Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi em Eli
Speaker 1: went Worth, and you're listening to Go ask Alli. Where
Speaker 1: this season I'm asking the question, how do you grow
Speaker 1: a teenager in a pandemic? Well, everyone, this is it.
Speaker 1: We've officially come to the end of our first season
Speaker 1: of the podcast Go ask Alli, and it has been
Speaker 1: an incredibly enriching, insightful podcast. I mean, my guests have
Speaker 1: been incredible. From Janette Freeman who helped deal with teenagers
Speaker 1: and addiction, Harold Koppowitz an anxiety in our teens, which
Speaker 1: during a pandemic has been off the charts, Jessica Leahy,
Speaker 1: Stephen Russell who talked about growing a trans or gay
Speaker 1: teenager in a pandemic, Logan Powell looking at the landscape
Speaker 1: of applying to college in a pandemic, my friend Brooke
Speaker 1: Shields who came on to talk about the sexualization of
Speaker 1: girls in social media, and so many other amazing guests.
Speaker 1: I thank you all so much, and now onto our
Speaker 1: final topic for the season. I want to discuss positive
Speaker 1: sexuality for girls and boys today because we're trying to
Speaker 1: grow teenagers in a pandemic today. I'm very excited because
Speaker 1: I have read her books and she has been an
Speaker 1: integral part of my parenting technique. Peggy Orenstein is here.
Speaker 1: She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books,
Speaker 1: including Boys and Sex, Girls and Sex Flux and Schoolgirls.
Speaker 1: She is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine.
Speaker 1: Peggy has also been published in New York, The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, and other publications. Her Ted Talk has
Speaker 1: received over five million views. She lives in northern California
Speaker 1: with her husband and daughter. It's a lot of accomplishments, Peggy.
Speaker 1: I've accomplished taking it during it's weird because during COVID
Speaker 1: like all that just sort of dissipates, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're just I'm just sitting in my house. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, in the world just seems to
Speaker 1: be going by. Um. I have two teenage daughters, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot to discuss. But also I grew up
Speaker 1: um never talking about sex in my family, never talking
Speaker 1: about sex. In fact, when I say the word masturbation,
Speaker 1: I still get a little pinch to my stomach, like
Speaker 1: that's something bad's going to happen to me, so, UM,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of questions for myself so I
Speaker 1: can redo my own childhood sexually, but also for all
Speaker 1: the girls and boys out there. And I want to
Speaker 1: start almost chronologically, which is the early body messaging, particularly
Speaker 1: with girls. So as babies we name boys, genn tell you,
Speaker 1: but not girls. Now why is that? That's in research?
Speaker 1: That's what they find with UM parents that we tend
Speaker 1: to you know, at least you'll say here's your pep.
Speaker 1: You'll say like something. UM, we do such a number
Speaker 1: on girls, and we perform a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: in America psychological clitterodacty man our girls. We just are
Speaker 1: silent about UM sex and pleasure for them. So that
Speaker 1: starts early on when we don't name their body parts.
Speaker 1: And then they go into you know, around fifth grade
Speaker 1: or something. They have puberty education, right, and they learned
Speaker 1: that UM boys have erections and ejaculations and girls have
Speaker 1: periods and unwanted pregnancy, which is not the same UM.
Speaker 1: And they see that, you know, that diagram looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a Georgio o'keith painting or something like a
Speaker 1: steers head right of the internal women's reproductive system. And
Speaker 1: then it grays out between the legs. So we never
Speaker 1: say volva. We never say clitterists. You know, no surprise,
Speaker 1: god never, never, I'm going to say the M word now, Ali,
Speaker 1: Fewer than half of girls fourteen to sevent have masturbated
Speaker 1: even once, and then they go into a partnered experience
Speaker 1: and somehow we believe that they will magically think that
Speaker 1: sex is about them, that they will magically know how
Speaker 1: to express their wants, their needs, their desires, their limits.
Speaker 1: We really set girls up at best for a reduced
Speaker 1: experience in pleasure and at worst for accepting unwanted behavior
Speaker 1: or being subject to assault harassment. So wow, okay, so
Speaker 1: let me let me ask you this. So do you
Speaker 1: think that parents shouldn't have let's say, they don't say
Speaker 1: vagina to a toddler, but they call it something else.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a babysitter and she called my
Speaker 1: daughter's vaginas peck peck, So it was always like peck peck.
Speaker 1: Did you watch your peck peck um? And so do
Speaker 1: you think that parents should initially always call penis and
Speaker 1: vagina um even at a young age, or are you
Speaker 1: allowed to have a nickname but then you need to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, get rid of it and start
Speaker 1: calling it by a clinical label. You know, all the
Speaker 1: research and best practices are that we should use the names,
Speaker 1: like you would not use some weird old name for
Speaker 1: somebody's elbow or their knee or something. You know, it
Speaker 1: seems specific to this body part. And also ali, um,
Speaker 1: i'd say vulva, kind of like if you only named
Speaker 1: boys testicles and didn't name their penis. It's a weird
Speaker 1: thing to do. So um, I think it's hard for
Speaker 1: us to say the word, you know, as hard as
Speaker 1: it is to say vagina. It feels it's like in
Speaker 1: the masturbation camp to say volva. But um, we really
Speaker 1: should try like naming these things. And I mean I
Speaker 1: do remember having a toddler who would walk around town
Speaker 1: yelling vagin avagin avagina, and I had to do a
Speaker 1: certain amount of like, you know, oh, that's her name, right,
Speaker 1: that's her name. Um, but you know it's it's it's better.
Speaker 1: And similarly, when we talk about I mean, I think
Speaker 1: about things like a masturbation right to you brought up
Speaker 1: this whole episode about masturbation. Why not good for the girls,
Speaker 1: good for the boys, good for everybody in between, and
Speaker 1: beyond when I wasn't setting in a puberty education class
Speaker 1: at one point the teacher had the diagram of the
Speaker 1: external genitalia of the volva, and what she said was,
Speaker 1: this is the clearterest it's for making good feelings. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was enough, Like you don't have to go into,
Speaker 1: you know, super big detail to a ten year old.
Speaker 1: Why do we think of female pleasure as so taboo
Speaker 1: and like something that we shouldn't tell girls about, that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't know about, that boys shouldn't know about or
Speaker 1: should only learn. I mean they what's so what do
Speaker 1: they learned? They learned porn? But um, that's where they
Speaker 1: that's where they're learning what female pleasure is. And you
Speaker 1: know that's not optimal. Um doesn't it start with Barbie?
Speaker 1: I mean Barbie is you know, it was the first
Speaker 1: thing I played with, and she had she was speckled ship,
Speaker 1: she had no genitalia and by the way, looks like
Speaker 1: a porn star. Yeah. Well she based on a sex doll. Actually,
Speaker 1: the um woman who created Barbie based her on a
Speaker 1: German sex doll. I know, weird things. I love that,
Speaker 1: and I think the sex doyle's name was Lily. I
Speaker 1: even know that they well they changed the name for
Speaker 1: patent and reasons. Um. But it's interesting because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to give my girls Barbies for that reason. And
Speaker 1: also a few years ago I had written a paper
Speaker 1: on anal bleaching, and a lot of the anal bleaching
Speaker 1: stemmed from obviously pornography, and that stemmed from Barbie, Like
Speaker 1: don't we don't want to see anything. We don't want
Speaker 1: to see hair. Everything has to be pink and plastic.
Speaker 1: And and I know that at one point you had
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, the image of Barbie and the
Speaker 1: image of girls not having any genitalia is what leads
Speaker 1: to laby a plastic right, Yeah, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: to be fair, Barbie now is not very popular, but um,
Speaker 1: but that kind of dollar yeah, laby a plast He
Speaker 1: has been the fastest growing form of plastic surgery um
Speaker 1: among women and particularly actually among young women. Um. And
Speaker 1: that is when they cut off the folds of the
Speaker 1: labia to make them less prominent. And there's nothing about
Speaker 1: it that is in fact, it may impede pleasure, It
Speaker 1: may um numb um the area permanently. And how do
Speaker 1: they know to do this surgery? What is it? What
Speaker 1: kind of messaging are they getting that they that's what
Speaker 1: they see in pornography. And and then on top of that,
Speaker 1: the style that is asked for the most is called
Speaker 1: the barbie And yeah, I mean what does that mean somebody?
Speaker 1: You know? It means it's fused and and the same
Speaker 1: on a much you know, lower scale. Um. The kind
Speaker 1: of trend to remove all pubic hare, which too older
Speaker 1: you know women of a certain age, feels kind of
Speaker 1: often like, um, you're trying to make them look like
Speaker 1: a child, which is so ikey to me. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: two young women and girls, you know, the removal of
Speaker 1: the pubic hare or the uh, the laby of plasty
Speaker 1: is all about, um, opening the most intimate part of
Speaker 1: your body to the idea of public scrutiny and to
Speaker 1: being what's important about it is how it looks to
Speaker 1: other people, not how it feels to you. Yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: It's so when I talked to my daughter's about masturbation, um,
Speaker 1: and again, I've had very light conversations about it because
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to get comfortable with it. Because the
Speaker 1: one time I asked my mother about masturbation, we were
Speaker 1: I was twenty one and we were decorating the Christmas tree,
Speaker 1: and I said, how came we never talked about masturbation?
Speaker 1: And a Christmas ornament dropped to the floor, and for
Speaker 1: like two minutes we all we heard was the role
Speaker 1: of the ornament down the wood floor. And then she said, well,
Speaker 1: it's self indulgent. Oh wow. So that was my messaging.
Speaker 1: And obviously I don't want to have that messaging with
Speaker 1: my daughters, but I still find it hard to bring
Speaker 1: up because they and embarrassed too. So how do how
Speaker 1: do you even approach it? How do you do you
Speaker 1: say to them, you know, have you given yourself pleasure?
Speaker 1: Like without them going like, oh my gosh, shut up,
Speaker 1: get out of my room. Um, well, and they might,
Speaker 1: you know. And and I'll tell you, um, speaking as
Speaker 1: somebody who had very opposite messaging as a kid. Uh,
Speaker 1: my mother. My mother had this deep fear so I'm
Speaker 1: Jewish speaking of Christmas ornaments. Um. And she got it
Speaker 1: in her head that, um, gentile women don't like sex.
Speaker 1: She's kind of right, She just got it in her head.
Speaker 1: And she was so worried that I would absorb that message, um,
Speaker 1: that she would constantly tell me how great her sex
Speaker 1: life was with my dad. Um and like, really, I
Speaker 1: did not want to hear that. I mean, she didn't
Speaker 1: go into the graphic detail or anything. She just would say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really important to enjoy sex. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is this is really important that you're saying this, because
Speaker 1: I say that to my daughters and they see it.
Speaker 1: With my husband, we are, you know, after twenty years,
Speaker 1: it's still hot for each other. And there have been
Speaker 1: times when I have gone on TV shows and stuff
Speaker 1: where I've written in my books about the fact that
Speaker 1: my husband and I are still high for each other
Speaker 1: and like people would give me a really hard time
Speaker 1: about it, like I shouldn't talk about sex. And I
Speaker 1: remember I was about to go out do Good Morning
Speaker 1: America and Chris Rock said to me, he was like,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something, Ali. What you're doing is great.
Speaker 1: You're going out there and you're saying I'm married and
Speaker 1: I have great sex with my husband. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of time for married couples to get a little
Speaker 1: you know, good publicity in terms of that. Um so,
Speaker 1: so in other words, with my kids, they know that
Speaker 1: and they see that, and so that is one area
Speaker 1: I feel pretty healthy about. But it's the the idea
Speaker 1: of my daughter's being able to Aran's pleasure to understand it. Um.
Speaker 1: As they go into dating and then having relationships and everything,
Speaker 1: I want them to be uh. I wanted to be mutual.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be satisfying for them. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know that you have to be necessarily explicit about
Speaker 1: masturbation if that makes you uncomfortable, but saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really important that you understand your own body, um
Speaker 1: before you interact with another person. The best way to
Speaker 1: have a good experience is to, um, have a sense
Speaker 1: of your own body. And I would say, honestly, I
Speaker 1: really wrote Girls in Sex not just for parents, and
Speaker 1: and it's not read just for by parents. It's read
Speaker 1: by girls themselves. And I get and the Ted Talk too.
Speaker 1: I get so many emails, um from teenage girls and
Speaker 1: college age girls all around the world who have watched
Speaker 1: that Ted talk UM or listen to an interview, and
Speaker 1: it's been revelatory for them in a way that every
Speaker 1: single time surprises me because I keep thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: this must be all fixed by now right. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody understands all this stuff by now right. I mean,
Speaker 1: like every time I can email. I just think, wow, Wow,
Speaker 1: you too grew up with you know, with zero information.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, Ellie, is that it's not like
Speaker 1: they're not getting information. They are bombarded by media, you know,
Speaker 1: in an unprecedented way, and that media is highly sexualized
Speaker 1: and a lot of times, you know, there's a few
Speaker 1: things that are really great, like shows like Big Mouth
Speaker 1: or sex education, UM, but so much of it is
Speaker 1: so toxic, um and just you know, gives the messages
Speaker 1: that are so distorted and wrong that if you're not
Speaker 1: getting in there, um talking to them in this day
Speaker 1: and age, you're kind of throwing them to the wolves.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think that sort of mainstream media
Speaker 1: is as destructive as pornography to our teenagers? You know,
Speaker 1: I really do, and I talk a lot about porn
Speaker 1: and I think it's important to um. That is, you know,
Speaker 1: demonstrably where young people are turning for sex education now,
Speaker 1: which is disturbing. Well, porn Hub, I mean porn hub,
Speaker 1: the YouTube of at the first the front page, and
Speaker 1: and think this is how they're learning about sex and
Speaker 1: is that the message you want them to get? And
Speaker 1: how do you need to correct for that? And um,
Speaker 1: what has changed about pornography and parents need to understand
Speaker 1: this too. Is porn Hub dropped the paywall. It used
Speaker 1: to be that all hardcore porn was behind a paywall,
Speaker 1: and now it's completely free, completely accessible, completely anonymous. UM.
Speaker 1: And that was the game changer. And this generation of
Speaker 1: kids are guinea pigs around that. So Peggy, wait, I'm
Speaker 1: asking you this because I don't know. I really don't know.
Speaker 1: When you go on porn hub, you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay to see this stuff. It's free. No, that's why
Speaker 1: kids can do it. Otherwise I have to have a
Speaker 1: credit card, so everything is free. That was what changed everything.
Speaker 1: Two seven was the dividing line. UM. So you know,
Speaker 1: anything you can think of and a lot of things
Speaker 1: that you can't, and nobody wants to think of. Um
Speaker 1: at at the touch of a mouse, everything is there.
Speaker 1: What I hear from girls a lot is the way
Speaker 1: that that behavior does seep into the bedroom, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, sticking fingers in the mouth or um, you know,
Speaker 1: hands around the throat or various things UM jackhammer, intercourse,
Speaker 1: you know, as as somehow the way you're supposed to
Speaker 1: do it. UM. What girls will say they learn from
Speaker 1: porn is UM self presentation and um. Also it encourages
Speaker 1: the kind of spectator ing it's called in in sex
Speaker 1: where girls, um, it's like you're floating above the experience
Speaker 1: and watching yourself from the outside. And I remember talking
Speaker 1: to a girl who was saying, you know, I think
Speaker 1: about when I'm having it. It's fine when I'm kissing,
Speaker 1: and then there's like a certain point where it flips
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, you know, how did she have her arm? Um?
Speaker 1: What would she do with this? And She's like, I
Speaker 1: don't even know who this she is that I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a woman from porn, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing girls will say is that they
Speaker 1: use it to see what guys want. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's a whole different thing. So as a teaching tool,
Speaker 1: as a teaching tool against sex education, So you have
Speaker 1: the whole porn thing, and obviously we could talk about
Speaker 1: that for the next hour, but you know, kids also
Speaker 1: talk about mainstream media and it's impact, and mainstream media
Speaker 1: has been heavily influenced by pornography. At this point, Um,
Speaker 1: it's more and more explicit to grab eyeballs, right, that's
Speaker 1: a great way to grab eyeballs. UM, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, Netflix or UM YouTube or Instagram or
Speaker 1: UM music. I remember a voice saying to me that
Speaker 1: he thought music had a big influence on how guys
Speaker 1: learned to treat girls. Because when you're I can cuss
Speaker 1: in your podcast, right, yes, UM. You know you're driving
Speaker 1: around your car all day with your friends and you're
Speaker 1: hearing funk that bitch and leave her four or five,
Speaker 1: ten times UM in a day. You know, it starts
Speaker 1: to affect your mindset, and especially when you're hearing too
Speaker 1: like tap it, hit it, fuck it, throw it. You
Speaker 1: know it's and we just went to a whole you know,
Speaker 1: we've been having this whole national discussion, or at least
Speaker 1: some of us have, about the impact of media messaging
Speaker 1: on our beliefs and thoughts and the way we see
Speaker 1: the world and our politics and how we vote, and
Speaker 1: how easy it is for things that are untrue, that
Speaker 1: are fake, that are distorted UM to become our truths
Speaker 1: with with repetition. Even if you start out not believing
Speaker 1: that UM media affects our beliefs and our thoughts and
Speaker 1: our behaviors, even when we think it doesn't. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the tsunami of media. We're we're always up
Speaker 1: against it as parents and trying to find ways to
Speaker 1: help our kids have critical thinking. Look, you know good
Speaker 1: media literacy UM and really understand things. And when we
Speaker 1: don't say a word about pornography or about misogyny in
Speaker 1: mainstream media or sex in mainstream media, you're not saying
Speaker 1: anything right because you're what embarrassed. We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: short break and we'll be right back. Welcome back with more.
Speaker 1: Go ask Alli. You know my other question is I
Speaker 1: did a I did a podcast and we were talking
Speaker 1: about UM, which I'm a sort of big participant in
Speaker 1: helping kids with mental health issues, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about pornography and I said, you know, my children haven't
Speaker 1: asked me about pornography or anything, but I would. I
Speaker 1: would actually sit down with them and I would explain
Speaker 1: to them, you know, this is not a natural act.
Speaker 1: What you're seeing right now is a performance. And this
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe go through it with them. But maybe
Speaker 1: that's the wrong thing, because then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw I was in you know, us
Speaker 1: Weekly saying Ali Wentworth watches porn with her children. But
Speaker 1: I was I was trying to actually figure out in time.
Speaker 1: Is that helpful? I mean, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would sit down. I mean, if you have that relationship
Speaker 1: with your kids, great, but I think most people aren't
Speaker 1: able to do that. You know what I did as
Speaker 1: a parent was right. UM. A chapter in Boys, Boys
Speaker 1: and Sex has a lot more about pornography than Girls
Speaker 1: and Sex did UM. And there's a whole chapter in
Speaker 1: there that talks about what is true and what is
Speaker 1: not true about pornography and the research around pornography and
Speaker 1: voice thoughts about pornography and allows them to reflect UM
Speaker 1: and read it without feeling like they're being shamed or blamed.
Speaker 1: And I think the first thing is to say it
Speaker 1: is too for children, adolescence, whatever, to understand that curiosity
Speaker 1: about sex is normal, that masturbation again UM is crucial
Speaker 1: and great for everybody, regardless of gender. So if you
Speaker 1: can't do that, UM, at least you can provide some resources,
Speaker 1: you know, or at least maybe there's another person, an
Speaker 1: aunt or an uncle or a cousin or an older
Speaker 1: sibling or something that you can you know, ask to
Speaker 1: have that conversation, these conversations with your child, or you
Speaker 1: can UM make sure that you have resources around the house.
Speaker 1: There's like, um, uh, well, one great book for parents
Speaker 1: I think is Safia's a Loom This book and I
Speaker 1: know you're not gonna remember her name, but you'll remember
Speaker 1: the title is called Sex, Teens and Everything in Between.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a great book to help with
Speaker 1: sort of a more scripted way or ideas on how
Speaker 1: to talk to your child about all these issues. Um.
Speaker 1: The other book I always think is really great to
Speaker 1: have for your adolescent is Heather Corina's book UM I
Speaker 1: always forget to tell it's s e X something like
Speaker 1: an All you Need Manual to get you through your
Speaker 1: teens in twenties or something like that. She's the she's
Speaker 1: the person who does the website Scarlet teen, which is
Speaker 1: also very good and really helpful for young people to
Speaker 1: know about. I think everybody should read this. There's one
Speaker 1: essay UM called an a Modest Proposal. Also if I
Speaker 1: Heather Corina, who who does Scarlet teen, and it is
Speaker 1: about um first intercourse, and I can't I sort of
Speaker 1: can't go through the whole thing, but she lays out
Speaker 1: the scenario that sounds like what most of us would
Speaker 1: think of would be a positive first time for a
Speaker 1: girl and then she breaks down why it's not good enough?
Speaker 1: Um And I think that in that conversation, in that essay,
Speaker 1: it brings up so many questions that would start conversation
Speaker 1: or start a girl thinking about what, you know, what
Speaker 1: she can have, what she should have, what she should
Speaker 1: be able to ask for. And so I think there's
Speaker 1: there is an aspect, even if you're not willing to
Speaker 1: or don't know how, or to embarrass or whatever, to
Speaker 1: have the conversations at the very least, UM, you need
Speaker 1: to provide your child with um a countra narrative somehow.
Speaker 1: So now I'm gonna swing the pendulum from pornography to virginity.
Speaker 1: How do we change the optics of virginity? I I
Speaker 1: will say to my kids, you know, your virginity is
Speaker 1: not something that you give to a boy. This is
Speaker 1: not a gift for him, um And and I hammer
Speaker 1: that in their heads because it's just a thorn in
Speaker 1: my side when people say, oh, you know how great
Speaker 1: she gave her virginity too, Timmy and I just I
Speaker 1: don't want that Timmy took it or that Timmy took
Speaker 1: it so um, that danged Timmy kind of Timmy dickted
Speaker 1: to porn that, Timmy, So, how do we have a
Speaker 1: conversation with their girls about virginity and take out these
Speaker 1: kind of old fashioned ways of saying it. Virginity is
Speaker 1: a social construct. Um uh so, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that's true, though, And why do we even define it
Speaker 1: the way we define it. Why is the virginity defined
Speaker 1: as penis vagina intercourse? Why do we think that that
Speaker 1: is the ultimate thing, because you know, for the one
Speaker 1: thing it's it's not going to you know, feel that
Speaker 1: good to most girls. Um. By the way, Peggy, should
Speaker 1: we tell girls that there are ways to make it
Speaker 1: to help you know that they're like lube is your
Speaker 1: best friend kind of thing. Being actually ready as a
Speaker 1: you know, knowing your body and knowing when your body
Speaker 1: is aroused and receptive is going to make it easier. Um,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times that's not the case when
Speaker 1: they when they're having intercourse for the first time. Um.
Speaker 1: So not only that it's going to hurt, but that
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily have to. Um, it's helpful. But I
Speaker 1: think the bigger conversation is we think of that as
Speaker 1: this line in the sand intercourse between childhood and adulthood. UM,
Speaker 1: and that is ends up being such a disappointing thing
Speaker 1: for for girls, right, Like it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: usually doesn't feel like good for them. Um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like something they want to get over with. Right.
Speaker 1: It's the way that we constructed so that it's this
Speaker 1: race to the goal and that's the goal is so
Speaker 1: um unfair and inappropriate for most young women. So one
Speaker 1: thing I thought a lot about was UM. I thought
Speaker 1: a lot about that when I interviewed gay girls in particular, UM.
Speaker 1: And I remember talking to one of the girls and
Speaker 1: she UM, had only had sex with other girls, And
Speaker 1: I said, so, how did you know anywhere to virgin anymore?
Speaker 1: And she kind of laughed and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I had that question too, And so I googled it
Speaker 1: and at least at the time, Google did not have
Speaker 1: a very good answer for her. Um, they should get
Speaker 1: on that, and uh so she she kind of she said, well,
Speaker 1: so for a while I thought was the first time
Speaker 1: somebody put their hands in my pants? But then I
Speaker 1: decided that wasn't it. And she thought about it. She
Speaker 1: finally said, you know what I decided it was. I
Speaker 1: decided I wasn't a virgin anymore. The first time I
Speaker 1: had an orgasm with another person. Oh that's interesting, right,
Speaker 1: Like what if that was the definition. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not that I want to put Sometimes girls can feel
Speaker 1: intense pressure to be orgasmic with partners, and that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be either. But but it shifts the idea a little
Speaker 1: bit too. Sex as a pool of experiences. Um, that
Speaker 1: that is about sensuality and intimacy and pleasure and orgasm
Speaker 1: and all these other things, not just about somebody sticking
Speaker 1: to penis into her vagina and then suddenly you're a
Speaker 1: changed human being. We're still kind of living by this
Speaker 1: incredibly ancient idea of you know, a man demanding his
Speaker 1: wife be a virgin and be right, and then somehow
Speaker 1: that is what is gonna um make a woman, you know,
Speaker 1: like purity and all these So it's really, um, it's
Speaker 1: an offensive concept, hope or girls who think, oh i'll
Speaker 1: have a sex, yeah, and then that makes those things
Speaker 1: not sex. I mean, there's a couple of things that
Speaker 1: first of all, I was just going to finish that
Speaker 1: thought was that I think that we should think in
Speaker 1: terms of virginity. S if we're gonna think, you know,
Speaker 1: for you know, like things like having different experiences and
Speaker 1: like all the things being sort of waited differently than
Speaker 1: we wait them now. And one of the issues is
Speaker 1: that that I found with with oral sex in particular,
Speaker 1: was that it had become it was they that kids
Speaker 1: didn't think of it as sex, and so the problem
Speaker 1: was and and it's it's actually the biggest change in
Speaker 1: American sexual behavior, UM is the eyes of oral sex
Speaker 1: and that it has become less intimate than intercourse. Whereas
Speaker 1: until really, um that changed in the nineties, so sort
Speaker 1: of before then it was considered more intimate than intercourse. UM.
Speaker 1: So girls in particular would talk to me about it
Speaker 1: and they would say, oh, it's no big deal. Like
Speaker 1: it was like they all read the same Instagram post
Speaker 1: or something. You know, it's no big deal. Um. But
Speaker 1: only when it was girls giving oral sex to boys. UM.
Speaker 1: The other way was a big deal. So they were
Speaker 1: using blow jobs as a way to um, you know,
Speaker 1: improve a relationship, to satisfy a guy, to um gain status.
Speaker 1: I started saying to girls, what if you know, what
Speaker 1: if every time you were alone with a guy he
Speaker 1: told you to get him a glass of water from
Speaker 1: the kitchen, but he never got you a glass of water.
Speaker 1: You know, you would never stand for that, and that's
Speaker 1: called a marriage right, And they said, you know when
Speaker 1: you put it that way, Um, it was like, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you put it that way? Why would you be
Speaker 1: more willing to perform a non reciprocal sex act and
Speaker 1: get somebody a glass of water from the kitchen? You know.
Speaker 1: So when we allow all these other things to be
Speaker 1: not sex, um, it opens the door not only to
Speaker 1: that sort of you know, distorted and unreciprocal thinking, but
Speaker 1: to risky behavior and to disrespect. It's interesting My um
Speaker 1: now eighteen year old daughter years ago came home from
Speaker 1: school and she said to me, um, Mom, can we
Speaker 1: talk about a blow job? And I thought, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to explain it to her. Um. And I
Speaker 1: was about to explain it, you know, what it was
Speaker 1: and the mechanics of it, and she said I don't
Speaker 1: get it. And I said, well what you have to do?
Speaker 1: And you know, I all but took out a banana
Speaker 1: and she said, UM, no, I don't get it. What's
Speaker 1: in it for her? And I said what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And she said, well, it's something that you know a
Speaker 1: girl or a boy would do it to a boy,
Speaker 1: But then how is it reciprocated? And I thought I
Speaker 1: never thought that way as a teenager. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating and encouraging, at least for me, it
Speaker 1: was excellent. Yeah, you talk about intimate justice in your work,
Speaker 1: Explain what you mean by That's a phrase that was
Speaker 1: coined by Sarah mcwelland, who is a psychology professor at
Speaker 1: University of Michigan. And it's the idea that, UM, sex
Speaker 1: has political implications as well as personal implications. UM Just
Speaker 1: like right, who does the dishes in your house? Right?
Speaker 1: And or or who's vacuating the rubber, who's doing the childcare?
Speaker 1: All those things are political as well as personal, and
Speaker 1: just like those things, it brings up issues of economic
Speaker 1: inequality and violence and mental health and physical well being. UM.
Speaker 1: So in intimate justice, McLean says, UM, we ask questions
Speaker 1: like who um is allowed to have a sexual experience,
Speaker 1: who's the primary beneficiary of that experience? Um? How does
Speaker 1: each partner define good enough, who's allowed to have pleasure?
Speaker 1: All of those things? Those I think I think that's
Speaker 1: gonna be really tricky questions for adult women to answer. Frankly, UM,
Speaker 1: but I felt like when I was talking to girls
Speaker 1: in particular, that you know, I just kept coming back
Speaker 1: to this idea that I didn't want their early sexual
Speaker 1: experiences to be something that they had to get over.
Speaker 1: M Oh, yes, absolutely. Um. In an interview with seventy
Speaker 1: women between fifteen and twenty, you found that the young
Speaker 1: women realized that they were expected to please their sexual partners,
Speaker 1: but did not expect it to be reciprocated. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot and and that's and that's true. Um, that's
Speaker 1: true in research that you know, women are more likely
Speaker 1: than young men to measure their satisfaction by the yardstick
Speaker 1: of their partner's pleasure. So they'll say, um, if you know,
Speaker 1: if he's satisfied, that I'm satisfied. This is a straight
Speaker 1: women in particular. Um, and there's a really interesting difference
Speaker 1: with women who have sex with other women. Uh. Men,
Speaker 1: by contrast, straight men and gay men probably do are
Speaker 1: more likely to measure their um sexual satisfaction by their
Speaker 1: own orgasm. So and and especially in you know, for
Speaker 1: young people right now when they're in college in a
Speaker 1: sort of more hook up culture type of situation. UM,
Speaker 1: that is not a culture that values female pleasure and
Speaker 1: female orgasm. So there and and you know, going back
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about before, we don't name
Speaker 1: any of these things. We don't tell our daughters that
Speaker 1: they UM are capable of orgasm and pleasure. We expect
Speaker 1: them to find out in some kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know way, UM, So it's not surprising that they don't
Speaker 1: feel that. And it's not only an issue frankly, of
Speaker 1: UM sexual equality, it's also a safety issue because the
Speaker 1: only UM program that has been found to reduce rates
Speaker 1: of assault among college girls, it's this program in Canada,
Speaker 1: and it has been shown to reduce assault rates among
Speaker 1: girls by encouraging refusal skills and practicing and UM a
Speaker 1: kind of awareness. And they found that when they pair
Speaker 1: all of that with sex positive sex AD that the
Speaker 1: rates of a cell go down even further. The reason
Speaker 1: is because assault often starts with a kind of low
Speaker 1: level verbal coercion, and when girls are more aware of
Speaker 1: their own bodies and their own needs and wants and limits,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to see that more quickly and to
Speaker 1: potentially be able to UM get out of there. And
Speaker 1: so rather than saying, oh, well, maybe it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so bad, or maybe it's just me or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you know I should this is what people do. Um,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to be able to say, um, I
Speaker 1: don't want that, and and to get out. And you know,
Speaker 1: again it's not young women's fault if they can't do
Speaker 1: that or don't do that, but we do want them
Speaker 1: to have every tool at their disposal if possible, to
Speaker 1: help keep them safe. And I talked about this in
Speaker 1: Girls and Sex um when they would talk to college
Speaker 1: women and say, you know, can you tell a guy no? Uh?
Speaker 1: And they would say, well, yeah, I don't have a
Speaker 1: problem with that. But then they would put them in
Speaker 1: a kind of simulated experience with an actor, and even
Speaker 1: at really low level stuff like somebody asking badgering them
Speaker 1: for their phone number, they would just collapse. They couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. Um. And and when it got to a
Speaker 1: more um aggressive situation they had they had a very
Speaker 1: very hard time because girls are so socialized to be polite,
Speaker 1: even girls who are assertive and powerful and educated. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know it, right, we're adult women. We know that
Speaker 1: it's true. You know. One thing that um uh I
Speaker 1: read was that saying telling your daughter, you know, honey,
Speaker 1: you don't have to stay in a conversation with a guy,
Speaker 1: just to be polite. That's a big thing to say
Speaker 1: to a girl, just that, you know, just letting them know.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stay in that converse. You don't
Speaker 1: have to make that person feel good, you don't have
Speaker 1: to take care of that man's feelings. You can walk away,
Speaker 1: really practicing the muscle of saying no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say that. If you don't get out of there,
Speaker 1: that that's on you, and in no way is it.
Speaker 1: But um, but if it's possible, gee, I would want
Speaker 1: my child to be able to recognize and get out
Speaker 1: of a potentially dangerous situation well before it escalates, or
Speaker 1: even I mean even in a non dangerous situation, you know,
Speaker 1: just the idea that. And I'll speak for myself. I
Speaker 1: think I was programmed young to just facilitate pleasure to
Speaker 1: the other person. So yeah, if I if I actually
Speaker 1: had to listen to my body, which at that age
Speaker 1: I had no idea how to do, I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: know if I wanted to, you know, make out with
Speaker 1: this boy or not, because I was so shut down.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think, you know, obviously the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario is assault, but but even in an okay scenario,
Speaker 1: feel your body? Does this even interest you? Right? And
Speaker 1: to me it was so important. All the consent stuff
Speaker 1: obviously is crucial. But that's where our conversation these days
Speaker 1: in the modern era UM is stopping. It used to
Speaker 1: be that we would talk about birth control and pregnancy,
Speaker 1: pregnancy and disease protection, and UM think that we've done
Speaker 1: our job. Now we've added consent, and we think that
Speaker 1: we've done our job. But all of that is about
Speaker 1: risk and danger, and we are not doing the other
Speaker 1: part of the job, which is what happens after yes.
Speaker 1: You know, how do we how do we help our
Speaker 1: daughters to be able to advocate for themselves UM in
Speaker 1: a sexual situation when they do say yes, so that
Speaker 1: it's not they're not just looking at it from the
Speaker 1: perspective of it's about the other person's pleasure. And one
Speaker 1: thing I will say about that though I I said
Speaker 1: earlier that UM that girls who have UM sexual encounters
Speaker 1: with other girls things left. UH. In those situations, UM,
Speaker 1: girls continue to focus their attention on their partner. That
Speaker 1: doesn't change, But the what shifts is that both people
Speaker 1: are doing it. So UM. The orgasm gap that you
Speaker 1: see between heterosexual men and heterosexual women. Disappears and women
Speaker 1: climax at the exact same rate as heterosexual men. My god,
Speaker 1: I know think I'm about to leave my husband for enough,
Speaker 1: right I know? Now A quick word from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: welcome back to go ask Gali. Let's get back to
Speaker 1: the discussion. I love the fact that you when you
Speaker 1: went and spoke to so many boys for your book
Speaker 1: on boys, that they were dying to talk, and they
Speaker 1: were dying to open up because you know, we classically
Speaker 1: thank boys are just going to go in their room
Speaker 1: and shut the door and we don't have to deal
Speaker 1: with them because there you know, I I initially really
Speaker 1: resisted doing that book. Um you know, readers and girls
Speaker 1: and boys and my editors were like, do a boy
Speaker 1: booked boy? And It's like, I don't think so. The
Speaker 1: boys aren't going to talk to me. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do with that. But they totally did. And I
Speaker 1: think in some ways it was an advantage to be
Speaker 1: a woman because they if they're going to open up,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to open up to a woman. What
Speaker 1: surprised you the most? That actually surprised me the most,
Speaker 1: to be honest, it surprised me how willing they were
Speaker 1: to talk and how much they had to say UM
Speaker 1: and how and what what good narrators they could be
Speaker 1: of their own UM lives and and one of the
Speaker 1: surprises to was the non consensual stuff with guys and
Speaker 1: UM that came up a number of times again before
Speaker 1: I could really hear it, and I ended up writting
Speaker 1: a chapter about it around the story of one boy
Speaker 1: in particular, UM, who had been drunk at a party.
Speaker 1: He was not really himself religious, but he came from
Speaker 1: a religious family, so I think that was part of
Speaker 1: it for him, but not all of it, because other
Speaker 1: boys didn't say that UM, and he UM was really drunk,
Speaker 1: and this girl UH kind of led him into a bathroom,
Speaker 1: I think, and had intercourse with him. And he kind
Speaker 1: of only has hazy memories of it. But he woke
Speaker 1: up the next day and thought, wait, what happened? And
Speaker 1: he texted her and said, did we have sex? And
Speaker 1: she said yeah, And he said I did not want
Speaker 1: to do that. I did not consent to that. He
Speaker 1: had never had intercourse and that wasn't what he wanted.
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: a guy who doesn't want to have sex. And and
Speaker 1: he really spiraled in exactly the same way that girls
Speaker 1: spiral in those situations. Um. And he was you know,
Speaker 1: he was not um stereotypically like emotive boy or anything.
Speaker 1: And he had a really hard time. And and I
Speaker 1: actually ended up writing that chapter one as a as
Speaker 1: an article for New York magazine. And um, and I
Speaker 1: got all these emails from boys saying it happened, they
Speaker 1: had these experiences. Yeah, and and they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to understand, like sometimes it was confusing. Usually it wasn't
Speaker 1: that troubling to them. I mean a lot of times
Speaker 1: when I talked to boys and I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: you have you had unwanted you know, unwanted experience, usually
Speaker 1: they would say like it was kind of funny, or
Speaker 1: they just kind of brushed it off, so it didn't
Speaker 1: really affect them for the most part in the same way. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think that we have to recognize that it
Speaker 1: goes both ways, because both ways, and that that this
Speaker 1: idea that boys aren't allowed to say no, who aren't
Speaker 1: able to say no, is unfair to them and robs
Speaker 1: them of agency. And you know, and that's enough. But
Speaker 1: in addition, to that. How can somebody who isn't allowed
Speaker 1: to say no really hear no from somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also, uh, you know when I think about sort
Speaker 1: of boys dealing with consent on this other side, you know,
Speaker 1: and you you do hear the with girls as well,
Speaker 1: but particularly if he had an arract action, that immediately
Speaker 1: says to people, well, you were into it. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a girl who's raped and has
Speaker 1: an orgasm. You know, it's it's well, you have you
Speaker 1: had an erection and you had sex with her, So
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I mean, I can see
Speaker 1: that being a very complicated thing just because of you know,
Speaker 1: the optics of it all, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And erections are not consent and orgasm is not correct
Speaker 1: you know that that's um, that's just the body like
Speaker 1: that's just a physiological response, and it's you know, you
Speaker 1: can't you can lubricate, Yeah, during an assault. You can
Speaker 1: have an orgasm during an assault. You can get an
Speaker 1: erection when you know, to something, you can get a
Speaker 1: direction in the middle of a math class. You didn't
Speaker 1: want to get that erection. You're not turned on, you know,
Speaker 1: it just like happened um, And actually I mean not
Speaker 1: to totally circle back to porn all the time, but
Speaker 1: I think it's actually an important you know, one important
Speaker 1: lesson that I learned, um about just the mechanics of
Speaker 1: how our bodies work is that there is a big
Speaker 1: gap between what physical response and turned on feelings. Emily Nagaski,
Speaker 1: who does work in this area, likens it. Tom. If
Speaker 1: you're tickled by somebody you don't like like, you might laugh, right,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean you're enjoying yourself. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a really actually a great
Speaker 1: metaphor because everybody understands that, right, Yeah, everybody said that happen.
Speaker 1: That's just the body being the body. We're having a
Speaker 1: physiological response of laughing, even though you want to punch
Speaker 1: that person in the face. Exactly when talking to adolescent
Speaker 1: boys and girls, do adolescent boys care if the girl
Speaker 1: I'm talking about heterosexual, If the girl has an orgasm
Speaker 1: or has pleasure, did you find that and be do
Speaker 1: adolyst and girls fake it again in an attempt to
Speaker 1: please her partner? Oh yeah, you know that answers, Yes,
Speaker 1: I know. I just want to hear it out loud
Speaker 1: from your mouth. Actually, what was funny was that that
Speaker 1: a fair number of boys did too. I was like,
Speaker 1: how does that work? Um, but they did too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they probably can. Teenagers could probably they can, sure
Speaker 1: they can. But it's kind of another thing that kind
Speaker 1: of hadn't occurred to me. But they talked about. The
Speaker 1: boys talked about that to get out of a situation.
Speaker 1: They you know, if they just didn't want to be there. Um.
Speaker 1: And but the girls, Yeah, so it's contact specific for
Speaker 1: the most part. Um what what guys would tend to say?
Speaker 1: And this is not universal, but you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's the tendency both among the boys I talked
Speaker 1: to and in research in general, that they care in
Speaker 1: a relationship, They care about their partners pleasure very much
Speaker 1: in a relationship. In a hook up, in a one off, no,
Speaker 1: they would say, I know this sounds terrible, but I
Speaker 1: just don't care. So you know, if if you're um,
Speaker 1: that's what you know, if you're in a in a
Speaker 1: college or a high school context, that that is a
Speaker 1: hook up culture. Um, that is not what that is
Speaker 1: there for. It is not there for female pleasure and
Speaker 1: female orgasm. I think what what? And And that was
Speaker 1: really important to me in the books to really and
Speaker 1: it's the one thing where there's a big overlap in
Speaker 1: both books is discussion of cook up culture from the
Speaker 1: girl's side and from the boys side, because and and
Speaker 1: the boys side was kind of surprising at how ambivalent
Speaker 1: they were about it. I didn't know. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know that. But the girls, um, you know, the lack
Speaker 1: of reciprocity was pretty much presumed. It's not my job
Speaker 1: to say you should never. That's not my you know,
Speaker 1: And relationships can be toxic and abusive and stuff, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's issues with everything. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: in a hook up you're likely to get a warm
Speaker 1: body and and for girls, you know, an adrenaline rush,
Speaker 1: a war story. That's a big one. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole thing about the hook up. The main I think
Speaker 1: aspect of a hook up is that you're going to
Speaker 1: go back and report to your friends. That's the story
Speaker 1: I got t yep. And um, if you're a guy,
Speaker 1: you know you might get an orgasm you probably want
Speaker 1: if you go, but well, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: in a hook up is good sex. And what you're
Speaker 1: not going to get are the tools that you need
Speaker 1: in order to create either a positive, you know, a
Speaker 1: satisfying sexual experience or emotional intimacy. So so hook up
Speaker 1: from my understanding for my daughters is it can be
Speaker 1: anything from making out to having sex, which as a parent,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit terrifying when I hear them talking
Speaker 1: the next morning and they're like, oh my god, Sally
Speaker 1: hooked up with Timmy. Amusing Timmy again that Timmy and
Speaker 1: I'm telling me he's the worst, He's a bad seed
Speaker 1: that to me, and I say that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be cool, but I'll say, like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: hook up? And they'll say like, oh, they hooked up,
Speaker 1: And I go, what does that mean? Right? It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything, and it's it's it's a totally ambiguous term.
Speaker 1: And it can mean kiss saying, it can mean growing,
Speaker 1: it can mean oral sex, of community, storce, and and
Speaker 1: it allows young people to over estimate what their peers
Speaker 1: are doing, which can lead to you know, engaging in
Speaker 1: sex that you don't want to engage in so that
Speaker 1: you can keep up with the jones this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: or are pushing harder than you might otherwise push. So
Speaker 1: what we know in terms of research and is that
Speaker 1: in at the college level, of hookups involved intercourse, another
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen pcent involved oral sex, and the rest
Speaker 1: are kissing and groping. And that of college students never
Speaker 1: hook up once in their entire college careers, about ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen percent UM hook up more than ten times UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, in some combination of those activities and
Speaker 1: the rest, the average number of partners over four years
Speaker 1: is seven. So it's not exactly the fall of rome. Um.
Speaker 1: What the other piece, though, is so there's the hook up,
Speaker 1: but then there's also the phrase hook up culture and
Speaker 1: hook up culture is something else and that with that,
Speaker 1: and college students will say, Um, this research is always
Speaker 1: done on college students because they're over eighteen and they're
Speaker 1: all in one place. What that college students say that
Speaker 1: hookup culture predominates on their campuses. And what that is
Speaker 1: is the idea that physical intimacy should precede emotional intimacy
Speaker 1: rather than be its product, and that hooking up is
Speaker 1: the pathway to a relationship, um, even though most hookups
Speaker 1: won't lead to relationships. So that that's what has really shifted,
Speaker 1: is that you know, rather than being like you know,
Speaker 1: you ask somebody out on a day you've got to coffee,
Speaker 1: you move towards seeing if you like them, and then
Speaker 1: you start getting physical with them. You first get physical
Speaker 1: and then you decide if maybe you might like them.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to do because part of the script
Speaker 1: of the hookup is that afterwards you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: um kind of less friendly with the person. So that
Speaker 1: makes it really hard to figure out how to establish
Speaker 1: some level of emotional connection, UM, when you're sort of
Speaker 1: not supposed to do that. That's part of the part
Speaker 1: of the deal. So what's the difference between a one
Speaker 1: night stand, which was my generation, and a hook up?
Speaker 1: What's the difference? Um, nothing, necessarily, they didn't invent casual sex,
Speaker 1: but I think in your era. In my era, UM,
Speaker 1: that was typically the exception was that you would have
Speaker 1: a meaningless one night stand. It wasn't you know that
Speaker 1: It was sort of like I remember we used to
Speaker 1: my friends and I used to call them transitional men.
Speaker 1: You would be in a relationship for a while, the
Speaker 1: relation and then you'd have like the transitional guys who
Speaker 1: you would just like, you know, sleep with for three
Speaker 1: months or something or I think usually wasn't one night
Speaker 1: but sometimes but you know that that you knew what
Speaker 1: we're kind of temporary and you were just kind of
Speaker 1: blowing off steam and having a good time. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's just it's a different orientation that young people tend
Speaker 1: to have. Now, if you had to as a as
Speaker 1: a parent wandering in the desert of teenage sexual discovery,
Speaker 1: are there which I am, which I am as well, Um,
Speaker 1: what would you say? And I know this is like
Speaker 1: a hard question, but what are the three things the
Speaker 1: most important things that we could say to our daughters. Well,
Speaker 1: that's tough to say. I mean I think that you know,
Speaker 1: we do have to talk to them about knowing their
Speaker 1: own bodies. Um, we have to talk to them about
Speaker 1: having a friend of mine always says they need to
Speaker 1: have a strong yes, and they need to have a
Speaker 1: strong now. And and I think that that's really wise.
Speaker 1: And I think that we need to provide them with
Speaker 1: the resources that they need, um to reach that understanding,
Speaker 1: not only our own voices, but um books or websites
Speaker 1: or whatever they need that can help them self educate,
Speaker 1: because it is hard as a parent. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're really into like you've got a young child
Speaker 1: and you want to like get them into the best
Speaker 1: sex education ever. Um, you should check out the Unitarian Church,
Speaker 1: our whole lives. That's like having a little bit of
Speaker 1: Holland in America. They do such a fabulous job with UMA,
Speaker 1: with all kinds of sex and relationship education. They're they're
Speaker 1: like the gold standard. UM. But but for parents, I
Speaker 1: think it's starting. Those alogue said are about sex, but
Speaker 1: not you know again, not just about sex. But Americans
Speaker 1: when we talk to our kids, we tend to frame
Speaker 1: all our conversations in terms of risk and danger, and
Speaker 1: the Dutch frame them in terms of responsibility and joy.
Speaker 1: And for me as a parent, that shift was enormous. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would have added consent to the um discussion of
Speaker 1: uh birth control and disease protection, but the other you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of joy, I don't think so. And I
Speaker 1: have really tried to you know, whether she likes it
Speaker 1: or not, and a lot of times she doesn't. Um.
Speaker 1: Make that shift. Yeah, I think that's such a great point.
Speaker 1: It really is. I feel like I've been sort of
Speaker 1: parenting from a fear based position. We all do, right,
Speaker 1: we all do, because it's terrifying to be a parent
Speaker 1: and you have, you know, this child walking around you
Speaker 1: don't want them to be hurt, and you don't want
Speaker 1: them to you know, you want to wrap them in
Speaker 1: bubble wrap. I will say that for me, a lot
Speaker 1: of the pandemic has been about that. When I've been
Speaker 1: forced to UM because I travel a lot for work,
Speaker 1: and I have been home for a longer period than
Speaker 1: probably since my child was a toddler. UM, and it
Speaker 1: kind of forces me to think about the conversations we've
Speaker 1: had and haven't had, and how we've had them and
Speaker 1: what that means. And um, you know, we're stuck in
Speaker 1: the house together talking all the time. So that has
Speaker 1: been some days, you know, really hard. But it's also, um,
Speaker 1: I think created some real opportunity that absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: if there is any upside to the pandemic, it would
Speaker 1: be something being able to have conversations we probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have time to have or extend them. And absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: Peggy Orenstein, this has been a pleasure. Thanks too, Yes,
Speaker 1: and um again I'm going I can't speak highly more
Speaker 1: highly of what amazing books you have. Whether you have
Speaker 1: a girl or a boy or a princess, Um, all
Speaker 1: your books are so helpful because I do find when
Speaker 1: I talk to other parents. This is the area we
Speaker 1: are most uncomfortable about about talking about about understanding UM,
Speaker 1: mostly as I started this podcast with because of our
Speaker 1: own upbringing in the subject. So exactly, I actually don't
Speaker 1: want to perpetuate some of the same things. I want
Speaker 1: to change them for my children. So UM, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Uh my great pleasure, Allie, and I hope
Speaker 1: to speak to you soon. I cannot tell you how
Speaker 1: much I appreciate those incredible messages Peggy offered. Know your
Speaker 1: bodies have a strong yes or no and provide resources.
Speaker 1: I hope this insight has been helpful to our listeners
Speaker 1: out there. I know this conversation has helped me. So
Speaker 1: that's it everyone. We are wrapping up for this season
Speaker 1: and we will be going on a brief hiatus, but
Speaker 1: do not fear. I'll be back in for season two
Speaker 1: and when I return, I will be diving into our
Speaker 1: next topic, how to grow a relationship in a pandemic.
Speaker 1: See you in Thank you for listening to Go ask Ali.
Speaker 1: Remember to subscribe to go ask Alli and follow me
Speaker 1: on my social media Twitter at Ali e Wentworth in Instagram.
Speaker 1: The Real Ali Wentworth. Go ask Ali is a production
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