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[This talk contains mature content]

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Six years ago,

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I discovered something that scientists[br]have been wanting to know for years.

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How do you capture the attention

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of a roomful of extremely[br]bored teenagers?

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It turns out all you have to do[br]is mention the word pornography.

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(Laughter)

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Let me tell you how I first learned this.

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In 2012, I was sitting in a crowded room[br]full of high school students

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who were attending[br]an after-school program in Boston.

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And my job, as guest speaker for the day,

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was to inspire them to think[br]about how exciting it would be

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to have a career in public health.

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The problem was,

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as I looked at their faces,

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I could see that their eyes[br]were glazing over

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and they were just tuning out.

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It didn't even matter that I wore

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what I thought was[br]my cool outfit that day.

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I was just losing my audience.

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So, then one of the adults[br]who worked for the program said,

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"Aren't you doing some research[br]about pornography?

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Maybe tell them about that."

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All of a sudden, that room[br]full of high school students exploded

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into laughter, high fives,

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I think there were some[br]loud hooting noises.

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And all anyone had done[br]was say that one word - pornography.

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That moment would prove to be[br]an important turning point

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for me and my professional mission[br]of finding solutions

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to end dating and sexual violence.

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At that point, I'd been working[br]for more than a decade

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on this seemingly intractable problem[br]of dating violence.

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Data from the US Centers[br]for Disease Control and Prevention

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demonstrate that one in five[br]high school-attending youth

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experience physical and/or sexual abuse

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by a dating partner each year in the US.

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That makes dating violence more prevalent

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than being bullied on school property,

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seriously considering suicide,

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or even vaping,

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in that same population.

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But solutions were proving elusive.

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And I was working with a research team

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that was hunting for novel[br]answers to the question,

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what's causing dating abuse[br]and how do we stop it?

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One of he research studies[br]that we were working on at the time

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happened to include a few questions[br]about pornography.

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And something unexpected[br]was emerging from our findings.

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Eleven percent of the teen[br]girls in our sample

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reported that they had been[br]forced or threatened

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to do sexual things that[br]the perpetrator saw in pornography.

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That got me curious.

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Was pornography to blame[br]for any percentage of dating violence?

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Or was it more like a coincidence[br]that the pornography users

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also happen to be more unlikely[br]to be in unhealthy relationship?

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I investigated by reading[br]everything that I could,

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from the peer-reviewed literature,

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and by conducting my own research.

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I wanted to know

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what kinds of sexually explicit media[br]youth were watching,

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and how often and why,

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and see if I could piece together

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if it was part of the reason that[br]for so many of them

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dating relationships[br]were apparently unhealthy.

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As I read, I tried to keep an open mind,

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even though there were plenty[br]of members of the public

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who'd already made up[br]their mind about the issue.

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Why would I keep an open mind[br]about pornography?

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Well, I'm a trained social scientist,

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so it's my job to be objective.

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But I'm also what people[br]call sex positive.

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That means that[br]I fully support people's right

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to enjoy whatever kind of sex life[br]and sexuality they find fulfilling,

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no matter what it involves,

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as long as it includes[br]the enthusiastic consent

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of all parties involved.

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That said, I personally wasn't inclined[br]towards watching pornography.

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I'd seen some, didn't really[br]do anything for me.

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And as a mom of two[br]soon to be teenage children,

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I had my own concerns

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about what seeing pornography[br]could do to them.

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I noticed that

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while there were a lot of people[br]who were denouncing pornography,

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there were also people who were[br]staunch defenders of it

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for a variety of reasons.

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So in my scholarly exploration,

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I genuinely tried to understand,

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was pornography bad for you[br]or was it good for you?

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Was it misogynist or was it empowering?

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And there was not one singular answer[br]that emerged clearly.

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There was one longitudinal study[br]that had me really worried,

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that showed that teenagers[br]who saw pornography

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were subsequently more likely[br]to perpetrate sexual violence.

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But the design of the study

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didn't allow for definitive[br]causal conclusions.

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And there were other studies[br]that did not find

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that adolescent pornography use

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was associated with certain[br]negative outcomes.

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Even though there were other studies[br]that did find that.

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But as I spoke to other experts,

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I felt tremendous pressure[br]to pick a side about pornography.

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Join one team or the other.

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I was even told that[br]it was weak-minded of me

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not to be able to pick out the one[br]correct answer about pornography.

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And it was complicated,

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because there is an industry

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that is capitalizing[br]off of audience's fascination

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with seeing women, in particular,[br]not just having sex,

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but being chocked, gagged, slapped,

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spit upon, ejaculated upon,

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called degrading names[br]over and over during sex,

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and not always clearly with their consent.

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Most people would agree[br]that we have a serious problem

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with misogyny, sexual violence[br]and rape in this country,

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and pornography probably[br]isn't helping with any of that.

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And a critically important[br]problem to me was that

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for more than a century,

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the anti-pornography position[br]had been used as a pretext

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for discriminating[br]against gays and lesbians

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or people who have kinks or have fetishes.

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So I could see why, on the one hand,

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we might be very worried about[br]the messages that pornography is sending,

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and on the other hand,

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why we might be really worried[br]about going overboard indicting it.

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For the next two years,

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I looked into every scary,[br]horrifying claim that I could find

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about the average age[br]at which people first see pornography,

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or what it does to their brains[br]or their sexuality.

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Here's what I have to report back.

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The free, online mainstream pornography,

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that's the kind that teenagers[br]are most likely to see,

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is a completely terrible form[br]of sex education.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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But that's not what it was intended for.

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And it probably is not instantly[br]poisoning their minds

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or turning them into compulsive users,

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the way that some ideologues[br]would have you believe.

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It's a rare person who doesn't see[br]some pornography in their youth.

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By the time they're 18 years old,

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93 percent of first year college males[br]and 62 percent of females

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have seen pornography at least once.

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And though people like to say

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that the internet has made[br]pornography ubiquitous,

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or basically guarantees[br]that any young child

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who's handed a smart phone[br]is definitely going to see pornography,

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data don't really support that.

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A nationally representative study[br]found that in the year 2000

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16 percent of 10 to 13-year-old youth

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reported that they'd seen[br]pornography in the past year.

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And by 2010, that figure had increased.

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But only to 30 percent.

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So it wasn't everybody.

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Our problems with adolescents[br]and sexual violence perpetration

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is not only because of pornography.

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In fact, a recent study

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found that adolescents are more likely[br]to see sexualized images

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in other kinds of media[br]besides pornography.

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Think about all those[br]sexualized video games,

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or TV shows or music videos.

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And it could be exposure[br]to a steady stream of violent media

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that instead of or in addition to[br]the sexualized images

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is causing our problems.

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By focusing on the potential harms[br]of pornography alone,

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we may be distracting ourselves[br]from bigger issues.

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Or missing root causes[br]of dating and sexual violence,

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which are the true public health crises.

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That said, even my own research

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demonstrates that adolescents[br]are turning to pornography

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for education and information about sex.

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And that's because they can't find

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reliable and factual[br]information elsewhere.

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Less than 50 percent of the states[br]in the United States

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require that sex education[br]be taught in schools,

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including how to prevent coerced sex.

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And less than half of those states

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require that the information presented[br]be medically accurate.

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So in that Boston after-school program,

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those kids really wanted[br]to talk about sex,

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and they really wanted to talk[br]about pornography.

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And they wanted to talk about those things

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a whole lot more than they wanted[br]to talk about dating or sexual violence.

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So we realized,

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we could cover all of the same topics[br]that we might normally talk about

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under the guise of healthy[br]relationships education,

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like, what's a definition[br]of sexual consent?

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Or, how do you know[br]if you're hurting somebody during sex?

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Or what are healthy boundaries to have[br]when you're flirting?

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All of these same things we could discuss

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by using pornography[br]as the jumping-off point

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for our conversation.

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It's sort of like when adults[br]give kids a desert like brownies,

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but they secretly baked a zucchini[br]or something healthy inside of it.

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(Laughter)

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We could talk to the kids[br]about the healthy stuff,

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the stuff that's good for you,

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but hide it inside a conversation[br]that was about something

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that they thought[br]they wanted to be talking about.

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We also discovered something

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that we didn't necessarily[br]set out to find,

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which is that there's a fantastic way[br]to have a conversation with teenagers

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about pornography.

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And that is,

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keep the conversation true to science.

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Admit what we know and what we don't know

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about the impact of pornography.

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Talk about where there are mixed results

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or where there are weaknesses[br]in the studies that have been conducted.

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Incite the adolescents to become[br]critical consumers

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of the research literature on pornography,

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as well as the pornography itself.

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That really fits[br]with adolescent development.

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Adolescents like to question things

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and they like to be invited[br]to think for themselves.

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And we realized by starting to experiment,

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teaching some classes in consent,[br]respect and pornography,

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that trying to scare adolescents[br]into a particular point of view

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or jam a one-sided argument[br]down their throat about pornography

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not only probably does not work,

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but really doesn't model[br]the kind of respectful,

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consensual behavior[br]that we want them to learn.

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So our approach, what we call[br]pornography literacy,

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is about presenting the truth[br]about pornography

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to the best of our knowledge,

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given that there is[br]an ever-changing evidence base.

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When people hear that we teach[br]a nine-session, 18-hour class

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in pornography literacy to teenagers,

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I think that they either think[br]that we're sitting kids down

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and trying to show them[br]how to watch pornography,

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which is not what we do,

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or that we're part of[br]an anti-pornography activist group

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that's trying to convince them[br]that if they ever saw pornography,

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it would be the number one[br]worst thing for their health ever.

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And that's not it, either.

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Our secret ingredient[br]is that we're non-judgmental.

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We don't think that youth[br]should be watching pornography.

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But, above all, we want them[br]to become critical thinkers

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if and when they do see it.

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And we've learned,

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from the number of requests[br]for our curriculum and our training,

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from across the US and beyond,

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that there are a lot of parents[br]and a lot of teachers

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who really do want to be having[br]these more nuanced

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and realistic conversations[br]with teenagers about pornography.

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We've had requests from Utah to Vermont,

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to Alabama, to Hawaii.

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So in that after-school program,

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what I saw, is that from the minute[br]we mentioned the word pornography,

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those kids were ready to jump in[br]to a back-and-forth

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about what they did[br]and didn't want to see in pornography,

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and what they did[br]and didn't want to do during sex.

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And what was degrading to women

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or unfair to men or racist, all of it.

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And they made some[br]really sophisticated points.

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Exactly the kinds of things that[br]we would want them to be talking about

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as violence prevention activists.

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And as teachers, we might leave[br]the class one day and think,

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"It is really sad that there's[br]that one boy in our class

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who thinks that all women[br]have orgasms from anal sex."

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And we might leave class[br]the next week and think,

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"I'm really glad that there's[br]that one kid in our class who's gay,

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who said that seeing his sexuality[br]represented in pornography

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saved his life."

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Or, "There's that one girl in our class

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who said that she's feeling[br]a lot better about her body,

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because she saw someone shaped like her[br]as the object of desire

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in some tame pornography."

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So this is where I find myself[br]as a violence prevention activist.

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I find myself talking about[br]and researching pornography.

0:14:23.021,0:14:24.482
And though it would be easier

0:14:24.506,0:14:26.823
if things in life were all[br]one way or the other,

0:14:26.847,0:14:30.828
what I've found in my conversations[br]with teenagers about pornography

0:14:30.852,0:14:35.077
is that they remain engaged[br]in these conversations

0:14:35.101,0:14:39.267
because we allow them to grapple[br]with the complexities.

0:14:39.895,0:14:43.173
And because we're honest[br]about the science.

0:14:44.393,0:14:47.346
These adolescents may not be adults yet,

0:14:47.370,0:14:50.139
but they are living in an adult world.

0:14:50.163,0:14:53.362
And they're ready for adult conversations.

0:14:53.944,0:14:55.095
Thank you.

0:14:55.119,0:14:59.143
(Applause)