I'm using it in my
book and in my teaching practice to talk about this
idea that all sects that happens should be wanted by
all participants and enjoyed by all participants, and that people
should have the right to opt into a sexual situation
and to opt out. And you know, so often I
think people put their sexual desires on another person without
(10:43):
the other person's buy in or agreement. We objectify people,
we harass people, We physically put our bodies on people
in the way that we want. We have sex with
other people without any regard for whether they're enjoying it.
I mean, it can be consensual, but it can still
be a really unpleasant or lackluster at best. Experience. So
this is the idea, and I'm not talking about, you know,
(11:06):
some mind blowing multi orgasmic situation. Every time you have sex,
doesn't you like what you're doing. You're like happy enough
to be there, and it feels fine or good. We're
mind blowing. So it's opting in and opting out and
feeling safe to do that.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
All sex should be wanted by all parties involved and enjoyed. Yes,
I like that a lot, And it's so interesting how
murky that all gets for people. Many years ago, I
remember reading an article on a good men project on
this website and it was about a man who after
(11:44):
the fact realized he had committed sexual assault. And he
sort of talked about films when you know, a woman
says no but she means yes, and he had gotten
the mixed signals and then he had to flee the town.
And I was just like, okay, wow, Like so you
can have committed sexual assault and not realize that you
actually committed assault. And it was actually a moment too
(12:05):
with Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant, when he talked about his incident,
he said, after the fact that I understand now that
this woman didn't consent to sex I thought she did,
or I thought there was consent, but she hadn't. And
I wish we could talk about that without people like
(12:28):
sort of coming for cobD, like you're denegrating this man's memory.
But like that feels like a shift to me, Right,
I understand now that what I thought was consensual was
not consented to by the other person involved, Like, I
don't hear a lot of people say that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, I think, you know, here's the thing. I think.
I think he was one of the few people public
figures who actually acknowledged having committed that harm. I mean
in this kind of circuitous way, but I think most
people are in this kind of litigious you know, deflect
reflect I didn't do it, I know it was consensual.
And for him to actually say that was a departure
from I think a lot of the responses, I never
did this, it didn't happen. She's lying, right. There's a
(13:07):
big mythology about false rape claims. So in many ways,
actually that was a real different approach to I wouldn't
say complete ownership, but acknowledging the harm that was caused
to another person. And I think partly because we do
live in such a religious environment, many people really cannot
(13:28):
ever take ownership for harming other people. And that's tricky
because you know, there's a growing movement obviously in many
circles for restorative justice, and you know, I think research
has found that many more people who experienced harm would
be open to restorative justice practices where somebody who has
(13:49):
harmed them somehow repairs the harm rather than you know,
gets into the criminal justice system, in justice system, whatever
we want to call it, but we don't really make
a lot of space for them, either socially or interpersonally.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
And restorative justice actually means that you have to admit
that you did something wrong.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Right, and as soon as you do that, you're opening
up the doors for a lot of other potential consequences
for you.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
This is a good time to take a little break. Okay,
we're back. Let's break down some myths and some misconceptions.
I mean, I think around like what consent looks like
(14:37):
and when it's given and when it can be taken away,
And there was there was there was an interesting the
disease I'm sorry moment. I thought it was also an
opportunity missed to talk with a lot of nuance about consent, right, Like,
if you recall that situation, that was one of one
of the last stories I could read. I have to
stop reading all these stories because it's just too triggering.
(14:59):
But if the account is to be believed that she
had gone on a date with disease, she met him
in his apartment. They had a drink, and they went
to a nearby restaurant. They got through dinner quickly and
went back to his place, and she said that I
don't want to have sex, and he said, oh, cool,
and then ten minutes fifteen minutes later, tries to have
sex with her, and then she's like, no, I don't
want to have sex. He says cool, waits and then
(15:23):
tries again. It's almost as if she's still here, so
there's still a chance. I don't need, you know, it's like,
and then eventually they have sex and she it's just awful.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's awful. I remember that completely, so you know, obviously
I also only read the account.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yes, we don't know what happened, fully, right, we weren't there.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, but it sounds so familiar. It sounds so familiar.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
It sounds so familiar to me, and he's so familiar
to me, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And I think for so many people who read it,
we were just like, oh, yep, right, like this is
how this can go down so frequently, and does that
is that exactly the same as other instance of sexual violence. No,
but it's one form of harm that so many people
have experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And a lot of people would say that this is
not assault, right. I heard a lot of people say
that this wasn't sexual assault, this wasn't rape, and I'm
not sure I would say that it was. But I
think this is the kind of gray area we get
into where for me, as a woman and having I had,
(16:38):
I learned very early on that like I can't if
I'm in private with the man, I probably need to
be ready to have sex, right that I learned this
message in an unfavery, unfortunate way that like going upstairs
he hears sex, Like right, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Think that's a message that a lot of us get. So,
I guess, you know, you mentioned the term gray area,
and I think about this all lot. For me, I
guess I don't need to you know, whatever anybody wants
to name their situation. I think that is in one's
own space. And you know, I can't tell somebody what
crosses the line from harassment to assault to rape. But
(17:15):
I can say, like, these are awful, damaging, harmful, violent situations.
They're really upsetting. And you know, I'm not a prosecutor,
I'm not a litigator, and I'm an educator and somebody
who cares about young people and sexual safety. So I
guess I'm less worried about what we name certain incidents,
although I do think naming is important. And one thing
(17:36):
that came out of this that I was thinking about
with this we mentioned before CDC report this rise of
sexual violence, is that maybe actually post me too, there
has been more naming, and maybe that is positive. That
maybe the reason we have this thirty percent or so
rise is that we know that certain things aren't just shitty,
excuse crappy, bad experiences, but they're you know, this rises
(17:58):
to the level of violence. So I want to put
that in one container. And then also say, I can't
name other people's experiences because bad sex for somebody, an
unpleasant experience can really be sexual violence in somebody else's
understanding of those terms. But this great area is so tricky,
(18:19):
and I'll tell you what I tell my students about
that is that on the face of it, Yeah, I
don't believe a grey area really exists. Like you have consenter,
you don't, you have somebody who's really enthusiastic, and enthusiastic
again does not mean you're, like, you know, replicating the
hottest scene you've ever seen in a movie. But it's
like you're in it because you want to be there
and you like to be there and you're open to
(18:40):
what you're doing, so you have somebody's buy in or
you don't. But I also one hundred percent believe that
we live in a world that is so sex negative,
so uncomfortable talking about sex, and this makes it really
confusing for a lot of people who don't know how
to communicate about sex, so they're confused in those moments.
So it feels like it's a real gray area. You're
(19:01):
in this moment, you leave forward, you try to kiss them,
Are they kissing you back? Or are they not kissing
you back? You put your hands in their pants and
they step it up. Is that because they're turned on
or because they don't want you to do that? Right?
So it's like these confusing We're relying on body language
that means different things to different people. We're relying on
social cues which are often really really gendered. Still live
in a world where boys are often told work for
(19:23):
what you want, don't give up, you know, you just
got to keep trying, and girls are often told, don't
seem too easy, play hard to get. You want to
make him like you make him work for it. So
those outdated messages play in a lot of people's heads
when they're hooking up with someone, and that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Can mean So then with those messages that, I mean,
that's I think we still hear that right like you
guys go for get, girls play hard to get. So
where is the intervention? Then with that old, outdated how
do we undo that?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah? I will often tell students this, if you have
any doubt, just hold off. If you don't feel comfortable
checking in verbally and being like, hey, do you want
to keep going? Can touch you there? Do you want
to do this? Or do you want to take a break?
Do you want to go watch a movie? If you
don't feel comfortable in that, just stop, Just stop because
maybe the next day that personal text would be like
why did you stop? I was having so much fun?
I really wanted to hook up with you more. Then
(20:18):
you can text back and say, oh, I wasn't sure
want to go out tonight, and like, maybe you blew
your one shot to ever hook up with that person.
Maybe that experience will never happen again, But your potential
missed opportunity is so much better than a consent violation
than harming somebody if you were really in this kind
of muddled headspace where you just weren't sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And the communication piece too, how did we Because I
think about where situations where I've consented to one particular
sex sect, but I haven't consented to another one, right,
So that's the nuance of like communication, I'm not into this,
you know, you can't do that. And I'm pretty good
at this, like you know, as I've gotten older, I'm
(21:01):
fifty years old now, so I've gotten better at this
over the years, and I've gotten better at like not
putting myself in situations that could be dangerous. But then
I feel like this puts the onus on the potential survivor.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
But I think that's where we have to change our messaging.
You know, we so often and a lot of the
sex education still is really gendered, right, really binary, and
it's really saying to girls like put the brakes on,
stop the boy, tell them to stop. But I really
think we need to reframe that from day one and
tell people that if you are trying to move a
(21:35):
hookup sex act a little forward, if you're making out
and you want to go under somebody's clothes, right, if
you're having oral sex and you want to move into
a different form of penetration, like if you're the person
who's initiating or suggesting the next sex act or something
that you aren't already doing, like, then you should check in.
It doesn't need to be, you know, this lengthy conversation.
(21:55):
But I think that if people aren't comfortable, I mean,
this is easier to say to children and teenagers, but
you know, if you're not comfortable having that check in,
it's kind of assigned to me that you're not really
comfortable or ready to be doing this. And that's kind
of something I say a lot. It's harder to do
with adults who beens actually active for decades, but with
teenagers and college students, I really often say, like, if
the idea of talking to somebody about the kind of
(22:17):
sex you want to have is really off putting, like
just take a pause, maybe figure out how you can communicate.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What I would say to adults is if having a
conversation with the person about what kind of sex you
want to have or don't want to have feels uncomfortable,
they're the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, that's another part.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That's actually what I would say to adults, that if
you can't have that conversation, I mean, adults can have
trauma and regress into childhood. I mean, the body doesn't
know if a trauma happened twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So I think you recommended that book to me many
years ago. The body keeps score.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, so that in a certain situation, we're not an
adult anymore and we regress, particularly if we have an Unfortunately,
a dear friend of mine who experienced childhood sexual abuse
was in a situation recently and then that trauma. They
weren't an adult anymore. They were again the abused child
(23:11):
in a situation and it was it was it was bad.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
No, we certainly hold onto these physically, we hold onto
these memories. I think there's also another complication, which is
that you know, we live in a world with a
lot of neurodiversity, and so I do want to also
make space for people who communicate differently, and not everybody
verbally communicates or uses body language in the same way
(23:36):
or reads body language in the same way. So that's
that's another layer that it can You know, if you're
talking to somebody who just really isn't reading like really neurologically,
it is not reading signs the way that you assume
they are, or potentially comes from a culture where body
language is read completely differently, you really can have a
tricky situation where one person really thinks something is clear
(23:59):
and the person really doesn't. So I think we still
also need to do a lot of work because you know,
gender socialization certainly, but also cultural experiences and you know,
our diversity can all play into how we interpret messages
about sex and what is not okay for someone else.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I was just thinking about like the great relationship I'm
in now, the great sex I'm having now that is
consensual and hot and wonderful and I'm so grateful for
And then I think about situations in my past where
things were kind of iffy and murky, and I think that,
like what was going on for in those situations with
(24:41):
these men is that, like I was a conquest. Their
goal was to get me in bed by any means necessary,
and I wasn't a full human being, and so good
sexual citizenship I don't think can happen in the context
of us sort of objectifying someone the way in which
(25:03):
we see men talking about women in the man sphere, right,
just horrible ways and when like a person and I
think this is all genders can do this when we're
in the space of like this is a conquest that
doesn't foster an environment of I don't know. I mean,
I don't want to tell people. You know, maybe that's
hot a role player for someone, but like for me,
(25:24):
it feels like that is the difference between situations where
like even though I can sent it feeling just horrible
and awful and just yucky, and situations where I came
out feeling like embodied and seen and I had fun
and it was healthy. You know. I guess it's like
defining healthy sexuality being a good sexual citizen. What does
(25:44):
healthy sexuality look like? It's different for everybody, right, But
like for me, it's about feeling empowered in this situation.
I'm enjoying it that I've consented that I'm and I'm
feeling respected.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Like rough sex can be super hot sex. Different people
are in your step, we will play like different people
are totally into different things. But it really only works
when everybody's on the same page.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
But then it's like, do we need to talk about everything?
And I think is it hot to have a conversation
about everything you do before you go forward to and
remember being on a date with the guy and he
was just kind of like real squeamish about like even
kissing me or making any kind of move and he
was very like woke and very like progressive and it
was great, but I was just like, okay, like you know,
(26:29):
come on, you know, like let's do this.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So it's like way, But I think that you that
comes back to kind of what you were saying, like
maybe these aren't the right people, right, Not everybody gonna
have sexual chemistry with, not everybody you're gonna be able
to have these intimate physical experiences with. And I really
don't think that every sex act needs a long conversation.
But literally, if you put your hands on somebody's neck,
saying is this okay? Or literally even can I put
(26:54):
my hands there right? Or do you like this? Like
doesn't have to be a whole conversation and I think
that can go a huge way.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How does that feel? Is that hot for you?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Right? No?
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes? Stop? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
You know. It's funny because I was talking to middle
schoolers today about kissing and I showed a clip from
Frozen two where Anna and who is the sister of
the queen, and Christoph, who is the reindeer herder, are
in a moment and she gives him a present and
(27:28):
he gets so excited he says can I kiss you?
And she says, yes, you can, and then they kiss it.
It's adorable and it's cute, and I like to show
that because I juxtapose that with all these movie images
where normally man forcedly grabbing a woman and passionately kissing
her and she might resist, but then she might melt
into him.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I'm saying more more instances where women are initiating and
doing maybe in film and television.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Maybe. And I don't want to say that that's never appropriate,
but I also don't want to say that it's never
okay to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I love it when a man has asked me, is
that can I kiss you? Yeah? That's as you know,
I was a very grown woman, and then asking me
if he can kiss me, it's like it's hot. And I,
you know, I am a person who and my boyfriend
seems to love when I knowed she ate sex and
he you know what. I don't want to say too
(28:16):
much about our relationship, but we talked very openly about
a lot of things, and we talked about I was
telling him weeks ago that I was going to do
this podcast, and we kind of talked about consent and whatnot,
and he said what he does is he like, he'll
make a move and if he doesn't, if it doesn't
feel like she's responsive, he'll wait for her. He just
will stop and he'll wait to see if she makes
(28:38):
a move. If she doesn't, then that's it. And I
was like, okay, I'm like, not, man, I don't know what.
I don't know what you think about that, but like
that's worked for us.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a one size
fits all solution. I mean that sounds like, you know,
two grown ups who can figure out how to navigate this.
Plenty of people don't talk about sex and they have
perfectly consensual, intimate, positive experiences without actually using verbal conversation. Yeah,
I'm so often thinking about young people are so new
(29:08):
to this. So I feel like for young people who
are so new to this, you know, putting it out
on the table is often just the clearest way to
stay safe. But yeah, when I'm talking to my students,
it's a suggestion, right, like this might make you feel
safer and better. It's not going to work for everybody.
But if you're unsure, hold off use words, you know,
wait until you are sure. Maybe it's a sign you're
(29:29):
not comfortable, Like all right, is this really what the
other person wants to do? And am I really okay
with it? Also?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I love I love that, and I love kids talking
creating an environment work. It's okay for kids to like
communicate and say, maybe this isn't right for me, Okay,
it's that time again. We'll be right back. Let's get
(29:54):
back to it. So what is the balance between that language?
You know, language is also a place to struggle, to
quote Bellehooks as you do in your book, to understand
that language can contribute to a culture of violence, to
rape culture. But then to have those messages in a
(30:18):
way that people can hear them. I just feel like
there's but the backlash has been so effective, like this
anti woke and you're too woke, and the left specifically
wants to police everybody, and you can't say anything right now.
Comedians can't joke, you know. I was just on a
talk show the other day with the comedian. She was
just like, we can't say anything now, and so how
do we balance or how do we Maybe it's about reframing,
(30:41):
you know, the conversation to give people not to tune out.
I think it's the piece so that we can have
these conversations so that people could just be safer.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Sure. So I have another sex educator friend, Justine Fonte,
who has been sending me reels of comedians that I
actually think are really funny, entire all these issues in
a really funny way. So I know it's possible, totally right,
and I know it's out there, but I'm always nervous
about dehumanizing people in comedy or using somebody's identity as
the butt of a joke. And it's actually, you know,
(31:11):
I teach middle in high school health, right, so I
can say to my students, like, when we make jokes,
there are certain things that I'm gonna tell you I
don't feel are very funny. I don't think it's funny
to joke about something that somebody can't change, right the race,
their age, their ability. So those things to me feel
like too sensitive for the average interaction. I also tell
(31:32):
my kids that it's really different when two people who
share an identity tease each other about those identities that
if somebody from outside of the identity does so. I'm
Jewish and I'll sit around my Jewish friends and we'll
make funny jokes about Jewish culture, being Jewish, And sometimes
someone who is not Jewish can make those funny jokes
and it feels okay, but oftentimes it doesn't. So for kids,
I just think there's some good guidelines that we can give.
(31:56):
And maybe this does feel like it's too policing and
it's being too strong sured and censoring language. But at
least in some environments, I'm concerned about people feeling safe,
and I care less about how hilarious we're allowed to
be as opposed to how safe people feel.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
You know, it's so interesting because I think I sit
here and I think have I so deeply internalized the
narrative that we should let comedians be commedians, And I know
the conversation right now around the You know, there's a
several comedians who want to make anti trans jokes, and
the second a trans person or a group of trans
people have an issue with it, then it like seems
(32:33):
to feed them. It seems too a reaffirm that we're
too sensitive. But then there is still the harm, there's
still the like, I guess, it's like, how do we recenter? Okay,
I'm really processing this in real time. It's like, how
do we recenter the marginalized people? How do we recenter
the people who are having their healthcare taken away, who
(32:55):
are more likely to be victims of sexual assault, of
street harassment, steal. Transgender kids a g Listen report seventy
eight percent of them experience rass and are bullying in school.
Transcids the reality.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
So I grew up in Canada, I grew up with
anti hate speech laws, so when people talk to me
about I should be free to say whatever I want.
I feel like language is deadly Obviously there's anything can happen.
But if you think about an altercation between two people,
normally starts with words, right, normally starts with somebody using
a slur, saying something, doing something, then throwing a punch
(33:32):
but I think you mentioned something before that, you know,
how do we not turn people off this cause, how
do we bring people in? How do we not have
them say you're just policing what I'm saying. What I
really try to do is speak to people's underlying core
positive values and to kind of bring them in.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
For example, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
So there's this researcher named Alan Berkowitz, and he has
done a lot of work on something called social norms surveys,
and what he has done is kind of looked at
this idea and it started out with work on campus
drinking patterns. Why are you know so many students on
college campus has been shrinking? And he started doing this
(34:10):
work kind of looking at perceptions of how much other
people are drinking and how that influences one's own drinking.
He then started doing this work looking at sexual violence.
They started working with men, and he started looking at
you know, if men thought that other men thought sexual
violence was acceptable, would they be more likely to perpetuate it?
And he found that was the case. So some of
(34:31):
his research has found that most men don't support sexual violence,
but many men who don't personally support sexual violence. I
think they're in the minority, but when you let them
know that they're actually in the majority, they're more likely
to speak up and speak out against it and less
likely to commit hostile acts. So I really when I'm
talking to my students, I try to speak to them
(34:53):
as if we're all on the same team. We all
want everyone to feel safe and happy. I know that
they have good hearts. I know they can be empathetic,
they can be loving. I know that people of all
genders can be caretakers. Can you stand up for each other?
And I really do think that instead of berating people,
because I think there are so many phrases that I
think are I'm using this word inappropriately but triggering for folks, right,
(35:16):
and toxic masculinity right, it's it's lost all its power
because people get so defensive. Absolutely, So that's not a
phrase I use when I'm talking to boys now. So
instead I speak to positive qualities. We're all in this together,
Bring you on board. Most boys are good and caring,
and let's take that quality and bring it into the
larger world so that you can share your good, positive
(35:38):
qualities with your community and help make it safer for everyone,
which is something I know you want. I mean, that's
the message. And again, you're not going to catch everybody
in that net. But I'm hopeful that it is effective.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And there is that I mean, that's beautiful and it's wonderful.
But then that you're doing that work in a larger
cultural context of an Andrew Tate and a manisphere online,
and I wonder how you educating middle school, high school,
college students and the role of the internet and in
(36:12):
estelle culture kind of seems to be prevalent online. There's
an onlineness around completely a lot of this. I mean,
when you hear like a manisphere a person talk, they
like say all these like very misogynistic and essentializing things
about what men do and what women do. And so
you're having these interventions in your classrooms and with your students,
(36:33):
but then there's this larger culture that's reinforcing something very
different in I think the context of a backlash. What
do we do in the base of that.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is so tricky right
now because there, you know, we can't police everything that
young people are doing. Obviously that older people are doing too,
I think, at least for kids. I really, you know,
I believe in children's rights, and I believe in children
having privacy. I also think that parents need to have
a better idea of what their kids are doing online,
(37:04):
and that kind of flies in the face of my
belief in kids independence and growing up and being able
to find themselves in the world. But I do think
a lot of grown ups do not know those rabbit
holes that kids go down online, and we're going to falter.
And I don't want to constantly be spying on our kids,
but I think that's one thing. Know what your kids
(37:24):
are doing online. And of course lots of parents are
going to reinforce these ideas. We know that we see
what's going on around the country. I mean, the idea
of parents' rights to me is so unselling. Like as
a parent of three kids, I have a seven year old,
a thirteen year old, and a sixteen year old, And
here I am saying, these parents' rights groups are really
really problematic.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
In what way? How do you feel parents' rights groups
are problematic?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, most of them are the parents' rights groups who
are saying things like we don't think that children should
have the atonicity to make decisions about expressing their gender
identities or sexual orientations. We want to know exactly what
boks they are reading. Those values don't line up with mine.
As a parent, I really want my children to express
(38:08):
themselves in the ways that are true and honest for
who they are. But of course everybody's driven by their
own values.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, what do you say then, I mean, because I
know there's some attorneys who are arguing for parental rights
when parents do want to be supportive of their trans child,
and the state is Texas, for example, a state of Arkansas.
Mini states are saying that that parent can't be supportive
of their transgender child, that that is child abuse, that
they're threatening to take their child away, you know, if
they're supportive of their trans child.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think that is tragic. I think
it is tragic that the state is telling loving parents
that they might lose their parental rights for supporting a
child in a way that I believe honors that child
and is the safest, most authentic way to be a child.
I mean, you know, obviously just how at risk our
trans kids are for mental health issues, suicidal ideation, And
(38:58):
I often think back to two studies that were published
in the Journal of American Pediatrics and one study which
found that, yeah, there are significantly higher rates of depression
and suicidal ideation among trans kids. And then the next
that you found that trans kids who are supported in
(39:19):
their identities have developed mentally normative levels of mental health
concerns to cisgender kids, it is all about the support, right.
It is nothing inherently woven into a child's identity. It
is the world that they live in. So when I
see these things happening in places like Arkansas and Texas,
it's heartbreaking, terrifying that the state would see fit to
(39:42):
intervene in a loving household that is supporting its children.
So that's what I say when I'm concerned about parental rights.
And that's how the term I think I've seen it
used recently as parents saying, you know, it is my
right to deny my child this kind of intervention and
care that I personally believe they.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Need, and access to books and education. And sure, it's
a it's a really intense time right now. I want
to shift gears slightly. But as an educator, now, how
do you see the influence pornography and kids you know
obviously are seeing it very young, very early.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I mean, you know that there actually was just a
study that came out from an organization who I really
liked called common Sense Media. They look at lots of
media and they kind of assess it and what you're
going to see in it. But they just did a
study and they found that, not surprisingly, seventy five percent
of American kids had seen poor and by the time
they were seventeen, and the majority of them had seen
(40:38):
it by the time they were twelve r. So it's there,
It's out there. People are seeing it, and I think
most of the porn that kids are seeing is what
they can get for free when they google, and a
lot of those images are not necessarily what grown ups
want kids to be seeing. I mean, or it was
a great way to learn about sex. So I think
that's one of the problems. I think there's totally normal
(40:58):
for kids to be curious about what sex looks like,
especially if you're not getting sex education and this is
your only outlet. So I think it's grown ups. We
just really need to remind kids that parn't isn't sex education.
It's fantasy. You know, you watch Harry Potter and you
know that people can't really past spells or fly on brooms.
But I think a lot of young people somehow forget
(41:21):
that when they watch porn and might think this is
an instruction manual and there's been work done on you know,
what mainstream porn normalizes with kids. I think that the
wrong approach is to scare kids. This is going to
become an addiction. It's going to destroy sex for you forever.
(41:42):
A lot of states have declared porn a public health crisis.
Like I think that alarmist of you is not helping kids.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I think like a critical relationship to it. It's like
it feels like to me, it's like, how do we
have a critical relationship to any media that we consume, right,
so that we foster critical thinking and adults and children. Right.
So in the context of sex education, it would be like, Okay,
this porn is doing this is this is being represented.
But this could be an adult fantasy, it could be
(42:11):
a patriarchal fantasy. I mean, this might not be something
that feels good to you just because you saw it
in a video. Just developing some critical awareness around it,
I think it's the only thing we could probably do.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
And I think, like you said, like having that critical
lens for all media is super important. Yeah, right, we
don't want to just be a sponge. We want to
kind of analyze critique. So much of what you encounter
is really sending a message from one lens. But I
do think that there's just so much out there that
it's really hard to know how much kids are consuming
(42:43):
and the messages they're getting, and what they're looking at
critically and what they're integrating into their lives.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
What about social media? And you know there's studies that
Instagram is, you know, makes girls hate themselves more. I
think the internal research on Facebook, and I know for
me in my life, there was a relationship between how
good I felt about myself and how empowered I felt
to say no to situations that didn't feel good.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, much like kind of all the Internet, I feel
like it's such a mixed bag. I think social media
connects people. It helps you find your people. If you're
that quirky person who wherever you're living, you don't have
your people, this can help you fine you know that
group who really gets you and who sees you for
who you are. And like so many other things, there
(43:35):
are obviously the harmful corners. And just like you're saying, yeah,
we know that it can do a real number on
people's body image and self esteem. That it can you know,
when you're hiding behind the screen, you can say really
unkind things. So those two things, I think you know
can both be true at the same time. But certainly,
you know, revenge porn, sharing people's pictures, you know, using
(43:58):
AI to kind of digitally put somebody's face on somebody
else's body, having sex, like, all of that stuff is
really upsetting and scary for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, and just the whole AI of it, all the
deep fakes, that's a whole new sort of frontier that's happening, Like, Brian, Yeah,
there's so much more that we can talk about, but
we need to wrap up. I would really suggest that
folks read your book, Good Sexual Citizenship. There's so much
in here that I wanted to get to that we
(44:29):
didn't get to today, and they're wonderful ways that you
offer for us to think in a really complicated way
and educate ourselves and our kids. So I hope this
conversation will continue. I like to end the podcast with
(44:50):
the question that comes from my own trauma resilience therapy,
and this question is what else is true? And it
basically just means when the world is on fire, when
you are distressed, right that and everything seems horrible. That
can certainly be true. But there's something else that is
also true that is resilient and wonderful, something that can
(45:11):
get you through, something that is wonderful and amazing, and
that can be a resource in your life. So Ellen
freeddrikes today for you what else is true?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I will tell you what else is true. For me.
It's that when I graduated high school in the nineteen nineties,
sexual violence the past is normal. That didn't have names.
It was just an everyday thing. I think now we
have names, and now we have a lot more understanding
and support for kids who are being bullied, tormented, or persecuted.
(45:40):
I know, the outside world, like you're saying, there's so
much backlash against so many young people who are already marginalized.
But I also think of greater awareness and that some
of these things that passed is normal. We have passed
that point. And you know, I know that we are
in a two steps forward, hopefully not more than one
step back. But I think some of those steps forward
we are not going to lose.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's beautiful, that's wonderful, And I think it's what that
reminded me of is that even as the backlash is
coming ferociously, that it is so important to hold.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
On to.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
My narrative, to my values, and not allow myself. I think,
as a marginalized person, it's really easy to allow ourselves
to be defined by our pressors, by the people who
want to take our rights away, and let them set
the tone and the terms of the conversation. So much
of what I've been trying to do and media lately
is take back the conversation from those people who are
(46:37):
wanting you to take rights away and refusing to have
the conversation on their terms. Even as there might be
laws criminalizing bodily autonomy, that we must not allow them
to set the narrative. That there's a truer narrative that
we must hold on to and fight for.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
And I think, just like I was saying, I believe,
and research shows that more men are opposed to sexual
violence than not. I think more people are on the
side of maintaining rights for folks than pushing back. But
those people who are pushing back are so loud and
they're route organized. So I think, just like you're saying
you need to reclaim the narrative and push back against
(47:19):
the pushback, because there are more people out there who
want to do that, and they just need to have
a container in which they can.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah and feel and have language and have ways to
do it. I like a lot of people don't know how,
So that's what you're doing, and hopefully that's what we've
done today. And thank you so much. I'm so grateful
for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Oh well, thank you so much for having me on.
It's such a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I love that Ellen defines good sexual citizenship as all
sex should be wanted by all parties and enjoyed by
all parties. There's something really simple about that, and we
got into some really complicated, nuanced, tricky territory in that conversation.
(48:11):
But at the end of the day, all sex should
be wanted by all parties and enjoyed by all parties.
That's it. That's it. It is possible for survivors to
heal and to have wonderful, healthy sex lives. I'm so
grateful at fifty that I have one. And I love
(48:34):
what Ellen said at the end that now there's language
for it. There are ways now for us to have
this conversation that we didn't have twenty years ago. So
with open hearts and love and empathy, I hope that
we can begin to use this language, use these tools
(48:54):
so that we can have these conversations, shift our mindsets
and our behavior. Is an end a culture of sexual violence.
That is my hope, that is my prayer. Thank you
(49:16):
so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review, subscribe,
and share with everyone you know. You can find me
on Instagram and Twitter aka x at Laverne Cox and
on Facebook at Laverne Cox for reel. Until next time,
stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a
production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more
(49:40):
podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Laverne Cox
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