Carter Sherman: How Shame Became the New Sex Ed

Gen Z is having a sex recession.

20 and 30-somethings are having less sex than previous generations-

Wow

... and are starting their sex lives later.

Gen Z have been done dirty when it comes to dating, and people's views of dating is more polarizing than ever. For many teenagers, greater use of social media means a far greater sense of isolation.

The average 14-year-old boy today has seen more hardcore porn than all of the American fighting forces in the Second World War.

Sex ed here in the United States is nonsense and confusion because it teaches you how to be safe, but not the pleasures, and porn teaches you the pleasures, sort of, but not how to be safe.

Carter Sherman, reproductive health and justice reporter with The Guardian, who interviewed over 100 young people for her new book. It's called The Second Coming. [upbeat music]

This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. [upbeat music] I'm truly ex- so excited to have this conversation.

Mm-hmm.

You don't understand.

Well, thank you for having me on.

Yeah, because, like, sometimes you reading a book and then it's just, like, facts, facts, data, data, facts, facts, facts, and then here it's like facts, data, sex.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Good times.

Why didn't you lead with that?

[laughs]

I mean, I don't-

We're here. Coffee, coffee, marriage, coffee-

[laughs]

... hospitals, hospitals, research. [laughs]

You know, I like to surprise.

Okay. [laughs]

But yeah, that's the secret thing that I also write about, in addition to healthcare, is sex. Which is more fun, that's for sure.

Sherman, your husband's name?

No, it's my name.

[laughs]

[laughs]

So.

What? [laughs]

[laughs]

He asked if Sherman was my husband's name, and I was instantly like, "No."

[laughs]

[laughs]

Just no way.

[laughs] Oh, that's funny.

Well, his name is, his last name is Conway Pearson, and so I would like to combine our names and be, like, Conman and Sher- or Sherman and Sherman-

Sher- Sherman and Conman

way I would change my name is for this bit.

Those are some of, that's, I mean, like, those are some of those things in life that are terrible in the thought-

Yes

... but man, what a beautiful idea.

Yes.

That would be a great one.

Thank you.

Do- Dr. Conman. Especially if anything went wrong, you- you've i- you've, like, immunized yourself.

Yeah. You're like-

What went wrong?

... "What were you expecting?"

Well, when Dr. Conman, "I'm sorry you trusted, Dr. Conman."

[laughs] Totally your fault. [laughs]

[laughs]

It just becomes that in everything.

I know.

Dr. Conman. Well, but-

His malpractice insurance might be really hard to come by, but.

Right? [laughs]

I loved your reaction when I asked if that's his surname or yours and you were like, "Mine."

[laughs]

[laughs]

So y- so you haven't changed your surname, or you only use your surname when you're doing business?

I haven't tr- changed my surname.

At all?

No.

South Africa just made it, uh, did you see the-

Yes

... the law just changed?

Yes.

Because you're used to it.

No. No, no, no. It does. There's certain names that don't have a music, and to those people, I apologize, because your parents messed you up. Carter Sherman. That has music to it.

Yeah, yeah.

Carter Sherman.

That is best-

You know what I mean?

Best-selling author-

If you, if you-

... written all over.

Exactly.

Somebody did tell me it would be a good name for, like, a airport paperback thriller writer.

It would indeed.

Yeah.

Like, The Latest Carter Sherman.

It would indeed.

Yeah.

The Latest Carter Sherman. It has that vibe. Even, like, a rapper would say it.

Hm.

Carter Sherman, never heard him. You know what I mean? It's got, like, a co- like there's a-

Clearly not German.

There we go. What, you see? You see what I'm talking about? This is what I'm talking-

Uva Thurman.

I'm gonna leave here-

Man

... with a theme song. That's what's gonna happen here. [laughs]

This is, you see what I mean? These are good names. Eugene Koza has a flow. Trevor Noah.

Trevor Webber.

It's like Tr- no. Trevor Webber. It just sounds like you stumbled after saying it. I wouldn't do that. But that's, that's for your next book.

Okay.

Yeah.

[laughs]

Yeah.

It could, you know what? It could be your natural evolution because, like, I l- I look at all this, this stuff, not all the stuff that you've written.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but I, I was going back i- into some of your older writings, and one of the first pieces I could find was the one that you did for Ms. Magazine, right? That's-

Oh.

That's, that's, I think you s-

I love it. Yeah, no way

... you were still an intern.

Yes.

And it was a piece about, um, why co- why aren't condoms designed for female pleasure?

Hm.

You know what I mean?

I have no memory of writing this.

Oh.

So what's the answer?

No, uh-

Yeah.

No, the quest- you were asking the question.

Oh, okay.

You were saying, like, "Why aren't they?"

Yeah.

"Why are they not considering?"

Well-

"Why is it, like, how does it fit on the penis? Does it work well on the man's penis? Does he like it? Does it work well for him? Does it feel this? Does it feel that?"

Yeah.

But you were like, "But none of this work and none of this research is around but how does it feel for her?"

Mm-hmm.

And as I was reading that, and then reading through your book, I went, "Oh, wow, this is ... It's, it's cool to see somebody's trajectory and, and, and watch them ... " You, you know, like, you, we always meet people as they are now.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, I mean, I think it was one of the stories I used to open up the book, which is that I was pathologically obsessed with my own virginity. I was so upset to be a 17-year-old virgin. I thought I was the-

Upset?

Upset. I thought I was the last 17-year-old virgin on the planet.

Might have been.

I mean-

Who were you?

[laughs] It felt like it.

[laughs]

Like, I fully... My, one of the last girls in my friend group-

Mm-hmm

... to lose her virginity texted me during class that she had lost it, 'cause she cut school-

Wow

... and, yeah, had sex with this guy on her laundry room floor. I mean, it was great it sounded like. And I kept it together for the rest of school.

Mm.

And then I got into the car when my mom picked me up from school, and I just burst out sobbing-

Mm

... because I was so upset over the fact that I had-

You were the last one standing.

I know. And it was so tragic.

Wait, did you tell your mom why you were crying?

Oh, yeah, of course.

Wait, of course?

Yeah.

Oh, there's no of course in my w- wait. So your mom was like, "Why are you crying?" And you're like, "Well, 'cause, 'cause I can't get some."

Yes. And she was like, "You know, it's fine. Like, everybody loses it at different times. It's not a big deal."

Oh.

And I was like, "Well-"

These are the families I watched in movies and thought never existed.

[laughs]

But also, we're talking about-

Imagine

... h- how people were born to be villain- I mean, their villain origin stories. Yeah, their villain origin story. These are the opposites.

Yeah, like.

Like Carter Sherman, the last hymen.

[laughs]

[laughs] You-

That's my next book.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Can you imagine, Eugene? Let's, let's just play.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you... I'm gonna take you through time.

Okay.

Yes.

We're gonna transport you to a Black family, a, a South African family.

To be exact.

To be exact.

Okay.

What's wrong with... [laughs] Oh, this is amazing. Oh, wow, this is amazing.

It was a really... Yeah.

Oh, wow. [laughs]

I, she of course totally forgot the story, 'cause you know how parents just-

Yes

... fully forget the experiences-

Yes, yes

... that shape you forever?

Yeah. [laughs]

She forgot this, and then I was telling her the story again, you know, when I was writing the book. And [laughs] she was like, "I can't believe I said that. I really should have lied." And I was like-

[laughs]

... "Okay, I get it. Like, you were not a virgin at 17. Cool. Thank you for that."

[laughs]

[laughs]

She really wanted to impress upon me. Yeah.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs]

Yeah, but, but-

[laughs]

[laughs] I feel like, I feel like that, that story-

Oh, man, sorry. [laughs]

It's, it's, it's the perfect jumping-off point into, into what... You know what? It's, I don't know if there's right or wrong in it.

Mm.

I think rightly and wrongly, our obsession with sex. 'Cause on the one, there's one part of my brain that goes, "Why are we so obsessed with sex?" There's another part of me that always goes like, "Why aren't we more obsessed with sex?" In that-

Mm

... it is, it is the thing that means most of us are here.

Yeah.

It is the reason the human race will or will not continue in many ways.

Mm.

through, like, you know, all the different topics that you get into in every, every single one of the chapters. I think you do it amazingly, is like, it- it's not necessarily our obsession with sex that's wrong, it's what elements of sex we're obsessed with-

Mm

... that become detrimental to a society. And so, like, let's, let's talk about virginity. You know, when you look at virginity throughout the decades, it's amazing how it changes. 'Cause you're, you're, you're talking about crying-

Mm-hmm

... because you're the last virgin. And then you just rewind time or go to a different place, and the, the tears are because people aren't a, a virgin. Do you know what I mean?

Right. It, I mean-

Mm

... for so long virginity was something to be prized, and in many places of the world is still something to be prized, particularly for women.

Mm.

Like, it is essential to maintain your virginity-

Yeah

... in a lot of places, at risk of, I mean, potentially even death-

Mm-hmm

... depending on where you are in the world.

Mm.

And so it is kind of stunning how quickly that has flipped here in the United States, where it is seen as lame to be a virgin past a certain age. And I was really struck in writing the book that the feeling that I had that it was so uncool to be a virgin was shared by so many young people I talked to. Like,

all of them felt like having held onto their virginity for as long as they did, even if they lost their virginity early on, like, that was the wrong age to do it.

Oh, wow.

I talked to one young man who, what, like, as soon as, at 14, he started feeling really bad, that he-

14

... at 14, yeah, that he had not yet had sex.

Feel like his numbers was going down.

Yeah.

Well, but it's interesting because younger people are actually having less sex than previous generations. So these young people are telling themselves, "Oh, I'm so lame for not having sex" but it doesn't match the reality that, like, most of their peers probably aren't having sex at this point.

So do you find that, are people just lying about having sex, or are they-

Hmm.

I mean-

Which one is it?

[laughs]

If ev- if everyone thinks they're lame for not having sex, but they are having less sex than ever before-

I don't know if it's lying so much as we don't really have open conversations about sex. I think the extent to which we talk about sex in public is oftentimes to stigmatize sex, or when you talk about sex amongst your friends, you're oftentimes, like, em- not lying, but maybe embellishing stories or talking about-

Trust me

... like, only the good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're not really discussing the complexity of it or maybe your own feelings about how much sex you're having, how much sex you're not having, what your last sexual experience was like. And so I think that we're not really able to have conversations that get into the nuances of sex and the role that it plays in our lives because I think that we see sex oftentimes as something that, like, should be private. And I'm not saying it's not something that can't be deeply personal and something that you should hold for yourself, but I do think that we underestimate the ways that what's going on in public shape our approach to sex-

Oh

... and shape even our ability to have the kind of sex that we like.

Yeah, there's some, there's some parts of the book where it feels like, it feels like you're, you're forcing us to ask the question, who is obsessed with whose sex and why? And what does it, what does it mean? You know, like w- when I, when I was reading through, I was thinking of y- you know, going through the decades, and there's always these new moments in media where they'll be like, "Hook-up culture: Is it out of control? Is there a hook-up cult? What does it mean for your kids?" You know, and there's-

Mm-hmm

... n- those news headlines. And then you, like, fast-forward a few years and they'll be like, "There's a virginity recession. There's a," wa-wa. And there's like ... They always have these, like, these, these catchphrases.

Yeah.

But it always focuses on young people. That's something your book really made me realize. I, I hadn't thought of it before, but they very seldom are talking about 50-year-olds or 40-something-year-olds or 60-year-olds even. It's always focused on a peculiar thing that is happening in and around young people's sex.

Mm.

Like, why do you think that is? When you researched it,

what did you find?

Yeah. Why do we love telling young people that they're doing sex wrong?

Yeah. [laughs]

I mean, I think that-

Like

... in a lot of ways, like, controlling how young people have sex means you control the future.

Huh.

You can reset the narrative about what an American family should look like, what an American life should look like, how to be good in the United States-

Hmm

... depending on how you condition young people to think about sex. I mean, I would also argue that there's probably some element amongst people as we get older and maybe lose more of our sex appeal that we feel like-

Jealous

... yes. Yeah, like, we wanna control these young people who are sort of like, you know, rising up, flourishing, what have you. But I think that there is also a great political utility-

Yeah

... in telling young people how to live their lives, and in particular making them feel certain types of ways about sex and making them afraid of certain kinds of ways.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like y- you've nailed it, and I guess that's why you are a great author and I'm...

Well, I don't know about great author, but thank you. [laughs]

Yeah. You don't be... Hey,

you're Eugene Cozier. You don't forget that.

Thank you, Trevor.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

You ... I don't care what happens in your life.

Yeah.

You never forget that, right?

Thank you.

Yes, she's a great author.

Yes.

And you might be useless at everything, but you're still Eugene Cozier. [laughs]

Thank you. Okay.

Your name has a... What was-

Your na-

What did you say?

Your name has a r-

A rhythm

... it's a musicality to it.

Yeah, a musicality.

You don't forget that.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Guys, I don't know what to say. I'm, I'm touched. I mean-

Thank you, Eugene.

Thank you for seeing me, guys.

We see you.

You're welcome.

Well-

We can all go now. We're done here. We [laughs] ...

Yeah. [laughs]

Yeah, I mean, it's true that abstinence is the only way to totally avoid getting things like STIs or getting pregnant. And, but I think that that is not only the message that's communicated-

Yeah

... through abstinence-only sex ed. Like, oftentimes abstinence-only sex ed has been embedded with specific notions around, like, who, what a man should be or what a woman should be-

Mm

... or what a family should look like. And so I think for many of the advocates of abstinence-only sex ed, this is about creating a kind of American family that looks a lot like the American family of the 1950s.

Mm-hmm.

Which is to say, like, two very young people getting married-

Mm-hmm

... because in the 1950s the average age of marriage dropped to an unprecedented, I think it was 20 for women and 22 for men.

Wow.

So as a man and a woman get married, they have 2.5 kids, man works-

What's the .5?

... woman stays at home.

[laughs]

The dog.

I've always-

Yeah

... I've always loved that .5.

Yeah.

But never in Black families have I heard of a .5.

[laughs]

Never.

It's always ... Maybe it's, like, the always the possibility of more children.

Or you just count-

You know what I mean?

... your neighbor's child.

Yeah.

They have three and you have two.

Yeah.

Then the like-

They're talking-

They're talking about a lifestyle.

Right

... they're talking about a way to be, a way to be perceived or-

Values, yeah

... they're talking about a way that they want the United States to look.

Oh, damn. Damn So when you dig into it-

[laughs]

... you know, like, the, the, when I came across your work, it was, it was around, there were all these headlines about the sex recession. That's what, that's what got me intrigued 'cause I'd be reading the news and then all of a sudden I'd see a headline, "Sex Recession." I was like, "What, what is this?" And you, and you click into it, and it was like, "Gen Z are not having sex. They're having less sex than ever before. The sex is going down. No sex for Gen Z. What does that mean for your

children?" You'd see all these headlines. And you really-

Yeah

... in truly one of the most brilliant ways, you break down what people are missing, is that it's not a sex recession because, like, kids are like, "Ah, no sex," or, "I don't want sex," or... You go into the nuanced ideas in and around sex, intimacy, the responsibility, the bonds that people have.

Yeah.

What do you think people miss when they just go, "Gen Z doesn't wanna have sex"?

I think we take the idea of sex as being, like, good in and of itself, for whatever reason. Even though there's so much shaming around sex, it's, like, treated as a bad thing, a knee-jerk bad thing that the sex recession is going on.

Yeah.

And I think we should be asking ourselves, like, to why does it matter if young people aren't having sex? 'Cause, like, to be honest, I don't really care if young people are having sex or not. Like, what I care about is whether or not they are willing to be vulnerable, whether or not they learn skills like how to risk rejection and how to handle rejection-

Oh, yeah

... and what it means to connect with other people, not just sexually, but platonically and romantically. And so, like, the reason I, I find all these headlines about the sex recession to be very interesting is because I think we don't actually interrogate what sex is or means or the role that it plays in our lives.

Sure.

Which goes back to this earlier question-

Yeah

... that you were asking about, like, what are we not talking about when we talk about sex, and I think that that's what we're not really talking about. And I think the way that the sex recession headline happens is it sounds really dramatic, and you can understand why people would avoid

having sex-

Right

... 'cause sex is kinda fun. But-

Hmm?

... I think that it's- [laughs]

I like the way you said, "Kinda fun."

I mean, I mean-

You're selling it well, eh? Kinda fun.

Yeah.

Kinda fun.

Kinda fun.

I like it. I've had-

Yeah. [laughs]

[laughs]

I've enjoyed it in my time.

I mean, look-

Yeah. [laughs]

... you know, kinda fun.

Kinda fun. [laughs]

Was, was-

Well, you know [laughs]

... sex is kinda fun. Yeah, like from my-

I'm not, I'm not against it.

Yeah. [laughs]

That's a great sticker, by the way. "Sex is kinda fun."

Kinda fun. [laughs]

It's kinda fun.

I mean, it's breaking news right here.

[laughs]

I don't know, I don't know if anyone's heard.

[laughs]

Um, I don't know if the headline or the title-

[laughs]

... of the book made that clear, but, uh, I mean, I think it's, it depends on who you're talking to.

Mm.

Like, people, these young people that I, I interviewed more than 100 people under 30 for the book, and so, like, every conversation felt really different depending on where these people had come from-

Yeah

... and what their backgrounds were and, you know, how they identified their sexual orientation or their gender.

There's a lot. Mm.

But I think what was uniform amongst these young people is they really hadn't been asked a lot of the questions that I was asking them.

Yeah.

They all, virtually all of them had had sex education that they thought was incompetent. There was a lot of references to, if you've seen the movie Mean Girls-

Yes. Yes, yes

... you know how Coach Carr says, like, "If you have sex, you will die"? A lot of people unprompted brought up that exact analogy to me and said that that's what their sex ed was like. But then beyond that, they, a lot of them had never, they didn't have parents like mine. They couldn't talk to them about sex. They didn't have friends that they felt like they could speak openly about sex with. And so I think a lot of them enjoyed being able to have these in-depth conversations, 'cause each of these interviews ran, like, maybe 90 minutes.

Yeah.

Um, and I think particularly f- what I found was interesting, there was kind of a gender divide that happened-

Yeah

... which is that a lot of the young women, and also a lot of the queer folks I interviewed, they came to the table with more to say.

Okay.

They had th- thought about it even if they hadn't had these conversations before, whereas a lot of the young men I interviewed had not necessarily thought about or even, like, come to the table with things to talk about. And I thought that, my theory around that is I feel like the young women and the queer people Had understood that their sexual desires or their interests maybe created more friction for them.

Hmm.

Because, like, those desires, those interests were not treated as im- as being as important as young men's interests, young straight men's interests.

Right.

Whereas the young men, like, they ... It sort of took them longer to come to start thinking about some of this stuff because they hadn't really had to put as much thought into it.

Yeah, and it's-

Good point.

Yeah

... it's, it's interesting because society-

Hmm

... s- tells you what your story is

a lot of the time, you know?

Yeah.

So if I, if I think of it from a young man's perspective, when you're a young man, you're sold a story of yourself. You're sold a story that tells you where you should be at a certain time.

Oh.

How you should be s- viewing sex, what you ... And you think of, like, there's like-

The character

... the fun version, like Superbad, a movie like Superbad, or for me growing up, American Pie. You know what I mean? It's just this, "You gotta lose your virginity by prom, man. You gotta lose it by prom, man. Come on." You, you get what I'm saying?

Yeah.

But there's this idea, and even in those stor- And, like, don't get me wrong, those are comedies. I'm not saying don't make them, but society's telling you a story as a young man about your relationship with sex.

Mm-hmm.

And what your relationship with sex means about you and your, your success in life.

Hmm.

And I can only imagine, you know, if you're a woman, uh, you know, if you're queer, if you're any ... If you identify as anything, th- y- ... This is a very different relationship, and maybe, maybe you have less influence and more room to think about it, but also less m- support maybe for, for lack of a better word.

It's harder to make it real-

Yeah, yeah

... or to see it out in the real world. There was this concept that I came across while I was, uh, reporting the book called hegemonic masculinity. Just-

Hegemonic mas- masculinity.

Yeah, which is a sort of weighty word for, I think, something that people understand very easily, which is that there are a lot of very narrow ideas about what a man should be.

Yeah.

And, like, and particularly when it comes to sex, like, men should be big, strong, tall, emotionless cavemen who are good at obtaining sex and always want to have sex.

Good at obtaining it?

Yes.

And also want it.

Also want it.

Hmm.

So, like, there's not a lot of space-

For the in- between

... in those stereotypes for men to have the feelings that they do have-

Mm-hmm

... about sex.

And I feel like we've done a very good job in the United States over the last 50 years of expanding the ways that we think about, like, women's relationship with sex in some ways. Um, and, you know, even if it's harder for those young girls that I was interviewing or the young queer folks I was interviewing, it's harder for them to see this out in the real world or h- they have to think about it more, and they have all these ideas and s- like swirling around inside them. But, like, we haven't even created the space for men to start having those conversations or thinking about those stuff-

Yeah

... for themselves. And so I, when I was interviewing these young men, they talked a lot about dealing with those stereotypes and feeling like they had to be a particular kind of way-

Yeah, I remember having a-

... when it came to sex

... yeah, a conversation about this. It was, um, uh, I for- I forget where this was, but there was, there w- there was a panel that was being hosted, and there were some really interesting, um, psychologists talking about it. And then afterwards, there was a little break-off, and everyone was just chatting. And one of the therapists there, they, they, they were family therapists, sex therapists, all of this. They said something that stuck with me for years. They said, "We've lived in a world where men have been taught that they only think about sex, and sex has no feelings. And we've taught women that sex is only their feelings, and it defines them as a human being, and y- you know, it's, it's the most, it's the most valuable, powerful, like, 'Oh, this is your ...'" And so you, you have this imbalance where men go, "Stick it in. Good times." And then women are like, "It is my sanctity." And she was saying that, "No, no, no, the truth lies somewhere in the middle."

Hmm.

"Men need to be taught that they do have an emotion. They do have a little bit of a fear. They do have a connection. They do have a warmth. They do have a tenderness. They ..." You get what I'm saying? And then women can also be taught, like, "Hey, there's a liberation in going, like, it is yours to wield as you please. It is not only your sanctity. It's just yours." So you know what I mean? In the same way someone can choose to spend their Friday night drunk or reading a book,

there's gotta be a freedom in saying to people, "Your sex is your sex. Do with it as you please and don't think that it defines you in, like, a singular forever." Do you know what I'm saying?

I, I think all of this is, and it makes total sense, I think all of this, much like anything else, is a byproduct of marketing. I think sex products don't need to use sex to market anything anymore. For example, cigarette smoking.

Mm-hmm.

Going, um ... Remember those ads where you used to see guys and girls at the beach having a, a bonfire?

Yeah.

Car ads. There's this famous Mustang one where there's a woman and a man and the arm over. Have you noticed how car ads look now? It's usually one guy driving it, being responsible.

[laughs] Or it's, like, a family or-

Yeah, it's-

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, but it's nev- s-

Car ads are wildly gendered, I have to say.

Right?

[laughs] They really are.

Like, yeah. They'll, they'll pop up when I'm watching television.

I'm like, "Gosh, this is like, it's like a car for big strong men-

Yes

... or a car for families."

Yes.

Yeah.

And, like, those are the two genders of cars.

There's n-

[laughs]

There's ... They don't sell the M3 or the m- the, the whatever fancy super sports car with a man and a woman. The only time you see that is when you watching those videos of people in Monaco. So now people have sold, have, have ... Brands have stopped being interested in selling sex to use to sell a product. So I think now when kids that are younger, Gen Zs, look, this just my opinion, when they look at the kind of women of the people that they idolize, they know they'll never have that woman. When they look at their favorite sports star, their favorite rapper, and they look at the kind of women that they're with, I don't think they see themselves with that kind of person.

So you think that's affected how they see sex because of that?

Yes, but that's why kids now, when you ask them, "What do you wanna be?"

They say, "Rich or-

Famous

... yes," 'cause they know that's the only way to get-

To get to that place

... the kind of girls that they want. Yes, because now the normal is not marketed anymore p- 'cause one or the other. It's either a guy, macho, macho guy in a car by himself-

Yeah

... or you have a whole guy with five kids, and the person's like, "I'm 16. I don't want-

I don't want either of these outcomes

... yeah, if I'm gonna have sex, must it come with these ones?"

I, I mean, but it's interesting though because young people are growing up on, in a, on an internet that is saturated with sex. Like, they're being exposed to so many more different kinds of sexuality-

Mm. Oh, yeah, that's true

... than we ever had growing up. I mean, I'm 31, so I grew up- A bit on the internet, but not in the way that young people are now. And so I think that this is also sort of one of the questions that perplexes people with the sex recession is, like, how is it possible that young people are running into, like, every possible kind of sex that they want, and probably a few that they don't, on the internet-

Yeah

... and yet not having-

Hmm

... IRL sex. And so I think that it's, it's really hard to say what the messaging is that young people are getting around sex right now, because the world of the internet is just full of all kinds of different sex.

Well-

Is, is that part of the

problem-

Yeah

... though, in like the-

Exactly, yeah. It is

... you know, when we, when we think, when we think about sex-

Yeah

... and you, you talk about this in the book, it is pretty crazy that one of the most important aspects of your life as a human being-

Hmm

... something that will stick with you until you probably leave this planet, is not taught to you in any formal way for ... Like, yes, you can say there's sex ed, but, you know, as you, as you write and as we've seen, sex ed has, has dropped its, um, the, the, the window that it thinks of sex through.

Yeah.

So it tells you, like, the, the, the, the, the physical function of sex.

Mm-hmm.

This is a penis. It goes into a vagina.

Hey, whoa, whoa, yes. [laughs]

[laughs]

Hey, Bubba.

[laughs]

We're still from s- Africa, yeah?

[laughs] And so, no, but I'm saying, like, when you think of that-

[laughs]

... what do you think that's also done to, to ... Not that it was better per se, but there's a flattening of sex and its edu-

Yeah

... and the education that goes around it.

Mm-hmm.

It means-

That-

... that you have to go to the internet-

That doesn't-

... for sex ed

... equip people with the tools-

looks like so much fun," what is it not telling them?

I mean, it's not telling them a lot. Like, 'cause porn is scripted, right?

Yeah.

It's basically-

Wait, what?

I know.

No, no, no.

I'm so sorry. I'm yet again breaking news [laughs] here on the podcast.

Ah. Mr. Penis over here is surprised. [laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs]

Captain Penis. [laughs]

[laughs]

I mean, it's basically ... Like, I use this analogy in the book, but it's basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Right.

It's just not, it has very little to do with what real-life sex looks like. And-

What does, Carter, real-life sex? 'Cause obviously it's bang, bang, choo.

[laughs]

Wee, swing from the chandeliers.

Wow.

Send me-

What porn are you watching

... send me that

link.

Yeah.

Please send me that link, Eugene.

I got you, fam.

We'll put that in the show notes.

Yeah. [laughs]

[laughs]

Let's get that link to everyone.

Which-

I wanna watch that video.

[laughs] It sounds acrobatic.

It really sounds fantastic.

Very flexible, yeah.

And classy. There's a chandelier.

[laughs]

Oh, yeah. This was a really nice set that they probably ... Yeah.

It's called Cirque du Soleil. [laughs]

[laughs]

Oh, Soleil.

It's called-

I see what you did there.

[laughs]

Nicely done.

Oh, wow. [laughs]

Oh, nicely done.

You need to catch up on the sex studies, by the way.

[laughs]

[laughs]

I don't feel like you're really pulling your weight.

[laughs] So what ... So if, if that's advertised clearly through these clips that they watch and these movies that they watch-

fuck around. And so what I found was interesting in the book is I kind of had thought that young people on the right would be opposed to porn, and I thought that young people on the left would-

Yeah

... have better feelings about it. But what I found inside is that young people almost routinely thought that porn was bad for them.

Hmm.

And they felt that it had warped their sexuality. There's this concept in sociology called the deep story, which is basically the story that people feel is true, and that story can have more power than the actual facts.

Wow.

And we see this in politics all the time, right? People vote for the guy who they just have a good feeling about-

Yeah

... even if he doesn't actually align with any of your opinions. And so the deep story among young people is that porn has been very bad for them, and they feel like, in particular because they can't talk to their parents about sex or their friends, and because sex ed has so failed them, that they're just stranded in front of all of this pornography, and they've just been left to deal with it on their own. In particular, one of the things that really stuck with me is they really felt that porn had normalized rough sex and, in particular, choking.

Yeah.

If you're under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex as someone-

If you're under 40

... if you're under 40, compared to people over 40. And, like, if you like choking, that's fine. Just do it safely and consensually. And the thing is that most people-

Hmm

... or many people I should say, are not asked for consent before they're choked. And choking is ... You know, it can be strangulation. It can be actually very dangerous.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And so it was fascinating to me to talk to these young people, and they would So many of the young women I talked to just would relay spontaneously that they had been choked during sex. Like, there was one young woman who told me that, you know,

they called it a love squeeze in her high school. And again, it's just one of those things where if you like it, go for it, but it's not a normal part of sex.

Mm-hmm.

It's not, like, an average part of sex, and you do have to have a real conversation about it before you do it, and that's just not something you see in porn.

Yeah. As, as you're saying this, I realize the paradox of not having a thought out and centralized form of education means that the normal becomes defined by the abnormal.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

'Cause, yeah, you just said choking's not normal.

Yeah.

And then I went, "Except when it is."

Right.

Because everything-

Hmm

... that's in sex was not normal at some point. I remember when I was, how old was I? I think I was 12 or 13 years old, and I remember seeing, it was like d- distant aunts and uncles, but they kissed using their tongues, and I remember

my mind was like, "What?" Just I'd never seen adults do that.

Mm-hmm.

Like, because at that time in my life, that was not normal. Even in TV shows, people kissed, it was just like a, a smooch. You just plucked your lips and you-

Camera swirls around them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't really get a good view of what's happening.

The camera just does... Yeah, it's exactly that.

Yeah. [laughs]

You know what I mean? And then one day there were tongues, and there were more tongues, and there were more tongues. But now if you said to somebody, "Kissing with your tongue is not normal," they'd go like, "What are, what are you talking about? That's, that's weird that you're not-"

Hmm

... "opening your mouth. What's wrong with you?"

Mm-hmm.

So the, the, the paradox then becomes that normal does exist, or, or rather, like, the Overton window of normal exists, but what's really wrong is where, is how it's being defined.

Mm-hmm.

You know? It's like if nobody's talking about the thing that's not happening in porn, then porn becomes the only teacher in, in, in essence. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, the thing is they're also, like, they're not even really talking about it either, right?

Oh, yeah. Silence.

Like, they're-

Silence is the-

Yeah. It's just like this is just happening.

Yeah, yeah. $2 billion to be quiet.

Yes.

Yes.

Exactly. And so they're just, they're not even talking about it, and it's going on behind closed doors and, you know, there's been like... I was reading stories and studies where, like, women would talk about having a guy, without asking, use his belt around their neck.

Use his what?

His belt.

His belt?

Yes.

Oh, jeez.

Or, like, a necklace to choke her, and it's like, you know, these are things that can be dangerous.

I've gotta know this stuff because if I don't know it, do I know sex?"

Hmm.

"And do I wanna be mocked, and do I wanna be teased, and do I wanna be..." To, to, to rewind to back in my day, but I remember in, in high school how boys, and obviously I wasn't spending all the time with the girls, but how boys particularly were mocked if they didn't, like, seem to know things. And back then it was much less sex based, but it was still, "Do you know how to do th- Do you know how to finger somebody?" And it was like, "Uh, uh, uh." And it's like, "If you don't know..." Exactly like that, Eugene. See, I taught you well. So [laughs] But it was-

This podcast is not sex ed. I just want to be really clear. [laughs]

You said $1 billion. You had us there.

Yeah, you had us there.

A billion. Yeah.

$2 billion.

One for you, one for me.

We're coming for that billion.

Yeah. [laughs]

We're, we're doing our best here. But no, what I... Yeah. It's, it's... Do, do you see what I mean? The conundrum is, is like-

Yeah, yeah

Yeah. Well, like-

You, you, you're in a world where it's, as you, as you so eloquently say, you've got women who are saying, "Oh, man, this is my experience of the men and what they're doing." And I also go, yeah, there's a world where the men are going, "This is my experience of what I've been told a woman likes, and because I don't meet a woman until I'm having sex with her, I don't know actually what the thing is, and I don't wanna get there and then not know what the thing is." And you don't wanna be the fumbling guy, and then wh-

Yeah.

So to your point, because the-

Yeah

... the original sin is committed by not having the education, everyone is now bumping. It's the blind leading the blind.

Well, it also, I mean, it goes back to what we're talking about with, like, these stereotypes of masculinity, where-

Yes

... it's this idea that men have to know everything about sex and should be good at sex, and, like, there's no room for men to ask questions-

Yes

... including of their partner, which is the person they should be directing these questions at, because it's seen as not being cool, including oftentimes by women. It's not like, oh, men are just telling men to be this way. There's a lot of messaging from all kinds of areas, including from women at men, to tell them to be a particular kind of way when it comes to sex.

Yeah.

And I should say one of the things I wanted to do in the book was also explain, like, porn is not a monolith.

Yeah.

And a lot of the young women I talked to, they're, the kind of porn that they liked wasn't video porn.

Mm-hmm.

It was something like erotica or fan fiction or romance novels.

but because they also had this idea of, like, rough sex from those forms of pornography-

Mm-hmm

... like, they brought that to the table as well. And so if these young men are watching video porn-

Mm-hmm. Mm

... where rough sex is being normalized, and these women are reading porn where rough sex is being normalized, the story that young women were telling me and the story that young men were telling me and the, the sort of deep story among young people is, like, that's how rough sex becomes just treated as just another kind of sex-

Mm

Right

... and not something you need to have a conversation about. And I, I should also say, I do wanna say, we actually don't really know what porn does to us. Like, the science on porn is incredibly muddied. It's very hard to find a control group these days of people who haven't seen-

Who haven't seen it

... internet porn.

Oh.

Yes.

Jeez. Yeah, that's a good point.

So, you know, to the extent that this is the story that's being told, I find that valuable and I find that interesting, but we don't actually know from a scientific perspective exactly what is happening to us and our sex lives because of the proliferation of internet porn.

I think from just listening to you and the research that you've done, the people that you've spoken to, I think the whole entire world is missing a big part of what sex education should be. Instead of, uh, sex health education, they should focus more on sex mental health education.

Oh, damn.

The ability to connect or disconnect should the act not go right. Because I feel like a lot of men who ... I mean, young men who grow up to be men and how they view relationships, it's usually having to prove yourself, and then finally when the act is done, you realize you don't have to be someone that you are not all along.

Mm-hmm.

Because, again, of the romanticization of relationships and the end goal being sex. And on the other end, it's the,

"Now that we've done it, let's talk."

Yeah.

You know-

Well, advocates of comprehensive sex would say, like-

Mm-hmm

... healthy relationship-

Mm-hmm

... education is also a part-

There

... of sex ed.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Healthy relationship.

Yeah, like how to talk about your relationships, your feelings, the sex you wanna be having. Like, that could also be a part of sex ed. And honestly, the first time someone said that to me, I was like, "My mind has been blown." [laughs]

[laughs]

But ... 'Cause I thought I had pretty good sex ed. Like, my sex ed, I'm from Seattle, Washington, which is a very liberal place, and it talked about STIs, and it talked about condoms, and it talked about pregnancy prevention. But it did do its best to pathologize sex. Like, they had us watch a video of, I think this woman was giving birth to a 16-pound-

Yeah

... baby.

Damn.

Which is huge. It's large.

Damn.

Yeah. What's the point of that video other than to make me afraid-

Traumatize you

... of sex?

Big babies, they out. [laughs]

[laughs]

Well.

I am, I would love to track down the woman from that video-

[laughs]

... and be like, "What's up?" [laughs]

my kid anything." And, and there's many parents who I think very naively think if they don't hear about it, they won't know it exists.

Hmm.

You know? But, but how much of it is that? How much, how much of it is, is like we, we sort of blame the schooling system, but parents oftentimes can shape what a schooling system does or doesn't teach.

I think it's a s- vocal minority of-

Yeah. Oh, that's-

... parents who feel-

Okay

... the way that you're describing. And I think we-

That's interesting

... especially see that in the United States post-2020 and post the pandemic.

Yeah.

Where, you know, we've always had a lot of conversations around sex in the l- ed, and a lot of fighting around sex ed here in the US, but post-2020, I would say that those fights have reached a new level, where people at school board meetings, for example, have just started spouting off things that have nothing to do with reality.

Yeah.

So I describe in the book, um, there was in 2020 a school board meeting in Texas, because Texas was changing its sex ed curriculum for the first time in two decades. And during this school board meeting, parents were coming up and talking about things that, I mean, I struggled to even understand what they were saying because it didn't make any sense.

[laughs]

Like, they were talking about ... I kept on having to rewind and be like, "Am I hearing this right?" But it, they were talking about, like, you know, teachers grooming students and-

Oh, God

... teachers grooming students not only for sex, but f- into being transgender, which is not a thing.

Mm-hmm.

And they were talking about, oh, comprehensive sex ed is just a way to, you know, make students gay or trans. And consent even of itself, consent even by itself is

a gateway word, is what one, um, actually a school board member said, where they were saying, like, "This is a gateway word," so that, like ... I believe he said that, like, Planned Parenthood and NAMBLA, the male, [laughs] was it Man Boy Student? Man Boy ... National Man Boy ... National American Man Boy Love Association. Sorry, that took me a minute.

Yeah.

To, like, consent is a gateway word so that those organizations, Planned Parenthood, NAMBLA, et cetera, can sink their hooks-

Wow

... into these young people. And I'm paraphrasing what he said, but it was a very staggering thing to hear.

Right.

And obviously it doesn't have anything to do with reality.

Yeah.

And so it got to the point where it's like, oh, we can't even necessarily talk about consent in schools because that is a politicized word-

Yeah

... at this point.

The tough thing is it doesn't have to do ... Do you know, to go back to what you're saying about, like, a slither of porn, a slither of people, is that I, I, I truly feel bad for those parents because I think they sort of care the most. Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

I- think of what you must feel like as a parent. You're watching the news. You see a story a- about a teacher who had sex with one of their students.

Mm-hmm.

Man or woman.

Mm-hmm.

You see another story where teachers had sex with their students. You see a story where this child was kidnapped or this child was this. You see a, you see a story of grooming. You see people come out and say they were groomed from a young age. I, it, it's so hard to say to that person, 'cause I, I ... And I've been guilty of this, don't get me wrong. 'Cause I would dismissively go like, "That's not a thing." But then I'm like, "Oh, man," but how do you, how do you get through to people or how do you help them balance out the weighting of risk? Because they're saying, "I'm trying to protect my child at all costs."

Mm-hmm.

And then you wanna go, "Yes, but what cost is too great? At what point are you not protecting the child?" Do you, you know?

Yeah.

'Cause it is, it is a tough one because there are teachers- Who've molested kids. There are kids who've e- you know what I mean? It's, it's this weird-

I mean, the world is a scary place.

Yeah.

And schools are a scary place.

Yeah, but I-

Yeah

... you see, it's funny, I don't think the world is a scary place in that way. No, genuinely.

Yeah.

And I, I don't mean this, like, facetiously, I just think the world feels scarier when you know everything that is happening in it at the, at the same time, but most of the world is not a scary place. You know? Like, people are like, "Oh, I'm scared of flying," but they're scared of flying because of the plane crashes we focused on. Yeah. But there's no news story about planes that land. Yeah. There just, there just aren't, you know? And- Yeah ... and we do this with everything, and I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on those things- Right ... but the human brain is very difficult at understanding how much or how little to focus on something

depending on how much it's been told to us.

Accurately gauging risk.

Yeah. It's, it's-

Yeah

... you know?

Well, I think also during the pandemic, in particular, you know, people were trapped at home-

Yeah

... on their computers-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

... looking constantly at bad news, and conspiracy theories proliferated.

I thought you said bad nudes.

Oh, [laughs] well even that too.

[laughs] I was like, "I've had those during the pandemic."

Yeah. [laughs]

Trapped with bad nudes. I was like, "Eh, man, eff it." [laughs]

There is nothing worse than lockdown with bad nudes.

Oh.

Lockdown on itself.

And I'm like, "I know those stores are run, run out of razors now." You, you, let, actually, let's talk about social media because you, you talk about what you call the fuckability trap. Huh? You know? Hey, hey, Carter.

I'm sorry, yes.

[speaks foreign language]

Oh, okay. [laughs]

[laughs]

I didn't realize that was approval. Thank you.

[laughs]

Yeah.

That, what is it again? The fuckability

trap.

I mean, I have to-

Yeah

... credit, fuckability is not my concept. It's a concept of this philosopher whose name I'm definitely gonna mispronounce.

Yeah.

It's Amia Srinivasan. I'm so sorry.

Mm-hmm.

I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. But she is, um, a philosopher who talks about basically fuckability is sexual desire as constructed by our pol- our politics.

Right. Wow.

Which is the idea that, like, you know, how can we differentiate the ways that, like, racism and sexism and all other kinds of isms affect which bodies are seen as most desirable.

Mm.

Um, so that's the definition of the fuckability trap.

Yes. But-

I don't know where you're going with the actual question

... no, but, but the-

Yeah

... but the trap that you were

talking about.

Yeah.

And you see, this, this is where I, like, I get stuck because it, it's so complicated and layered.

Yeah.

You talk about social media and how we, we're given these signals. We're sh- we're shown these signals. Post a picture of yourself, you know, just sitting in a park drinking your coffee. Yeah, get a few likes. Post the same picture in a bikini.

Mm.

Likes go up. Go back to a picture of you reading a book. Eh, a few likes. A bikini, likes go up. And, and, and y-

Am I reading in the bikini in this case? Is-

Ah.

Yeah. [laughs]

Cut.

Yeah. [laughs]

Cut. I mean, that's good for another conversation.

Yeah. Are you?

Let's have this conversation later. [laughs]

I mean, look, everybody-

I mean-

... everybody wants to be smart and hot. Like, that's the goal for everybody.

That is the goal.

Yeah.

Can I tell you, and I-

Yeah

... can I tell you, we need to normalize that, by the way. I'm so jealous of that line because I wish I had it. No, but it's true, though.

You can steal it.

Okay, okay. [laughs]

You can.

But no, I, I like this because I, I feel like we, we, we make it seem like it has to be one or the other. Yes. We make it seem like ... We also make it seem like it, it, it shouldn't, like, exist. And, and maybe, maybe th- that goes into this, this conversation, but, but, but, like, what did you notice in how social media has played a role in how we define ourselves and portray ourselves in, in, in society in and around sex?

I think it is exactly what you're talking about with the bikini photos and the ways that those are valued more.

Mm.

So there was one young man I was talking to, and I appreciated that he said this, where he was talking about, you know, if he might see a girl that he likes on In- on Instagram, he might keep scrolling and see another girl he likes, but she'll be in a bikini, and he's like, "Well, I'm probably gonna like her more."

the key phrase.

Right. And I think for young people who grow up constantly having that kind of feedback loop, it leads to a kind of self-objectification-

Mm

... where they don't think about their bodies and what their bodies can do for them. They think about what their bodies look like and how other people think about their bodies.

Mm.

And that feeling is linked to all kinds of negative outcomes, like eating disorders or low self-esteem or even potentially people having less sex because, you know, if sex is another occasion for you to be judged and found wanting, you're not gonna do it. If you feel like your body is perfect, has to look perfect in order to be, get naked, you're probably just not gonna get naked.

Yeah, I think- Yeah ... I think about when I was young- Yeah ... we thought the worst thing ... You know, when society was talking about this, the worst thing was the magazines have very perfect bodies and perfect people. Yes. What does this mean to you? And we thought that that's the worst it could get, but now you're on the cover of your own magazine, and no one's buying your magazine. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, what does that do to you? And you can see it now. Yeah.

That would be devastating.

But that's what's happening.

Yeah.

Think about it.

Yeah, it is.

Because before you could go, like, "Oh, that's a supermodel, and I'm not that, and that's the beauty standard," but the judgment wasn't about you. You knew what people were aspiring to, and you knew where you were maybe in relation to it, but it wasn't about you, but now it's completely about you because now you've put your magazine right next to somebody else's

magazine online. Mm. And then a little button tells you how your magazine stacks up against somebody else's. Mm. And so now it's, it's not just an aspirational thing that you cannot reach. Yeah. It's a realistic one. Yeah. And- You see it here. Right here and right now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know-

Oof

... also we've been given, young people have been given many more tools to make themselves appear more attractive.

Ah, damn.

Like, there was one young woman I was talking to who was talking about, you know, she posts on TikTok a lot, and she took somebody else's filter, and she didn't realize that the filter had made her cheeks look slimmer. And when she accidentally removed the filter, she realized, "Oh, I don't like my face this way. I don't like the way my face actually looks. I liked it with the filter more."

Yeah. She catfished herself.

Yeah. [laughs] I mean, kind of.

[laughs]

And she was saying, like, that's a terrible feeling.

Yeah.

Like, looking at your own face and being disappointed by it. And so not only are you ... Like, you're given all the tools to change how your body looks on social media- Can't really change your body in the same way without a lot more money, and it's probably some surgery in real life. And so you're, again, just constantly being compared and contrasted and falling short

Could, could that be one of the things? I don't, I don't know. I don't, I haven't done any research in this field, but could that be one of the factors? If people are living in a world where they're able to augment themselves so perfectly online, could it prevent them from interacting in real life?

Mm.

Because you, you, to your, what you just said-

Mm

... the catfishing of it all.

Mm.

I know

how I look online.

Mm.

I don't wanna show up in person 'cause I ca- I can't do anything. There's no filter.

Can't match it.

There's no-

Yeah

... I can't, I can't match it. And so if I stay online, I never get disappointed. I keep accruing this feeling and this, you know. But if I come into the real world, it all, it all falls apart. D- did you speak to anyone where that happened? Were there people who were more comfortable existing as their full filter selves and then wouldn't go into the real world anymore?

I think that what has happened for young people is like just so much more of their lives has been outsourced online.

Oh, yeah

And the pandemic contributed to this, right? Because these are young people who are growing up. Like, they didn't have prom, they didn't have-

Mm

... graduation.

Missed a few years of school.

Yeah.

Yeah, they missed a lot of the-

Yeah

... sort of teenage-

The formative moments

... yeah, the ways that, the moments that teach you how to handle being embarrassed or being rejected or just the nuances of human connection. And so instead, they were on their screens all the time, and that, for them, replaced a lot of those interactions, but there's nothing that can really replace-

Yeah

... an IRL connection.

Real life-

Yeah

... battle experience.

Exactly.

I'm

a big fan, me personally, of real-life battle experience, and I feel like there's nothing that will make you tougher and nicer at the same time than being done a favor instead of being rejected.

Mm-hmm.

Kat, I'm gonna tell you the truth, neh. There's some women back in my life where I look back and I'm like, "Why did you date me?"

[laughs]

But [laughs] you ... but you know what it did for my self-esteem? It took it from here to the ... That was real battle life. And also, so I've decided every year I do charity drive. I date someone who I wouldn't-

[laughs]

It's my outreach.

That's so generous of you.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I write it off with my taxes.

Oh, my God.

I'm like,

"No, this is time I will never get back."

You are a philanthropist.

A few-

Yeah

... a few tanks of gas that I used and, uh, I put my credit card.

[laughs]

I write it off, and I'm going, "Okay, this is my-

Oh, gosh

... corporate social responsibility."

Oh, gosh.

Like, so that that person goes home, what they'll do is they'll say to themselves, "If that guy saw me, then someone else can see me." And we laugh, neh.

[laughs]

But there's a lot of marriages that I think are based on my theory because now people are like-

Unch, really?

... "Do you know who I dated?"

Yeah.

Now they look at me going, "I dated that guy," and the person behaves.

[laughs]

But [laughs] no, I love that idea that they're using you as the metric. So they go like ... I'm just picturing a couple right now, and then the husband is saying something. "I don't know if this is working for..." "Working for you? Do you know who I used to date?"

[laughs]

You know, they pull up your profile and then they're like, "Mm."

[laughs]

It's like, "You dated him?" "Yeah." Why is he wearing a bikini and reading a book in the-

[laughs]

... in the park?

He's smart and hot, yeah. [laughs]

So but that's my thing on, on a, a less ch- [laughs]

But you're right, though. Good. No, but I, you, I, I do like the point, yeah, which is beautiful.

Yes.

And we forget that it's all real life.

[laughs]

With, with your everything. You can just ... The r- the impact, I mean, you can have one in Harlem, the Bronx. You can outr- even in Africa, you can d- definitely do an outreach where a person can say, "Look who I took a self, and look, I dated this person." And then you can just lift up your self-esteem one girl at a time, sometimes a man here and there. But if, if anyone can do both.

Thank you.

I've seen the things you do when no one is looking.

Thank you for seeing me, Eugene. Thank you so much for seeing me.

I've got you.

That's me almost crying. Thank you.

Sharp.

Beautiful.

Over to you, Carter.

Oh, thank you. [laughs]

[laughs]

I don't have anything to add. Yeah. [upbeat music]

Don't press anything. We've got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music] W- let's talk about sexting. Um, throughout time, the way humans have expressed their sexuality has constantly evolved and changed. And, and you, you spend a section in the book talking about, like, you know, like, how people see sexting and, and what it should be-

Mm

... and how they communicate their sexuality to each other. W- what would you say has been the biggest change for, like, Gen Z from w- what a previous generation might have considered what's appropriate,

not appropriate, what they're doing or not doing? Has there been a shift?

I mean, it might be sexting.

Yeah.

I think that, you know, when I was growing up, my parents were always like, "You know, everything you put online, be prepared for the New York Times to publish on its front page," which-

Oh, wow

... I know, really puts the fear of the New York Times into you.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Um, but now I think like everybody sends nudes.

Yeah.

And that's just how it is.

Yeah.

And I think that there is a much more generational acceptance that like, yeah, probably, you know, depending on the future of American democracy, if we end up having a younger president, that president will probably have nudes out there.

Oh.

And that's just how it is.

Wow.

And so I don't think that, like, sexting is an inherently bad thing. I think it gets stigmatized a lot of the time because it's new and because it's lewd.

Wow.

Yeah.

But it-

But one day it could be the norm.

I, I-

Ask not what pictures your president can send to you.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Ask what pictures you can send to your president. [laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] That was the best Kennedy ever.

[laughs]

[laughs]

and that kind of stuff happens all the time, and we just blame those people-

Right

... for having sent out the nudes-

Victim blaming

... instead of recognizing everybody sends nudes, and actually leaking somebody else's nudes without their consent is a violation.

But to your point-

Mm

... the difficulty, and I think this is something we, we struggle with in society across the board, we love flipping between binaries.

Yeah.

You know? And we think the equilibrium gets reached when we go to the opposite end of a spectrum-

Mm

... but it doesn't, you know?

Mm.

So people will go, "Oh, this is unequal. Uh, let's switch to the complete opposite." Now it's then it's like, then it's like, no, now it's an unequal the other way.

Right.

You know? And I remember-

Yeah

... like I think of-

Goes from exclusive to super inclusive.

Yeah. And it's like, but-

Mm

... but if you think of the, um, uh, f- and Nelson Mandela, for instance.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of people wondered why he said, what he w- he was like, he was like, "I do not s- seek the, the oppression of Black people. I do not seek the oppression of white people. I do not..." And people are like, "Why is he saying that?" 'Cause he was like, "I wanna be crystal clear with you. I'm fighting for equality."

Mm.

"I'm not fighting for a role reversal."

Mm.

And, and sometimes people miss that, and I think when you're saying that, to go back to what your parents said, that is one of the dichotomies that we also face in this world. One half of sending nudes-

Mm-hmm

... and your nudes getting leaked is not your fault, because somebody leaked your nudes.

like the, the, the complicated ramifications of this thing, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think in the flipping from one side to the other, like you just, it's a rejection of reality.

Yes.

'Cause reality-

Yes, mm-hmm

... is always in the middle.

Yes.

And so we can't actually a- acknowledge or grapple with the nuances of reality if we're constantly moving from one extreme to the other.

Oh, I like that actually.

Yeah. I- I'd even say it's the language that people use to not make that a crime. People call it revenge porn, and you're like, no. Porn is an industry. It's a business with-

Right

... actors, with willing participants, with incentives. Someone leaking your nudes-

You're not wrong

... is not revenge porn.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's not porn at all.

'Cause it was never, 'cause it was never porn in that way.

At, at all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think the wording around it gives these tech companies plausible deniability, because once they get dragged into what they allow someone else to do-

Yeah

... as a proxy of someone else's, uh, uh, willingness, then they'll be in trouble.

Yeah.

Right?

Well, there's new, I mean, advocates now would say instead of using revenge porn, we should use terms like non-consensual image abuse or intimate image abuse.

Oh, yeah. There you go.

federal civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education.

Mm-hmm.

And it has become a political football over how we should be treating s- non, uh, sex and rape on college campuses.

Yeah.

Which is to say, like, under the Obama administration, it was, its powers were- I don't wanna say expanded, but maybe more illuminated to the extent that you could use Title IX to combat sexual harassment and-

Mm

... sexual abuse. And that sparked a huge backlash from the right that said that, you know, this was overreach by the Obama administration.

Mm.

And for example, they took specific aim at the standard of proof that the Obama administration set that should be used in adjudicating these kinds of cases. And so then when the Trump administration came in, they changed a lot of the rules around Title IX, and they rewrote them to, for example, make it that you have to have, like, in-person,

uh, hearings-

Mm-hmm

... around these kinds of things, where both the survivor, the alleged survivor-

Mm

... and the alleged perpetrator have to be there.

Mm.

And this, amongst other changes, made it, as one activist told me, basically Title IX became unusable for survivors.

Yeah.

It just did not do-

Became a kangaroo court.

I mean, that's the... I mean, they ... Basically, the Trump administration said that, "You guys made Title IX a kangaroo court first, and then-

Huh

... we're fixing it."

We're going the opposite direction.

Right. And then, so, like, basically it's now, at this point, the Biden administration rolled in. They, again-

[laughs]

... rewrote the rules of Title IX. Trump administration, as people might have heard, is back in power and-

Wait, what?

I know.

Argh.

It's-

How long have we been in here?

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs]

I mean, what is interesting is, like, there are things-

[laughs]

Hi

[laughs]

[laughs]

abuse and harassment on college campuses seriously in all kinds of ways.

It- it's also, um ... I always feel like it's also a little disingenuous to deal with the people who are dealing with the ramifications of a system without thinking of the system itself.

Mm.

Like, like one of the biggest ones that throws me in my daily life is ... I'll think about, like, drunk driving. I always think it's confusing that if you sign a contract and you are inebriated, most courts would argue that you did not have the capacity to sign that contract.

Yeah.

Let's say you were drunk at the time.

Yeah.

So you couldn't agree.

Altered state.

You were in an altered state. If somebody drives drunk and they crash their car into people, they are prosecuted fully because the law says they made a decision to drive drunk.

Mm-hmm.

But I'm like, yeah, but that same law in another instance says you did not have the capacity to make a decision.

Mm-hmm.

Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And it's these small paradoxes that are complicated, and that's what law needs to get into. That's what I think law was fundamentally meant to be about, is trying to understand the complicated nuances in a society-

Mm

... provide clarity as to how to deal with them on a case by case basis. But the messiness of the system

isn't dealt with. Like, whenever these college things came up, I would see them have all these conversations, but very seldom would I see colleges say, "What do we think about how we allow alcohol on a campus?" Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And I'm not saying that that is the cause, but I'm going, you cannot separate a conversation about sex and young people from alcohol. But you're just gonna talk about the people and not the environment that the people are in and how they're consuming the alcohol, and then what then happens. And the ... You-

Yeah

... you with me?

100%.

And, and sometimes I think it's, it's such a, it's such a shortsighted and, and, and small approach that you may end up swinging back and forth the whole time because you just go, "Oh, yeah." You know, one administration goes, "It's the guys who are the problem." Then now it's the girls who are the problem. Then it goes, it's just gonna keep going back and forth.

Mm.

And the institutions never actually have to ask themselves-

Yeah

... "Wait, what environments are we creating?" To your point, in educating, in ... They, they do those campus tours. They tell you about the morals of the camp- th- this is what it's like to be a student here. This is where you should go for this. This is ... I feel like even on that level, colleges should say, "Hey, we're gonna teach you about sex on campus. This is part of your onboarding."

Yeah.

This is part ... Not sex also in life, but we're gonna, like, we're gonna talk about sex in a college setting. We're gonna talk to people about sex. We're gonna talk to you about shame. We're gonna talk to you about pleasure. We're gonna talk to you ... But these things are all part of sex itself, and if we don't, we're just gonna be living in a world where everyone is coming in with, like, their own little manual that was written by porn or their friends-

Yeah

... or their parents or a random school teacher that taught them nothing.

Mm.

And then we wonder why there's so many breakdowns in that world. Do you know ... Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah. I mean, I do think colleges do- Try to some extent. Like, I remember on my college campus, we did get, uh, you know, a talk about how to handle sex, how to handle drinking, and the thing is, like, I still didn't really know that Title IX existed until my senior year.

Oh, got it.

And so it's not something that I think can be solved by, like, one talk that the college campus gives to incoming freshmen, especially, I mean, when you're in an Ivy League-

Yeah, no, I mean more than a talk

... Ivy League school. Yeah

... I mean, uh, like it's, it's, to me, it's a syllabus.

It's part of life. But, but carry on, sorry.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it just ... I don't know. I think, I'm thinking back to all these young women I interviewed. So in the course of doing these interviews, I never asked people-

Mm

... if they had been sexually assaulted. Like, that was not a standard question that I had because I didn't necessarily want to put people into a space that they weren't willing to talk about it.

Yeah.

But I was staggered by the young, number of young women, and some young men, who told me that they had been sexually assaulted, that it ca- it just came up organically in the course of the conversation. And to me, I feel like we are just simply not at a place where we are dealing with this or thinking about this at the scale that it's occurring.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, post ... I did ask young people, you know, "Can you tell me about a, uh, cultural or social or political event that shaped your approach to sex?" And almost all of them said Me Too.

Hmm.

That they, most of them had memories of it. Some of them didn't, which was very shocking to me because it made me feel very old. Um, but, like, it turns out that very little has really changed post-Me Too in terms of, like, actual legal reforms, actual changes on college campuses.

Yeah.

Like, the main change we saw post-Me Too was reforms

in NDA laws, which are not very helpful-

Mm-hmm

... for college students, who are-

Mm-hmm

... not working, and better HR trainings, or more HR trainings, I should say, on sexual assault.

And yet again, they're also not at work.

Right. And so it just ... We really, I think, have a resistance to having any of these kinds of conversations about the system or about how the system can be improved or what the law should do or what even, like, we should talk about as terms of culture. Like, is the law always the best mechanism for dealing-

Mm-hmm

... with the aftermath of sexual assault?

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question, actually.

Like, not everybody actually wants to go through the legal system.

Yeah.

I can tell you, I was sexually assaulted in college. I never thought about going to the cops, 'cause it was me and him alone in a room, and, like, I knew that it was my word against his, and it wasn't gonna end well. And incarceration is also not necessarily the same thing as justice.

Hmm.

And so I felt like what c- became very clear to me is in talking to these young people is, like, there is just a resounding failure across the board to take sexual assault and sexual abuse and its aftermath seriously.

Yeah.

And, like, maybe Title IX ... Uh, we at least need to be talking about Title IX as more than a political football in this environment. It can't just be something that Democrats and Republicans use to wield against each other to prove that one, "Oh, you're attacking men. You're attacking women."

Yeah.

It has to be something that we actually have real conversations about as a law or as, like, the beginning of a foundation for cultural change.

It, it's a noble thought, but I can't-

[laughs]

No, I can, I can-

No, fair enough. Yeah

... I can't help but think to myself, is that a possibility, like, ever in our evolution as humans? Because y- you can go back and read, I mean, like, like, ancient texts, and it's shocking to find, like, the Greeks and the whatever, like, on a,

on a legal level talking about morality and what is and isn't permissible-

Mm

... and what a pervert is and, you know. It feels like it's always going to be politicized. It's always gonna be political because to what you said in the beginning of the conversation, there's a power attached to it.

Mm-hmm.

And it's also a very, a very, um, uh ... It's the perfect tool to define where morality lies in a society.

Yeah.

You know? You, you think of, like-

Law or ...

Yeah, no, no-

Yeah

... but, like, how we view sex and the, and the ... even beyond the laws around it itself, but the, how we view it, you know. You know, you think of colonial writing, the, the, they ... the savages, the way they have sex and the savage sex and the ... It, it's such a powerful tool-

Yeah

... to define where the norm exists-

Yeah

... and where the other starts. And I actually wonder, because you do write, uh, quite a lot about this. I actually wonder how much you think we can learn from societies or peoples who have been pushed to the fringes of society. 'Cause I often find that they do a lot of work in defining sex in a way that, like, mainstream doesn't. Y- you know what I mean? Like, I remember in and around the Me Too movement, I learned more from the BDSM communities that came up online.

Mm.

W- everyone was like, "But how would we know?" And then BDSM people were like, "Oh, uh, so this is what we do. This is because we have been choking."

Yeah.

"We have been whipping."

Consent. Right.

"We have been..."

Mm-hmm.

And it's, it was, I was ignorant to it.

Mm-hmm.

I couldn't believe that people who were in those communities had checklists and had very, you know, like-

Guidelines

... tender and interesting guidelines on how to go about this. And I, so I wonder what, like, what you learned about what we could learn by engaging with groups or communities who have generally been pushed out to the fringes.

I mean, a lot. I think that a lot of these groups ... I mean, B- BDSM is a great example, and I'm paraphrasing, um, somebody else who said this, uh, a philosopher at Yale who's talked about BDSM needs hierarchy

into, or an erotic resource through consent.

Wow. Oh.

And so you can use consent to take, you know, all of these different hierarchies in society and, like, work with them and make them a part of your sexual play and your pleasure. And the fact of the matter is, like, I don't think that we should necessarily be aiming at abolishing hierarchies or that, because I just don't think it's necessarily possible.

Right.

But I do think that there are a lot of communities that have thought a lot about, like, how do we take the world as it is-

Hmm

... and figure out a way to wring pleasure out of this?

Hmm.

Hmm.

Um, I, I was really inspired in, in doing these interviews by the number of young people I spoke with who were interested in activism around sex. I talked with a lot of young people who were fighting against sexual assault, who were fighting for abortion rights, against abortion rights, who were fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, and there was one young woman- Who I talk about in the book, Zoe, who actually she had been sexually assaulted, and she had also had her nudes leaked multiple times. And she ... It was, it was devastating for her. It was profoundly difficult for her to pick herself up again after that. But she got involved in pleasure advocacy on campus and s- became really invested in sex ed. And she got to a point where, you know, she is interested in sending nudes to her now boyfriend.

Mm.

And so the answer isn't necessarily, you know, never send nudes again.

Yeah.

You've been hurt by it.

Yeah.

It's to create a framework for yourself where you can say, "Okay, I recognize the risks."

Mm.

Like, "Maybe my nudes will get leaked again. Maybe this boyfriend who I love so much will betray me. But if I go into these situations knowing the risks-

Mm

... I will feel more empowered than I did in a previous situation that I was in." And I found that those kinds of stories to be very inspiring because, you know, people do pick themselves up and go on after these circumstances, and they do think about new frameworks for themselves that make them feel comfortable as opposed to just rejecting the thing that had hurt them in the past.

I, I, I don't wanna probe into your past, so please feel for it free, feel free to not share, but I'd love to know what you would have thought justice would have looked like in your story. Because you say you

weren't comfortable in going to the police, but you wanted something to happen. But, uh, you said an interesting phrase after that. You said you don't necessarily think that incarceration would have been the right solution. So when, when you look back on that, and again, like I say, we can move on, uh, but, like, what do you think justice would have looked like for you?

I think an apology would have actually done a lot.

Yeah.

Like, it actually ... I wasn't, I wouldn't-

Mm-hmm

... have really needed frankly that much. And I should say that I, I wasn't raped. It, I describe it in the book.

Yeah.

But it basically became, like, he wanted a blow job. I didn't wanna give him one. We had, like, a physical tussle over it.

Mm.

And I ultimately was able to effectively push him out of my apartment. And so maybe if someone had had, like, a different kind of assault, it was just a different person, they would have wanted more. But I would have felt that if he had acknowledged what had happened as something that had hurt me-

Yeah

... and said, "I'm sorry that I did that"-

Mm-hmm

... that would have been enough for me.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, this is something that gets talked about in the concept of restorative justice-

Yeah

... which I bring up a little bit in the book, which is that you can have ... If you have

conversations and create a safe space for conversations, I think people don't re- necessarily realize that, like, you know, there's actually a wide variety of outcomes that some people would accept-

Yeah

... that are not just punitive.

Yes.

But we don't create the space for those kinds of outcomes. We don't create the possibility for envisioning a world where it's like it's not necessarily the law that's gonna solve all of this stuff for us.

Yeah. In a, in a world where the law-

Mm

... has now become responsible for handling all of community's conversations, like every, every aspect of a, of a conversation that should be held in a community-

Mm

... everything becomes legal. Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And it's ... That's like one of the, the things that you see. It's really big in America, but it's expanding to the rest of the world as well, where people have lost or misunderstand the value of, as you said, "I'm sorry."

Yeah.

Or the value of, "Do you acknowledge the thing that happened to me?" The value of ... And because of the business side of it-

Yeah

... you know, which you talk about all the time, there isn't really value in the other one. There's no, there's no money in the sorry side.

Mm.

But there's money in the legal side.

Mm-hmm.

You know what I mean? There's money in the-

Punitive side

... in the punitive side.

Mm.