Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Several months ago I had the pleasure of meeting Lux Alptraum (that’s her over there on the left). Lux is one of the figures behind Boinkology, and an all around interesting person. Last month, Lux did an interview with me on Boinkology, and I enjoyed the talking with her so much I asked her if I could turn the tables and pick her brain too. Here’s the ensuing interview:

Karen: Hi Lux! Thank you so much for doing this interview! Can you introduce yourself a bit? How would you introduce yourself in a personals ad?

Lux: 25 year old girl in New York with a penchant for smart conversation. Particularly conversation about sex, the internet, or both.

K: Can you describe your most influential sexual relationship from the past few years? Why was it so influential for you?

L: Sadly, my most influential relationship was a negative one. My first serious relationship, which ended a little over four years ago, was with someone who was pretty emotionally abusive and spent a lot of time and energy on making me feel bad about myself. Though I don’t wish that experience on anyone, I do feel that — in the long run — it taught me a lot about how I want to be treated, and gave me the knowledge and ability to avoid people who bring that kind of negativity into my life.

K: I’m sorry to hear about the negativity in that first serious relationship, Lux. Now that you’ve moved past it, where are you, relationship-wise?

L: I’m in a really great place, actually. I have a partner who loves and respects me, appreciates me for who I am, and is really good at talking through problems when they arise. Really, what more could you ask for?

K: Let’s talk about work a bit too. I know you’re behind Boinkology - can you talk a bit about what you do there?

L: I launched Boinkology almost a year ago with my friend Richard Blakeley. We wanted to create a space where people could talk about sex beyond the usual conversations about porn, sex toys, personal sexual experiences, and sexual health. While all those areas are extremely important, we feel that there’s much more to sex and sexuality than what goes on between our legs — Boinkology focuses on all of that.

K: What are a few of those topics beyond the ones you mentioned that you like to focus on at Boinkology?

L: I’m really interested in seeing how sex and sexuality are viewed and represented in daily life — and especially in pop culture. Sex is everywhere — in our advertising, in our entertainment, even in our presidential race — and I think it’s fascinating to observe and comment on it.

K: Now we know the whats, let’s talk about the why. What drew you to create Boinkology?

L: I’ve been interested in sex for — well, pretty much all my life. It’s pretty much the only thing that’s consistently held my interest for the past ten years; and that was definitely a huge part of why I created a blog about sex. Beyond that, however, is the fact that I’m consistently disturbed by how hard we, as a culture, find talking about sex, one of the most fundamental, basic parts of life. I strongly believe that the more we talk about sex, the more comfortable we become with the topic, and the better off we all are. Through my work, I try to help people see that sex doesn’t have to be a taboo topic.

K: So with this understanding of where you are now in your sexual and work lives, I’d like to understand a bit about how you got here. Can you talk a bit about your sexual development through adolescence?

L: Though in some ways I developed really early — I discovered masturbation at a very young age, and started puberty at 10 — I went through much of adolescence feeling like a late bloomer. I didn’t date at all until after high school, and started college feeling like I was way behind my peers (though in retrospect, I see that that was hardly the case). On the plus side, this gave me a lot of time to figure out who I was and what I wanted — which, in the end, was a very beneficial thing for me.

K: And how did your parents and family interact with you around issues of sex and sexuality? What, in essence, was your sex education at home like? How did it influence you?

L: My parents have always been pretty open about sex and sexuality. When I was five years old, they gave me a copy of “Where Did I Come From?” and were always open to discussing any questions that I had (it also helped that my mom was an HIV educator). I think their openness helped me understand that sexuality is a beautiful, wonderful thing, and taught me to be comfortable with the topic.

K: I’m was sorry to hear that your first relationship was so negative. I think that is something of a common theme for young women. How did your parents react to that relationship?

L: What’s really interesting, for me, is that my parents were privately opposed to my relationship, but never tried to step in and get me to end it. They were very aware that I needed to make my own mistakes — and were very cautious about risking alineating me by coming out against my relationship.

K: Helping parents learn how to interact with their child who is in a relationship they don’t approve of is a difficult thing. I’m sure there are parents who would love some advice on how to support their daughters through such a difficult time. Do you have any suggestions?

L: I think the best thing that you can do is remind your daughter that you love and support her, and will be there for her through anything. It’s very hard to see someone you love get hurt, but coming down hard and trying to prevent your daughter from being in a relationship is a surefire way to drive her away. Being a loving, supportive figure, and reminding your daughter what a healthy relationship is supposed to be like, is really the best tactic — when your daughter realizes that she needs to get out of her relationship, you will be the person she comes to.

K: Based on your experiences, how would you recommend parents teach their children about sex and sexuality?

L: I think being open and honest (and starting the conversation early) is the only way to go. While there are certainly topics that aren’t appropriate for younger children, it’s never too early to teach children to love their bodies and love the wonderful feelings their bodies can give them. And the earlier you start talking to kids about sex, the easier it becomes to talk about it — by the time they’re teenagers, you’ll be much more prepared to take on the hard questions.

K: Thank you so much for your time, Lux! I look forward to watching Boinkology develop! Is there any last thing you’d like to say?

L: I think talking to young people about sex is a hugely important thing. What we learn about sex in our youth and adolescence can shape our identities for the rest of our lives — I’m very glad to know you’re out here helping parents have these conversations.

I am delighted to have been interviewed by Boinkology recently. Go take a read and read my (rather lengthy) answers to these questions:

• What got you interested in adolescent sexuality?
• In your writing, you stress the importance of parents talking to their kids about sex. Does it matter how parents address the topic, or is just bringing it up for discussion enough?
• When should parents start talking to their kids about sex? What kinds of messages should young children be given about sex and sexuality?
• If you could design a sex ed curriculum for America’s public schools, what would it look like?
• What’s the most common mistake parents make when talking (or not talking) to their kids about sex?
• In your opinion, has the Internet had an effect on how — and what — kids learn about sex?
• What’s the most important sex advice you can give someone?

Thanks so much to Lux for taking the time to talk with me! I look forward to catching up with her sometime soon, and picking her brain for an interview here.

There are lots of good things on Boinkology (in addition to me, of course), including a post from yesterday titled: Yes, You Tell Your Partners About Your STIs. This is just good, basic sexual protocol for teenagers to know, and it’s often easier for them to read it on-line rather than have their parent tell them - so go ahead and forward them that link. The comments are also interesting because they give a bit of a view into realistic expectations about STI prevention among young adults.

In other news, an incredibly brave and strong 8-year-old girl from Yemen filed a suit against her father for marrying her off to a 30 year old man. She showed up in court alone because she couldn’t find anyone who would agree to take her. Wow, what fabulous gumption!

And, finally, the Washington Post has done a relatively decent job of introducing the difficulties of talking with your kids and teenagers about sex in a world full of sexual mixed messages, ambiguity, and scientific amazement.

I recently met the delightful 24-year-old Sarah Dopp. Sarah’s understanding of gender and sexuality has developed over the years into a delicate balancing act between male and female, gay and straight. Sarah generously agreed to an interview to provide some insight into the path of defining sexuality when the standard road maps don’t make sense.

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KR: Sarah, can you introduce yourself a little? What would you say in an internet dating ad?

SD: [chuckles] The title of my most recent dating ad was “Androgynous Queer Girl seeks Androgynous Queer Boy.” Inside, it said, “I’m looking for someone to go on adventures with. Someone who knows how to laugh at the line-painters and make forts out of the boxes with sticks and sheets.” I guess you could say I’m playful.

I’m 5′10″ and I have a shaved head. I’m built like a man from the knees down and the shoulder blades up, but the middle of my body is made up of a woman’s curves. If I’m dressing down, my clothes are gender-neutral. If I’m dressing up, I mix and match feminine and masculine clothes and accessories until I feel like I’ve struck a perfect balance. I happen to be single right now, and my dates cover the spectrum of gender pretty thoroughly — from manly men to feminine women to transgendered people and androgynous folk. There are so many flavors of beauty in the world.

KR: How do you define your gender and your sexuality? Can you explain how that plays out in “real life” terms?

SD: I identify as queer. The word resonates with me and seems to describe both my gender and my sexuality, which are two separate things. I understand that a lot of people are still uncomfortable with that word, though, so I try to be flexible. You can call me bisexual or androgynous, and I’ll believe you understand who I am. If you live in a world where there are only two categories for gender or sexuality, you can put me in whichever one feels most comfortable to you. I usually won’t argue.

How does this play out in real life? It’s interesting. I get called “sir” a lot in public, but everyone who knows me understands that I’m female. Most people assume I’m a lesbian except for the men I date, and they’re often convinced that I’m straight. I’ve learned to stop taking it all personally and to go just go with the flow.

KR: So you’re single now, but have been in relationships with both men and women. Tell me a little bit about how your relationships have gone. Would you say that once you’re in a relationship that it follows a relatively standard path - something that would be familiar to most people?

SD: I’ve had several long-term relationships that were standard enough to make everyone in my family breathe a sigh of relief. There’s a sense that I’ll become more “normal” — or at least fit categories better — if I’m in a stable relationship, because it’s easier for people to understand. But I’ve also been in relationships where we both intentionally agreed to be non-monogamous or nontraditional in some way, and where that turned out to be a healthy arrangement for both of us. Those relationships are much harder to explain to the outside world.

KR: When did you first start feeling different from the standard girl?

SD: My mother has told me she suspected I was gay from the time I was six, but I don’t think I felt different until middle school, when all of a sudden “being pretty” mattered to everyone I knew. That’s when I noticed I was awkward. Really really awkward. That’s all I could understand at the time.

KR: How do feel your teen years were affected by your orientation? Did you acknowledge your difference or not?

SD: My orientation confused the heck out of me. I had crushes on boys, so that meant I wasn’t a lesbian. But sometimes I had crushes on girls, too, and I sort of looked like a lesbian, so that must have meant I wasn’t straight. I wasn’t taught that there were more than two categories for these things, and I really thought I was doomed to feel “invalid” for my entire life. To top it all off, the first boy I had a crush on turned out to be gay, and my first girlfriend later transitioned to male. The most I could really do was acknowledge that I was “weird” and embrace that.

KR: Do you think your peers were aware of the difference? If so, how did they react?

SD: Yep. They knew me as the “weird” kid, too. In middle school, I was the butt of way too many jokes, and I’m still surprised sometimes that I made it out alive. I became so severely depressed that I actually attempted suicide my first year of high school. After that, my life shifted, though. My weirdness morphed into some strange kind of social charisma, and people started to tell me that they envied me. I was different, I knew it, and I embraced it. Turns out, that’s what everyone else in high school wants to do, too.

KR: And what about your peers, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances these days? How do they generally react upon meeting you, and as they get to know you and your gender and sexual identity more intimately?

SD: Well, the whole “shaved head” thing seems to put my queerness out on the table before we have a chance to discuss it. People either make assumptions about me (which are sometimes wrong) or they start asking questions right away. I’m a friendly person who genuinely likes people, so I think people feel at ease around me even if they’ve never talked to a queer person before. When they begin to learn more about me, I find that they can either accept my “middle grounds” or they can’t. If they can’t, it’s because of their belief system, and that has nothing to do with me. They’re usually still polite about it.

KR: Is there anything more you’d like to say about how you define yourself in these terms or how that has impacted your peer or romantic relationships?

SD: In some ways, my queerness makes my world very big — I can shift my appearance to meet people’s expectations, and nearly every friend has the potential to make me fall in love with them. But in other ways, my world is very small. I know there are other people out there like me, and too many of them are hiding in shame.

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Tomorrow Sarah and I continue our interview, with Sarah speaking more directly to her family.

I recently spoke with Nancy Bruno. Bruno’s new book, Beautiful Women, is now available. Beautiful Women is a book of photos of 35 beautiful women, ages 3 through 90. In addition to the pictures, there is a story snap-shot of each woman and how she got to where she is.

Here is my conversation with Bruno:

Karen: Nancy, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Nancy: I was so excited when I realized I was going to get the chance to actually talk with you! I prefer talking to computer communication.

K: First, can you tell me a little bit about your experience with the book?

N: When I started looking for the 35 women, they were all strangers. A few of them I had an acquaintance with, but I didn’t really know-them know-them. So people would say, “Well, what are you looking for.” And I would say, “Someone who just shines when you think about them.” And people would say, “Oh, I know exactly who you need to meet.”

It was an amazing experience. I found that I was able to spend enough time with each of them that by the time the camera came out, they were able to ignore the camera. They were just going on with their life, and that is really what I wanted to capture – these people just being themselves.

The way these women have lived their experiences, have dealt with their experiences, that is what makes them beautiful. And the thing with the teens is that we get so caught up, that we ignore the beauty right next to us. And we forget that it’s right there, on each side of us.

And I love Ms. Elizabeth [a teenager in Beautiful Women]. She is someone who always thought of herself one way [as smart], but not the other [as beautiful]. And she is just beginning to be able to see herself as beautiful, to incorporate that into her identity.

K: Last week I wrote about the Dove Self Esteem Campaign, and you commented briefly on my post. Can you elaborate on that comment? What do you really think about the Dove campaign?

N: I have a couple of thoughts on the Dove campaign. The first thought is that I like what they did when they first started. I remember the very first time I saw the Dove campaign: there were five women lined up, who looked like regular women. And I was so proud of Dove – not for running it, but for standing up for all of the criticism they got for running it. People said, “Why would I want to look at fat people when I could look at beautiful skinny people?” Dove didn’t back down, and I give them so much credit for that, that they started something positive.

What I do agree with is something that you wrote, is that you look at the girls on the Dove campaign’s website, and they are all fresh-faced, and they have that “look” to them. And I’ve taken a lot of time to think about this. Dove is in the business of selling hair products and soap and all that, and I think they are doing the best they can within the boundaries of what they need to accomplish as a company. I thing what the Dove campaign is doing is very, very positive. Within the parameters that they have to work in.

Now, will they stand by it? I have never seen any money from the Dove campaign actually help in the community. I see interactive tools, but no real action. So I think they are doing good things, within their restrictions as a company. And I do think it’s good that they have regular people in their ads, and that they have encouraged other companies to do the same.

K: Your book is named Beautiful Women. But most teenage girls these days are more focused on sexy than on beautiful. What do you see as the difference between sexy and beautiful?

N: What do you mean by teenager here? Are you saying like 13 through 18? Or up into the 20’s?

K: I mean actual teenagers, the 13 through 19 year-old crowd.

N: I’ll be really honest with you, from 13 to probably 17, I wouldn’t want them to be considered sexy. A 13 year-old is still a child in so many ways. And I don’t know if they are able to understand what that concept is – sexy. A 13 year old is still a kid in so many ways. And only through reading magazines and watching music videos is a 13 year-old able to understand what sexy is. It really is after 17 that wanting to be sexy really becomes real.

And that’s why I’m glad I have boys, to be very honest with you. In so many ways, I am so traditional. A 13-year-old would still be my little girl, and I wouldn’t want them to be sexy. Because “sexy” would still be something on their mind, and as their mom, I would want to really slow that down until they were able to take responsibility for what “sexy” really means. But still not denying their sexuality, and I think sexy and sexuality are two different things.

But to answer your question, the people I have seen who are sexy, are beautiful first. It’s not clothes, it’s not how their hair is done, it’s not overt, and it’s not a played-up or a role-model sexuality. It’s just who they are as human beings.

K: Thanks so much for talking with me today, Nancy. Now that Beautiful Women is out, what’s next on your plate?

N: My next book is about 35 men. It was a totally different experience making it, and really wonderful in its own way. It will be out in time for Father’s Day this year.

K: I look forward to seeing it, Nancy!

Last Thursday morning I had the pleasure of speaking with Robert Jensen about pornography and raising kids in a sexually saturated society. I have mentioned Jensen’s newest book on pornography in a previous post. Several articles he’s written are on his website.

What is a brief description of how you see porn?

When you look at pornography, you see the perfect storm of a predatory corporate capitalism, white supremacy, and male supremacy. Pornography is not only racist and sexist, but it’s also the commodification of one of the most central part of ourselves. You can literally buy your sexuality. If you actually look honestly at that, it’s incredibly depressing.

How is it that kids or teenagers typically get introduced to porn?

Well, there just isn’t much in the way of reliable research on kids’ use of pornography, or much research on adults’ use for that matter. I always use my own experience as a baseline for understanding men of my generation, the post-Playboy generation, I’m 49. But there have been dramatic cultural changes driven by the technology since my generation. The first of those changes was the VCR, which made it much easier for people to see the hardcore stuff in their house. And then of course the internet, which ramped pornography use up by about a factor of a thousand. The fundamental thing that hasn’t changed over the years is that boys are much higher users of porn than girls.

So how should parents talk with their kids about porn?

It seems that for teenagers, boys use porn far more than girls. Not surprisingly, because the vast majority of porn is directed for a man’s imagination. And the conception of masculinity in pornography is in line with the rest of the training that adolescent boys get in becoming a man.

The one footnote to that is this “girl power” trend. And there has been some writing on this, where girls are taking on more stereotypically male sexuality, it’s called the “hook-up culture.” And so girls are taking on the perception of sexual pleasure and dominance. This is the “Girls Gone Wild” culture.

However, I still think that porn is still overwhelmingly a male genre. It is made by men, for men, and addressing the male sexual imagination. It reinforces the worst aspects of gender training, particularly around male sexuality.

What can parents, particularly of boys, do?

Well, at the obvious level, parents have to deal with their own fear of pornography first. We have to get over the feeling that if we critique porn we’re prudes.

The second thing is that I think a lot of parents in the post-Playboy world saw porn as kind of a harmless indulgence when they were growing up. So parents sometimes avoid the topic by seeing it as harmless.

Mothers in particular have to deal with their own fears in order to have good conversations with their boys about it. Most adult women have this very visceral reaction to porn, for very reasonable reasons, because it generally turns them into an object. Porn and pop culture is a very scary thing, with threats of violence, and particularly sexual violence. And add on to that, there is often a very nervous relationship with husbands regarding their own use.

Fathers, on the other hand, have to come to terms with their own pornography use. It is my experience that if you get together 10 nice, liberal men who deny using porn, at least 5 of them are lying. My experience says that men don’t step up to their responsibility in talking to their boys about porn, and particularly if they’re users themselves, they can’t.

The thing to remember is that no intervention is too early. The earlier that kids have a framework to understand the negative cultural training the better. There are two main perspectives from which sexualizing teenagers and the sexual culture is critiqued: the right-wing religious framework or the feminist framework. Those are the only people who are being vocal out there saying that our sexualized culture is wrong. The right-wing approach is rooted in a fear of sexuality and male dominance. I think we need a feminist analysis, and it is never too early to introduce that to children.

So first parents have to come to terms with these things. And if you really come to terms with pornography, it is overwhelming. It has to be. Because it’s one thing to know that Hollywood movies objectify and sexualize women. It’s another thing to know that there is this huge corporate complex out there that directly supports men having sexual power and sexual dominance over women.

We also need to remember that boys often are struggling with this too. There’s a kind of surface bravado, like when they trade images and web links on e-mail. They have this kind of jocular, surface, male bravado kind of conversation that allows them to circulate the material risk-free because it’s just joking. But what that shows is that young men are very conflicted about porn. They know there is something wrong with this, that their sexuality is reduced to 7 minutes or less of masturbating while online. It produces an incredible amount of insecurity in men.

So whatever kind of bravado parents get from boys may just be masking the terror on the inside. Boys don’t understand sexuality, they’re scared of it, they’re aware that they usually are a step behind the girls in development. That’s scary to them. And then you put that fear into a situation where they’re watching a hyper-sexualized image of masculinity, that they know they will never be able to meet. That says to me that boys are a mess, and so the more conversation with parents the better.

Of course, all of this assumes a healthy communication between the parents, which is why I always say that the first step is for parents to get together and deal with their own fears.

That addresses boys, but what about girls? What can parents do to help their girls survive in this pornography-saturated, hyper-sexualized society?

If you’re a young woman, and you see the outline of the sexual culture that you live in (male dominant, hyper-sexualized, etc.), and you think it’s not going to change, many girls have the not unreasonable response that if you can’t beat it, join it. They take as an assumption that men are going to set the terms of sexual dominance as a form of pleasure acquisition (i.e., not intimacy). If you’re a woman, or a girl, you may not believe that is what sexual encounters should be. But nevertheless it seems to be the way things are, and if you don’t have any counter-cultural way to see the world, you may assume that if you can’t change it, you can take control of it. That’s where this hook-up, Girls Gone Wild culture comes from. So girls trying to use their sexuality as power may just be making the best of a bad situation. But the problem is that it still doesn’t meet teenagers’ deeply felt need for intimacy and love.

So what do you do as a parent in this culture? It’s mostly trying to provide an alternative when there aren’t many alternatives out there. Some teenagers take this into their own hands, and decide as a group that they are taking sex off the table and interact as a group, as close friends who don’t date, making a safe space for themselves. The problem is that as a kid, you can’t do that alone.

The reason we have to pay attention to pornography, and the reason we have to talk with our kids about it, is because we have to talk to them about their sexuality and we have to talk with them about what kind of people they are becoming. This is really just part of that broader question of what kind of people they want to be.

So I don’t have any great insights about helping kids worth through the issues inherent in pornography, just that it’s something as parents we have to talk to our kids about. And part of that is coming to terms, and talking with them, about our own struggles with the issue.

I’ve introduced Dan before - he’s my favorite sex advice columnist. Here’s another short intro: Dan talks about sex and tells things like they are in a way few advice columnist (or people, for that matter) are willing or able to do. He’s the go-to-guy for everything from freaky to vanilla sex or relationship questions. He’s also exceptionally politically minded. He’s also a dad.

So I approached Dan to see if he would answer a few questions by e-mail about sex education. Here’s what he had to say:

KR: What should a twelve-year-old know about sex?
Dan: Well, hopefully before 12 a kid is familiar with basic reproductive biology — where babies come from, how babies are made, and how babies can be prevented. Kids also need to be aware of the non-reproductive aspect of sex; the pleasure of sex, the intimacy. Babies are great — had one myself, thanks — but adults don’t have sex primarily to make babies. Adults only rarely have sex to make babies. Adults have sex for fun, and to create, cement, or shore up partner bonds. You can’t leave that info out.

Yesterday I spoke with Howard Schiffer, author of How to be the Best Lover: A guide for teenage boys. I wrote about Howard’s book several days ago. Here is our conversation:

K: Can you explain why you wrote How to be the Best Lover: A guide for teenage boys?
H: Because I felt like I had to. My son was 13, and I thought, wait a second, he’s getting this horrible view of women, all that’s out there is his friends and the media. And since the book was written, what’s been interesting to me is that people are so scared in this country. People don’t realize that’s it’s really all about connections. And what I see from the kids is that they get it instantly get it: where I was coming from and that it was written for them. There are kids who hadn’t spoken to me for years and they read the book, and then they come up and tell me that it’s a great book.

K: And what about your experiences as a teenage boy? Did you feel that you had enough information?
H: My teenage experience was horrible. It was a lot of the motivation for writing the book – wanting to get it right and redo my past.

I was with older boys who saw girls as objects. Young boys were finding porn and passing that around. They were looking at these little cartoon books that were really pornographic, they were just about screwing and they were about women as objects. And the whole focus when I was 13 or 14 was all about when you were going to get laid. And if someone had a girlfriend, the only thing was that they might be able to get some.

And so my whole experience was horrible. It was just about the sex, there wasn’t any connection there. And the experiences felt bad. They weren’t satisfying. They weren’t anything I felt good about. There was a lot of shame involved.

I knew that sometime my dad was going to come talk to me about sex. And all of a sudden one day he was in the dinning room with me and my mom disappeared into the kitchen. And he asked, “So let’s talk about sex.” And I had my answer ready, I said, “Okay, what do you want to know?” And he was so scared, so taken aback, he said “Oh,” and that was all.

It was the same with Austin [my son, when he was 13]; he asked why we needed to talk about sex. We were going to talk over a period time while kind of going through this book, but he said he had already read the book. So if I hadn’t really wanted this conversation to happen, it wouldn’t have. I told him that this [sexual awakening] is something that everybody goes through and nobody wants to talk about it

Even in California, even in 2007, even in men’s groups where guys are really trying to open up, guys just don’t want to talk about if their girls like to have oral sex

K: How was Austin’s experience with sexual awakening?
H: Austin has been with two serious girlfriends. His second serious girlfriend, he was about 17, started sleeping over. She lived about an hour away, and would sometimes spend the night in the guest bedroom. Then there was one weekend when it was late, they were watching a movie, and everyone else went to sleep. For some reason, I don’t remember why, all the other beds were taken, including the guest bed. And so Austin and his girlfriend ended up sleeping together that night. The next morning I said to one of my younger girls, “Where’s Austin and his girlfriend?” and she said, “Oh, they’re still asleep.” And it just came out of this very natural situation. The bonus was that we got to have them in the house. They woke up and we got to have breakfast together. It was just a chance we got to have it be normal.

So there’s been a tremendous transition for me in this whole process, getting to give this knowledge to my children who are getting what I didn’t have.

K: How have your experiences with and around this book played into your perception and beliefs about sex education?
H: If all you’re getting is from your friends and the Internet, it’s not okay. Because you’re like, “What is all this?” and you have to go try it out to figure out what it really is. But if someone is really giving you real information, you’re able to say, “Well, maybe I don’t actually want to be giving someone a blow job right now.” But if you give them this glorified fantasy they want to go try it out. Most of the information hovers right between “don’t do it” and “just do it.” The reality is that there is a tremendous biological imperative to have sex. So you can’t just say don’t do it, you have to talk about it. And the liaise-faire parents are completely ripping off their kids by saying, “Well, they’re just going to go do it” because there’s no guidance there. I ask parents “Do you want your kids going into a sex education class taught by a 14 year old?”

The thing is, with teenagers now, there’s more illusion out there because the Internet is so prevalent. They’re under this idea, I have a 15-year-old daughter, and she thinks she knows everything. They think that because they’ve seen some porn or something on the Internet and they don’t get that it’s really about this connection thing. And they’ll spend years before they figure it out, the way I did.

K: Tell me about the book you suggest reading after this one, it’s called First Love?
H: It’s a collection of people’s first times. It really helps young people awaken to the fact that it’s just not always nice. A lot of the people I interviewed realized the first time they were naked in front of someone else how naked they really felt. And past being naked, they don’t realize how vulnerable it is, for girls definitely, and I think probably for guys. And they way guys deal with it is they just stuff it all, and they can’t talk about how weird it is because no one is talking about it. So this book shows them some of those things.

K: Have you considered writing a similar book for teenage girls?
H: I have thought about it, I have been asked to do it. I honestly have just run out of money and time. The other two books were really done because I felt like they had to be done, and I haven’t made any money on them. What I’ve found is that girls really like Best Lover for boys, and so I think there would be a market for a guide for girls.

K: Thank you for talking with us, Howard.
H: Thank you for doing what you’re doing. I am always so encouraged to see people getting real information out there.