Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between

"After the hundreds of presentations Shamus and I have done at campuses, the administrators, and professors with whom we interact frequently reach out to us, as parents, and say, I got the message from Sexual Citizens that I should be talking with my kid about this stuff, but I have no idea how to begin. Parents are understandably underprepared because it’s quite likely that they didn’t have these conversations with their own parents. I tell them to begin by reading Shafia Zaloom, an award waiting sex educator. It’s a hands-on self-help book , a very good one. It does begin with the scary stuff, such as how not to assault someone. What we need to be doing in prevention work is not focusing so much on how to tell people not to be assaulted, but instead focus on teaching our kids not to be assaulters. But what I like most about this book is that it has a chapter about good sex and good relationships. It tells you how to talk with your kid about what they should be striving for in a relationship. Zaloom provides a framework and case studies and specific questions that parents can use. She explains that it’s not ‘a talk,’ but rather an ongoing series of conversations. I’m famously terrible at keeping up with popular culture . But figuring out sex is the central cinematic drama in high school films. So pretty much any movie you would watch with your kid has some sexual elements to them. We watched Animal House . It’s awful. Not just in terms of being a master class in white privilege and alcohol abuse, but there are also some very rapey scenes in that movie. But whether it’s dated movies like Animal House or something newer like Booksmart , they’re all a conversation starter. I’m not aware that that’s driving parents’ hesitation. What people have said to me leads me to believe the hesitation is rooted in a fear of doing it wrong. I reassure parents by saying: It’s your job to teach your child to move their body through the world in a way that is safe for them and doesn’t hurt other people. Think about the amount of time you spend teaching them oral hygiene or how to carefully cross the street or the necessity of wearing a helmet when riding a bike. There is so much we teach children about how to manage their bodies already. Teaching them about sexual citizenship is just one step further. Like when you say to your child, don’t grab, use your words before you take a friend’s French fries. That’s a sexual assault prevention message. We just need to help children see how to apply the messages we give them all the time about how to be a good person to relationships. This is not about sexual positions and technique. It’s about not being a terrible person."