What I want to tell my son about sex (in the wake of Steubenville and Maryville)

E, I’m glad we have a little time together. You see, I want to talk to you about sex. Sorry, you can’t jump out of the car—we’re on the freeway now. Anyway, I know your dad already went over all of the basics with you, but I wanted to give you my perspective too—a woman’s perspective. I know you don’t think of your mom as a woman, but I am, and I’ve been around the world a few times more than you have, so listen up.

First, I want to tell you that I understand how confusing sex can be for young men and women in the United States (I’m assuming here that we’re living in the U.S., which may not be the case. But, unfortunately, a lot of the negative aspects of American culture are going global). On the one hand, sex seems to be everywhere around you. You might get the impression that everyone is having sex all of the time. On the other hand, there is shockingly little real or honest information about sex. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of what you see around you is lies.

You and I have talked before about the fact that some of what our culture tries to tell us, through media, movies, and advertising, is a lie. For example, the idea that having more stuff will make you happier. It won’t, but advertisers want you to think that. Well, the same is true of sex. Advertisers, and the media, seem to keep pushing this idea that women and girls are available for sex all of the time, but passively. Just look at the way scantily clad women are lounging all over things in just about every ad. Even singers and actresses, and other women with successful careers and global reputations, pose this way. On the other hand, the message to young men seems to be that, in order to truly be masculine, you have to be dominant and aggressive towards women. Women are available for sex, but they won’t initiate it, so you have to reach out and ‘take’ it (and porn, which I very much hope you haven’t watched, for the most part perpetuates this idea). Let me tell you in the strongest terms possible that none of this is true.

You see, women and girls are not very different from you. Most are curious about sex, and interested in it, but want it to happen on their own terms, in a situation in which they feel comfortable. Some of them want sex, and some of them don’t. In other words, women and girls are human beings, not objects upon which to act out sexual desires. My hope for you is that you treat every human being with which you have a relationship, sexual or not, with kindness, respect, honesty, and generosity. My hope for you is that you look back on your sex life as an old man with no regrets about the way you interacted with your partners, knowing that you always treated them the way you would want to be treated. The way you would want your cousins, your friends, or any woman or girl who is precious to you, to be treated.

You see, I don’t subscribe to the notion that sex is unimportant or inconsequential. I think that sex, like money, can be a very powerful force for good or for evil. It can create and build relationships, and it can also destroy them. We have to be our best selves in our sexual lives just as in every other aspect of our lives—as I said, kind, respectful, generous, and honest. When we do that, trust me, sex can be amazing. (This is the part where you throw up all over the dashboard – and we stop to clean up the car).  It can be one of the best things in your life, and a way to communicate to your partner that you love and trust them. It can be emotional and spiritual. Don’t get grossed out (too late!)—your old mom is trying to be honest with you here!

Let me get a little more specific. Call me old-fashioned, but I think sex is for adults. In other words, you have to be emotionally and mentally mature enough to bring your best self to a sexual relationship, as I said. Also, it’s your responsibility to ensure the health and safety of both you and your partner in any sexual relationship (I think your dad talked to you about how to do that). If you’re not ready to do these things, you shouldn’t be having sex. Also, I firmly believe that alcohol and sex do not mix. Alcohol impairs your judgment; it makes you do things you will regret doing later, and believe me, that is not something you want to bring to a sexual encounter. If you are too drunk to drive, you shouldn’t have sex.

And let me be crystal clear: if your partner is too drunk to drive, she is too drunk to consent to sex. Having sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent is rape. It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, how many other guys she slept with (or how many other guys you think she slept with), or what your buddies are telling you to do. In your life, you will encounter girls or women who perhaps make poor or foolish choices. That is not your responsibility. But it is absolutely your responsibility to treat any woman or girl, in any state of intoxication or dress, like a human being. Again—with respect, kindness, and generosity. Taking advantage of someone who can’t speak for themselves or defend themselves, to gratify one’s own sexual desires, is disgusting and wrong, not to mention illegal. And statistics indicate that most rapes reported among teenagers happen when one or both parties involved are drunk.

Being a ‘real man’ doesn’t mean acting with aggression and dominance towards women and girls. It means standing up to do the right thing even if you face ridicule and rejection from your peers. It means being the first to defend someone who is in a weak or vulnerable position and can’t defend themselves. There was one young man in Steubenville who did this—he saw the pictures of the rape that were circulating among his friends and reported them to the authorities. I love the ads from Men Can Stop Rape—they have exactly the right message.

That’s all I wanted to say. I believe in you and I know you’ll always do the right thing. After all, you have great role models—your dad and your many uncles, to start with. When you’re not sure what to do, think about how they would act. Ignore the lies the media tries to feed you, and try not to rely too much on your buddies either—after all, they’re probably pretty confused too. Treat everyone with the respect and kindness all human beings deserve, and you’ll never go wrong. I love you.

Advisory: Your Brain has Implicit Content

The article in the New York Times magazine this week, titled, ‘Why are there still so few women in science?’, prompted me to reflect on the concept of implicit bias. According to those who study the way people make decisions and judgments, all of us have implicit bias, and in a way, all of us are also victims of it. I’ll explain what it is below; first, I’ll talk about why the NYT article brought it to mind.

 This article took a different view of the skewed gender ratios in STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) fields compared to many other recent publications, by focusing not on work-life balance and its challenges for women, but on the subtle discouragement and lack of support women receive all along their career paths. Most of the article is anecdotal; the author relies on her own experiences and those of women in STEM to demonstrate how women and girls with exceptional intelligence and talents in these fields are still not being accepted and mentored in a way that would ensure their success.

Boy, this article rings true for me. Rather than boring all of you with my own stories, I’d like to focus on an interesting aspect of the article, in which the author, Eileen Pollack, asks her former professors and teachers why they didn’t show her more support and encouragement to go into the sciences. It’s fascinating that most of them don’t perceive that they discouraged her in any way—yet, that’s the way Ms. Pollack experienced her interactions with them. She opens the article with the study I referenced on this blog a couple of months ago, in which male AND female researchers were presented with imaginary applicants for a laboratory position, and overwhelmingly chose ‘John’ over ‘Jennifer’, even though their credentials were identical—only the names were altered. Yet, I would bet that if you asked these researchers, ‘Do you think that men are more competent scientists than women?’, they would answer with a resounding, ‘No!’, and even be insulted by the question. I came across another fascinating tidbit recently: when men are the lone male members of a small work group, they tend to speak more than they do in male-dominated groups. Yet, again, if you asked these men whether they think their opinions or ideas are more important than those of the women in the group, they would probably deny that they do.

All of these phenomena—professors’ lack of support for female students, which they don’t recognize; the assumption that ‘John’ is more competent than ‘Jennifer’ ; and the impulse for men to talk more and listen less in groups with more women—are examples of implicit bias. This is bias that you don’t consciously think that you have. In other words, you might intellectually believe that men and women are equally competent at math and science; that the opinions and experiences of women are no less important than those of men. But your actions speak differently. The subtle stew of gendered bias and sexist messaging in which we marinate from the time we are small children infiltrates our thinking to the degree that our impulses, our knee-jerk reactions to situations and information, can be deeply sexist. And we don’t even know it.

I know some of you are probably squirming in your seats right now, or denying that this applies to you. Let me just issue you one simple challenge: go to Harvard’s Project Implicit website. Take some of the tests there—for example, the exercises that assess your bias (or lack of bias) against women in scientific fields. What do you find? Surprised? Shocked? In denial? I know that I was all of those things.

Believe me, I understand how uncomfortable it can be to confront your own implicit bias. Last spring, I had invited a senior female colleague to give a guest lecture in a graduate class I was teaching. I have enormous respect for this woman both personally and professionally. Before the class started, I asked her what she had been working on recently. She replied that she had been very busy since the beginning of the year, as she had been elected president of her scientific society, which is a very large and prestigious one. And—here is where my bias comes in—I am ashamed to admit that my initial internal reaction to this statement was not, ‘Wow, fantastic! And well deserved! I am sure she will make a good leader for that organization.’ It was more like, ‘Why should she say such a thing? That sounds like bragging.’ Of course, it wasn’t bragging at all—it was an honest response to my question about what she had been spending her time doing. And, she was very well qualified to hold the position as society president, having been actively involved in and a major contributor to her field for decades. But my initial, un-examined reaction was coming from a cultural background that gives much more space for men to tout their accomplishments than women. As a girl, I was taught from an early age that if I spoke honestly about my intelligence and accomplishments, people (especially boys) wouldn’t like me. And clearly, I internalized that message, and my sub-conscious felt the need to enforce it in my interactions with other women.

So how should we deal with implicit bias? In my experience, it doesn’t help either to deny that you have it, or to wallow in your own guilt about it. It’s better to acknowledge it, recognize the knee-jerk reactions that it tends to spark, and consciously counteract them. One mental exercise that I have been performing ever since taking the Project Implicit test is to imagine statements or actions coming from the opposite gender, and gauging my reactions. For example, if I think that a woman is bragging, or that she’s not qualified to speak about a given topic, I close my eyes and imagine her as a man, making the same statements. Do I still think that her words are inappropriate? This actually seems to help separate implicit bias from a genuine, thoughtful reaction. But, I’m still working on it. I hope you all will, too—as Socrates (quoted by Plato) pointed out, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. And it can also be sexist. And keep women—and men—from reaching their full potential.