50 Shades of Grey and the web teach teens kinky sex. Let's teach them first | Twanna Hines

Publish date: 2020-12-10
‘Young people are quite savvy when it comes to accessing communication that helps them explore their own sexuality’ Still via Universal Pictures Photograph: Universal Pictures‘Young people are quite savvy when it comes to accessing communication that helps them explore their own sexuality’ Still via Universal Pictures Photograph: Universal Pictures
OpinionFifty Shades of Grey This article is more than 9 years old

50 Shades of Grey and the web teach teens kinky sex. Let's teach them first

This article is more than 9 years old

Open your eyes: young people need access to the facts about BDSM as much as adults do

Exactly when should we tell a 17-year-old girl that she can enjoy consensual erotic asphyxiation – that is, letting someone choke her? Wait. Don’t answer that. It’s a trick question.

Literally, it was a trick question: this week, 26-year-old anti-abortion activist Lila Rose released her latest series of deceptively edited videos from Planned Parenthood clinics in Colorado, Oregon and Indiana in which she posed as a 15-year-old girl seeking information from counselors about kinky sex. Rose explained that she and her boyfriend wanted to try out some of the scenarios described in 50 Shades of Grey; she called the counselors’ responses about consent and safe words an “incitement to risky behavior” and said that they “[glorified] kids acting out rape scenarios”.

Reality check: any horny teen and her eager partner can figure out how to engage in “bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism” (BDSM) at home in their parents’ absence or in the backseat of a car without assessing the risks with a trained counselor. If the imagination fails, a finger-click on the internet – or the purchase of 50 Shades of Grey – succeeds.

But to reduce or eliminate risks the associated with uneducated or new BDSM practitioners and provide guidelines for safer sex, in all its forms, competent educators should be talking about enthusiastic consent, boundaries and pleasure to help young people transition from adolescence to a safe and happy adulthood.

Some, like Rose, argue that educating young people puts them at risk – that teenagers are better off not knowing about how to engage in it safely and consensually – but they are wrong. There is no red-bricked wall or barbed-wired fence separating sex and “kinky” sex – but there are ways to educate young people in age-appropriate ways, answer their questions honestly and provide them the means to explore their burgeoning sexualities in ways that are safe and consensual for them and their partner(s).

Alternative sexuality educator and storyteller Mollena Williams travels to college campuses in the US and Canada, speaking to students about BDSM and consent. “One of the striking commonalities, from Ivy League schools to local community colleges”, she told me, “is that young people are quite savvy when it comes to accessing communication that helps them explore their own sexuality and find like-minded people.”

A study published by the American Journal of Sex Education backs her up: most adult respondents disclosed their interests in BDSM began before they reached age 15.

But if people find academic journals and doctoral degrees unconvincing, common sense should dictate that a closed-eyes, fingers-in-ears approach to sex education is a significant barrier to the thing that we all know is best: safety.

Williams literally co-wrote the book on keeping kink safe, Playing Well with Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities. She told me:

With the troubling upsurge in sexual assaults and the increasing revelations of improprieties and downright criminal behavior, the idea that a sexual subculture places an emphasis on negotiation, obtaining active and enthusiastic consent, and checking in to insure all involved parties are mutually satisfied ... is revolutionary.

Establishing boundaries, developing self-esteem, and understanding healthy relationships should be significant portions of any respectable, evidence-based, comprehensive youth sex education program. “This isn’t just a sex thing,” sex writer AV Flox told me. “It is part of a vital toolkit for life, of which sex is only a small part.”

Sexpert Lena Chen agrees: “If young people want to find out about BDSM, all they have to do is do a Google search. As such, I think education –particularly about consent and the psycho-emotional aspects of BDSM – is crucial if we are to provide a healthy understanding of human sexuality, and not only from a physiological but psychological perspective.”

Author and sexuality educator Cory Silverberg says that information is key to helping young people and adults make appropriate choices for them.

Just like adults, many young people are capable of consenting to BDSM and many are not. Sex education should include information about the various kinds of sexual activities that young people might be engaging in because staying silent makes it harder for young people to get the information they need.

In their book, Partners In Passion: A Guide to Great Sex, Emotional Intimacy and Long-term Love, coupled co-authors Mark A Michaels and Patricia Johnson talk about the importance of honest, educated exploration in forming one’s authentic sexual identity as an adult. “If you can embrace your erotic authenticity at an early age, you’re likely to be more integrated as you grow older”, they wrote me. “There is no right or wrong way to experience pleasure, provided it’s consensual.”

Sex education and counselling have to start with the premise that healthy bodies are our goal – and pleasure is not inherently evil. Individual teens and youth adults who comprise the next generation are responsible for their own health – with the primary guidance of their parents and guardians.

But we can’t symbolically tuck some forms of consensual sexual activity away from them on a high shelf any more than we can block them from loving however and whoever they wish – with or without our approval.

And we can’t complain about the influence of porn and the internet on young people’s sexual choices if we restrict them from getting honest, unembarrassed information any other way.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJuforqmutOiqp%2BqlZp8c3yQbWajrZxkgHJ7lGlkrKCRmbK0ec6fZKCqla56uLHBZqKipptiwKbEjJubrKU%3D