[This talk contains mature content] Six years ago, I discovered something that scientists have been wanting to know for years. How do you capture the attention of a roomful of extremely bored teenagers? It turns out all you have to do is mention the word pornography.
[ 本演讲包含成人内容 ] 6 年前, 我发现了科学家一直想知道的事情。 你如何吸引一屋子 无聊透顶的青少年的注意力? 结果发现你所要做的事情 无非是提到“色情”这个词。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Let me tell you how I first learned this. In 2012, I was sitting in a crowded room full of high school students who were attending an after-school program in Boston. And my job, as guest speaker for the day, was to inspire them to think about how exciting it would be to have a career in public health. The problem was, as I looked at their faces, I could see that their eyes were glazing over, and they were just tuning out. It didn't even matter that I wore what I thought was my cool outfit that day. I was just losing my audience. So, then one of the two adults who worked for the program said, "Aren't you doing some research about pornography? Maybe tell them about that." All of a sudden, that room full of high school students exploded into laughter, high fives. I think there were some loud hooting noises. And all anyone had done was say that one word -- pornography. That moment would prove to be an important turning point for me and my professional mission of finding solutions to end dating and sexual violence.
让我告诉你们 我第一次是怎么发现的。 2012 年,我坐在 满是高中生的屋子里, 他们在参加 波士顿的一个课后项目。 作为当天的演讲嘉宾,我的工作是 激发他们思考 在公共卫生部门发展职业生涯 可能是一件多么令人激动的事。 问题是 当我看着他们的脸蛋, 我可以看到他们目光呆滞 且无心听讲。 即便那天我穿了 我自认为很酷的衣服,也丝毫没用。 我就要失去我的听众了。 然后两个成年项目工作人员中, 有一个人说, “你不是在做一些关于色情的研究吗? 也许可以跟他们讲讲那个。” 突然之间, 满屋子的高中学生沸腾了, 爆发出了笑声,相互击掌。 我印象当时有一些响亮的嚎叫声。 所有的一切 只因有人说了一个词——色情作品。 那一刻,对我而言,以及我的 找到终结约会和性暴力解决方法的 职业使命而言, 结果是一个关键的转折点。
At that point, I'd been working for more than a decade on this seemingly intractable problem of dating violence. Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrate that one in five high school-attending youth experience physical and/or sexual abuse by a dating partner each year in the US. That makes dating violence more prevalent than being bullied on school property, seriously considering suicide, or even vaping, in that same population. But solutions were proving elusive. And I was working with a research team that was hunting for novel answers to the question: What's causing dating abuse, and how do we stop it? One of the research studies that we were working on at the time happened to include a few questions about pornography. And something unexpected was emerging from our findings. Eleven percent of the teen girls in our sample reported that they had been forced or threatened to do sexual things that the perpetrator saw in pornography. That got me curious.
那时,我已经用了超过 10 年时间 在研究这个似乎非常棘手的 约会暴力问题。 美国疾病控制和预防中心的数据 显示美国每年有 1/5 的高中生 遭遇过约会伴侣的 身体虐待或性暴力行为。 这使得同一年龄群体的 约会暴力问题 要比校园凌霸、 认真考虑过自杀, 甚至吸烟的问题 更加普遍盛行。 但事实证明很难找到解决方案。 我在和一个研究团队合作 以寻找解决这个问题的 新颖的答案: 是什么导致约会暴力? 我们如何制止它? 我们那时正在进行的其中一项研究 碰巧包括了几个关于色情的问题。 于是我们发现了 一些意料之外的东西。 我们样本中 11% 的青少女 报告称她们曾被强迫或威胁 做犯罪者在色情作品中 看到的性行为。 这引起了我好奇。
Was pornography to blame for any percentage of dating violence? Or was it more like a coincidence that the pornography users also happen to be more likely to be in unhealthy relationships? I investigated by reading everything that I could from the peer-reviewed literature, and by conducting my own research. I wanted to know what kinds of sexually explicit media youth were watching, and how often and why, and see if I could piece together if it was part of the reason that for so many of them dating relationships were apparently unhealthy.
色情作品要为任何约会暴力负责吗? 还是说色情作品的受众 碰巧更有可能是那些 处于不健康关系的人? 我通过阅读同行评审的一切文献 以及我自己的研究 来调查这个问题。 我想要知道 年轻人在看什么样的 色情暴露媒体资料, 看的频率和原因, 看看我是否 能把所有零碎信息拼凑到一块, 查清色情是不是那么多人 约会关系明显不健康的部分原因。
As I read, I tried to keep an open mind, even though there were plenty of members of the public who'd already made up their mind about the issue. Why would I keep an open mind about pornography? Well, I'm a trained social scientist, so it's my job to be objective. But I'm also what people call sex-positive. That means that I fully support people's right to enjoy whatever kind of sex life and sexuality they find fulfilling, no matter what it involves, as long as it includes the enthusiastic consent of all parties involved. That said, I personally wasn't inclined towards watching pornography. I'd seen some, didn't really do anything for me. And as a mom of two soon-to-be teenage children, I had my own concerns about what seeing pornography could do to them.
当我阅读时, 我试图让自己保持思想开放, 尽管已经有无数的公众成员 已经对这个问题做了论断。 为什么我要对色情作品 保持开放的思想? 我是个受过训练的社会科学家, 所以我的工作是要保持客观。 但我也是人们口中 拥有积极性态度的人, 这意思是我完全支持人们 去享受任何一种他们觉得满意的 性爱生活和性行为的权力。 不管它涉及到什么, 只要它得到了所有关联方的 热情同意。 说到这,我个人不喜欢看色情作品。 我看过一些,但对我并没什么吸引力。 作为两个即将步入青春期孩子的母亲, 关于色情作品会对他们产生什么影响, 我有自己的担心。
I noticed that while there were a lot of people who were denouncing pornography, there were also people who were staunch defenders of it for a variety of reasons. So in my scholarly exploration, I genuinely tried to understand: Was pornography bad for you or was it good for you? Was it misogynist or was it empowering? And there was not one singular answer that emerged clearly. There was one longitudinal study that had me really worried, that showed that teenagers who saw pornography were subsequently more likely to perpetrate sexual violence. But the design of the study didn't allow for definitive causal conclusions. And there were other studies that did not find that adolescent pornography use was associated with certain negative outcomes. Even though there were other studies that did find that.
我注意到有很多人 在谴责色情作品的同时, 也有很多人因为各种理由 是它的坚决捍卫者。 于是在我的学术探索中, 我真诚地尝试去理解: 色情作品对你有害, 还是对你有益? 是反对女性,还是赋权女性? 没有任何一个答案能够清晰浮现。 有一个纵向研究让我很担心, 研究显示看色情作品的青少年 随后更可能实施性暴力。 但研究的设计 并不能明确得出该因果结论。 而且其他研究也并未发现 青少年接触色情作品 与某些特定负面后果有关。 尽管也有其他的研究 确实发现了其因果关系。
But as I spoke to other experts, I felt tremendous pressure to pick a side about pornography. Join one team or the other. I was even told that it was weak-minded of me not to be able to pick out the one correct answer about pornography. And it was complicated, because there is an industry that is capitalizing off of audience's fascination with seeing women, in particular, not just having sex, but being chocked, gagged, slapped, spit upon, ejaculated upon, called degrading names over and over during sex, and not always clearly with their consent. Most people would agree that we have a serious problem with misogyny, sexual violence and rape in this country, and pornography probably isn't helping with any of that. And a critically important problem to me was that for more than a century, the anti-pornography position had been used as a pretext for discriminating against gays and lesbians or people who have kinks or have fetishes. So I could see why, on the one hand, we might be very worried about the messages that pornography is sending, and on the other hand, why we might be really worried about going overboard indicting it.
但在我和其他专家的交谈中, 我对针对色情作品选择立场 感到了巨大的压力。 加入一个阵营,或另一个。 我甚至被告知自己心智薄弱, 没能力找出 关于色情问题的正确答案。 它很复杂, 因为这是一个行业, 利用观众对女性的迷恋 来赚取金钱的行业。 尤其是,不仅是性爱行为, 还有被掐,被堵嘴,被击打, 被唾弃,被颜射, 在做爱中一次次地 被叫唤侮辱性的名字, 也并未每次都获得了她们的同意。 大部分人会同意我们这个国家 充斥着厌女情结、性暴力和强奸, 这是一个很严重的问题, 然而色情作品可能无助于任何一点。 对我而言, 尤其重要的一个问题是 一个多世纪以来, 反色情的立场被用来作为 歧视同性恋, 有性癖或恋物癖的人的借口。 所以我可以知道为什么, 一方面我们可能会非常担心 色情作品传递的信息, 另一方面, 我们可能真会担心过分地控告它。
For the next two years, I looked into every scary, horrifying claim that I could find about the average age at which people first see pornography, or what it does to their brains or their sexuality. Here's what I have to report back. The free, online, mainstream pornography, that's the kind that teenagers are most likely to see, is a completely terrible form of sex education.
在接下来的两年里, 我研究了每一个我能找到的 关于人们第一次看色情作品的平均年龄的 可怕的、令人恐惧的说法, 以及它对他们的大脑和性行为的影响。 这是我需要汇报的。 免费、在线、主流的色情作品, 那些青少年更可能看到的, 是一种非常糟糕的性教育形式。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
But that's not what it was intended for. And it probably is not instantly poisoning their minds or turning them into compulsive users, the way that some ideologues would have you believe. It's a rare person who doesn't see some pornography in their youth. By the time they're 18 years old, 93 percent of first year college males and 62 percent of females have seen pornography at least once. And though people like to say that the internet has made pornography ubiquitous, or basically guarantees that any young child who's handed a smartphone is definitely going to see pornography, data don't really support that. A nationally representative study found that in the year 2000 16 percent of 10-to-13-year-old youth reported that they'd seen pornography in the past year. And by 2010, that figure had increased. But only to 30 percent. So it wasn't everybody.
但这本就不是它的目的。 它可能并不总是毒害他们的思想 或者把他们变成冲动的用户, 一些理论家可能试图让你相信这点。 很少有人在年轻时没看过色情作品。 当他们 18 岁时, 93% 大学一年级的男生 和 62% 的女生 至少看过一次色情作品。 尽管人们喜欢说 互联网使得色情作品无处不在, 或者基本上保证了每个年轻的孩子 有了手机肯定会去看色情作品, 数据并没有真正支持这一论点。 一个具有全国性代表的研究发现, 在 2000 年, 16% 年龄在 10-13 岁的年轻人 报告称他们在过去一年 看过色情作品。 到 2010 年,这个数据增长了。 但只有 30%。 所以它不是每一个人。
Our problems with adolescents and sexual violence perpetration is not only because of pornography. In fact, a recent study found that adolescents are more likely to see sexualized images in other kinds of media besides pornography. Think about all those sexualized video games, or TV shows, or music videos. And it could be exposure to a steady stream of violent media that instead of or in addition to the sexualized images is causing our problems. By focusing on the potential harms of pornography alone, we may be distracting ourselves from bigger issues. Or missing root causes of dating and sexual violence, which are the true public health crises.
青少年和性暴力犯罪的问题 不仅仅是因为色情作品。 事实上,一个最近的研究 发现青少年更可能 在色情作品之外的其他媒体 看到有关性的图片。 想想所有这些有关性的视频游戏, 或者电视剧,或音乐视频。 这可能是持续暴露 在特定的强势暴力媒体 而非性感图片, 或者跟性感图片一道 引发了我们的问题。 只是聚焦在色情作品本身的潜在危害上, 我们的注意力可能被从 更大的问题上引开, 或者错过导致约会和性暴力的根本原因。 这才是真正的公共卫生危机。
That said, even my own research demonstrates that adolescents are turning to pornography for education and information about sex. And that's because they can't find reliable and factual information elsewhere. Less than 50 percent of the states in the United States require that sex education be taught in schools, including how to prevent coerced sex. And less than half of those states require that the information presented be medically accurate.
也就是说,即便我自己的研究 显示青少年正转向色情作品 来获得性教育和性相关的信息。 那是因为他们无法在其他地方 找到可信和真实的信息。 美国不到 50% 的州 要求学校提供性教育, 包括如何防止强迫性行为。 而这些州中,不到一半, 要求提供的资料在医学上准确无误。
So in that Boston after-school program, those kids really wanted to talk about sex, and they really wanted to talk about pornography. And they wanted to talk about those things a whole lot more than they wanted to talk about dating or sexual violence. So we realized, we could cover all of the same topics that we might normally talk about under the guise of healthy relationships education, like, what's a definition of sexual consent? Or, how do you know if you're hurting somebody during sex? Or what are healthy boundaries to have when you're flirting? All of these same things we could discuss by using pornography as the jumping-off point for our conversation. It's sort of like when adults give kids a desert like brownies, but they secretly baked a zucchini or something healthy inside of it.
在波士顿的课后项目中, 这些孩子们真的想要讨论性, 并且他们真的想要讨论色情作品。 他们想要谈论的这些事情 远远多于他们想要谈论的约会或性暴力。 于是我们意识到, 我们可以在健康关系教育的幌子下 讨论我们通常可能会谈论的 所有相同的话题, 比如,性爱同意的定义是什么? 或者,你如何知道在性爱中 你是否伤害到人? 或者当你调情时, 你的健康边界是什么? 所有这些对话我们都可以 用色情作为交流的出发点 来讨论。 这有点像大人 给孩子们吃巧克力蛋糕, 但他们偷偷地在里面放了个西葫芦 或是某些健康的东西。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
We could talk to the kids about the healthy stuff, the stuff that's good for you, but hide it inside a conversation that was about something that they thought they wanted to be talking about. We also discovered something that we didn't necessarily set out to find, which is that there's a fantastic way to have a conversation with teenagers about pornography. And that is, keep the conversation true to science. Admit what we know and what we don't know about the impact of pornography. Talk about where there are mixed results or where there are weaknesses in the studies that have been conducted. Invite the adolescents to become critical consumers of the research literature on pornography, as well as the pornography itself. That really fits with adolescent development. Adolescents like to question things and they like to be invited to think for themselves.
我们可以跟孩子们谈论健康的东西, 对你有益的东西, 但隐藏在他们觉得 他们想要谈论的话题里面。 我们也发现了一些 我们没有特别去寻找的东西, 那就是一种跟青少年讨论色情作品 绝佳的方式。 那就是, 保持对话的科学真实性。 承认我们了解的和未知的 关于色情作品的影响。 谈论在已经进行的研究中, 有哪些不同混杂的研究结论, 有哪些不足之处。 邀请青少年成为色情作品研究 和色情作品本身的 批判性用户。 那真的非常适合青少年发展。 青少年喜欢问问题, 并且他们喜欢被邀请 为他们自己思考。
And we realized by starting to experiment, teaching some classes in consent, respect and pornography, that trying to scare adolescents into a particular point of view or jam a one-sided argument down their throat about pornography not only probably does not work, but really doesn't model the kind of respectful, consensual behavior that we want them to learn. So our approach, what we call pornography literacy, is about presenting the truth about pornography to the best of our knowledge, given that there is an ever-changing evidence base. When people hear that we teach a nine-session, 18-hour class in pornography literacy to teenagers, I think that they either think that we're sitting kids down and trying to show them how to watch pornography, which is not what we do, or that we're part of an anti-pornography activist group that's trying to convince them that if they ever saw pornography, it would be the number one worst thing for their health ever. And that's not it, either.
通过开始实验, 教授一些关于同意、尊重和色情的课程, 我们意识到试图恐吓青少年 以形成一种特定的观点, 或者硬塞给他们 一个关于色情的片面论点 不仅可能没有作用, 而且我们也没能做一个榜样, 示范我们想让他们学习的 那种尊重的、双方同意的行为。 所以我们的方法, 我们称之为色情作品素质教育, 是在我们知识范畴内 尽可能地展现 色情作品的真相, 鉴于有不断变化的证据做为基础。 当人们听说我们给青少年 上 9 节,18 个小时 的色情素养课时, 我想他们要么会认为 我们是跟小朋友们坐下来 并试着告诉他们如何观看色情作品, 这不是我们做的, 要么会认为 我们是反色情活动组织的成员, 试图说服他们 如果他们看了色情作品, 这对他们的健康来说可能是 最糟糕的事情。 但这也不是我们做的。
Our secret ingredient is that we're nonjudgmental. We don't think that youth should be watching pornography. But, above all, we want them to become critical thinkers if and when they do see it. And we've learned, from the number of requests for our curriculum and our training, from across the US and beyond, that there are a lot of parents and a lot of teachers who really do want to be having these more nuanced and realistic conversations with teenagers about pornography. We've had requests from Utah to Vermont, to Alabama, to Hawaii.
我们的秘诀是不带偏见。 我们不认为年轻人应该观看色情作品。 但最重要的是, 假如某天或当他们观看色情作品时, 我们希望他们 能成为批判性的思考者。 并且我们学到, 就我们从整个美国和其他地方 对课程和培训需求的数量来看, 有很多的父母和老师, 他们真的想和青少年就色情内容 进行更细致、更现实的对话。 我们接到的请求来自各地, 从犹他州,到佛蒙特州、 到阿拉巴马,再到夏威夷。
So in that after-school program, what I saw, is that from the minute we mentioned the word pornography, those kids were ready to jump in to a back-and-forth about what they did and didn't want to see in pornography, and what they did and didn't want to do during sex. And what was degrading to women or unfair to men or racist, all of it. And they made some really sophisticated points. Exactly the kinds of things that we would want them to be talking about as violence prevention activists.
所以在那个课后项目中, 从我们提到色情这个词那一刻起, 我看到的是 那些孩子已经准备好来回地讨论 他们在色情作品中想要看, 和不想要看到什么, 以及在性爱中他们想做什么, 和不想做什么。 还有什么是对女性的侮辱, 或者对男性的不公,或者种族歧视, 所有这些东西。 并且他们提出了一些非常成熟的观点。 正是我们希望他们作为 暴力预防活动人士 能谈论的事情。
And as teachers, we might leave the class one day and think, "It is really sad that there's that one boy in our class who thinks that all women have orgasms from anal sex." And we might leave class the next week and think, "I'm really glad that there's that one kid in our class who's gay, who said that seeing his sexuality represented in pornography saved his life." Or, "There's that one girl in our class who said that she's feeling a lot better about her body, because she saw someone shaped like her as the object of desire in some tame pornography."
作为老师, 有天我们离开课堂可能会想, “真让人难过,我们班上有个男孩 认为所有女性都能通过肛交 获得性高潮。” 我们在下周离开课堂时可能会想, “我真的很高兴, 我们班上有个同性恋的孩子 说看到与他相同性取向的角色 出现在色情作品中, 这拯救了他的生活。” 又或,“我们班有个女孩说, 她对自己的身形感到舒服多了, 因为她在一些温和的色情作品中 看到身材像她那样的人 也能成为人们的欲望对象。”
So this is where I find myself as a violence prevention activist. I find myself talking about and researching pornography. And though it would be easier if things in life were all one way or the other, what I've found in my conversations with teenagers about pornography is that they remain engaged in these conversations because we allow them to grapple with the complexities. And because we're honest about the science. These adolescents may not be adults yet, but they are living in an adult world. And they're ready for adult conversations.
所以我把自己看作了 一个暴力预防活动人士。 我发现自己谈论和研究色情作品。 尽管万事倘若非黑即白, 一切都将会变得容易些, 我在和孩子们谈论色情作品的过程中发现 他们仍然非常热衷于这些对话, 因为我们允许他们解决复杂的问题, 因为我们对忠诚于科学。 这些青少年可能未成年, 但他们正生活在成年人的世界里, 并且他们准备好参与 成年人的对话了。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)