"That idea of emotional vulnerability was so profound for boys," Orenstein says. One interviewee confided that he preferred to partner with girls for school projects because, "It was OK to say you didn't know what you were doing with a girl, and you couldn't do that with a guy." Orenstein says the boys she spoke with felt constrained by traditional notions of masculinity. Maybe that's why the young men she spoke to were so eager to open up: "When they had the chance, when somebody really gave it to them and wasn't going to be judgmental about what they had to say, they went for it." Orenstein notes that society doesn't often give boys "permission or space" to discuss their interior lives. "With boys, it felt like they were being cut off from their hearts." "When I was doing the girl book, the kind of core issue with girls was that they were being cut off from their bodies and not understanding their bodies' response and their needs and their limits and their desires," she says. Her new book, Boys & Sex, is based on extensive interviews with more than 100 college and college-bound boys and young men of diverse backgrounds between the ages of 16 and 22. Shots - Health News 'Girls & Sex' And The Importance Of Talking To Young Women About Pleasure But then came the #MeToo movement, and Orenstein, whose previous books include Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter, decided it was time to engage young men in conversations about gender and intimacy.
Orenstein spent 25 years chronicling the lives of adolescent and teen girls and never really expected to focus on boys.
"If we don't talk to our kids, the media is going to educate them for us, and we are not going to love the result." They spanned a broad range of races, religions, classes and sexual orientations.Įditor's note: This interview contains a homophobic slur.Īuthor Peggy Orenstein knows that talking to your son about sex isn't easy: "I know for a lot of parents, you would rather poke yourself in the eye with a fork than speak directly to your son about sex - and probably he would rather poke himself in the eye with a fork as well," she says.īut we don't have "the luxury" to continue avoiding this conversation, she says. between the ages of 16 and 22 on intimacy, consent and navigating masculinity. Author Peggy Orenstein's new book, Boys & Sex, is based on extensive interviews with more than 100 college and college-bound boys and young men across the U.S.