Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episodeTeen hookup culture is dangerous. And while most parents are aware of how scary and confusing it is for girls, society at large is neglecting half of the participants: boys.Despite what culture norms say generally about boys, young men have feelings too. Unfortunately, media and male role models are rarely depicted as anything but macho, “strong,” assertive, and sexually dominant. While parents may encourage their girls to play sports and stand up for themselves, it is still taboo to encourage a teen boy to dance, craft, or be vulnerable. (Unless of course the teen boy is openly gay, in which case doing “feminine” things is more accepted.)But sending messages, overt or subliminal, about how teen boys are “supposed” to be, hurts not only the boys, but the girls they will interact with.This week New York Times bestselling author, Peggy Orenstein, joins me for a candid discussion about teens, hookup culture, and her latest book, Boys & Sex. Boys & Sex follows on the heels of Orenstein’s second foray into teen hookup culture from the female side, Girls & Sex (the first being the ground-breaking and bestselling Schoolgirls 20 years earlier in 1995).As it turns out, the boys are as equally confounded as their female peers when it comes to sex, intimacy, and relationships. Almost all the information we give teens about sex is risk-based; that is, we tell our teens all the “bad” things that might happen, such as diseases, sexual assault, rape, pregnancy, and skip out on everything else.When we forget to (or purposely leave out) talking to our teens about what healthy, normal, intimate relationships look like, we are letting everyone else decide for them.  The media, magazines, YA fiction, Netflix, and Hollywood (not to mention the pornography industry) decide “roles” for our teen girls and boys to play. Is it any wonder that young people, afraid of intimacy, lubricate their sexual interactions with alcohol?Peggy and I discuss how we got here and what parents and educators can do to make things better. We cover:
What’s missing in our talks with teen’s about sex
How teen boys locker room talk feeds into hookup culture
Why it’s so hard for boys to stand up against other boys’ bad behavior
The big disconnect between girls acting “sexy” before truly understanding what sexy means
Peggy is a wealth of knowledge and I was blown away by her body of work on gender, women, and the landscape of teenage sex. Her insights are sometimes funny, sometimes disheartening…but they are always powerful!