Carter Sherman: Why Gen Z Stopped Having Sex

27:12They had thought about it, even if they hadn't had these conversations before. Whereas a lot of the young men I interviewed had not necessarily thought about or even like come to the table with things to talk about. And I thought that my theory around that is I feel like the young women and the queer people had understood that their sexual desires or their interests maybe created more friction for them because like those desires, those interests were not treated as being as important as young men's interests, young straight men's interests. Whereas the young men, And it sort of took them longer to come to start thinking about some of this stuff because they hadn't really had to put as much thought into it.

27:50Yeah, and it's interesting because society tells you what your story is a lot of the time, you know? Yeah. So if I think of it from a young man's perspective, when you're a young man, you're sold a story of yourself. You're sold a story that tells you Where you should be at a certain time How you should be viewing sex And you think of like There's like the fun version Like Superbad A movie like Superbad Or for me growing up American Pie You know what I mean It's just this You gotta lose your virginity by prom man You gotta lose it by prom man Come on You get what I'm saying But there's this idea And even in those stories And don't get me wrong Those are comedians I'm not saying don't make them But society is telling you a story As a young man About your relationship with sex And what your relationship with sex Means about you and your success in life.

28:37And I can only imagine, you know, if you're a woman, you know, if you're queer, if you identify as anything, this is a very different relationship. And maybe you have less influence and more room to think about it, but also less support maybe for lack of a better word. It's harder to make it real. Yeah. Or to see it out in the real world. There is this concept that I came across when I was reporting the book called hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity. Yeah, which is a sort of weighty word for, I think, something that people understand very easily, which is that there are a lot of very narrow ideas about what a man should be.

29:13Yeah. And like particularly when it comes to sex, like men should be big, strong, tall, emotionless cavemen who are good at obtaining sex and always want to have sex. Good at obtaining it? Yes. And also want it? Also want it. So like there's not a lot of space in those stereotypes for men to have the feelings that they do have about sex. And I feel like we've done a very good job in the United States over the last 50 years of expanding the ways that we think about like women's relationship with sex in some ways. And, you know, even if it's harder for those young girls that I was interviewing or the young queer folks I was interviewing, it's harder for them to see this out in the real world or they have to think about it more and they have all these ideas and like swirling around inside them but like we haven't even created the space for men to start having those conversations or thinking about those stuff for themselves and so i when i was interviewing these young men they talked a lot about dealing with those stereotypes and feeling like they had to be a particular kind of way yeah i remember having a yeah a conversation about this it was um i forget where this was but it was there was there was a panel that was being hosted and there were some really interesting psychologists talking about it.

30:25And then afterwards, there's a little break off and everyone's just chatting. And one of the therapists there, they were family therapists, sex therapists, all of this. They said something that stuck with me for years. They said, we've lived in a world where men have been taught that they only think about sex and sex has no feelings. And we've taught women that sex is only their feelings and it defines them as a human being and you know it's it's the most it's the most valuable powerful like oh this is your and so you you have this imbalance where men go stick it in good times and then women like it is my sanctity and she was saying that no no the truth lies somewhere in the middle men need to be taught that they do have an emotion they do have a little bit of a fear they do have a connection they do have a warmth they do have a tenderness they you get what i'm saying and then women can also be taught like hey there's a liberation in going like it is yours to wield as you please it is not only your sanctity it's just yours so you know what i mean in the same way someone can choose to spend their friday night drunk or reading a book there's got to be a freedom in saying to people your sex is your sex do with it as you please and don't think that it defines you in like a singular forever do you know what i'm saying i i think all of this is and it makes total sense i think all of this much like anything else is a byproduct of marketing i think sex products don't need to use sex to market anything anymore for example cigarette smoking going um remember those ads where you used to see guys and girls at the beach having a bonfire yeah car ads there's famous mustang one where there's a woman and the man and the arm over have you noticed how car ads look now it's usually one guy driving it being responsible or it's like a family yeah yes but it's never car ads are wildly gendered i have to say they really are yeah they'll pop up when i'm watching television i'm like gosh this is like it's like a car for big strong men or a car for families and like those are the two genders of car they don't sell the m3 or the whatever fancy super sports car with a man and a woman the only time you see that is when you're watching those videos of people in Monaco.

32:33So now people have sold, brands have stopped being interested in selling sex to use, to sell a product. So I think now when kids that are younger, Gen Zs, look, this is just my opinion, when they look at the kind of women of the people that they idolize, they know they'll never have that woman. When they look at their favorite sports star, their favorite rapper, and they look at the kind of women that they're with, I don't think they see themselves with that kind of person. So you think that's affected how they see sex because of that? Yes, but that's why kids now, when you ask them, what do you want to be?

33:03They say, rich or? Famous. Yes, because they know that's the only way to get the kind of girls that they want. Yes, because now the normal is not marketed anymore. Because one or the other, it's either a guy, macho, macho guy in a car by himself. Yeah. Or you have a whole guy with five kids and the person's like, I'm 16. I don't want either of these outcomes. Yeah, when I have sex, I must have come with these ones. I mean, but it's interesting though, because young people are growing up on an internet that is saturated with sex. Like they're being exposed to so many more different kinds of sexuality than we ever had growing up.

33:37I mean, I'm 31, so I grew up a bit on the internet, but not in the way that young people are now. And so I think that this is also sort of one of the questions that perplexes people with the sex recession. It's like, how is it possible that young people are running into like every possible kind of sex that they want and probably a few that they don't on the internet and yet not having IRL sex? And so I think that it's really hard to say with the messaging is that young people are getting around sex right now because the world of the internet is just full of all kinds of different sex is that part of the problem though in like exactly yeah it is you know when we when we think when we think about sex yeah and you you talk about this in the book it is pretty crazy that one of the most important aspects of your life as a human being something that will stick with you until you probably leave this planet is not taught to you in any formal way.

34:30Like, yes, you can say the sex ed, but as you write and as we've seen, sex ed has dropped the window that it thinks of sex through. So it tells you the physical function of sex. This is a penis. It goes into a vagina. Hey, yes. Hey, Baba. We're still from Africa. and so no but i'm saying like when you think of that what do you think that's also done to to not that it was better per se but there's a flattening of sex and it's edu and the education that goes around it it means that you have to go to the internet that doesn't equip people with the tools to know what sex encompasses right because all they hear in school is like don't have sex you'll die yes and then they open up their phone or their laptop or whatever and then they see porn.

35:21I mean, three quarters of American teenagers have seen porn by the time they're 18. And so I think, and what porn purports to do is like show you what sexual pleasure looks like and what it feels like to give it and what it feels like to receive it. And so especially if you are coming from a school that teaches you next to nothing about sex, like of course porn is going to feel like, oh, well, this is sex ed. This is what I should use instead. And like young people do say like oh i know that porn is not accurate and yet they still rely on it for this but what does it not tell you so if if i'm if a kid is watching porn thinking oh man this looks like so much fun what is it not telling them i mean it's not telling them a lot like because porn is scripted right yeah it's basically what i know i'm so sorry i'm yet again breaking news here on the podcast.

36:09Mr. Penis over here. Surprise.

36:15Captain Penis. I mean, it's basically like, I use this analogy in the book, but it's basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto. Right. It's just not, it has very little to do with what real life sex looks like. What does, Carter, real life sex? Because obviously it's bang, bang, swing from the chandeliers. Wow, what part are you watching? Please send me that link, Eugene. I got you, fam. We'll put that in the show notes. Let's get that link to everyone. I want to watch that video. It sounds acrobatic. It really sounds fantastic. And classy. There's a chandelier. Oh, yeah.

36:55This was a really nice set that they probably found out. It's called Cirque du Soleil. Oh, Soleil. I see what you did there. Nicely done. Oh, wow. Oh, nicely done. You need to catch up on the sex balance, by the way. I don't feel like you're really pulling your weight. So if that's advertised clearly through these clips that they watch and these movies that they watch, what is the reality of it? Because we're so quick to say that's not realistic, but what's the realistic part of it? What is realistic about porn? No, what is realistic about sex that porn is not showing people? Oh, I mean, it's not showing like communication.

37:35It's not showing. I mean, I think the things that make people good at sex are an ability to communicate, having a sense of humor, a willingness to be awkward. Because, like, let's be honest, sex, in addition to being kind of fun, is usually fairly inelegant. And, like, none of those things are present in porn because porn is very sleek and scripted. And these are professionals operating on a closed track. And that's fine. I really don't want the message from me or from the book to be that porn is bad. It's just porn has very little to do with the way people, and particularly young people, fuck around.

38:13And so what I found was interesting in the book is I kind of thought that young people on the right would be opposed to porn. I thought that young people on the left would have better feelings about it. But what I found inside is that young people almost routinely thought that porn was bad for them. And they felt that it had warped their sexuality. There's this concept in sociology called the deep story, which is basically the story that people feel is true. And that story can have more power than the actual facts. And we see this in politics all the time, right? People vote for the guy who they just have a good feeling about, even if he doesn't actually align with any of your opinions.

38:48And so the deep story among young people is that porn has been very bad for them. And they feel like, in particular, because they can't talk to their parents about sex or their friends and because sex ed has so failed them that they're just stranded. in front of all of this pornography, and they've just been left to deal with it on their own. In particular, one of the things that really stuck with me is they really felt that porn had normalized rough sex, and in particular, choking. If you're under 40, you're almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex. If you're under 40. If you're under 40, compared to people over 40.

39:21And if you like choking, that's fine. Just do it safely and consensually. And the thing is that most people, or many people, I should say, are not asked for consent before they're choked. And choking is, you know, it can be strangulation. It can be actually very dangerous. And so it was fascinating to me to talk to these young people and they would, so many of the young women I talked to just would relay spontaneously that they had been choked during sex. Like there was one young woman who told me that, you know, they called it a love squeeze in her high school. And again, it's just one of those things where if you like it, go for it, but it's not a normal part of sex.

39:56It's not like an average part of sex and you do have to have a real conversation about it before you do it and that's just not something you see in porn yeah as you're saying this i realize the paradox of not having a thought out and centralized form of education means that the normal becomes defined by the abnormal oh wow yeah you know what i mean because yeah you just said choking is not normal And then I went, except when it is. Because everything that's in sex was not normal at some point. I remember when I was, how old was I? I think I was 12 or 13 years old. And I remember seeing, it was like distant aunts and uncles, but they kissed using their tongues.

40:43And I remember my mind was like, what just, I'd never seen adults do that. Because at that time in my life, that was not normal. even in tv shows people kissed it was just like a smooch you just plucked your lips and you camera swirls around them you can't really get a good view of what's happening yeah it's exactly that yeah you know what i mean and then one day there were tongues and there were more tongues and there were more tongues but now if you said to somebody kissing with your tongue is not normal they're like what are you talking about that's that's weird that you're not opening your mouth what's wrong with you so the the paradox then becomes that normal does exist or rather like the Overton window of normal exists.

41:19But what's really wrong is how it's being defined. You know, it's like if nobody's talking about the thing that's not happening in porn, then porn becomes the only teacher in essence. You know what I mean? Well, the thing is they're also like, they're not even really talking about it either. Oh yeah, silence. Silence is the, yeah, yeah. It's just like, this is just happening. Two billion dollars to be quiet. Yes, exactly. And so they're just, they're not even talking about it and it's going on behind closed doors. And you know, there's been like, I was reading stories and studies where women would talk about having a guy without asking uses belt around their neck.

41:52Uses what? His belt. His belt. Yes. Oh, geez. Or like a necklace to choke her. And it's like, you know, these are things that can be dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you like it, do it safely. Consensually, again. But we're not really, as the internet has shown us more and more different kinds of sex and maybe help normalize more and more different kinds of sex, sex education has receded as a resource that people can find in institutions. I also think there's a there's a there's an like um there's almost an amplification effect that can happen with algorithms and social media because you you're saying this and I'm thinking about all the videos young men see where women are mocking them for the type of boring sex they have do you know do you know what I mean it's not abnormal to see like young men going oh yeah like like you're still out here like you'll see these videos and I'm not blaming those people you make whatever video you want to make but you'll see some of these videos where they'd be like oh yeah when he still wants to hug you before da da da and you know like it's like a little tick tock and it's and it is funny but i can also imagine being a young man and going oh man i guess i've got to know this stuff because if i don't know it do i know sex and do i want to be mocked and do i want to be teased and do i want to be to to rewind to back in my day but i remember in in high school how boys and obviously i wasn't spending all the time with the girls but how boys particularly were mocked if they didn't like seem to know things and back then it was much less sex-based but it was still do you know how to do that do you know how to finger somebody and it was like oh it's like if you don't know exactly like that eugene see i taught you well so but it was this podcast is not sex ed i just you said one billion dollars you had us there yeah you had us there two billion two billion We're coming for that billion We're doing our best here But no what I Yeah it's Do you see what I mean The conundrum is It's like You're in a world where It's As you As you so eloquently say You've got women who are saying Oh man this is my experience Of the men And what they're doing And I also go Yeah there's a world Where the men are going This is my experience Of what I've been told A woman likes And because I don't meet a woman Until I'm having sex with her I don't know Actually what the thing is And I don't want to get there And then not know what the thing is And you don't want to be the fumbling guy.

44:11So to your point, because the original sin is committed by not having the education, everyone is now bumping. It's the blind leading the blind. Well, it also, I mean, it goes back to what we're talking about with like these stereotypes of masculinity, where it's this idea that men have to know everything about sex and should be good at sex and like there's no room for men to ask questions, including of their partner, which is the person they should be directing these questions at because it's seen as not being cool, including oftentimes by women. It's not like, oh, men are just telling men to be this way.

44:38There's a lot of messaging from all kinds of areas, including from women, at men to tell them to be a particular kind of way when it comes to sex. And I should say, one of the things I wanted to do in the book was also explain like porn is not a monolith. And a lot of the young women I talked to, the kind of porn that they liked wasn't video porn. It was something like erotica or fan fiction or romance novels, which oftentimes can also feature rough sex. But because they also had this idea of like rough sex from those forms of pornography, like they brought that to the table as well. And so if these young men are watching video porn where rough sex is being normalized and these women are reading porn where rough sex is being normalized, the story that young women were telling me and the story that young men were telling me and the sort of deep story among young people is like that's how rough sex becomes just treated as just another kind of sex and not something you need to have a conversation about.

45:34And I should also say, I do want to say, we actually don't really know what porn does to us. Like the science on porn is incredibly muddied. It's very hard to find a control group these days of people who haven't seen internet porn. Oh, geez. Yeah, that's a good point. So, you know, to the extent that this is the story that's being told, I find that valuable and I find that interesting. But we don't actually know from a scientific perspective exactly what is happening to us and our sex lives because of the proliferation of internet porn. I think from just listening to you and the research that you've done, the people that you've spoken to, I think the whole entire world is missing a big part of what sex education should be.

46:11Instead of sex health education, they should focus more on sex mental health education. Oh, damn. ability to connect or disconnect should the act not go right. Because I feel like a lot of men, I mean, young men who grew up to be men and how they view relationships, it's usually having to prove yourself. And then finally, when the act is done, you realize you don't have to be someone that you are not all along because, again, of the romanticization of relationships and the end goal being sex. And on the other end, it's the now that we've done it, let's talk. Yeah. Well, advocates of comprehensive sex, I would say, like, healthy relationship education is also a part of sex ed.

46:51Oh, yeah. Healthy relationship. Yeah, like, how to talk about your relationships, your feelings, the sex you want to be having. Like, that could also be a part of sex ed. And honestly, the first time someone said that to me, I was like, my mind has been blown. Because I thought I had pretty good sex ed. Like, my sex ed, I'm from Seattle, Washington, which is a very liberal place. and it talked about STIs and it talked about condoms and it talked about pregnancy prevention, but it did do its best to pathologize sex. Like they had us watch a video of, I think this woman was giving birth to a 16 pound baby, which is huge.

47:24It's large. Yeah. What's the point of that video other than to make me afraid of sex? Damn. Dramatizing. Big babies, they're out.

47:33I would love to track down the woman from that video and be like, what's up? why did you participate in this? That's one way to learn. Yeah, but it didn't include, like they made sex seem scary even if they were trying to provide me with the resources much more so than other schools do. And they didn't talk about like, here's how to talk to your partner or here's how to talk to someone you might be interested in about not only sex but about just the relationship. Is part of this because parents are also saying I don't want my kids learning about sex? Because you see that happening more and more in America.

48:05And I mean, but it flares up all over the world at different times. Parents will say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, you don't know. You don't tell my kid anything. And there's many parents who I think very naively think if they don't hear about it, they won't know it exists. You know, but how much of it is that? How much of it is like we sort of blame the schooling system. But parents oftentimes can shake what a schooling system does or doesn't teach. I think it's a vocal minority of parents who feel the way that you're describing. And I think we especially see that in the United States post-2020 and post the pandemic, where we've always had a lot of conversations around sex ed and a lot of fighting around sex ed here in the U.S.

48:47But post-2020, I would say that those fights have reached a new level where people at school board meetings, for example, have just started spouting off things that have nothing to do with reality. So I describe in the book, there was in 2020 a school board meeting in Texas because Texas was changing its sex ed curriculum for the first time in two decades. And during this school board meeting, parents were coming up and talking about things that, I mean, I struggled to even understand what they were saying because it didn't make any sense. Like they were talking about, I kept on having to rewind and be like, am I hearing this right?

49:25But they were talking about like, you know, teachers grooming students and teachers grooming students not only for sex, but into being transgender, which is not a thing. And they were talking about, oh, comprehensive sex ed is just a way to, you know, make students gay or trans and consent even by itself is a gateway word is what one actually school board member said where they were saying like, this is a gateway word. so that like, I believe he said that like Planned Parenthood and NAMBLA, the male, what is it, man-boy student, man-boy, national man-boy, a National American Man-Boy Love Association.

50:03Sorry, that took me a minute. Yeah. To like, consent is a gateway word so that those organizations, Planned Parenthood, NAMBLA, et cetera, can sink their hooks into these young people. And I'm paraphrasing what he said but it was a very staggering thing to hear right and obviously it doesn't have anything to do with reality yeah and so it got to the point where it's like oh we can't even necessarily talk about consent in schools because that is a politicized word yeah at this point the tough thing is it doesn't have to do you know to go back to what you're saying about like a slither of porn a slither of people is that i i truly feel bad for those parents because i think they sort of care the most do you know what i mean think of what you must feel like as a parent you're watching the news you see a story about a teacher who had sex with one of their students man or woman you see another story where teachers had sex with their students you see a story where this child was kidnapped or this child was this you see it you see a story of grooming you see people come out and say they were groomed from a young age i it's so hard to say to that person because i i and i've been guilty of this don't get me wrong because i would dismissively go like that's not a thing but then i'm like oh man but how do you how do you get through to people or how do you help them balance out the weighting of risk because they're saying i'm trying to protect my child at all costs and then you want to go yes but what cost is too great at what point are you not protecting the child you know because it is a tough one because there are teachers who've molested kids there are kids you know what i mean it's this i mean the world is a scary place and schools are a scary place yeah but you see it's funny i don't think the world is a scary place in that way no genuinely and i don't mean this like facetiously i just think the world feels scarier when you know everything that is happening in it at the at the same time but most of the world is not a scary place you know like people like oh i'm scared of flying but they're scared of flying because of the plane crashes we focused on yeah but there's no new story about planes that land yeah they're just aren't you know and yeah and we do this with everything and i'm not saying we shouldn't focus on those things right but the human brain is very difficult at understanding how much or how little to focus on something depending on how much it's been told accurately gauging yeah it's you know well i think also during the pandemic in particular you know people were trapped at home yeah on their computers looking constantly at bad news and conspiracy theories proliferated I said bad nudes.

52:32Oh, well, I'm not too. I was like, I've had those in the pandemic trapped with bad nudes. I was like, hey, man, I've had... There's nothing worse than lockdown with bad nudes. Lockdown on itself. And I'm like, I know the stores are running out of razors now. Actually, let's talk about social media because you talk about what you call the fuckability trap, you know? Eh, eh. Carter. I'm sorry, yes. Yeah, again a lot. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that was approval. Thank you. That... what is it again? The fuckability trap. I mean, I have to credit, fuckability is not my concept. It's the concept of this philosopher whose name I'm definitely going to mispronounce.

53:12It's Amiya Servassian. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. But she is a philosopher who talks about basically fuckability is sexual desire as constructed by our politics. Right. Wow. Which is the idea that like, you know, how can we differentiate the ways that like racism and sexism and all other kinds of isms affect which bodies are seen as most desirable um so that's the definition of the fuckability trap i don't know where you're going with the actual no but but but the trap that you were talking about and you see this this is where i like i get stuck because it's so complicated and layered you talk about social media and how we're given these signals we're showing these signals post a picture of yourself you know just sitting in a park drinking your coffee yeah get a few likes post the same picture in a bikini likes go up go back to a picture of you reading a book a few likes bikini likes go up and and and am i reading in the bikini in this case yeah i mean that's good everybody wants to be smart and hot like that's the goal that is the goal can i tell you we need to normalize that by the way.

54:26I'm so jealous of that line because I wish I had it. No, but it's true though. You can steal it. Okay, okay. No, I like this because I feel like we make it seem like it has to be one or the other. We make it seem like we also make it seem like it shouldn't like exist. And maybe that goes into this conversation but like what did you notice in how social media has played a role in how we define ourselves and portray ourselves in society in and around sex? I think it is exactly what you're talking about with the bikini photos and the ways that those are valued more. So there was one young man I was talking to, and I appreciated that he said this, where he was talking about, you know, if he might see a girl that he likes on Instagram, he might keep scrolling and see another girl he likes, but she'll be in a bikini.

55:08And he's like, oh, I'm probably going to like her more. Like, he's going to be more into her. And that's, I think, this thing that people have internalized, which is that they understand their sexual value and how to convey it online because they're constantly getting feedback in the form of likes and matches and follower counts. And they can quantify what makes them appear to be sexually desirable to other people. Yeah, appear to be being the key phrase. Right. And I think for young people who grow up constantly having that kind of feedback loop, it leads to a kind of self-objectification where they don't think about their bodies and what their bodies can do for them.

55:45They think about what their bodies look like and how other people think about their bodies. And that feeling is linked to all kinds of negative outcomes like eating disorders or low self-esteem or even potentially people having less sex. Because if sex is another occasion for you to be judged and found wanting, you're not going to do it. If you feel like your body is perfect, has to look perfect in order to get naked, you're probably just not going to get naked. Yeah. I think about when I was young, we thought the worst thing, you know, when society was talking about this, the worst thing was the magazines have very perfect bodies and perfect people.

56:17What does this mean to you? And we thought that that's the worst it could get. But now you're on the cover of your own magazine and no one's buying your magazine. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, what does that do to you? And you can see it now, yeah. That would be devastating. But that's what's happening. Think about it. Yeah, it is. Because before you could go like, oh, that's a supermodel and I'm not that and that's the beauty standard. But the judgment wasn't about you. You knew what people were aspiring to and you knew where you were maybe in relation to it, but it wasn't about you. But now it's completely about you because now you've put your magazine right next to somebody else's magazine online.

56:51And then a little button tells you how your magazine stacks up against somebody else's. And so now it's not just an aspirational thing that you cannot reach. Yeah, it's a realistic one. Yeah. You see it here, right here and right now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And also we've been given, young people have been given many more tools to make themselves appear more attractive. Ah, damn. There was one young woman I was talking to who was talking about, she posts on TikTok a lot and she took somebody else's filter and she didn't realize that the filter had made her cheeks look slimmer. And when she accidentally removed the filter, she realized, oh, I don't like my face this way.

57:30I don't like the way my face actually looks. I liked it with the filter more. She catfished herself. I mean, kind of. And she was saying like, that's a terrible feeling. Yeah. Like looking at your own face and being disappointed by it. And so not only are you, like you're given all the tools to change how your body looks on social media, can't really change your body in the same way without a lot more money and probably some surgery in real life. And so you're, again, just constantly being compared and contrasted and falling short. Could that be one of the things? I don't know. I haven't done any research in this field, but could that be one of the factors?

58:03If people are living in a world where they're able to augment themselves so perfectly online, could it prevent them from interacting in real life? Because to what you just said, the catfishing of it all, I know how I look online. I don't want to show up in person because I can't do anything. There's no filter. I can't match it. I can't match it. And so if I stay online, I never get disappointed. I keep accruing this feeling and this, you know, but if I come into the real world, it all falls apart. Did you speak to anyone where that happened? Were there people who were more comfortable existing as their full filter selves and then wouldn't go into the real world anymore?

58:40I think that what has happened for young people is like just so much more of their lives has been outsourced online. And the pandemic contributed to this, right? Because these are young people who are growing up, like they didn't have prom. They didn't have graduation. Missed a few years of school. Yeah, they missed a lot of the sort of teenage moments. Yeah, the ways that the moments that teach you how to handle being embarrassed or being rejected or just the nuances of human connection. And so instead, they were on their screens all the time. And that for them replaced a lot of those interactions.

59:08But there's nothing that can really replace an IRL. Real life, battle experience. Exactly. I'm a big fan, me personally, of real life battle experience. And I feel like there's nothing that will make you tougher and nicer at the same time than being done a favor instead of being rejected. Kat, I'm going to tell you the truth. There's some moment back in my life where I look back and I'm like, why did you date me? But you know what it did for my self-esteem? It took it from here to there. That was real battle life. And also, so I've decided every year I do charity drive. I date someone who I wouldn't.

59:47It's my outreach. That's so generous of you. Yeah. I write it off with my taxes. I'm like, no, this is time I will never get back. You are a philanthropist. A few tanks of gas that I used and I took my credit card. I write it off and I'm going, okay, this is my corporate social responsibility. So that that person goes home. What they'll do is they'll say to themselves, if that guy saw me, then someone else can see me. and we laugh but there's a lot of marriages that I think are based on my theory because now people are like you know who I dated now they look at me going I dated that guy and the person behaves but no I love that idea that they're using you as the midwifery so they go like I'm just picturing a couple right now and then the husband is saying something I don't know if this is working for working for you do you know how I used to date and then they pull up your profile and they're like hmm it's like you dated him yeah Why is he wearing a bikini and reading a book in the park?

1:00:44He's smart and hot. So, but that's my thing. But you're right, though. No, but I do like the point behind it, which is beautiful. And we forget that it's all real life. Yes. We often will say like the bad and the, but man, the good of real life as well. Being real life accepted, being real life chosen. Yes. Yes. I mean, there's nothing to replace it, for sure. Nothing to replace the feeling of being told, Look man I'm out of your league And I've realized That I can do better in life And then at that moment You feel You know Shattered, broken But you go Look if I were you I would totally do the same And then you move on And then you start punching In your weight class And when you're in your weight class You're like No man I actually can do better than you But I think the Krafma Krah Of relationships Is what's missing It's The end goal Has become the win Where people I've heard people saying Why would I want to go out there And meet people where I could be sitting here watching porn.

1:01:39Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard people saying that. So I feel like the close quarter combat-ness of dating that eventually leads to sex, the adventure of it all has been taken out. It's all outcome-based. Yeah. It's Netflix and chill. And then we skip to URL and then we come back again. And then now you're talking to your friends online. You're watching girls that you will never have online. You're watching people having a good time online. Where else with us? You had to go out there and be rejected. So that's why my outreach program is still continuing till this day. It's so beautiful, Eugene. Thank you, Trevor.

1:02:12So beautiful. Thank you. I'm touched. And I think inspired as well. I think a lot of people don't consider. Imagine what kind of impact you would have with your reach, with your everything. You can just, the impact, I mean, you can have one in Harlem, the Bronx. Even in Africa, you can definitely do an outreach Where a person can say, look who I took as off And look, I dated this person And then you can just lift up your self-esteem One girl at a time Sometimes a man here and there But if anyone can do both I've seen the things you do when no one is looking Thank you for seeing me, Eugene Thank you so much for seeing me I've got you That's me almost crying Thank you Beautiful.

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1:04:22Let's talk about sexting.

1:04:27Throughout time, the way humans have expressed their sexuality has constantly evolved and changed. And you spend a section in the book talking about like, you know, like how people see sexting and what it should be and how they communicate their sexuality to each other. what would you say has been the biggest change for like gen z from what a previous generation might have considered what's appropriate not appropriate what they're doing or not doing has there been a shift i mean it might be sexting yeah i think that you know when i was growing up my parents were always like you know everything you put online be prepared for the new york times to publish on its front page oh wow i know really puts the fear of the new york times into you but now I think like everybody sends nudes yeah and that's just how it is and I think that there is a much more generational acceptance that like yeah probably you know depending on the future of American democracy if we end up having a younger president that president will probably have nudes out there and that's just how it is and so I don't think that like sexting isn't inherently bad thing I think it gets stigmatized a lot of the time because it's new and because it's yeah Yeah, but one day it could be the norm.

1:05:36Ask not what pictures your president can send to you. Ask what pictures you can send to your president.

1:05:47That's the best Kennedy ever.

1:05:52Even the Kennedy with a bad radio speaker. Kennedy's like, I'd never started like that. I mean, look, if any president got a lot of nudes, it was probably Kennedy. to be honest. Touché. Touché. I knew you had it in you. But yeah, and I don't think that, I think that we just, like porn, treat sexing as a monolith and treat it as a bad thing. And the thing is though that by in so doing, similar to how we pathologize sex through sex ed, we make it impossible for people to handle it when something does go wrong. We don't create avenues for people to be able to seek accountability or to even feel better about themselves when their nudes are leaked or shared, oftentimes without their consent.

1:06:38And that kind of stuff happens all the time. And we just blame those people for having sent out the nudes instead of recognizing everybody sends nudes and actually leaking somebody else's nudes without their consent is a violation. But to your point, the difficulty, and I think this is something we struggle with in society across the board. We love flipping between binaries, you know and we think the equilibrium gets reached when we go to the opposite end of a spectrum but it doesn't you know so people will go oh this is unequal and let's switch to the complete opposite now it's then it's like no now it's an unequal the other way you know and i remember like i think of goes from exclusive to super inclusive yeah and it's like but but if you think of the um nelson mandela for instance a lot of people wondered why he said when he was like he was like i do not seek the the oppression of black people i do not seek the oppression of white people i do not and people like why is he saying that because he was like i want to be crystal clear with you i'm fighting for equality i'm not fighting for a role reversal and and sometimes people miss that and i think when you're saying that to go back to what your parents said that is one of the dichotomies that we also face in this world one half of sending nudes and your nudes getting leaked is not your fault because somebody leaked your nudes yes one half is your fault because you've sent nudes now i'm not saying you deserve it please don't get me wrong i'm not saying that yeah but i'm saying this there's like we don't want to live in a world where there's nuance we don't want to live in a world where there's gray but i think it's important for us to say to each other and to the parents and to also go like hey hey please know you are making it more likely that a nude can be i'm not saying it's good if it happens here i'm not saying you deserve it and i'm saying should but just understand that there's a risk that you're taking but on the other hand even if that risk if you are a victim of that i'm not going to now blame you yes but understand like the the complicated ramifications of this thing you know yeah i mean i think in the flipping from one side to the other like you just it's a rejection of reality because reality is always in the middle yes and so we can't actually acknowledge or grapple with the nuances of reality if we're constantly moving from one extreme to the other oh i like that actually i'd even say it's the language that people use to not make that a crime people call it revenge porn you're like no porn is an industry it's a business with actors willing participants with incentives someone leaking your nudes you're not it's not revenge porn yeah yeah it's not porn at all because it was never porn in that way at all yeah yeah so i think the wording around it gives these tech companies plausible deniability because once they get dragged into what they allow someone else to do as a proxy of someone else's willingness, then they'll be in trouble.

1:09:23Right? Well, there's new, I mean, advocates now would say instead of using revenge porn, we should use terms like non-consensual image abuse. Oh, yeah, there you go. You nailed it. Yeah. And acknowledge, yes, to your point, like porn is an industry. People participate in it for money. It's their job. Like someone who's nudes leaks, that is not them agreeing to be a performer. That is them being victimized. Yeah, it's a completely different thing. And now we've made it seem like they're part of an industry that they're not. How do we expand that into the world of dealing with sex and the way we think about it?

1:09:57You know, you talk in the book about college campuses and how there's this swing that goes back and forth in how college campuses have dealt and then are now dealing with sex that is consensual or non-consensual or somewhere in this gray area on campus. What have you found has happened in the past few years? I think in general, college campuses are oftentimes treated as like ground zero for all of the kinds of battles that we're having in American life. Like right now, for example, there's a lot of discussion around free speech on college campuses and what we should do there. But one of the things that I was looking at in the book is Title IX.

1:10:33And Title IX is the federal civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education. And it has become a political football over how we should be treating sex and rape on college campuses, which is to say, like, under the Obama administration, it was its powers were, I don't want to say expanded, but maybe more illuminated to the extent that you could use Title IX to combat sexual harassment and sexual abuse. And that sparked a huge backlash from the right that said that, you know, this was overreached by the Obama administration. And, for example, they took specific aim at the standard of proof that the Obama administration said that should be used in adjudicating these kinds of cases.

1:11:18And so then when the Trump administration came in, they changed a lot of the rules around Title IX and they rewrote them to, for example, make it that you have to have like in-person hearings around these kinds of things where both the survivor, the alleged survivor and the alleged perpetrator have to be there. and this amongst other changes made it as one activist told me basically title nine became unusable for survivors it just did not get a kangaroo court i mean that's that i mean they basically the trump administration said that you guys made title nine a kangaroo court first and then we're fixing it we're going the opposite direction right and then so like basically it's now at this point the biden administration rolled in they again rewrote the rules of title nine Trump administration as people might have heard is back in power and wait what?

1:12:12I know how long have we been in here?

1:12:18I mean what is interesting is like there are things there are things in the book that I predicted would change under a Trump administration and Title IX was one of them but I did not predict the speed at which a lot of this stuff would change oh yeah okay so like in between I mean, writing a book takes time. In between turning in the final draft and the book actually coming out, some of the stuff that I predicted would happen over the course of a four-year Trump administration happened more or less immediately. And so the Title IX rules have reverted at this point to what they were underneath the Trump administration.

1:12:52and I think for a lot of survivors on college campuses it's been very difficult and upsetting to see like sex effectively being treated as a political football yeah and not really being the nuances of it not really being reckoned with just people again flipping from one side to the other and you know I think we have to think about like what is a college campus like a college campus is where people go and learn about the world. And if they're being taught at that age that maybe there are not consequences for sexual abuse, for sexual harassment, for rape, like what does that say for the rest of their lives?

1:13:34Sex or rape is one of the, rape is one of the number one reasons that women leave college campuses. Damn. No way. And so when that happens, we're creating a situation where women are less able to flourish. They're not able to get the education. They're not able to get the jobs. They're not able to ultimately have as much of a public voice. And so we create like a snowball effect here when we don't take sexual abuse and harassment on college campuses seriously in all kinds of ways. It's also, I always feel like it's also a little disingenuous to deal with the people who are dealing with the ramifications of a system without thinking of the system itself.

1:14:15like like one of the biggest ones that throws me in my daily life is i'll think about like drunk driving i always think it's confusing that if you sign a contract and you are inebriated most courts would argue that you did not have the capacity to sign that contract let's say you were drunk at the time so you couldn't agree to state you were in an altered state if somebody drives drunk and they crash their car into people, they are prosecuted fully because the law says they made a decision to drive drunk. But I'm like, yeah, but that same law in another instance says you did not have the capacity to make a decision.

1:14:54Do you know what I mean? And it's these small paradoxes that are complicated and that's what law needs to get into. That's what I think law was fundamentally meant to be about is trying to understand the complicated nuances in a society, provide clarity as to how to deal with them on a case-by-case basis but the messiness of the system isn't dealt with like whenever these college things came up i would see them have all these conversations but very seldom would i see colleges say what do we think about how we allow alcohol on a campus do you know what i mean and i'm not saying that that is the cause but i'm going you cannot separate a conversation about sex and young people from alcohol but you're just going to talk about the people and not the environment that the people are in and how they're consuming the alcohol and then what then happens and then you with me and sometimes i think it's such a it's such a short-sighted and and and small approach that you may end up swinging back and forth the whole time because you just go oh yeah you know one administration goes it's the guys who are the problem then now it's the girls who are the problem then it goes it's just going to keep going back and forth and the institutions never actually have to ask themselves wait what environments are we creating to your point in educating in they they do those campus tours they tell you about the morals of the camp this is what it's like to be a student here this is where you should go for this this is i feel like even on that level colleges should say hey we're going to teach you about sex on campus this is part of your onboarding yeah this is part not sex also in life, but we're going to talk about sex in a college setting.

1:16:30We're going to talk to people about sex. We're going to talk to you about shame. We're going to talk to you about pleasure. We're going to talk to you. But these things are all part of sex itself. And if we don't, we're just going to be living in a world where everyone is coming in with their own little manual that was written by porn or their friends or their parents or a random school teacher that taught them nothing. And then we wonder why there's so many breakdowns in that world. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I do think colleges do try to some extent. Like I remember on my college campus, we did get a talk about how to handle sex, how to handle drinking.

1:17:05And the thing is like, I still didn't really know that Title IX existed until my senior year. And so it's not something that I think can be solved by like one talk that the college campus gives to incoming freshmen, especially when you're in an incoming freshman. Yeah, I mean more than a talk. I mean, to me, it's a syllabus. It's part of life. But carry on, sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it just, I don't know, I'm thinking back to all these young women I interviewed. So in the course of doing these interviews, I never asked people if they had been sexually assaulted. Like, that was not a standard question that I had, because I didn't necessarily want to put people into a space that they weren't willing to talk about it.

1:17:42But I was staggered by the number of young women and some young men who told me that they had been sexually assaulted, that it just came up organically in the course of the conversation. And to me, I feel like we are just simply not at a place where we are dealing with this or thinking about this at the scale that it's occurring. I did ask young people, you know, can you tell me about a cultural or social or political event that shaped your approach to sex? And almost all of them said Me Too. Most of them had memories of it. Some of them didn't, which was very shocking to me because it made me feel very old.

1:18:20But it turns out that very little has really changed post-MeToo in terms of actual legal reforms, actual changes on college campuses. The main change we saw post-MeToo was reforms in NDA laws, which are not very helpful for college students who are not working, and better HR trainings, or more HR trainings, I should say, on sexual law. And yet again, they're also not at work. Right. And so it just, we really, I think, have a resistance to having any of these kinds of conversations about the system or about how the system can be improved or what the law should do or what even like we should talk about as terms of culture.

1:18:56Like, is the law always the best mechanism for dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault? Yeah, that's a great question, actually. Like not everybody actually wants to go through the legal system. I can tell you, I was sexually assaulted in college. I never thought about going to the cops because it was me and him alone in a room. And like, I knew that was my word against his and it wasn't going to end well. And incarceration is also not necessarily the same thing as justice. And so I felt like what became very clear to me is in talking to these young people is like, there is just a resounding failure across the board to take sexual assault and sexual abuse and its aftermath seriously.

1:19:31And like maybe Title IX, we at least need to be talking about Title IX as more than of political football in this environment. It can't just be something that Democrats and Republicans use to wield against each other to prove that one, oh, you're attacking men, you're attacking women. It has to be something that we actually have real conversations about as a law or as like the beginning of a foundation for cultural change. It's a noble thought, but I can't, no, I can't. No, fair enough, yeah. I can't help but think to myself, is that a possibility like ever in our evolution as humans because you can go back and read i mean like like ancient texts and it's shocking to find like the greeks and the whatever like on a on a legal level talking about morality and what is and isn't permissible and what a pervert is and you know it feels like it's always going to be politicized it's always going to be political because to what you said in the beginning of the conversation there's a power attached to it and it's also a very a very um it's the perfect tool to define where morality lies in a society you know you think of like or yeah not about like how we view sex and and even beyond the laws around it itself but the how we view it you know you know you think of colonial writing that they the savages the way they have sex and the savage sex and it's such a powerful tool to define where the norm exists and where the other starts and i actually wonder because you do write quite a lot about this i actually wonder how much you think we can learn from societies or peoples who have been pushed to the fringes of society because i often find that they do a lot of work in defining sex in a way that like mainstream doesn't you know what i mean like i remember in and around the me too movement i learned more from the bdsm communities that came up online everyone was like but how would we know and then bdsm people like oh so this is what we do this is because we have been choking yeah we have been whipping we have been and it's it was i was ignorant to it i couldn't believe that people who were in those communities had checklists and had very you know like tender and interesting guidelines on how to go about this and i so i wonder what like what you learned about what we could learn by engaging with groups or communities who have generally been pushed out to the fringes?

1:21:55I mean, a lot. I think that a lot of these groups, I mean, BDSM is a great example. And I'm paraphrasing somebody else who said this, a philosopher at Yale who's talked about BDSM needs hierarchy into an erotic resource through consent. And so you can use consent to take all of these different hierarchies in society and and like work with them and make them a part of your sexual play and your pleasure. And the fact of the matter is like, I don't think that we should necessarily be aiming at abolishing hierarchies or that because I just don't think it's necessarily possible. But I do think that there are a lot of communities that have thought a lot about like, how do we take the world as it is and figure out a way to wring pleasure out of this?

1:22:43I was really inspired in doing these interviews by the number of young people I spoke with who were interested in activism around sex. I talked with a lot of young people who were fighting against sexual assault, who were fighting for abortion rights, against abortion rights, who were fighting for LGBTQ plus rights. And there was one young woman who I talk about in the book, Zoe, who actually, she had been sexually assaulted and she had also had her nudes leaked multiple times. And it was devastating for her. It was profoundly difficult for her to pick herself up again after that. But she got involved in pleasure advocacy on campus and became really invested in sex ed.

1:23:22And she got to a point where, you know, she is interested in sending nudes to her now boyfriend. And so the answer isn't necessarily, you know, never send nudes again. You've been hurt by it. It's to create a framework for yourself where you can say, okay, I recognize the risks. Like maybe my nudes will get leaked again. Maybe this boyfriend who I love so much will betray me. But if I go into these situations knowing the risks, I will feel more empowered than I did in a previous situation that I was in. And I found that those kinds of stories to be very inspiring because, you know, people do pick themselves up and go on after these circumstances.

1:23:56And they do think about new frameworks for themselves that make them feel comfortable as opposed to just rejecting the thing that had hurt them in the past. I don't want to probe into your past, so please feel free to not share. But I'd love to know what you would have thought justice would have looked like in your story? Because you say you weren't comfortable in going to the police, but you wanted something to happen. But you said an interesting phrase after that. You said you don't necessarily think that incarceration would have been the right solution. So when you look back on that, and again, like I say, we can move on, but what do you think justice would have looked like for you?

1:24:29I think an apology would have actually done a lot. I wouldn't have really needed, frankly that much. And I should say that I wasn't raped it. I describe it in the book, but it basically became like, he wanted a blow job. I didn't want to give him one. We had like a physical tussle over it. And I ultimately was able to effectively push him out of my apartment. And so maybe if someone had had like a different kind of assault, it was just a different person. They would have wanted more, but I would have felt that if he had acknowledged what had happened as something that had hurt me and said, I'm sorry that I did that, that would have been enough for me.

1:25:04And this is something that gets talked about in the concept of restorative justice, which I bring up a little bit in the book, which is that you can have, if you have conversations and create a safe space for conversations, I think people don't necessarily realize that there's actually a wide variety of outcomes that some people would accept that are not just punitive, but we don't create the space for those kinds of outcomes. We don't create the possibility for envisioning a world where it's like, it's not necessarily the law that's going to solve all of this stuff for us. Yeah. In a world where the law has now become responsible for handling all of communities' conversations, like every aspect of a conversation that should be held in a community, everything becomes legal.

1:25:47Do you know what I mean? And that's like one of the things that you see. It's really big in America, but it's expanding to the rest of the world as well where people have lost or misunderstand the value of as you said i'm sorry yeah or the value of do you acknowledge the thing that happened to me the value of and because of the business side of it yeah you know which you talk about all the time there isn't really value in the other one there's no there's no money in the sorry side but there's money in the legal side you know what i mean there's money in the punitive in the punitive side you put the person away in jail there's money to be made somewhere but there's no money in connecting human beings on a restorative on a restorative path so that's like it's a it's a beautiful way to think of it thank you for sharing that yeah i i think uh in the in the most softest side of it which is the one extreme which is an emotionally unavailable boyfriend for a woman is again the battleground is a female body and on the extreme side of it, which is assault and rape, it's still the female body.

1:26:55And on the other end of it, there can only be one perpetrator because they come from one gender. So even the innocent parties feel like one step could get me in a wrong place. So I think young people are not having sex because they don't like the human connection. I think they're scared. Women are scared for what might happen to them. Men are scared of what they might do because they don't know much. So I think you're right when you're saying it should be all-encompassing when it comes to sex education because I think it exposed how much is missing from those people that we look at and go, those were the nuclear family who were conservative in how they behaved.

1:27:32Yeah, how they saw the world. Yes, because at some point we have to admit that that generation also raised well-balanced and well-rounded individuals. So now this freestyling that's going on has left kids to their devices quite sooner. Kids take themselves to school earlier. They do their own homework. they bring themselves back so there's no conversation there's no way and also there's no for males especially I can speak for myself I'll see that with younger ones there's no examples of what a good man is of what a good protector is you know I've had these conversations in South Africa where during GB gender based violence month I would say I hate how that's why we're against it by the way yeah that one month just no but we're against it just so you know because you never know late night on the 31st you never but you can't just say the month because you never know if you fall against against i assumed against but you i'm just letting you know i don't want you walking away being like in south africa they celebrate gender-based violence for a month we don't celebrate it again highlighted against yes so and i said these activists and these ngos i feel like there's someone behind them obviously because the assault side of it like punitive side of it is a big business yeah and when they say they want to take the drive to younger men at school i'm like no you can't automatically assume that a young man is going to commit sexual assault against or gender-based violence against a woman.

1:28:52You're not giving them the benefit of a doubt. You're already accusing them before they've gotten their first kiss or their first crush. Fear, to your point, is something you talk about even on the, you talk about in the book in and around like Roe v. Wade. And it is something that has to be, again, we don't know any number conclusively. But I do appreciate how you talk about what fear does to us and how we how we should like count in all these things you're in school the fear is you have sex you're going to die yeah or you're going to have a 16 pound baby these are your options and then you move on to another one and then it's like your fear if you're a virgin you're a loser you're going to die you know it's fear and then there's another type of fear if i come forward i'll be shamed or i i will be you know i won't be listened to or this or it'll be a kangaroo call it becomes a fear and then you come into another situation if i say no it's a fear if i if i don't say yes even as like guys you know how many young men i've talked to who go i don't think that as a man i have the option to not want sex yeah i want to be clear also you know one in 25 young one in 25 men in the u.s has been penetrated against their will and one in nine has been made to penetrate somebody else against their will wow so but i'm saying that's that's them like even against their will i wonder if that includes men who will say and this is what I mean by the complicated nature of it they may go not it not against my will but I didn't know that I can say no and I think it was because men are expected to always want sex forget it from like even kids sides you know how many couples find therapy because a wife is going he doesn't want to have sex and the man's like I don't always want to have sex she's like I mean that clearly there's something wrong with me and then now you're living in a world where one half of the couple's going there's something wrong with me because men always want sex why doesn't he always want sex and the man's like men don't always want sex that's not like a real thing but now i can't say this to you now or the man is thinking men always want sex why don't i always want yeah what's wrong with me that's exactly so when we talk about that fear you're right i think of you add another layer to it yeah people go oh gen z why are they so afraid of sex and then you go yeah have you seen sex lately yeah and also like look at roe v wade if you've told somebody that the actions of your sex could lead to somebody being pregnant when you they didn't want to be pregnant, you didn't want to be pregnant.

1:31:11And now that, that's your life. That's your baby. You're moving forward. Otherwise you're a criminal. I can see some people going, ah, then I don't even want to have sex then. And I'm assuming you saw this or you felt this. How much do you think that affected how Gen Z now sees sex in America? I think one of the theses of the book is that the changes in the landscape around sex have added so much anxiety and fear around sex that it is for young people easier to opt out. And I'm not saying that this is a conscious decision that they're making. Yeah. But when it feels so fraught to be vulnerable with another person, to have sex with another person, you know, why do it when porn is out there?

1:31:51Actually, one of the sort of moments I decided to write the book was there was a young woman who messaged me right after Roe was overturned. I think it was the following day. And she told me that she was pregnant. She didn't want to be. But she lived in Arizona. and Arizona had a law in the books that was centuries old that banned virtually all abortions. And abortion providers were afraid to provide abortions because they thought that the law might be back in effect. And so she could not end her pregnancy in the state where she was living. She ultimately ended up ordering abortion pills online and ending her own pregnancy in a motel room with her ex-boyfriend.

1:32:27And that is safe to do. Medical experts widely agree you can order pills online and you can end your pregnancy in your first trimester. You can end the pregnancy in the first trimester of pregnancy safely. But what she told me and what really stuck with me was that she felt like she was being humiliated for having sex. That even though the abortion was something she wanted, she felt empowered in having it. She felt like that was a good decision for her. She felt like Republicans in particular were trying to punish her for having been a person that had sex. And I think that that is a feeling that a lot of young people are grappling with right now, which is that, oh, politics is making me a bad person for having sex, or the state of politics, I would say right now, is making me a bad person for having sex.

1:33:16And with Roe v. Wade gone and more than a dozen states having banned almost all abortions at this point, we're creating a generation that has to grapple with that fear every day and has to think about, okay, if I did get pregnant or if I do get somebody else pregnant, what are we going to do? Do I have the money to end this pregnancy? Could we go out of state? What does it mean if I just continue to have this baby? One in five men have been involved with somebody who went on to have an abortion. And so this is not just something that affects women. Knowingly or unknowingly? Both. And so this is not just an issue that just affects women.

1:33:54It is something that many of the young men I spoke to were also thinking about and were also wracked with anxiety over. Yeah. I've seen how it also, what's happening in the world affects how men date. Because sometimes disagreements with someone that you're dating are very tricky when you think what could happen when they leave here. You know, I've seen people who are going, But you know Might not agree about me Not wanting to Have sex with her Or Her wanting to do it with me Not Nah she's here I must play along So that At least I'm safe It's not a thing of When she can go out there And change her mind About what happened here Because also We've Had stories of people Who become malicious And weaponize The fact that Many women get raped And many women get sexually assaulted And a slight disagreement In the relationship Can turn to You know We had a few of those stories It is actually sad how that happens we've seen a few of those stories recently in the news and it is it is interesting to to use the airplane analogy it's amazing how people can use a few stories to create so much fear and do you know what I mean it's like a it's it's it's it's messy and it's complicated and it's like I wonder if you came to any um I wonder if you came to any light at the end of a tunnel and not that this is a morbid thing by the way you know yeah but like listen like to what eugene is saying now i agree with completely do you know what i'm saying think about like some of the conversations we've had on this podcast in different episodes you you know you you have a health care industry that does something that's pretty good for people with their kidneys dialysis and then there's a few companies who come in and go this is how we can use this to make money and it hurts people.

1:35:44In the same instance here, you know, some people can use the laws in their favor to hurt somebody. They can hurt, women can use a law to hurt men. Men have been using the law in their favor to hurt women for, you know, decades and decades. But where's like the, is there a hope in all of this or is it just us always grappling with the messiness that is never contained? I mean, I think grappling with the messiness can be something that is a hopeful process. Because I think the messiness of sex is what makes it interesting. It is what makes it kind of fun. And I think that we shouldn't try to make sex something that is black or white or that is very strictly one thing or the other.

1:36:21Like, I think we should try to look at sex in the landscape of its messiness and enjoy that. And I think one of the things that did give me hope was the extent to which young people were trying to do that. And I think because these young people have grown up, seeing Roe get overturned, seeing Me Too break out, dealing with a profoundly turbulent political environment. I think they understood a lot earlier than, say, I did that sex has political dimensions and that no matter what we do, sex will always have those political dimensions and that political valence. And they said to themselves in many instances, OK, given that that is true, what can I do in my community to change those dimensions and make sex be something that is something that I don't have to be afraid of or that my friends don't have to be afraid of.

1:37:08And I think that as much as the political elements of sex can make people anxious, it can also give them the feeling like, okay, I can create change around sex. It's not just something that happens in a bedroom between me and my partner or me and my partners. It's something that I can go out and try to redefine the terms of in school rooms or go out and try to redefine this terms of in school board meetings and in courtrooms and in state legislatures and in Congress. Like it is possible to change as opposed to thinking that sex is just this dirty thing that we can never, ever seek to make better.

1:37:46100%. I think what's tricky about sex is it's both a want and a need at the same time. Oh, damn. So it makes people, you know, very confused about where to draw the line. So, yeah. Yeah, I never thought of it like that. Did I You see what I did there You won So these things Happen often In this podcast I'll take it to the Top top top Then we get stuck Then there's just A moment of silence Of reverence There's a moment of silence The pointedness Of your Just that was Incredible insight I mean More than that What happens is I think to myself We're so lucky That he would dare To be with us Oh man This community service Is just I go wow Again your philanthropy we just don't deserve I just that's what I think to myself I'm like man I've got to go and talk to somebody who doesn't deserve it the way I don't deserve to listen to you um Carter we uh we really had fun this was this was great um I I think I appreciate more than anything how nuanced your book is yeah you know in in a world where everything is turning into like one thing or another it's so rare to read an account of just like human complexity you know age gender legal parent child you name it i don't think there's anyone who wouldn't be seen in this book and so thank you for coming and chatting to us about it and you know i i hope everyone reads it and i can't i can't wait to see what you write about in the next one thank you so much that's very kind of you to say.

1:39:22Thank you very much. This was dope. Too much fun. Thank you for all the sex puns. You are so good. You made this so much fun. Yeah, man, thank you very much, for real. Of course, thank you. Jeez, that was fun. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market is the place to get everything you need for Thanksgiving with great prices on turkey, quality organic produce, grab-and-go sides, and everyday low prices from 365 brand, you can prep for the holiday with big savings. Shop everything you need for Thanksgiving now at Whole Foods Market.

1:39:59What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by DayZero Productions in partnership with SiriusXM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random Other Stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now?

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