Moments and contradictions we currently have. In your research it seems the young men that you talked to have at least the beginnings of an understanding of the changing Politics Around gender and a lot of them go so far as to offer their pronouns in th and talk at feminist concepts such as consent and changing conditions, but they all seem haunted by past ideas of masculinity and sexuality. You wrote that they were critical also aspired to them. It feels it is a ghost of masculinity and sexuality that follows them around and i was hoping you could talk with beth. It is almost as if they have layered all of these new expectations on top of the old ones without really challenging or looking at or eliminating them so they are in a state of conflict. On the one hand, they see women as deserving of their place in the classroom and is deserving of their place on the Playing Field and deserving of being leaders yet that is all in the public arena and in the private lives, they are still being encouraged to see the conquest and hooking up with as many partners as possible not treating them very well and that is what is presented to them. When you hear boys in the locker room talking, they say i hammered, banged, not like they engaged in an act of intimacy. And a lot that i spoke with for the poor struggling with that contradiction. I was taken by that idea as well. You talked to a lot of young men who were engaged in either hookup culture or these traditional sort of facets of oldschool masculinity. And at times, they would even tell you they were afraid of things such as intimacy, and it sounded like in the conversationconversations you kg young men who fell for this hookup culture and misogynistic culture that hurts them as well. Guest i think it really did. I feel like when i wrote girls and sex, girls have been systematically disconnected from their body and their desire, whereas with boys they were systematically disconnected from their hearts so they were particularly constantly wrestling with ideas that vulnerability and what it meant to be vulnerable with avoiding cry in. That was a big taboo. One of the guys i spoke with said i never cried in his parents got divorced and he wanted to cry so he couldnt and he streamed holocaust movies back to back and that worked. When we cut the legs off from vulnerability and their ability to feel anything but anger and happiness, we are offering [inaudible] we know renee brown always says vulnerability is the secret sauce that keeps relationships together. Guest i found in my Research Young men are detached and their emotions being able to communicate how they feel about themselves and the world around them, and i think that really cuts them off from the idea of intimacy, and i was really captivated by your votes you have these conversations with young men in the time and time again, it seemed as if the concepts you are bringing of whether it is intimacy or Rewarding Relationships or expression of their wants and needs and desires, it seemed like you approaching the subject might have been the first time that they considered it and he seemed even shocked by it. Guest that is one of the Amazing Things about this work is how eager they were to talk. I really expected and worried that when i went to talk to them basically consist but they would be girls are the ones that have a reputation for chatting. But getting permission and space, and i think that possibly because i am a woman that that gives more permission to actually wrestle with severe wives and talk about feelings and to drop. They would say i learned to put a ball off the train myself not to appeal. These ideas once have we learned who confided in nobody. As the author of a previous book, girls and sex, how did you feel approaching the subject. This is obviously new territory. There are limitations in terms of gender communication. How did you feel as a researcher even coming into this project . Guest i kind of resisted doing it at all at the beginning because i had written about girls for 25 years, so that is where im comfortable and the trend that i know. Its a new era in terms of me too and Technology Media we need to know what is going on inside of her head. And thats a lot of attention on their behavior because they want to reduce sexual violence, but it also created an opportunity to engage boys in these conversations about intimacy and gender dynamics in a way that maybe is unprecedented. Host in the buck it seems like it is always a shadow looming in the background of the conversations you have. The young man who talked to seemed not only cognizant of it all so fearful of it. Some of them are aware its something they should be considering or something that should be changing their behavior. What are you finding with young men and how these dynamics are affecting them and how they see their place . Guest everything that you just said is where i found guys that were wrestling with it and in denial. A lot to one of the issues i think is that we think anyone that assault assaults is a monsd anyone that is a monster assault. As an overarching idea that aligns us to the kind of everyday coercion and lowlevel and sometimes not so lowlevel misconduct that ordinary guys engaging. Everybody thinks they are a good guy. But sometimes a good guy can do a bad thing and that is what we really have to reckon with. In a lot of ways toomey, these allegations, the one that was sort of the most interesting even though i dont think that it was responsibly reported as the party around around the party. It wasnt an illegality that it wabut itwas a matter of ethics t was a sort of very everyday power dynamic where you have an over eager guy that is pushing a young woman to do something she doesnt want to do and seeing her limits as a challenge that he is supposed to overcome and that is classic and its a great one to have a discussion about with boys. Host you talk near the end of the book where youve had these discussions an and gainedn idea ogain anidea of what was gn this culture. You talk a little bit about this idea of the good guy, and you brought up the case of the brock turner. They say hes a good guy and be underlining inherent meaning of these letters is that a good guy cannot come it these actions. Did you walk away from research and interviews feeling differently about the culture or how we respond to these situations or how we move forward . I walked away feeling that we have to have a lot more conversations with boys about whatwhat not to do and what too not only in a negative but its true that guys tend to over perceived yes. Especially if they been drinking. Said ivisit any kind of party hp culture they see anything as they come on and they are less likely to hear no when they are drunk and less likely to be able to perceive a partners hesitation, and weve had a lot of conversations about the impact of drinking on gross behavior or girls porn ability. But i think we have to shift a lot of good conversation to help our boys understand how alcohol affects the power dynamic and behavior. Its marvelous in ou more orr culture as a taboo subject. You talk about how it is a wee talk about how to prevent problems and talk about how its how in this realm it should wo work. Guest its how we tend to focus on risk and danger and we need to make a shift of responsibility. I have to say i understand most parents would rather put themselves poke themselves in the eye with a fork and particularly about the reciprocity talking to our kids about sex and our boys about sex that not only talking about sex, its also talking about media messages and gender dynamics and consent and all these other issues. This time, this book is the first time actually that i was more prescriptive at the end of the book. In my past books ive always taken the reader into a scene or place of a person that exemplifies what i think would be a way forward. But after nine years of writing about adolescence and sexuality, i felt like at this point i had something to say. Guest you wrote a substantial clai claim and aboue parents advocated the responsibility talking to their sons about sex an and at one pot you say despite the eye rolling they say they do want information about sex from their parents at the heart of the book its how the conversation is happening because of the kind of awkwardness or fear. You actually mentioned at some point an eyeopening contrast between American Culture and dutch culture in which children begin sexual education as early as four and as teenagers they have family sanctioned sleepovers with significant others as early as 14 or 15 and results have shown that dutch teenagers have better relationships and actually have sex at later ages and report more satisfaction. I wonder if you can talk about that because i found a rather interesting concept. Guest and fewer partners, too. There was research that prepared dutch and American College students. It was a sort o of apples to apples demographic comparison and it was looking at their earlier experience and found they basically had everything that we say we want for our ki kids. To prepare for the experienced responsibly, lower rates of regret they were less likely to be drunk, more likely to be sober. They enjoyed it more, they said they could communicate with their partners they knew very well. Everything they had americans dead and. And when they dug deeper with those students, bu what they fod is that dutch students said their parents, teachers and doctors talked to them from a very early age about sex, emotional intimacy, and about sexual pleasure. It made me think a lot as a parent myself that americans tend to frame discussions about sex when we have them with other kids solely in terms of risk and danger. It made me think about shifting the conversation talking about responsibility and joy. That, i dont know, like i said i am a parent myself and it shifted my mentality perhaps more than anything else ive ever read about sex education. Host i think that is really telling because it sounds like the way americans approach the conversations about sex particularly between parents and children with apprehension and fear and then when i read these conversations about how they are approaching either of their first encounters or while they are navigating the sort of politics of the whole thing out in the world, its always happening outside of the parents per view and at parties and unsupervised gatherings where theres alcohol involved in expectations and when you read your descriptions of it, it actually sounds pretty sinister and frightening to the people involved but there are a lot of miscommunications, there are a lot of situations where people can make bad decisions and it seems like that is really having an effect. I think it is true there is a lot of ambivalence and a fair amount of trauma. When yo you think it will their eyes and plug their ears, but this kind of what we are doing as parents all the time. We know what its going on thae dont want to know about it. I found this research about the dutch because they used the opportunity of doing things like negotiating the terms of the sleepover with a significant other as another way to reinforce their values and another way to talk about protection and another way to talk about it because it is a way that it creates a kind of soft control over kids that we dont have an American Culture we just dont talk about it and we pretend its not happening. The results are not great. Host even having an open conversation about the conversation on television feels a little revolutionary times. It does, and they would say to me in the interviews all the time ive never said this to anybody before, ive never talked like this with anybody before, ive never admitted this to anybody before. Its like therapy. I got a lot of that. They would say this is the conversation i learned a lot, i stayed in touch and i thought im a stranger. Imagine if they could have these kind of conversations with the adults are actually in their lives were with their peers or even in their own heads. Host and you are having these conversations in the book is really struck me that it feels like you really found a level of intimacy with these young men to speak about things that again they had never talked about and one of the things that keeps coming up in these conversations but i think is very notable is the idea of fear, insecurity, fear of being judged, fear of not fitting in, fear of being excommunicated from their groups. And i feel that you were able to move beyond that and find at the heart of this thing is fear. Fear of vulnerability and shame and exclusion. All of that was there and i think that it was just a very rare opportunity for the boys that i talked to to have those conversations with somebody in a kind of protective space where, you know, nobody they actually knew was going to hear them talking about it, so it was a little bit of time out of time for them and allowed them to have these conversations. I think that the conversations you were having a lot of the time resulted around the idea of peer pressure, and it feels like young men especially in the vacuum of their parents or people, their elders talking to them about sexuality, a lot of the peers are filling the vacuum of the conversation. And it sounds like a lot of the conversations are inherently dangerous at times. The idea of the locker room culture if you want to put it that way plays into the race culture and misogyny in the world and at times i wondered if you could talk about the role of male insecurity and peer pressure and how it perpetuates these ideas. Its very small in custody policed and reinforced in a lot of ways, so one way is by being silent in the face of some that they know is wrong or violent or in the face of misogyny or homophobia. Its really hard. I have a lot of compassion for how difficult it was especially for teenage boys with no support. So in one case, a guy was telling me that on his team, he and a friend tried to stand up to a slightly older boy saying something lets just Say Something despicable about girls and the other boys laughed at them and mocked them and so the boy that i was talking to stop talking and his friend continued to challenge it when it came up and he said to me i watched while he lost, he was marginalized. The other boys stopped liking him as much as he lost all that social capital. Here i was seekin sitting with s of social capital. He stopped and looked really pained and this was like a big guy. He looked at me with agony in his eyes and said i dont want to have to choose between my dignity and being part of a group of guys. How do we make it so i dont have to choose. Host i have that exact quote written down. It struck me i think as getting is really to the heart of a lot of the situation. I kept finding in my own research been put on a persona to mask their insecurities, and one of the problems with rave culture and misogyny is a lot of these men who are insecure or playing characters and they never understand that those around them are insecure as well and it turns into a competition to see who can be the least coding or misogynistic and in this case it was a young man that you named cole for your buck. It felt like he was really lost and this was a man that understood the morality and the ethics of the heart of the debate in the situation but felt powerless. For you to talk to a young man like that and get to this i thought was really remarkable. Thank you. And i really like what you say about that being underneath that competitive culture. And another place i got interested was hilarious and how guys use the word an that word s another place where it acts as that kind oakind of deflector st mask where if you hear something that is reprehensible uncomfortable or inappropriate or is wrong or its just, you know, violates morals or you know witunitwith my father mr. D you dont want to say anything because if you do, you are going to be targeted for ostracized, you can always default to saying thats hilarious and that is always a safe space. Hillary is becomes another way guys get cut off from their authentic selves into the real emotions and its also another way that has a more compassionate response when girls and women are the subject of whatever reprehensible disgusting thing they are saying is hilarious. At the frontend of the spectrum, i became really interested in reading and listening to stories of these highprofile stories of Sexual Assaults by High School Student so often their defense when they are caught is we thought we were just being funny. We thought it was hilarious. And i think that word just encapsulates this way that, you know, you learn to disconnect and put up a shield and find a safe space and if it is hilarious, then there is no problem and certainly you dont need to feel any empathy. Host im really happy that you use the term safe space because i think what a lot of people do behave in misogynistic behavior or are part of this objectifying culture or rape culture, you know, what sort of criticize the idea of a safe space or caring about how other people feel, but one thing that kept coming back around in your interviews when anybody would say these really awful things that were obviously covering up their own insecurities is that these were people who didnt feel as if they were safe and kept coming back around to the idea that they had to pretend in public. Whats the disconnect happening with young men that would make fun of these things and try these things but seemingly they are in search of her own safe place. Guest i think its really hard. When you are a young person coming you want to be accepted. You want to be part of the group, you dont want to be ostracized or excluded. I think boys need a lot of support and encouragement and discussion to start breaking the culture down, and we need to be able to connect voice to one boe another who want to do that. I guess, i just got an email today actually from a boy that had read the excerpt of the book in the atlantic and he was 16. A junior in high school and he wanted to thank me because he said it really made him feel like validated and like she could move forward in a better way from having heard the voices of these other boys and some that is one of the things i hoe in this book is that it can be a tool not only for parents but for boys themselves and that they can hear the voices of others and challenge them in this culture that i want challenge and open up more of a meaningful dialogue between themselves and their peers or even just within themselves. Host i think theres an aspect to the book i know for my own reading there was a portion where you actually talk to young men who were actively engaged in hookup culture and were seeking sexual conquest. They were having problems with intimacy, they felt detached from themselves and interactions with other people. There was a really profound loneliness and sadness to it i thought. And you had mentioned that even some of them in a couple of cases were actually what you were considered victims of sexual assaul assault or taken advantage of by people. And they were unable to express that maybe in a moment and in some cases the men around them even congratulated them for what they were doing, the self harm and the situations they were harmed by others and i thought that was really telling. Guest because theres one who had a fairly dramatic first sexual experience that said i would never tell that my friends because as a guy its got to be great, its always great. It is great. Some come it was interesting to me how often the issue of unwanted sex came up because you think about it are something that ias something thatis just t in fact boys experience a lot of unwanted sex and sometimes brush it off or make it into a joke or it was a masculinity issue so they didnt want to go into it but for a few, especially if it had been their first time, especially if they wanted the first time to be significant and caring and with somebody that meant something to them, if they had been taken advantage of when they were incapacitated or in some other state, they reacted very much the way girls react in that situation. They spiral downwards, they got depressed, have trouble with their schoolwork, became angry, lashed out. But there was nothing to become a place for them to really discuss that. A lot of guys said when i try to talk to the girl about it she said dont give me back. Olold guys wont sex. But if you cant say no, then you dont really have agency, and that in itself is an issue and beyond that, if you cant say no, im not so sure that you are really going to be able to hear it. Host that is a pretty important repercussion at the heart of all of this and the confusion about it and unwillingness to discuss it. I thought this was a telling section of the book. You wrote job culture and from schools, fraternities, wall street, silicon valley, hollywood, the military and justifjustifies misogyny and hostility. I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that and what you think the repercussions are of these problems going out into the world in going beyond just boys and young men and sex. Guest it becomes a smokescreen. Particularly talking about sports in that section and talking about how sports can be wonderful. Team spirit, carteret, learning to problem solve and wins and losses and learning about life. Its fun, but that culture that supposedly built a character can in some circumstances become a smokescreen for the worst kind of culture where there is bullying and by bragging about the ability to control the female body. So, all of that happens us welll and maybe not surprisingly athletes by the time they get to college are more likely to be brought up on charges of assault so that locker room talk, you know, for some certainly goes beyond that. One thing that was interesting to me is that a lot of the boys i spoke with who had blogged this but they were playing had dropped off not because they didnt love i want it or not bee they were not good at it but because they really didnt like that culture and offended them and they didnt know how to speak out against it and sometimes it was being accentuated by coaches as well so at the far end of the spectrum one guy i talked to was recruited at the college he was out and said he just couldnt handle the way that both the coaches and players were talking so he not only dropped out of the sport, but he transferred to another school because it was a small school and he felt that there wasnt room socially for him to maneuver after that so that was pretty extreme. I also really believe, and theres organizations that bear this out that the old male mail cultures can be a crucial change and can be leveraged under the right circumstances to challenge these ideas and get guy is talking about them. Host you talk about membership whether it is with coaches with authors and where that can go right and where that can go wrong. In particular i was struck by the idea young man desperately want their fathers to talk to them, and i think that would be a great resource for them to learn something about how to behave as man in the world but it seems like from the book and certainly from experience that often older men give the wrong lessons and actually make sure that these young men are steeped in things like toxic masculinity and objectification and conquest culture and it seems like theres a really pervasive influence with that. Guest yes. What they would say about appearances but they tend to be told was respect women. It was kind of meaningless. One guy said to me that is kind of like telling somebody dont run over a little old lady but im handing you the car keys. You dont think that they will but you still dont know how to drive. And they would really talk a lot about wishing that their fathers or whoever was in their life to talk to them in a really honest way about sex and intimacy and even this kind of surprised me about their own regrets. It made me think a lot about how i know that its their fathers didnt talk to them. Theres not a culture that we have of dads talking to some of the kind okind of authentic andd way. But if you can take that it would make such a difference. You have to drop the pressure to feel that even in terms of what you say or who you are. You can make a mistake and go back and say i wasnt quite right when i said that, or you can say you are 16. We never had a single conversation. Thats something i want to correct now and i know its going to be hard but i want to do it and even if you have and havhaventhave the most successr relationship, that doesnt mean you dont have the wisdom to offer to your son. Host i have a question reading your book which is it seems like with a lot of these young men, that you are one of f the first people to talk to them about the subjects. Many of them seem to take twodoor council and want to talk about these things openly. How did you find yourself feeling in the middle of this. Its how we talk about them and i felt like i was doing something for them just by having the conversations. It seems like you said they felt such relief and seemed to get them thinking and just giving them some space and room to think through their ideas and think through things that had affected them that in itself felt like i was giving them something. Host weve talked about some of the young man who felt relief from that and have kept in touch with you. Were there any young man who felt fear after talking to you or felt uncomfortable or were worried that opening u up what someone would be a damaging thing where they felt guilt . Guest i dont know how they felt afterwards. I dont know. There were, not every guy just walked into the room and, you know, said everything that was in his heart. There were those that were antispoke a lot, so there was a real range. But my what i would hear mostly is that it was a positive experience for them. Host anybody that picks up the book, it deals with the prevalence of online pornography and the readiness and you had at one point and i had to read this over a few times, you said young peoples erotic imaginations are shaped long before theyve been engaged in so much as a goodnight kiss, which again i keep going back to the beginning and move my way through, and really think about the consequences of thought. When you have these discussions it seems like with men and young women as well that the generations coming up with the internet and again readily available pornography have a different understanding of sexuality and their role in it and how it moves forward and it also feels strangely divorced from any real connection. I was wondering if you were shocked by that. Guest its become the de facto sex educator for a generation of younger people because we dont talk to them as parents, we dont talk to them in school so, you know, curiosity is natural, and for that matter it is important but whats different for this generation is not with the rise of internet and cell phones and the dropping of the pay walls, they can get anything they want and a whole lot of things that nobody wants at their fingerti fingertips. The closest thing that tends to be images that show its something that men do to women and female pleasure is a performance for mens pleasure and that the connection and that they wouldnt feel good to most people and absent any context or personal understanding, i know they would say that isnt real but we absorb media and it affects our thoughts and beliefs and feelings so maybe they know in a theoretical way that it isnt real but what is it that they think is real and they are definitely taking those ideas into the bedroom. Host in addition to readily available pornography, you also get into these online social media dating ask, hookup applications that really change the way people approach sexual relations. I was wondering if you can talk about how that affects the dynamic of it and how it affects the people involved. It seems at times like this has been a boom for certain people and for others it definitely has been an obstacle. Host we can talk about a imminent, but the college kids use that kind of in a way to almost like a video game, theres a lot of back and forth but not a whole lot. One thing that was interesting to me was how much it brought out sexual racism and you will see there has been a huge problem with people and profiles saying no lesions, no blacks. One guy that i talked to who was Asian Americans had she had been matched with a girl and they talked back and forth and seemed nice and then she said well, you know, we can be friends but no offense, i dont date asian guys and he was like how is that no offense. Host i think that is an interesting topic. In the conversations you talk about in this book, it seems like the young men you are talking to are more aware than ever of this idea of diversity and inclusivity and sexual politics and the need to be politically correct particularly out in the world, and at one moment you mentioned there is obviously more acceptance of things in the community is that the samatthe same time the convs feel like they are layered with homophobic slurs and there is either misogynistic ideas or racist ideas that might be underneath the surface of this thing. How did you feel navigating the text and subtext of the conversations . Guest that is what it was all about. That was the heart of it was the contradiction between the new messages that they are getting into the oland the old messagest havent gone away. I had a real concern with the boys in particular that on the one hand its a new world. We have a president ial candidate that is. Theres all this stuff where its completely different. On the other hand, there is a way that it was all social that nobody was talking about actually the sex park and what was happening is that a number of underage boys, boys were 15, 16yearsold were telling me about how they were lying about their age and going on grinder hooking up wit with a german, bt not telling anybody am obviously not telling their parents or their friends. That was concerning and i said to one guy if you were a girl and told me that story i would feel i had to report it to somebody. Why would i not feel that way in this case. And he sort of said you know, yeah i dont know. Its really not great. Crazy. So we have to think about how they need to be better educated about the kind of things that people of the same gender might be doing together. They need to talk their sons, their gay sons about speed and sex and about their values around the sex and intimacy and how they can provide them with social situations where they can have ageappropriate experience. Host there is a really harrowing account from a belief there was a grinder and counter that you wrote about in which a young boy that you talked to said something along the lines of im not going to say that it Sexual Assault im not going to not say that it wasnt. Did you get a sense these young men that you talked to were taking into consideration their own safety and whether or not it was eminent bodily harm or sexually transmitted diseases . It seems like they are very aware of the political and social capital at risk, but what about the actual body hung . Hung . Guest co. Are you talking about gay boys in particular . I did not, i mean i really worried about a lot of the gay guy is a myth. I worried for their safety, debating applications, and also that some of them were on prep but they were not using condoms and stds were very high and becoming drugresistant and so there is a way that, you know, if it isnt hiv its like its not so bad. We need to talk a lot more to gay boys about the risks and making sure that they are engaging safely and mutually and joyfully and allowing for human connection. Host i was stunned you mentioned in a lot of your conversations that there are moments where they felt as if they were coming out or their conversations with their families. The one that you spotlighted felt a lot less froth with being excommunicated from their family. They seemed accepted and as if they were comfortable with the people around them safer from coachable ignorance and things like that. But i wondered what do you think the new challenges are as people become more and more accepted in society and to sort of find their own way, what do you see is the future challenges or how to use the society sort of doing that are . Guest this is the third rail of the education classes is to have education thats inclusive of the lgbtq perspective, not only for those kids, but for all kids because otherwise those behaviors and identities and sexualities are marginalized and stigmatized and unless it is more normalized in terms of people understanding. So that is a big one. I was also going to say there was one thing about gay boys i found fascinating and important of which was that they were much better able and equipped to navigate Sexual Consent and to kind of set up the terms of an encounter and that is because the kind of have to be because what was going to happen wasnt assumed or obvious. So, they had dan savage whose an advice columnist and writes a column that says they will use the four magic words which are what are you into when they are starting an encounter and so at the moment of consent, its not just a yes or no, but its about a conversation. Its the kind of openended question we want to encourage adults, but kids in particular to be asking early in their history is that it isnt about one person saying yes or no to a prescribed idea of what the other person has, but its about having an openended conversation about creating an experience thats going to be mutually pleasurable on the mutually gratifying, and mutually consensual for a. Host i like the idea of the four magic words, what are you into, but i also find myself thinking about those words and why American Culture would be so hesitant to use them or have more openended honest conversations after all these interviews and their actions, what do you take away from that and what do you think it is that keeps americans from having these conversations . Guest we just dont. We never have. We just dont. Part of it is politics, part of it is culture and the weird thing is that we live in this culture that is saturated with sexual imagery and yet they are completely silent with young people about what constitutes respectful responsible mutually gratifying experience. When you start looking at that it seems inexplicable and bizarre, and like i said, if we dont talk to our kids, there are messages they are getting from the media about female sexual availability, male sexual entitlement, they are about disconnection as the idea and that is what they are going to absorb that is going to be there educator. After talking to girls and boys and completing these two volumes, what surprised you the most as a person diving into these projects and talking to all of these parties, but as the thinwhat isthe thing you are way from these being most surprised about are finding the most illuminating . Guest i think for me its been the most valuable learning how to have these conversations with the young people in my life and in general. I wasnt born being able to come onto your tv show and start talking. I was just a reluctant and had just as little language as any person growing up in American Culture. But, it just seemed like an imperative to me and if i wanted to help young people have more egalitarian, more connected, respectful, joyful interactions and meaningful relationships, i felt like i had to step up. So, learning how to do that has been the biggest thing for me. And what ive realized is that you can look at it as scary and awkward and excruciating and it can feel that way, but its also an opportunity to connect on a different level with your child into deep in your relationship and build towards the adult relationship you want to have with them and show up for them and help them see how to have a difficult conversation because they are not going to be able to have Difficult Conversations if you dont learn how to do it yourself and model it for them. Host it felt like you had very successfua very successfuls and obviously were able to bridge some of these gaps that these young men were suffering from and certainly plagued them. What advice do you have for maybe new parents watching who would like to have a conversatiotheconversation or pd like to talk about these topics are . How do you begin, where do you go, how do you form one of these relationships at home honesty . Guest that is why i wrote the book. I wanted to be a tool in the last chapter as you said it offers ideas for the type of conversations to have, and i was hoping that would help parents to have the conversation and you can watch this and it can spark a conversation. You dont have to say tell me about you, but you can say to me what they are talking about. How does that play out in your life, what do you see among others that you know, and that is the place to start. You just have to start. Host you said something in the book in the prescriptive chapter where yo you said use os dont just want to talk. They wanted multiple talks. They want an open dialogue between themselves and their parents with their mentors. And just a continuous conversation. This is a very, very large topic buthat i think of them of reachg different parts of culture. What do you think are the benefits of having this big giant conversation . Guest what can be more important than talking about the relationship if it is going to determine your wellbeing and Life Research shows over and over again its our personal relationships that make a difference so by having these conversations, you are helping to setup your son or daughter for having a far more fulfilled life. Why would you dont want to do that . Host from your conversations did you feel like they are hopeful about the direction of masculinity and manhood in america or is it a hard time to be a young man in america what is this an act you go forward . Guest constrained and conflicted but they also felt eager for something more expensive and for a way to be a better man and engage in intimacy both emotional and physical in a way that would be mutually gratifying and fulfilling. So i felt a sense of hope that they wanted to have these conversations and they wanted to engage in and if that is the case that gives me great hope that there will be a better way moving forward. Host walking away from this project, did you feel an overwhelming sense of hope in terms of sexuality in america or did you feel as if there were still several roadblocks and plenty of things we have to take care of . Guest we are in a very polarized country right now and this is another place its about as polarized as it gets, so that is a tough one. I do feel really strongly. I was excited to write this book and excited to get it out into the world because i felt like it really we do have an opportunity at this moment. When i first started writing about girls, parents of boys would say im so relieved because i dont have to think about these things and i would kind of think really, you think you dont have to think about these things, but that was the mentality and it has changed entirely. Now they are so eager to hear about these things and have the discussions because they also want to change and realize that they are tasked with a big challenge of raising a man of integrity in a world that gives the message that is the opposite. Host ive noticed in recent years particularly with a prevalence in the rise of me to a lot of prospective parents talk about the idea that they are actually fearful of having boys and that its a larger job now for some reason. What do you think is behind the anxiety at that point . Guest it is the lack of conversation that we think if we raise boys in the way that we have in the past, yes i would say that is something to be fearful about. You dont have a lot of say in what messages your son is absorbing and with what he is going to go but if we are actually really thinking intentionally about how, i feel like when i first started writing about girls 25 years ago, there was a lot of the same kind of anxiety around girls, but there were so many parents and advocates and activists and writers that began really engaging with the ideas of the contradictory conflicting messages girls were receiving and we are not all the way there. Theres a lot of work still to be done but we are a lot further and girls have a lot greater sense of opportunity and possibility and personal power, and i think now it is time that we bring our sons into the conversation and allow them to have that fuller sense of self so that they can be the man that we know they can be. Host thank you. A very important book that i hope people will pick up and read front to back and start over again and share with their son. Guest thank you so much for having me. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed on the website and tv. Org. Former adviser to President Donald Trump sebastian discussed his books and offered thoughts on politics and National Security. Here is a portion of that interview. The next two weeks before graduation, they took my daughters photograph and on social media and on posters around the campus, they put her name and underneath that this is the face of white supremacy. Why . Because she was my daughter despite the fact that she had hoped ethnic women, minority women when she was doing Research Projects on those who had been abused financially by their partners, their husbands. So, when it came to her graduation, i was very, very trepidations. I didnt want to cause a scene. I knew there would be parents there who were not supporter aro on that sunny day i didnt sit with my family, i sat under an oak tree so there wouldnt be any distractions from what should have been my daughters celebration. And it was all fine until after the ceremony my daughter received her diploma, the cats were thrown into the air and i decided to make my way back to my wife, motherinlaw, daughter and in the throes i was separated from everyone. A little girl walked up to me and this is the meat of the opening, a little girl walked straight up to me may be 19yearsold, 85 pounds dripping wet, she looked me in the eye and said are you sebastian, are you the sebastian that worked for donald trump in the white house. Smiled, i extended my hand and said yes that is me and here i have to edit things. In that case, f you you effing nazi. I had been through the mill in the white house but i never had somebody in the most successful previoupriest powerful nation ie world do that to me in front of hundreds of witnesses. I said im going to let this lie. This will go back to her family, mother, grandfather probably standing there. I looked her in the face and i said that hell do you think you are. My parents and children my parents as children suffered and after that my father under communist dictatorship was arrested and tortured and imprisoned. Who the hell do you think you are to call me a nazi . The girls mother was clearly shocked, her jaw dropped and she said did you really say that to this man. The little girl, american born and bred in the freest nation of the world with a slight grin from the joker in batman looked at her mother and me and said yes, i did. Thats frightening. Its frightening that according to the victims of communism and the foundation in the latest poll, 72 of american millennialist would like to live in a communist or socialist country. This after the fact that we know if you read the black book of communism at least 100 million human beings were exterminated in the name of karl marx and his communist ideology. So, i spent more than 20 years in the National Security domain i specialized in nonstate actors, warfare and Data Strategy on counterterrorism. And now the last three years have been a moment for me and ive realized perhaps the greatest threat we face is diversification of history and d the indoctrination of a whole generation of americans
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