Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
The Rise in Rough Sex
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Dr. Debby Herbenick wants us to know that today's trend for rough sex is different than what we might expect. Her research, as detailed in her book Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know About Today’s Teens and Sex, shows a rise in aggressive and risky behavior, often lacking the crucial communication necessary between partners. Listen in as we unpack the rise in rough sex - specifically choking. We also discuss nude images, digital safety, and the importance of having conversations around all these topics with our teenagers and young adults.
Dr. Debby Herbenick is a Provost Professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, and an AASECT-certified sexuality educator. Her research focuses on women’s sexual health, US population-representative research, as well as trends in sexual attitudes and behaviors.
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What's really alarming about the recent trend, too, is that this isn't something that people maybe try once or twice for the most part, and then they're like, oh, I tried that, and that's it. People are doing it quite often, like as just a typical part of their making out our sexual lives.
SPEAKER_00Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. This is Permission for Pleasure, and I'm your host, Cindy Sharkey. I am proud and delighted to introduce you to my guest today, Dr. Debbie Herbinek. Her research for years on women's sexual health as well as sexual attitudes, behaviors, it is a gift to the world. And we could have talked about hundreds of things that she personally has researched, written about, talked about related to sexual wellness, but we are going to focus on the rise of rough sex. In her newest book, Yes, Your Kid, which she wrote for parents, I quote, Fear is supposed to be your ally and alert us to potential danger. So what happens to our internal compass when we keep ignoring fear and telling ourselves it's fine? Given how common rough sex has become and the pressure some people feel to ignore their fear and go along with it, I sometimes wonder whether young people will grow up less apt to notice when they are in an abusive relationship. After all, if being slapped, smothered, or choked, strangled is no longer a red flag even when done harder or more aggressively than consented to. What is? End quote. Indeed, friends. While you may think this is an episode for parents only, and we do speak to parents in this episode, this is education from a leading expert about the sexual trends we're seeing around rough sex, especially choking, and it's for all of us. Please don't miss a word. And I implore you to share this episode with your circle of friends and open the conversation. It's a good one to be having. Debbie, welcome to Permission for Pleasure. Thank you. It's good to be here. I'm delighted to have you. I'd love for you to just introduce yourself and your work in the world to my community. Sure.
SPEAKER_01I'm Debbie Herbenick. I'm a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and have been doing sex research for about 25 years and especially with a focus on women's sexual health and well-being and with adolescents and young adults. And it's it's great to be here and talk with you about these topics.
SPEAKER_00I'm delighted to have you. I told you before we started to record, I just am so grateful for all your work in the world on behalf of all of us all these many years. So thank you. And your new book is Yes, Your Kid. Let's talk about why you wrote this book.
SPEAKER_01I wrote this book primarily to update parents on all of the changes that we've been seeing in the world through our research and talking with teenagers and with young adults about their lives. And I'm a parent myself. I'm also a sex researcher and educator. But it became apparent to me that even though there are many terrific sex education books out there for parents, that most were written, as I say, in the before times, before the internet, before some really sweeping changes in adolescent and young adult sexual behavior. And before pornography was as widely accessible in social media as it is today. And so all of these have presented really complicated changes for young people, and parents need an update.
SPEAKER_00Yes, they do need an update. I remember I circled that in your book. It's saying, you know, sex has changed dramatically since you were growing up. You're speaking to us parents, right? And you need a catch up and an update. And I think it's not just parents, Debbie, because I posted a few of your stats around rough sex, and my DMs exploded. And these are not just parents. They're saying, wait, tell me more. What is going on? What is happening? So I'm really excited to have this conversation together and update everybody to raise awareness about what the sexual landscape is looking like. And you're the perfect person. So first, we're going to start easy. You said the most common digital challenges affecting young people is taking, sharing, downloading, nude, partially nude, and other sexual images. Let's talk about this first.
SPEAKER_01It's a big change, and it affects, you know, all of us who have digital devices that are camera enabled and to try to figure out how to navigate those. Clearly, yes, your kid is focused on parents. So for parents, I talk about even at the youngest ages when you're sometimes really young kids start using your devices. I mean, toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners start picking up devices and they want to take pictures. And anyone who's a parent of young kids knows it's not surprising to sometimes pick up your phone and find, you know, 30 pictures of their feet or their dolls or things like that. But, you know, what we have is a situation now where you can have really, really typical normative child development where they're exploring their body and they are exploring it alone or with a friend or a sibling or a cousin. But now they also potentially have access to a camera-enabled device. So even some families, I've talked with many families with even their very young kids, their six, seven year olds, have taken pictures of their butts and of their genitals and either just left them on the phone or even shared them over things like um Facebook Messenger, which it's not that they had wide access to, but because of the pandemic, they may have had access to be able to communicate with one friend or you know, one or two cousins or grandparents. And I've talked with parents who's found out that their young kids have just to be silly, right, taken and sent these pictures to their one or two or three close contacts that they had through places like that. So even at young age, we can talk with our kids about digital safety, about kind of rules around technology use. But where we get the most direct questions from parents of young people is really around the tween and teen age, when many, many young people start getting their own devices, which becomes really challenging when, you know, 10, 12, 13-year-olds have their own smartphones and have to make choices around taking and sharing nude or nearly nude images.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. And do you think parents are talking about this with their kids? I mean, in general, what do you hear from people?
SPEAKER_01You know, the research is pretty mixed on that. When people research, involve parents in research. Many parents say that they've talked with their kids about it, but many teenagers themselves say their parents have not talked with them about it. So I think we we need more in-depth research to understand what's really happening. I suspect it might be what happens with other kinds of sex, which is that many parents feel that if they say, wait to have sex till you're older and leave it at that, or if you're gonna have sex, use a condom and leave it at that. You know, there's very, very brief messages, but they're not really in-depth conversations and they're not over a period of time. So I think many parents feel like they've checked a box, they've said the thing they wanted to say, but it's not enough for kids. And so sometimes kids may get that message at an age or stage where it doesn't feel personally relevant to them. They're not even thinking about the thing yet or doing the thing yet. But maybe six months or a year or two later they would be, and then it's not, and then maybe the parent thinks they've already had the talk, and the kid is now at the stage where they really need someone to be chatting with them that you know they really get it firsthand now and say, Oh, I don't know what to do. This person's pressuring me, right, for images. But if it's not an ongoing conversation of comfort, then kids don't necessarily think their parent is someone that they can go to with those questions. So, you know, in sex education, we often say it's not a single talk. We often call it the talk, but it's not the talk. It's a series of conversations, hopefully within families, hopefully coming from, you know, qualified teachers in like a sexuality education or health education at school. And hopefully also kids are supported through really good quality books. There's many, many good kid and teen focused books these days, so that they get lots of messages from lots of sources that are high quality and support them in making these good choices. But yeah, I don't think that there's too many really involved conversations. The research that's out there, there's emerging research also showing that family conversations about sexting are not that different from family conversations about drugs and alcohol, and that the best approaches can be what we call warm and informational rather than authoritarian. So rather than using fear tactics and saying, if you take these pictures, they're gonna stay in line forever and your life will be ruined. Well, that's not the message we want to send. We never want to make kids feel like they're doomed or their life is ruined if they do do this thing and take and send pictures. It happens to people, it happens to teens and adults every day. We want them to feel like they can come back to us. We do probably want to share, though, that we advise against it, that in half the states, taking pictures of minors is considered, you know, child pornography or sexual exploitation images. The term varies by state, but that there can be real legal consequences. There can also be school consequences, even when there's not legal consequences. So they could be suspended from school or expelled from school. And even if those things don't happen, they just might experience some bullying and harassment at school or the anxiety of knowing that their pictures are out there. So advising against sending it, but still saying, you know, look, even if you end up doing that and you have some challenges with this, you can always come talk to me. I will always be here for you and help you figure out how to manage the situation.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, and I one thing I really appreciated in your book, Debbie, is that you did a lot of role play like this and kind of gave a lot of language for parents to have these conversations and ongoing. You even differentiate it between youngers and olders, which is so helpful. So though parents might be reading it and they have an elementary child, you're gonna use different language with that age child, you know, versus then when you're gonna continue the conversation into tweens and teens. So I just I appreciate that. And that's what parents always ask at workshops. Well, give me an example, right? Can you show me how to do that? And that's really helpful language to give.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. As a parent, I appreciate that myself when I know how to talk at uh different ages and stages with my kids about tricky topics.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. And this is so important reminding people of the ongoing need for conversation. It's not a one and done. We talk about that a lot on this podcast, about lots of things, but it's just a continual open conversation. And I agree with that a hundred percent. We're gonna pivot a little bit in the book. You share about the dramatic change and rise in the mainstreaming of rough sex, and this is where my DMs just exploded. I mean, from what I gathered with my community in their comments, there is not a lot of awareness around this. So I would really appreciate you. I mean, you are one of the leading researchers on this topic, and I would love to hear kind of what do you want people to know around rough sex and what's happening in the mainstream?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this has been a big area of focus of my work. Um, it's when I'm really passionate about it. It was a huge driving force in deciding to write this book because I agree, most people, parents or not, do not know about this trend if they are, especially let's say mid-40s or over. Sure. Which I'm in that age group. You know, so this was a real awakening some years ago to realize that this was happening as a sexuality researcher and to say this has happened and it's happened quickly and it's happening in a big way. So what we see now, I lead studies that are both nationally representative surveys in the United States as well as college campus representative surveys. So what we see are really huge proportions of young adults and teenagers engaging in various kinds of rough sex. It could be slapping the face, slapping the breast or chest, slapping the genitals. It can be smothering, so putting a hand or pillow or other things over the nose or mouth. It can be hard spanking, hard enough to leave a mark, can be calling a partner names, often some pretty, some pretty condescending or degrading names that don't always feel good to the other person to be called, or feel really scary because it might suggest to them that this person's trying to hurt them or really hates them. And so even the name calling can be really scary to some people. But the behavior that we have seen the biggest increase in, and it's also the most consequential in terms of health, is what people overwhelmingly call choking, even though it's a form of strangulation. And so this can involve, it usually involves using one hand to press or squeeze against the neck. Sometimes it's both hands. Less often it's a limb, like a forearm or a leg, and less often it's a ligature, like a cord, a belt, a tie, hair extensions, or a collar or a necklace of some sort. So it can be a thing or an object around the neck, too. And people use all sorts of different pressures, anywhere from really light pressure on a scale of one to ten. We'll ask them anywhere from like a one or two to a nine or ten. The average is somewhere around a four. So they use different pressures, different styles of doing it. Sometimes people get the message to avoid the front of the neck, which is the windpipe or the trachea, and to focus on the sides with this idea that somehow the sides is safe or safer, and the sides are not necessarily safe, as we can talk about as well. But the point is that, you know, because it's external pressure to the neck, it is technically strangulation, even if people want to give it another name, like choking.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01And so it's very concerning. There's a vast medical literature showing about the short-term and long-term health effects of being strangled or choked. Again, we're gonna use the the term choked because people use it, but it's not choking. But vast medical literature related to strangulation, and most people just don't know that. They don't know.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so tell me more about that so people have context since they don't know. Let's talk about the side effects or potential harm.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so for immediate side effects, we've done studies with thousands of randomly sampled young adults, and we've asked them the kinds of physical responses that they notice in their body while they're being choked or strangled. And we see things, for example, like, you know, oh, it's maybe something like 15 to 19% who experience neck pain. In the days that follow, around 15 or 16% have noticeable neck bruising, which you know suggests some level of pressure that was not small on their neck. Around 40% report being unable to breathe or speak, which has very serious implications for the ability to consent or to withdraw consent or tell somebody that's too much, I don't like it. We have, you know, young people who report visual changes. So like tunnel vision or seeing stars or having their eyes wide open, but they can't see anything. They really just sort of their vision goes black. And those types of visual changes are more common as you approach the potential loss of consciousness. We have a few percent who do actually report having lost consciousness. Around 5% report memory loss related to the event, which is associated with loss of consciousness. If you've lost consciousness, you often don't remember some things about that time period. We also have a few percent who report neck swelling. The neck swelling is really concerning. So if somebody were, for example, to be strangled as part of a bar fight or, you know, a sexual assault or domestic violence and they went to an emergency room, then if people are following, you know, guidance around this issue and there was neck swelling, well, that person would likely be under observation for up to 36 hours to make sure that they don't have an airway collapse, which is life threatening.
SPEAKER_00Certainly.
SPEAKER_01So people don't really hear, and of course, people can die, right? It's very rare, but people do die from being choked or strangled even during consensual sex. And many young people we've interviewed and surveyed do actually know they could die or their partner could die, but they don't know anyone who has, right? So it does that seems so remote. What they really don't know about are all the other things that could happen, you know, elevated risk of heart attacks, of stroke. I mean, you could have some damage to your carotid arteries, which are on the sides of the neck. Again, the the place that people think is safe, but you could damage those arteries, which can elevate stroke risk, not just that day, but for hours, for weeks, for months, and possibly even for years. And so we need a lot more research on that, on the really long-term risks. But the point is, all of these have been well known. Some of these have come up in our research. We haven't done like, you know, research five or 10 years out, so we're not following people with these long-term risks at the at this point. But a colleague has also done some brain research on this as well, if if you'd like me to talk about that as well.
SPEAKER_00The thing is, is people do understand loss of oxygen to the brain. I mean, a lot of people have heard that related to issues around birth or, you know, drowning, right? Or I'm trying to think of like things people would relate. Well, this is another instance, yes, of possible loss of oxygen to the brain.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so this is both lack of oxygen and also lack of blood flow. And so we have both of those things happening, right? So not only is somebody potentially not getting oxygen, but if their blood flow is not getting to their brain because they're trapping their arteries, right, through pressure, then their brain is not getting all the other good things that is in the blood, like glucose, you know, so it's not getting really the food that it needs. And what's really alarming about the recent trend, too, is that this isn't something that people maybe try once or twice for the most part, and then they're like, oh, I tried that and that's it. You know, this isn't a new behavior, but even in the kink or BDSM community, strangulation was considered very high risk, and so not many people would engage in it. Some people at different sex parties or play parties would actually have rules against strangulation because it was considered so high risk. So, you know, colleagues of mine within the kink community have said, you know, wow, first of all, very few people used to do this, but even if they did, it might be pretty rare and they wouldn't do it often. And what we see now is that people are doing it quite often, like as just a typical part of their making out our sexual lives. So, in our most recent survey on this, for example, out of several thousand randomly sampled students, we found that of those who had been choked, that one out of five of them had been choked more than 25 times. And that's a lot.
SPEAKER_00My mouth just dropped open because three questions came in about this exact topic. I mean, they asked me, please ask her. Did they try it once and be like, oh, I'm never doing that again? Or, oh, I don't like that. We're never doing that again. And you're saying it's that's not the case.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean, there certainly are some people that don't, you know, don't make the habit of it. But yes, we're seeing quite a lot of people who, you know, again, at very young ages who are making this part of their repertoire. And so, in other words, their brain is having repeated, you know, insults on it, as you know, brain health researchers will talk about it, because they are experiencing this on a regular basis. And not only that, but some people, especially young women and gender diverse people as well, compared to men, for example, are more likely to be choked in what we consider like a repetitive style. So, in other words, multiple times during a given event. So it's not only just a single strangulation during an event, but they might do it repeatedly for different reasons. I mean, there's some sense that some people are doing that to actually get like a certain type of low oxygen high that you get from hypoxia, which is low oxygen, you know, to cerebral hypoxia is low oxygen to the brain. So when you have lower levels of oxygen, sometimes people feel a little euphoric. And so some people are trying to do that. Other people aren't trying to do that. But I actually came across a video which was really concerning for me to see by somebody calling themselves a sex educator, and they were, you know, actually encouraging people to do that style. And they were approaching it from a harm reduction perspective of rather than having a long duration of pressure on the neck, which could possibly, you know, have somebody pass out or they could die if it goes on too long. They were suggesting to sort of pulse it. And, you know, they didn't seem to have any sense that that is just like repetitively, you know, affecting the brain. And so while it's true, I guess that is better than like dying, it's still just shocking to me. I'm sure they just didn't know, but that they were again recommending to their audience that that is something that they could do to their partners.
SPEAKER_00I'm curious how often men are reporting enjoying being choked versus women non-binary across the spectrum. I think you talk about this in the book, I'm not sure. But tell tell me about this. I don't hear you saying that men enjoy being choked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so heterosexual men are not very often on the receiving end of being choked, but sexual minority men, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual men, are more often both giving and receiving being choked. So, yes, so we do know that being choked is more common among gay and bisexual men, among bisexual women. It's also very common with heterosexual women to be choked during sex. Regardless of people's orientation, if there's a man and a woman having sex together, it is usually the woman being choked. Heterosexual men will sometimes either allow their partner to choke them or ask them to choke them to try it out, but they don't usually make a frequent habit out of it.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Okay. We've talked about the risks. Well, what's the prevalence of this? We talked about the statistics. Yeah. Can tell me a little bit about the prevalence of this practice.
SPEAKER_01The prevalence is really shocking to many people. So so in our college samples, again, random samples of often three to five thousand young people, we find that about 64% of college women report having been choked during sex. So the majority. So just the last time, just the most recent time, not even looking at the last year or ever in their lives. But that again speaks to how common it is that it's just something people do now. Younger adults do now when they make out or have sex. And for teenagers, we often hear that they're, you know, starting this at the earlier stages of just making out. And so they're not even necessarily people who have had vaginal or anal intercourse yet or even oral sex necessarily. But while they're at the making out stage, it's not that unusual now for them to put a hand to the, you know, to what their partner's throat and and press the sides of it. Okay. Which is really, really concerning.
SPEAKER_00This is really concerning because I feel like young people that age, especially have so well, even in moving through young people and through college, often don't have a lot of language practice around talking about sex, sexual practices, their wants, desires, even their willingness. They don't have a lot of context often, personal, real life context, right, to negotiate this kind of high-risk behavior.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what's really concerning to me about is they often don't have enough information to make a truly informed choice about it. It's hard enough sometimes to ask if somebody's ready to move to some other stage of sex, right? Whatever the new thing is you haven't tried yet. You know, if someone's ready for oral sex or vaginal sex, or if they want to make out, if they want to kiss, if they want to be exclusive or not. I mean, all of those things are so hard when you are in those early years. It's not just the early months. I mean, I know that my college students still struggle with those conversations and they've had more practice than a 13 or 14-year-old. And so I think, you know, that is what is really hard for me to think about when I think about teenagers engaging in choking and other kinds of rough sex, is that they're so new to this, especially if they're feeling disempowered in any way, whether it's around their gender or sexual identity or just like their past experiences. Some of them have past abuse histories and so on. It can be really hard to stick up for yourself and to say what you like or don't like, to navigate these really tricky situations. And they don't have not only personal context, but really social context for it. And so these days, you know, they're learning about choking and other kinds of rough sex from TikTok videos, from some memes they see on Twitter, from TV shows that they watch, popular shows like Euphoria from like a decade ago or The Idol more recently, or popular teen shows. Jack Harlow's song Lovin' on Me, which is the number one for six weeks this winter, talks about choking and describes it as vanilla. And it was the number one song in this country, right? For six weeks. And it's been viewed more than a hundred million times on YouTube and used in a couple million TikTok videos, which, you know, is really hard, you know, in some ways to just see how this is coming at young people from every direction. But it also gives parents so many openings. So parents who are thinking, how do I talk to my kid about this? Well, if they like Jack Harlow, talk about Jack Harlow's song Loving Amy. Say, yeah, you know, I heard the song. I guess it's I didn't realize it was, you know, talks about choking. Have you heard about choking before? Is this something you and your friends talk about at school? What does it mean to you? And then talk about what you think about it and talk about that your concerns about health that you've learned about today or that you just happen to know about. You know, if they're watching shows like The Idol, watch it with them. If they're really into fan fiction, where some of them learn about rough sex and choking, check out the fan fiction sites that they like so that you get a sense of the information they're getting. Some are really explicit, some are not. Try to use those media as teachable moments and opportunities to step into the conversation.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. And even to the point of saying, what about that would appeal to you? Mm-hmm. To not always bring it to a negative. I've had some conversations around this with young women that I've spoken to or clients where it's like, well, what about it appeals to you? What is it about it, is it that you did you want from that experience, right? Bringing that conversation into a bigger conversation around desire or pleasure, or what is it you're looking for from that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can ask them what they themselves are looking for, what they've heard people get from it, and also what alternatives they might be aware of to get those same kinds of feelings, but without the risk. I mean, many of my college students, when I share with them some of our research on the health risks, and where, of course, they're in a bigger context where we've talked about lots of ways that people experience pleasure, you know, they've had that information, they understand there's a big menu of intimacy and sexuality, and they can then say, you know, I didn't know this, right? I didn't know that choking came with so many risks. I still like to blank, right? I still want to be submissive, or I still want to be dominant, or I still want to have a lot of variety in my sex life, or I want to be kinky, whatever the case is. But there are ways that I can still have what I want out of sex or intimacy without these kinds of risks that are more than I'm comfortable with. And I think that is really what helps them to identify what they want, identify what they don't want, which for you know, most of my students are those kinds of health risks, where I think many of them still need some support, not all of them, but many of them still say, okay, I don't want to do this anymore. This is way riskier than I thought it was, but I've been doing this with my boyfriend for six months. How do I tell him I want to stop? You know, and we've been doing that forever, right? Because in our field, like we have been telling young people forever, giving them language and scripts, offering them ways that they could say whether it's I don't feel like I'm ready for sex, or I'm ready for this kind of sex, but not that kind of sex, or it's, I know we've been having sex without a condom or birth control, but I really that feels scary to me, and I really want to, you know, find a method that's gonna work for us. In some ways, it's very much in line with what we've been doing, but now they're looking for specific scripts around how do I say things, you know, and I tell them, like you can say, hey, today in human sexuality class, you know, we had the speaker and they shared that this actually came with some risks I wasn't aware of. I still like being sexual with you. I just don't want to do any more choking, right? That doesn't feel comfortable to me anymore. And if somebody then respects that and supports you in that choice and says, Oh, yeah, I didn't know that either. I wouldn't want to do that to you, then that's really positive. But if they say, Oh, that's ridiculous, like we should still do it, and they're blowing past the boundaries that you're setting, that's a red flag about that partner and that relationship.
SPEAKER_00And good information to know and decipher at any stage in a relationship. And that's empowering language. I really I appreciate that. I'm wondering, too, for so many of these people and young people where this is their first experience with sexual activity, and you talked about this in the book, I remembered. I call it this uh-oh feeling. Like we have this uh-oh feeling. I use this with parents, with young, young children. Like I use it with myself. If I'm walking somewhere and I'm by myself and it's dark, I have that uh-oh feeling. If your child gets in a situation where they have that feeling like something's not right, or I'm afraid, or I feel my body is anxious, right? If this happens in this initial sexual scenario for a young person, this choking, or rough sex, or this name-calling, slapping, smothering, all of this, and you don't feel like you can say, that doesn't feel right to me. Yeah, that is dangerous ground.
SPEAKER_01It is, and I you're right. I bring this up in yesterkid because you know, we spend so much time as parents or educators, you know, we say this to our good friends, right? Pay attention to your gut feelings. Like we realize that that like we have these alarms that can sound off for us that are there to protect us. We know that. We have that built-in system that lets us know. And it's the idea, you know, some psychologists will say, like, fear is your ally, right? It's not your enemy, it's your ally when it's operating within normal realms, right? And not overly anxious. But anxiety can kind of let us know sometimes, just a little bit. Like, wait a minute, there's something that's making me a little worried or scared. I want to pay attention to that because maybe things aren't so safe right now. And so that helps us a lot of times. But what I do worry about in this climate of rough sex being a given, a norm, and even what many young people feel pressured to do, is it's not a judgment about rough sex per se. I think many of people can have lots of kinds of sex so they enjoy consensually and they can navigate. And so it's not at all a judgment on that. But if it becomes the norm and you start to say, you have those worries, you have, oh, I didn't like that I was called that name. Am I okay? I'm scared, I'm worried, and now I'm being choked, and and all these things. But if the message you're getting from your friends, your partner, the media are like, no, this is just how sex is, like, just do it no matter what, right? Then you're kind of starting to, I worry a bit that young people may, some of them, like sort of talk down those fears and say, no, like, don't listen to that voice. And I I think we want people to be listening to that voice. And if they decide that this is something that they really like, then they can figure out how to manage that, right? And they might say, No, I'm safe because this is a behavior within a risk level I'm comfortable with. It's with a person I completely trust. We've talked through issues of safety and safe words and all of this stuff. If it's not for any of those reasons, maybe it's someone you don't know that well, or you haven't had a good conversation about things, or it's a higher risk behavior, for any one of those reasons, like we really want to, again, fine-tune that gut alarm, the uh-oh feeling, as you said, because that is there to help us navigate the world. We don't want to shut it down.
SPEAKER_00No, I think that's a good part to include as part of this conversation with our kids, with ourselves. You know, this episode won't be listened to just by parents, you know, it will be listened to by all of us around. I think this is good language for all of us, frankly. It is, yeah. Yeah. You mentioned media and films and tick tock, but also what our kids are getting from pornography. I mean, you and I know this is where so many people, young people, get their sex education. And it's troublesome because it's entertainment and it's not real, and the porn they're usually watching is free. And it does probably depict a lot of these rough sex acts, yes?
SPEAKER_01It does. Pornography, that especially the free online mainstream pornography that young people are likely to come across often does have rough sex acts in it, choking in it. And so, you know, the common sense media report that came out in 2023 was, you know, consistent with so much of the other research that teenagers are seeing pornography really young, or young people are seeing they're not even always teens. I mean, the average age is 12.
SPEAKER_00The average age is 12.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's 12. Whether by accident or intentionally. And even though some may only see it here and there, others are seeing it pretty regularly. They see it, you know, on school grounds sometimes, even though schools are supposed to have filters. They may see it again, even if they don't have a smartphone. Their friends or peers or classmates may have it, so they may even see it on the school bus, you know, we hear, or of course they look for it too. And many parents feel pressured to get their kids a smartphone at young ages. I've heard from many parents who really try to band together, right, with their kids' friends' parents, like get parents to groups to say, let's all just delay this so they're not feeling that pressure. But it is hard because pornography, as you indicated, does not show sex the way that most people actually have it. Pornographic actors are also clear it's not the way they usually have sex in real life. You know, it's it's a very specific scenario that is driven by the companies that produce these media and what they want to show and what they think viewers want to see. We also have many teenagers delaying having partnered sex, so they're waiting longer than they used to to have sex. And while that has some upsides, it also means that they're seeing pornography younger, they're having partnered sex later. So they're often having many more years of this learning of a certain way of having sex, right? They may have seen pornography dozens, if not hundreds or more times since they were young. And so when they do start being with a partner, they might actually think that, you know, they've got to roll out the things the way that they saw in pornography. And again, without those communication skills to really kind of talk through and help them navigate, it can be tricky for some young people to figure that out.
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure. And that's an encouragement to keep having those conversations, right? I mean, that's another little arrow to say keep having these ongoing conversations with well, with ourselves and with our children around this topic, because it's a lifetime learning, our sexuality, what we like, what we don't like. But if we're not starting early with opening the conversations, circling back to what you said at the beginning, our kids won't come back to us with their questions and concerns. So when they get in an unsafe situation or they don't know how to do consent or they, you know, have fear or anxiety, who will they turn to if we have not opened ourselves up to say, I am here, I'm available to you, I want to answer your questions. If I don't know the answer, we'll figure it out together or whatever it is you want to say.
SPEAKER_01I mean, ultimately we want to be a reassuring, sturdy presence in their lives. We're here, you know, we won't know everything. Sometimes kids are going to ask us sexuality questions that we react to in ways we wish we didn't. And even though there are opportunities for us to come back and say, I'm sorry I reacted the way that I did, I was really surprised by, you know, that question or there were comments. And then, you know, that's an opportunity to repair, right? Which shows our children how you repair tricky situations and also continues to model how you talk about sexuality. So I would say for parents or grandparents or other caregivers out there, when you have those moments, and we all will do come back to them and try to be that really loving, supportive, you know, presence in their lives. Because just having an awkward situation and ignoring it and never coming back to it teaches avoidance of difficult sexuality conversations. And we want to teach that we can do it even when it's awkward, right? We can figure it out together.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That's a beautiful way to bring this full circle with an encouragement to parents. And I'd love for you to share how people can find you and your book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, my book is Yes You're a Kid, What Parents Need to Know About Today's Teens and Sex. It's available on you know Bookshop and Amazon and everywhere books are sold. I'm at the Indiana University School of Public Health. I think our website is sexualhealth.indiana.edu, and people can find out more about our research and our fantastic group of students and other faculty there as well.
SPEAKER_00She has a wealth of education and information for you if you want to pursue reading her writing, her research on behalf of all of us. Thank you. Thank you for your work in the world. Thank you so much. On this show, we like to have guests share something that delights them, something that brings them joy day to day. I wonder if you might share something that lights you up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right now it's my garden. We've got peonies out, and peonies are some of my favorites, and I'm working really hard and watering the hydrangeas enough that hopefully they'll pop in the next month or so.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. I'm a gardener, so I love to hear that. Thank you again for being with us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for having me here.
SPEAKER_00Community, this has been a maybe a heavy conversation for you, or maybe a hopeful one. Hopefully, it's been educational, and I hope that it serves you as you continue to give yourself permission for pleasure.
