WEBVTT

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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
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 bored teenagers?

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

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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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
full of high school students

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who were attending
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
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
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
my cool outfit that day.

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I was just losing my audience.

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So, then one of the two adults
who worked for the program said,

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"Aren't you doing some research
about pornography?

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Maybe tell them about that."

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

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into laughter, high fives.

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I think there were some
loud hooting noises.

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

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That moment would prove to be
an important turning point

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for me and my professional mission
of finding solutions

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to end dating and sexual violence.

NOTE Paragraph

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

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on this seemingly intractable problem
of dating violence.

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Data from the US Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention

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demonstrate that one in five
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 answers to the question:

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What's causing dating abuse,
and how do we stop it?

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One of the research studies
that we were working on at the time

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happened to include
a few questions about pornography.

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And something unexpected
was emerging from our findings.

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Eleven percent of the teen
girls in our sample

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reported that they had been
forced or threatened

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to do sexual things that
the perpetrator saw in pornography.

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That got me curious.

NOTE Paragraph

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Was pornography to blame
for any percentage of dating violence?

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Or was it more like a coincidence
that the pornography users

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also happen to be more likely
to be in unhealthy relationships?

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I investigated by reading
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
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 for so many of them

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dating relationships
were apparently unhealthy.

NOTE Paragraph

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

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even though there were
plenty of members of the public

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

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Why would I keep an open mind
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
call sex-positive.

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That means that
I fully support people's right

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

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no matter what it involves,

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as long as it includes
the enthusiastic consent

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of all parties involved.

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

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

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And as a mom of two
soon-to-be teenage children,

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I had my own concerns

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about what seeing pornography
could do to them.

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I noticed that while
there were a lot of people

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who were denouncing pornography,

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there were also people
who were 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
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
that emerged clearly.

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There was one longitudinal study
that had me really worried,

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that showed that teenagers
who saw pornography

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were subsequently more likely
to perpetrate sexual violence.

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But the design of the study

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didn't allow for definitive
causal conclusions.

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And there were other studies
that did not find

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that adolescent pornography use

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was associated with certain
negative outcomes.

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Even though there were other studies
that did find that.

NOTE Paragraph

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But as I spoke to other experts,

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I felt tremendous pressure
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
it was weak-minded of me

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not to be able to pick out the one
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
off of audience's fascination

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with seeing women, in particular,
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
over and over during sex,

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and not always clearly with their consent.

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Most people would agree
that we have a serious problem

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with misogyny, sexual violence
and rape in this country,

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

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And a critically important
problem to me was that

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for more than a century,

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the anti-pornography position
had been used as a pretext

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for discriminating
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
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
about going overboard indicting it.

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For the next two years,

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I looked into every scary,
horrifying claim that I could find

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about the average age
at which people first see pornography,

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or what it does to their brains
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
are most likely to see,

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is a completely terrible form
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 poisoning their minds

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or turning them into compulsive users,

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the way that some ideologues
would have you believe.

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It's a rare person who doesn't see
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
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
pornography ubiquitous,

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or basically guarantees
that any young child

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who's handed a smartphone
is definitely going to see pornography,

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data don't really support that.

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A nationally representative study
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
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
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 to see sexualized images

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in other kinds of media
besides pornography.

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Think about all those
sexualized video games,

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or TV shows, or music videos.

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

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that instead of or in addition to
the sexualized images

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is causing our problems.

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By focusing on the potential harms
of pornography alone,

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we may be distracting ourselves
from bigger issues.

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Or missing root causes
of dating and sexual violence,

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which are the true public health crises.

NOTE Paragraph

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That said, even my own research

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demonstrates that adolescents
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
information elsewhere.

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Less than 50 percent of the states
in the United States

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require that sex education
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
be medically accurate.

NOTE Paragraph

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So in that Boston after-school program,

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those kids really wanted
to talk about sex,

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and they really wanted
to talk 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
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
that we might normally talk about

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under the guise of healthy
relationships education,

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like, what's a definition
of sexual consent?

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

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

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All of these same things we could discuss

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by using pornography
as the jumping-off point

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for our conversation.

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

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

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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We could talk to the kids
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
that was about something

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that they thought
they wanted to be talking about.

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We also discovered something

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that we didn't necessarily
set out to find,

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which is that there's a fantastic way
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
in the studies that have been conducted.

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Invite the adolescents
to become 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
with adolescent development.

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Adolescents like to question things

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and they like to be invited
to think for themselves.

NOTE Paragraph

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And we realized by starting to experiment,

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teaching some classes in consent,
respect and pornography,

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that trying to scare adolescents
into a particular point of view

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

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not only probably does not work,

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but really doesn't model
the kind of respectful,

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consensual behavior
that we want them to learn.

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So our approach, what we call
pornography literacy,

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is about presenting the truth
about pornography

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to the best of our knowledge,

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given that there is
an ever-changing evidence base.

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When people hear that we teach
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
that we're sitting kids down

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and trying to show them
how to watch pornography,

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which is not what we do,

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

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

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

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And that's not it, either.

NOTE Paragraph

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Our secret ingredient
is that we're nonjudgmental.

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

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But, above all, we want them
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
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
and a lot of teachers

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who really do want to be having
these more nuanced

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and realistic conversations
with teenagers about pornography.

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We've had requests from Utah to Vermont,

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to Alabama, to Hawaii.

NOTE Paragraph

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So in that after-school program,

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

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

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

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and what they did
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
really sophisticated points.

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

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as violence prevention activists.

NOTE Paragraph

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

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

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

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And we might leave class
the next week and think,

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

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who said that seeing his sexuality
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
a lot better about her body,

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

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in some tame pornography."

NOTE Paragraph

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

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I find myself talking about
and researching pornography.

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And though it would be easier

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if things in life
were all one way or the other,

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what I've found in my conversations
with teenagers about pornography

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is that they remain engaged
in these conversations

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because we allow them
to grapple with the complexities.

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And because we're honest
about the science.

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These adolescents may not be adults yet,

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but they are living in an adult world.

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And they're ready for adult conversations.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)