← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Unlearning Bad Sex Ed: Gen Z, Sex, and Power with Carter Sherman | 352
00:34:37
We sit down with journalist Carter Sherman to decode Gen Z’s “second coming” sexual revolution—how politics, porn, and policy are rewriting rules around sex, consent, identity, and power—and how we reclaim autonomy and pleasure on our own terms.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:41]
Nicole Khalil
I'm Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work podcast where we redefine woman's work as whatever feels true and real and right for you. You are the decider. Not other people's opinions or expectations, not society shoulds and supposed to's. You write the rules for you. What you do with your own body, your desire, your love, your pleasure, that should be yours to decide, yours to explore, yours to own, not someone else's to control. But here we are, living in a time where sexual freedoms are being chipped away under the guise of protection. Where some young people are so anxious about the cultural and political climate that they're afraid to date, afraid to explore, afraid to know themselves. Which in my opinion is one of the greatest losses of all. Because whether we're talking about gender identity, sexual orientation, relationships, or sex itself, you are the decider. You're not the decider for everyone else, but you are for yourself. Which is why I will never understand why so many people are so obsessed with what other people are doing. And consensually, I can't wrap my head around any of it. Being informed is not dangerous. Turning to the Internet in the absence of real education is. Having access to healthcare should not be controversial. And believing in the freedom to choose how, when, with whom, and even if you want to have sex, that's not radical. That's agency, that's responsibility. That's woman's work. So today we're diving into what our guest calls the second coming of the sexual revolution. The one unfolding on campuses, at school boards, in courtrooms and in bedrooms. And we're doing it with somebody who's been reporting on the front lines of reproductive health, justice and sexual politics for years. Carter Sherman is an award winning journalist and author of the Second Coming Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future. A deep eye opening look at how Gen Z is rewriting the rules of sex, love, identity and power, and how those rules are being challenged at every turn. So, Carter, thank you for being here and let's talk about sex.
- [02:55]
Carter Sherman
Thank you for Having me. Let's dig in.
- [02:57]
Nicole Khalil
So I want to start with, let's call it miseducation. The Internet and the politics, all the noise that's out there, how is that impacting, changing how young people are experiencing sex, love, and relationships? What are you seeing out there?
- [03:13]
Carter Sherman
I think that it is basically impossible to understate the impact that the Internet has had on the ways that young people do and view sex. Basically, the Internet is sort of like this mass social experiment that we've all been participating in for the last 20ish years, and we're just now beginning to see the results of that experiment. That was one of the things I really wanted to understand in the book are what are sort of the key elements of the Internet that are providing sex education? Whether or not we like that sex education education or not, porn obviously is a huge provider of sex education. Social media really shapes the way that young people think about their bodies and their body image, and in turn leads them to sexually objectify themselves and others. I also found, though, that sometimes the Internet can be a real place of community and connection, particularly for young LGBTQ folks. You know, Gen Z is increasingly more and more young people are coming out more than ever before, and I think a large part of that is due to the Internet making people feel welcome and making them feel like they're not alone. So I think to say that the Internet is all bad is not necessarily accurate. I think it can feel like it is bad all the time, but there really are some bright spots online.
- [04:26]
Nicole Khalil
Yeah, what I'm hearing is kind of similar to my experience is social media or the Internet can be really great for connection or feeling like you're part of a community, but maybe not so great for being able to find factual, truthful information. Especially in today's day and age, it can feel like a mixed bag. There's all sorts of mixed and false messages out there. So I guess my next question is, where could we and should we be getting our education and our knowledge, and why are people fighting against it so hard?
- [05:00]
Carter Sherman
I would say that one of the key places that would be really helpful to provide young people with information is in schools. I think that we have seen. What's interesting is, you know, as the Internet has developed over the last 20 years, that has taken place against the backdrop of an explosion of federal funding in absence only sex ed. So I'm 31 years old. I started kindergarten in 2000, which was when the Bush administration came into power. And that was around the time that that administration started just flooding Schools with funding for absence only sex ed. By the end of the Bush administration, the federal government had spent more than $1 billion on abstinence only sex ed ed. And the thing about absence only sex ed is that it doesn't necessarily tend to work. If you tell people that, oh, if you have sex, you'll get pregnant and die, that actually doesn't really correspond with reality. And people know that. We have found through studies that in actuality people who undergo absence only sex ed, they tend to start having sex at around the same time as people who don't get that education. They tend to have a similar number of partners of people who tend to use get that education, and they also tend to be less likely to use things like cognitive condoms. So you can create basically a perfect storm where you're not actually creating a system where people are having sex less and you're potentially making the sex more risky. Now, in the absence of basically trusted adults, trusted authorities, that's when young people go to the Internet. And sometimes the information on the Internet can be very helpful, but you don't necessarily just want to rely on whatever it is that Google's telling you. And I think everybody who's been on the Internet knows that that could be a faulty way to approach life a hundred percent.
- [06:37]
Nicole Khalil
So, okay, you very nicely said that abstinence only education is just not working. Right? I mean, I, I don't know if historically it ever has. I read a stat and I don't know if this is totally true, but it's somewhere between 90 to 95% of people have premarital sex. And what's changed most over the last hundred years, when we talk about going back to the good times or whatever, what's changed is more the age in which people are getting married and how often people are getting married, not necessarily that they're having sex at later ages or not at all, or not premaritally. Is that in alignment with your research or your findings?
- [07:21]
Carter Sherman
Yeah. So the age of marriage actually has quite a bit to do with the way that people approach sex and relationships right now. There's a lot of talk about the quote unquote sex recession, which is basically this phenomenon where people are young people in particular are having sex with later and less. And that is true. There is a lot of data that shows that, for example, one in four Gen Z adults has not had partnered sex. The reason for that though is not necessarily that they're avoiding sex, it's that they're not necessarily getting into relationships. So I think we can better understand the sex recession as a relationship recession. Over the last 70 years, we've seen a real change in the way that people approach the question of marriage. So in the 1950s, the age of marriage actually dropped to a record low. It was 12, 20 for women and 22 for men. And this was in the midst of a very particular, very dominant kind of family structure. I think we all know the Ozzie and Harriet sort of vision of the 1950s, where you have the man with the 2.5 kids and his wife at home while he goes out, drives into the city, works, comes back. And that was actually pretty common. It wasn't a total myth that this was going on. What was a myth is that this was the natural endpoint of the American family. In fact, that structure became a reality for white people due to enormous government subsidies in the form of the GI Bill and government helping with mortgages. Again, for white people, this is a totally different story. When you look at people of color. Then we get to the 1960s, the 1970s, we have the sexual revolution. We have the development in the expansion of access to the birth control pill. We have abortion rights become established, and we have women gain more rights. For example, now women can own a credit card. And what we've seen in the years since then is that the age of marriage has started to creep back up, and now it is higher than ever before. People are getting married later on in their 20s, and when that happens, people just take a fundamentally different approach to the way that they think about relationships. If you're not trying to get into a very serious relationship when you're in high school, when you're in college, then you're potentially setting yourself up to go without sex because you're just not going to have that partner to provide you with sex. We have this idea that single people have a lot more sex. In fact, it is people who are partnered because you have that guaranteed source.
- [09:33]
Nicole Khalil
Okay, so then my next question is, and I. I don't know if I'm going to frame this very well, but it feels a little bit like this isn't about sex at all. It's about something else. This idea that, you know, we're not going to educate people, abstinence only. We're not going to provide any sort of free or accessible birth control. Then if people get pregnant, we're not going to provide abortions, and then we're not going to provide any sort of financial support for people who have children and can't afford to. I just don't know how Any of this works in reality. And so my brain goes to, this isn't about sex. This is about power. This is. It feels very anti women. Are your thoughts.
- [10:20]
Carter Sherman
Yeah, I agree that this is not just about sex. The phenomenon that I write about a lot in the book is the development of and mounting power of a movement that I call sexual conservatism, which aims to make it difficult, if not dangerous, to have sex that is not straight, that is not married, and that is not potentially procreative insofar as the movement is trying to limit access to abortion and limit access to hormonal birth control. So in that sense, no, it's not necessarily about sex. It's about creating a very particular kind of sex and in so doing, creating a very particular vision of the American family and of what gender role should look like. You know, there's this quote that gets attributed to Oscar Wilde where it's something like, everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. And I think that that feels very trenchant in this moment.
- [11:09]
Nicole Khalil
Okay. And I appreciate you saying that, because I, as I think many of us do, we default to our own experience. And I am a perceived to be white woman in a heterosexual married relationship. So where are I read a stat. Again, I'm not sure if it's right that something like 1 in 5 Gen Z have come out as LGBTQ. So I guess my question is, where are these young people getting the support, the knowledge, the conversations they need, given that it seems like everything's being tried to wrap in this neat little box of just one way to do it?
- [11:52]
Carter Sherman
I mean, the answer is the Internet. So it is true. It depends on sort of how you ask this question, but it's somewhere between like a third and a fifth of members of Gen Z have come out as some variation on lgbtq. And for this book, I actually interviewed more than a hundred people under 30, most of whom were under 25. And many of them were queer or trans or had some kind of identity that was other than cisgender and straight. And when I asked them how they had sort of figured this out, when they began to suspect it, one thing kept on coming up, which is that all of them Googled am I gay? This was the thing that they were constantly going to the Internet to search for. And indeed, we actually know that searches for things like, am I gay? Am I lesbian, Am I trans? Those have all skyrocketed over the last several years, and they've skyrocketed in particular in red states. So this is not just a phenomenon that's occurring in blue states, in more urban areas, where you would sort of think that there's a more socially progressive, socially liberal atmosphere that allows for this kind of ambiguity and fluidity. It is that people are going online and realizing that this is something that might ring true to them and doing further research. I also talk in the book, in particular, about this movement that I identified among young people called sexual progressivism, which I think is in a clash with sexual conservatism. And so many young people are trending left, and they're really looking to not only expand access to things like LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, and to fight against things like sexual assault. They are also looking to expand and rethink the ways we think about sex and gender. And I think part of that is in part because so many of them are coming out and understanding this about themselves at earlier ages.
- [13:35]
Nicole Khalil
There is a sizable amount of the population that thinks talking about being gay or trans or whatever is what creates people being gay or trans. Some of what you said, I think, flies in the face of that. But I wonder, do you feel like there actually has been an increase of people that are identifying that way, or is it more that it's a little bit more safe or a little bit more socially acceptable to explore that today than it was, say, 20 or 40 or 80 years ago?
- [14:08]
Carter Sherman
I think there's no denying that it is more safe to explore that. I talked to one middle school teacher, actually, because I didn't just speak just to young people. I also spoke to several experts and people who work with young people. And she was talking about how, you know, a few years ago, they them, quote, unquote, hit middle school life. That's how she put it. And many of the young people wanted to be addressed as they them. And now today, she says a lot of them have reverted to the gender that you would think that they were or imagined them to be. And the thing is about that, though, you know, being young has always been a time when people try on identities and cast them off and decide who they're going to be. And I think that what has really happened is being lgt LGBTQ is now a part of that itera. Iterative process in many communities. And I think that people oftentimes think of, you know, being gay or being trans or any sort of LGBTQ plus identity as being very fixed, being something innate. You know, I was born this way. And this is sort of an argument that I think a lot of older generations of LGBTQ plus activists got boxed into, because if the argument on the other side is that being straight is what's natural. Then you have to make this argument in return that know being gay or being trans or what have you, that is natural for us. But I think young people are really starting to think about these identities or these sexual orientations as being something that it's okay to be fluid, it's okay to be ambiguous about it. The many more young people are embracing the term queer, which I think indicates a very much an ambiguous identity as well as an embrace of more radical politics.
- [15:46]
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- [16:40]
Carter Sherman
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- [16:42]
Nicole Khalil
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- [16:45]
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Nicole Khalil
So what I'm hearing is I have a belief that most humans learn best via experience and it sounds like young people are, you know, with Gender fluidity or learning through experience. It's not, I was born this way, and this is the only way I can be. It's sort of a self discovery, self exploration that's happening.
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Carter Sherman
I think so. And, you know, that might not be true for everybody. Some people very much might feel like I have one true identity that's fixed inside me. But many of the folks that I interviewed had sort of gone through a number of different labels before they settled on something that felt right or before they settled on I don't actually want to be labeled. One guy I talked to was, it was sort of a big moment for him when he was on a dating app in college and he decided that he was going to be open to hooking up with anybody. And he selected that on the app. And the thing that he told me and the advice that he gives his friends is like, it doesn't really matter who you're sleeping with. Like, the labels are supposed to be useful for you. If they're not useful, you can discard them. What matters instead is being hot and dating hot people.
- [18:34]
Nicole Khalil
We've talked a little bit about. I'm just gonna say what I believe is not working. There has been a lot of sex positive movements. You know, I feel like there has been more awareness, more openness, at least in my upbringing. So I guess what can we learn from sex positivity movements? What's working, what's not working there? I. I don't imagine that anything has been totally figured out just yet.
- [19:02]
Carter Sherman
Yeah, I don't think sex has been figured out at all. As it turns out, the sex positivity movement was something I was very interested in because as I said, I'm. I'm 31. I think I grew up sort of in the thick of the sex positivity movement, which is in like the 2010s time when I was in college, everybody was talking about sex positivity. And the thing though that I do think sort of went south with sex positivity, at least in that era, was I think that there was an idea that to be sex positive meant having as much sex as possible, and the quality of the sex didn't really matter so much. And whether or not you were actually enjoying the sex or enjoying the people you were having sex with, that was less important to establishing your sex positive bonafides than just to be having sex. There actually are. It was. I was reading one study that was looking at college students and these young women at this time were not having orgasms. It was like if you didn't have intercourse in your hookup, you had an 8% chance of having an orgasm. And orgasms are not the end all, be all of whether or not a sexual experience is a good one. But conversely, in these same studies, a lot of young men were saying, oh, I don't really care if I give her an orgasm. And that to me does not indicate a reciprocal, positive partnership going on. You ideally would want your partners to be having a good time. The thing though, that I think sex positivity can do really well, you know, at its best, it advocates for comprehensive sex ed. It advocates for a real understanding of consent. And so I think it's still possible to achieve those things. I just think that we can get lost in the sort of rah rah sex. You know, the future is female, et cetera, et cetera, in a way that obscures the true political aims or the ideals around sex positivity.
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Nicole Khalil
Yeah, I feel like you basically just described my 20s, a lot of really bad sex.
- [20:52]
Carter Sherman
A lot of people who read this book have told me that the section I wrote about sex positivity really helped them reframe and understand what they were going through. Because it was like, oh, I wasn't really having sex for myself. I was having sex for this idea of who I wanted to be as a feminist. And then that made me not understand what feminism even was because the sex was bad.
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Nicole Khalil
Yeah, I was sort of under this weird empowered umbrella. Except now, with the benefit of hindsight, not at all like, it just.
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Carter Sherman
Yeah, I was like that. I can say that this was also my experience dating in college in my early 20s, that I was not doing it. I wanted to be feminist. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be sex positive. And yet this. I was totally comfortable having very mediocre sex.
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Nicole Khalil
I want to go back to the Internet and the medias. I. I feel at least I got into this box of what it was supposed to look like. You know, you watch movies and I was like, oh, that's what an orgasm looks like. And it feels like whatever is most extreme or whatever is what's getting the most attention right now. So how do we find what's right for us? How do we build our own healthy, empowered relationship with sexual.
- [22:07]
Carter Sherman
I think it starts with acknowledging the ways that politics have set the terms of our sex lives. I think so often people want to think about sex as being something as you introduct in your intro, being something that happens just in a bedroom between two or more people. But in reality, a lot of the terms of Sex are being set for us by outside political forces and we're getting, you know, absence only sex ed that teaches us that sex is something we should be ashamed of. We're going online and we're seeing all of these beautiful bodies on social media that make us feel bad about our own bodies. We are seeing porn that makes us feel like we should be having a very particular kind of sex and obscures our ability to understand what actually gives us sexual pleasure or what receiving sexual pleasure looks like. And so I think we can't really begin to heal or fix any of these things until we acknowledge that they're there and that these influences are out there. We're never going to be able to get rid of these influences. Right. Like, I don't even think it's necessarily the right thing. I, I will say this. I think it would be wrong to try to take porn off the Internet. And I think porn actually can be very much a source of real and good information about sex. But you also have to be able to see the influences for what they are and be able to sort them out yourself and be able to have that kind of insight into what you're being fed and what you're learning for from it, as opposed to just accepting it without question.
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Nicole Khalil
Are there any questions that we should be asking ourselves like, does this feel right for me? And I also keep going back to this idea that we're our own decider. Just because something doesn't feel right or attractive or whatever for you doesn't mean that it's not. I think we have this tendency to have our perspective but then, you know, be closed off to everything else. So I guess my question for people who are on this self discovery journey, and I think we have a tendency to think about the younger generation, but I'm approaching 50 and I'm still on a journey myself. How do we find our own answers? And then any advice for keeping them our own and allowing other people to find their own answers?
- [24:14]
Carter Sherman
You know, I've at this point kind of dedicated my life to studying gender and sexuality and talking to people about their sex lives. And I think it does consist of trying to flip the switch in your head where you think, like, it's interesting that other people are turned on by things that I'm not turned on by. It's interesting that there's such a diverse array of sexualities out there and it's not something to fear. I think that we are told so often that like, we should be having sex according to a particular kind of script. And once you start to let go of that script within yourself, you also have to agree that, oh, other people don't have to live by the script that I've written for myself either. And, you know, if everybody has sex the way that you have sex, like, what will you ever learn about your own sex life? You know what I mean? Like, part of the joy and interest of sexual is getting to see what turns your partner on and then trying it out or not trying it out and having conversations about it and communicating with yourself and communicating with them about it. Like, that is what makes sex such an interesting thing. That is what makes all of us so obsessed with sex. And so maintaining a sense of intrigue and interest and delight, I think is key to not only having your own good sex life, but creating a more sexually open and accepting and progressive success society.
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Nicole Khalil
I know one of the things that you did or are doing in your work is talking to young people, or really people in general, on, let's just call it both sides of the aisle. What are you seeing and experiencing that we have in common or that we believe the same? And where do you see the greatest divides? Let's start there.
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Carter Sherman
Yeah. This actually, I think, gets back to your last question. One of the things that I have gone to several times is the National Pro Life Summit, and I reported on this in the book. I went to a dating with dignity talk at one of the National Pro Life Summits, and it was packed. People were very excited. It was like Harry Styles had shown up and decided that he would put on a promise ring. That was the level of excitement in this gathering, which I was floored by, frankly. And as you might imagine, dating with dignity means dating without doing it. And I think what really struck me about that is the young people who are at that talk, and then the young people I've talked to over the years who identify as conservative, who believe in things like chastity, who want to save themselves from marriage, they are also looking to have valuable relationships. They are looking to be able to find ways to be vulnerable, but also not be vulnerable too much. Like, they have the same insecurities that I think sexually progressive young people have. And the difference is that I think in general, you can't really shield yourself from pain and uncertainty and questions around sex. You definitely cannot shield yourself from those things by, you know, having babies, getting married. As you said, you know, when you're in your 50s, you're still trying to figure it all out. And so I think recognizing that people want the same things, they want Love, they want acceptance, they want. Connection is key. Well, also I think it's key for all of us to understand. Like, you're never going to achieve self actualization, probably. I'm sorry, if you. If someone has. Who's listening in to this, I would love to know, please reach out to me and send me their therapist number. But I think in general, we just have to accept that, like, this is a lifelong journey and there aren't really strict answers and there's no way to be totally safe and happy for every moment of your life, especially when you're in an. In an intimate partnership.
- [27:50]
Nicole Khalil
1,000%. Okay, so then a key part of being in relationship with anyone is communication. And I think many of us struggle, and I don't know if this is more of an older generation thing or not, but struggle to have these types of conversations, it can be uncomfortable, it can be very vulnerable. Like there is this element, I'll just speak for myself, of it feels very private and very personal and at the same time I want to talk about it. And sometimes bridging that gap can be really challenging and uncomfortable. Any advice given that you talk about sex all the time? Any advice about how to bring this topic up within our relationships and with the people in our lives?
- [28:38]
Carter Sherman
Well, I am very open about sex, so I don't know that I am necessarily the model for everybody. That said, I think the more you are open about sex in appropriate settings, I'm not saying go into your workplace and talk endlessly about your sex life, but I think the more you are open about sex and treat it as another element of your life, the more other people see that and respond to it. In doing these interviews, one of the things that I really found is that many of these young people really enjoyed talking about their sex lives and they had never done it before. They were telling me in these conversations like, oh, I'm making these connections I never had before. No one's ever asked me about this. I totally forgot that this happened to me. And a lot of times it was kind of funny. You know, sex is an inherently funny thing. It is at best inelegant, I would say. And so I think just approaching these conversations with an acknowledgement that all of us are going through it all together, all at once. And also having a sense of humor is very key. And then also being able to laugh at yourself is so important. One of the stories I tell in the book is I was obsessed. I was pathologically obsessed with the fact that I was a virgin and I was so Upset about it. I really wanted to lose my virginity. I didn't lose it until I was 19. And at one point I just burst out crying in front of my mother because I was so upset about the fact that I was a virgin. And that was unnecessary. You know, I could have just talked about it. I could have just been open with my friends, I could have been open with my mom, and they would have been so normal about it. And I wouldn't have carried this around in myself for so many years. And in retrospect, I just feel like if you are able to treat it as another element of your life, treat your sexuality maybe even as your hobby, that can be so profoundly freeing for people. I have not figured it all out, though. I should also say, yeah, I. I don't.
- [30:33]
Nicole Khalil
I know that I would believe anybody who said that they had. So any advice for those of us who do worry that all the things that are happening out there are less about sex and more about control and power. And are there any ways that we can or should be fighting back?
- [30:53]
Carter Sherman
I think people see the news that comes out of the White House and it feels very overwhelming and upsetting if you don't agree with what the White House or what the administration is doing right now. But what I found in reporting on gender and sexuality for eight, nine years now is that so much of this policy is actually really set at this local level, and it is really being set in school boards and in state legislatures. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was the result of years and years of activism that was done at the state and local level by anti abortion activists. They were fighting for abortion restrictions that ultimately created a vehicle for the U.S. supreme Court to overturn Roe. And if people had paid more attention to that level of organizing and state level politicking that was going on at the time, it's possible that Roe v. Wade could have been preserved. And so if you were someone who was upset about the way that Roe went down, I can tell you that there are plenty of other sexually conservative causes that are running on the same playbook at this time. And so if you want to pay attention to what's going on in your schools, if you want to pay attention to what's going on in your state legislatures, if you want to pay attention to what's going on in your local governments, all of that will have an impact.
- [32:02]
Nicole Khalil
And I'll add one other thing that every one of us can do, and that is get Carter's book, the Second Coming available wherever you buy books, go to bookshop.org or go to your local bookstore. Let's keep them in business. Carter, thank you for writing this book, for doing this incredibly important work, and for being here, here today.
- [32:20]
Carter Sherman
Thank you so much for having me.
- [32:22]
Nicole Khalil
Okay, friend, here's the deal. As I see it. Sex is not shameful or dirty. Only people filled with shame will tell you that. It's not something to fear or control or legislate into a box. Only people filled with arrogance want to do that. Sex is human. It's natural, and it's deeply personal. And the truth is, when we allow other people to make decisions for us about our bodies, our identities, and our relationships, our. We don't just lose freedom. We lose connection. We lose curiosity. We lose ourselves. I will say this over and over until it stops needing to be said. You are the decider. You get to define what feels true and real and right for you. And that's the most important job you have in this life, because every other decision you'll ever make stems from it. No one is responsible. Not your parents, not your pastor, not your governor, and definitely not some Internet stranger with a strong opinion and too much time on their hands. This fight over sex isn't really about sex. It's about power. And reclaiming that power. Your autonomy, your voice, your agency is now and will always be woman's work.