[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.
〔本演說含有成人內容〕 六年前, 我發現了某件科學家多年來 一直想要知道的事。 你如何吸引滿屋子中 無聊透頂的青少年們的注意力? 結果發現,你只要做一件事, 就是提到「色情」這個詞。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
讓我告訴你最初我是怎麼發現的。 2012 年,我坐在一間 滿是高中生的擁擠房間中, 他們是去參加個課後活動, 地點在波士頓。 身為當天的客座講者,我的工作 就是要鼓勵他們去思考 投入公共衛生的職涯 是多麼讓人興奮。 問題是, 當我看著他們的臉, 我看得出來他們目光呆滯, 他們已經充耳不聞。 即使那天我穿著自認為很酷的服裝, 也沒有任何幫助。 我就要失去我的聽眾了。 於是,成年活動工作人員的 兩者之一問道: 「你不是有做一些關於色情的研究嗎? 也許可以跟他們談那些。」 突然,那間滿是高中生的房間 歡聲雷動,大家互相擊掌。 我認為還有一些很大的噓叫聲。 一切都只是因為有人說了 「色情」這個詞。 事實證明,那一刻 是個重要的轉捩點, 改變了我和我專業使命: 找出終結約會暴力 和性暴力的解決方案。
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.
那時,我已經投入十多年的時間 在處理看似很棘手的約會暴力問題。 美國疾病管制與預防中心的資料顯示, 每年在美國,每五位高中生就有一位 會遭到約會對象 施以身體及/或性虐待。 在同樣的年輕族群中, 約會暴力比在校內的霸凌還更普遍, 也多過慎重思考想要自殺 或甚至抽電子香菸的人數比例。 但已證明很難找到解決方案。 我和一個研究團隊合作, 該團隊的宗旨是在為 這個問題找出新穎的答案: 造成約會暴力的原因為何 以及我們要如何阻止它? 當時我們所進行的一個研究項目 剛好涵蓋了幾個和色情有關的問題。 從我們的研究結果中, 發現了未預期的現象。 我們的樣本中有 11% 的青少女 據報說她們曾經被強迫或遭威脅 去做犯罪者在色情產品中 看過的性行為。 那激起了我的好奇心。
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.
約會暴力要歸咎於色情產品嗎? 還是恰巧色情產品的使用者 更可能是處於不健康關係的那些人? 我藉著閱讀同儕審查的文獻, 和自己所進行的研究, 來調查、探討這些問題。 我想知道,年輕人看的 是哪種露骨的色情媒體、 觀看的次數、原因, 想知道我能不能拼湊出色情是否是 這麼多年輕人的約會關係 顯然不健康的原因之一。
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.
我在閱讀時,盡量保持開放心態, 即使有很多社會大眾 對於這個議題已經自有定見。 我為什麼要對色情保持開放心態? 我是位訓練有素的社會科學家, 所以我的工作就是要保持客觀。 但,我也有所謂積極正面的性態度。 意思就是,我完全支持人們有權 享受他們自己覺得很滿足的 那種性生活和性行為, 不論是怎樣的, 只要得到參與各方的熱情同意即可。 即使如此,我個人 並不傾向去看色情片。 我看過一些,對我沒起什麼作用。 身為兩個即將踏入青少年小孩的媽, 我有我個人的擔憂, 擔心看色情產品 會對他們造成什麼影響。
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,雖然 有很多人會譴責色情產品, 但也有出於各種理由 而非常堅定捍衛著它的守護者。 在我的學術探索中, 我真的想要了解: 色情對你是有好處還是壞處? 它是在仇視女性, 還是能賦權給女性? 沒有單一個答案清楚浮現。 有一項縱貫性研究真的讓我很擔心, 該研究顯示,看了色情片的青少年 之後更有可能犯下性暴力的罪行。 但該研究的設計並沒有辦法 導出明確因果關係的結論。 還有其他研究,並沒有發現 青春期接觸色情產品 會和某種負面的結果有關。 即便如此,還是有其他研究 發現它和負面結果有關。
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.
但我和其他專家談過, 要我針對色情選邊站, 我感到很大的壓力。 加入這隊或另一隊。 甚至有人告訴我,我心智薄弱 才會無法針對色情選出一個正確答案。 這很複雜, 因為有一個產業 是靠著觀眾對女性的迷戀 與幻想來賺大錢, 特別的是,不僅僅只是性行為, 還有被掐住、被塞住嘴巴、 被賞巴掌、被吐口水、被射精, 在性行為過程中不斷地 用卑劣的用語辱罵女性, 且不見得都有明確得到她們的同意。 大部分人會認同, 我們在這個國家中 有仇視女性、性暴力, 和強暴的嚴重問題, 而色情產品可能一點忙也沒幫到。 對我來說,有個非常重要的問題, 超過一世紀之久, 反色情的立場都一直被用來當作 歧視男同志和女同志, 或有怪癖或戀物傾向的人的藉口。 一方面,我能理解為什麼 我們會非常擔心色情產品傳遞的訊息, 另一方面, 也能理解為什麼 我們會擔心過分控訴它。
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.
在接下來兩年, 我去研究了我所能找到的 各種可怕、嚇人的主張, 都是關於大家第一次 接觸到色情產品的平均年齡, 或者它對他們的大腦 或性行為造成什麼影響。 我所得到的資訊如下。 免費、線上的主流色情產品, 那是青少年最可能會看見的類型, 它是一種最糟糕的性教育形式。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
但它原本的目就不是要教導性教育。 它可能也不會馬上毒害他們的大腦, 或者將他們變成強迫型使用者, 有些倡導家會試圖 用上述這些說詞來說服各位。 只有很少數的人在年輕時 沒有看過色情作品。 到了十八歲時, 大學新鮮人中, 93% 男性和 62% 女性 都至少看過一次色情作品。 雖然大家會說 網路讓色情無所不在, 或基本上保證任何一個孩子 只要有智慧手機 就一定會看到色情片, 資料並不支持這種說法。 一項有全國代表性的研究 發現,在 2000 年, 十到十三歲的孩子中,有 16% 說他們在去年有看過色情作品。 到了 2010 年,那個數字增加了。 但只增加到 30%。 所以不是每個人都會。
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問題 並不只是因為色情。 事實上,一項近期的研究發現 青少年更有可能 在色情產品以外的 其他類型媒體上看到色情圖像。 想想看那些含有性暗示的電玩遊戲, 或者電視節目, 或者音樂影片(MV)。 它可能源源不斷地在強勢媒體中曝光, 而不是/不僅是色情圖像, 造成我們的問題。 單單把焦點放在色情產品 會帶來的潛在傷害, 可能讓我們無法看到更大的議題。 或者漏掉了約會暴力 及性暴力的根本原因, 這才是真正的公共衛生危機。
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.
也就是說,就連我自己的研究 也顯示出青少年開始把色情作品 當作性教育和知識的來源。 那是因為他們無法在其他地方 找到可靠、真實的資訊。 美國只有不到一半的州 要求學校要教性教育, 包括如何預防強迫性行為。 在那些州當中,又只有不到一半的州 會要求呈現出來的資訊 具醫學的準確性。
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.
所以,在波士頓的 那個課後活動方案中, 那些孩子真的想要談談性, 他們真的想要談談色情。 比起約會暴力或性暴力, 他們更想要談談那些議題。 所以,我們發現, 我們可以用上健康關係教育的名義, 來談論所有那些相同的主題, 比如,性同意的定義是什麼? 或你要如何知道在性行為 過程中你已經傷到對方了? 又或者在調情時的健康界線到哪裡? 我們要討論上述所有這些主題時, 都可以用色情當作起始點, 開啟我們的對話。 這有點像是成人會 給孩子像是布朗尼的點心, 但他們會偷偷把櫛瓜 或有益健康的東西放在裡面。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我們能和孩子們談 健康、有助益的內容, 但把這些都包裝在一個 他們會想要去談論的對話當中。 我們也有一個無預期的發現, 那就是有一種很棒的方法, 可以和青少年來探討色情。 那方法就是, 確保談話都有科學根據。 承認對於色情所帶來的影響 我們已知和不知道的部分。 談談可能會有混雜的結果, 或已進行的研究中存在的缺失之處。 邀請青少年成為色情研究文獻 以及色情產品本身的重要消費者。 那真的符合青春期的發展。 青少年喜歡質疑事物, 他們也喜歡受邀為他們自己思考。
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.
我們透過實驗瞭解到, 在教導學生們同意、尊重和色情時, 試圖用恫嚇的方式 灌輸青少年某種觀點, 或強迫他們接受單一面向的色情論點, 不僅大概行不通, 同時也沒有以身作責, 示範我們希望他們能學到 帶著尊重且雙方皆同意的態度行為。 我們的方法稱為色情產品知識, 它的重點在於, 在我們所知的範圍內, 鑒於證據不斷改變的基礎下, 盡可能呈現出色情產品的背後真相。 當別人聽到我們安排 十八小時共九堂課 來教導青少年分析色情產品的知識時, 我想,他們若不是認為 我們是要孩子坐下來, 試圖教他們如何看色情片, 其實我們不會這麼做, 要不然就認為我們是 反色情活動團體的人, 在試圖說服青少年, 色情片是影響健康的頭號敵人。 我們也不會這樣做。
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.
我們的秘密成份是: 我們不會評斷。 我們不認為年輕人應該看色情片。 但,我們希望他們如果 真的看到了色情片, 首先要能夠做出批評性的思考。 我們發現, 根據全美各地和其他地方 對課程和訓練的需求量來看, 我們發現其實有很多父母和老師 都真的想要針對色情, 跟青少年做更細微、更真實的對談。 我們接到的請求, 從猶他州到佛蒙特州、 到阿拉巴馬州、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,在那課後活動專案中, 我看到的是,從我們 提到「色情」一詞開始, 那些孩子已經開始你來我往, 談論他們想要和不想要 在色情片中看到什麼, 以及在性愛的過程中 他們想要和不想要做什麼。 也談到怎樣是貶低女性, 或對男性不公平,或有種族主義, 所有這些都有談到。 他們還有一些很精湛的論點。 這些正是身為預防暴力活動家的我們 希望他們能夠去談論的主題。
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."
身為老師,可能有一天 我們離開教室時,會想: 「真悲哀,我們班上有一個男孩 認為所有的女性都是 從肛交產生高潮的。」 可能下週我們離開教室時,會想: 「我很高興我們班上 有一個同性戀孩子說, 在色情中看到他的性向被描繪出來, 救了他一命。」 或:「我們班上有一個女孩, 她說對自己身體的觀感 覺得變好許多, 因為她在比較溫和的色情片中 看到和她身材一樣的人 被當成渴望的對象。」
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.
這是我發覺自己扮演 預防暴力的活動家的時候。 我發現自己會去談論、研究色情。 雖然,如果人生中凡事都 非黑即白就會容易許多, 我在和青少年探討色情的對話中, 發現他們持續參與這些對談, 因為我們讓他們盡力解決 這些複雜的問題。 且因我們忠於科學的事證。 這些青少年還不是成人, 但他們生活在成人的世界裡。 他們已準備好做成人的對談了。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)