I remember my aunt brushing my hair when I was a child. I felt this tingling in my stomach, this swelling in my belly. All her attention on me, just me. My beautiful Aunt Bea, stroking my hair with a fine-bristled brush. Do you have a memory like that that you can feel in your body right now?
我還記得小時候, 姑姑幫我梳頭髮。 肚子裡那種搔癢的感受, 慢慢鼓脹的熱度。 她所有的注意力都在我身上, 只在我身上。 我美麗的畢雅姑姑, 用鬃毛梳一下 又一下梳著我的頭髮。 你有沒有像這樣的記憶, 到現在還讓你記憶猶新?
Before language, we're all sensation. As children, that's how we learn to differentiate ourselves in the world -- through touch. Everything goes in the mouth, the hands, on the skin. Sensation -- it is the way that we first experience love. It's the basis of human connection. We want our children to grow up to have healthy intimate relationships. So as parents, one of the things that we do is we teach our children about sex. We have books to help us, we have sex ed at school for the basics. There's porn to fill in the gaps -- and it will fill in the gaps.
在語言出現之前, 我們全靠感覺。 孩提時代,我們用觸摸 界定自己在世上的位置 把東西放進嘴裡、 抓在手上,或用皮膚去感覺。 感性 是我們最初體驗到愛的方式。 它是人類連結的基礎。 我們希望我們的孩子長大後 能有健康、親密的關係。 身為父母, 我們會做的其中一件事就是 教我們的孩子關於性愛的知識。 我們有書籍幫助我們, 在學校也有基本的性教育。 有色情書刊影片來填補中間的缺口, 而它們確實填 滿 缺 口。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
We teach our children "the talk" about biology and mechanics, about pregnancy and safe sex, and that's what our kids grow up thinking that sex is pretty much all about. But we can do better than that. We can teach our sons and daughters about pleasure and desire, about consent and boundaries, about what it feels like to be present in their body and to know when they're not. And we do that in the ways that we model touch, play, make eye contact -- all the ways that we engage their senses. We can teach our children not just about sex, but about sensuality.
我們教我們孩子的「那場談話」, 是關於生物的做法的, 關於懷孕和安全性交的, 在成長過程中,孩子大概就會 認定性愛就是全部了。 但我們能做得更好。 我們能教導我們的兒子女兒 了解愉悅和慾望, 同意和界線, 靈肉合一的感受, 和靈魂出竅的時刻。 而我們的做法是, 我們會模仿觸摸、玩樂、 做眼神接觸- 動用感覺的各種方式。 我們能教孩子的不只是性愛, 還有感性。
This is the kind of talk that I needed as a girl. I was extremely sensitive, but by the time I was an adolescent, I had numbed out. The shame of boys mocking my changing body and then girls exiling me for, ironically, my interest in boys, it was so much. I didn't have any language for what I was experiencing; I didn't know it was going to pass. So I did the best thing I could at the time and I checked out. And you can't isolate just the difficult feelings, so I lost access to the joy, the pleasure, the play, and I spent decades like that, with this his low-grade depression, thinking that this is what it meant to be a grown-up.
我小時候就需要這樣的談話。 我當時非常敏感, 但當我成了青少女之後, 我麻木了。 男孩們取笑我身體的改變, 讓我感到羞恥, 女孩們因為我對男孩的興趣, 而背棄我 難以招架。 我無法用言語形容 我當時所體驗到的; 我不知道它會不會過去。 所以我做了當時我能做的最佳決策, 我決定逃避。 你不能只把難過的感受分離開來, 所以我也失去了樂趣、愉悅、玩樂, 我數十年都那樣過日子, 帶著這種劣等的沮喪, 想著,原來當大人就是這麼一回事。
For the past year, I've been interviewing men and women about their relationship to sex and I've heard my story again and again. Girls who were told they were too sensitive, too much. Boys who were taught to man up -- "don't be so emotional." I learned I was not alone in checking out. It was my daughter who reminded me of how much I used to feel. We were at the beach. It was this rare day. I turned off my cell phone, put in the calendar, "Day at the beach with the girls." I laid our towels down just out of reach of the surf and fell asleep. And when I woke up, I saw my daughter drizzling sand on her arm like this, and I could feel that light tickle of sand on her skin and I remembered my aunt brushing my hair. So I curled up next to her and I drizzled sand on her other arm and then her legs. And then I said, "Hey, you want me to bury you?" And her eyes got really big and she was like, "Yeah!" So we dug a hole and I covered her in sand and shells and drew this little mermaid tail. And then I took her home and lathered her up in the shower and massaged her scalp and I dried her off in a towel. And I thought, "Ah. How many times had I done that -- bathed her and dried her off -- but had I ever stopped and paid attention to the sensations that I was creating for her?" I'd been treating her like she was on some assembly line of children needing to be fed and put to bed. And I realized that when I dry my daughter off in a towel tenderly the way a lover would, I'm teaching her to expect that kind of touch. I'm teaching her in that moment about intimacy. About how to love her body and respect her body. I realized there are parts of the talk that can't be conveyed in words.
過去一年, 我訪談了很多男男女女, 談他們和性愛的關係, 我一次又一次聽到我的故事。 女孩們被別人說是太敏感、太過頭。 男孩被別人教導要有男子氣概- 「不要這麼情緒化。」 我發現,我不是唯一逃避的人。 是我女兒提醒了我, 讓我想起我以前的感受多深。 我們在海灘上。 那是個難得的日子。 我把手機關機, 在日曆上記著 「和女孩去海灘的日子」。 我把我們的毛巾放在 海浪剛好沖不到的地方, 然後就睡著了。 當我醒來時, 我看到我女兒把沙子 這樣灑在她的手臂上, 我可以感覺到她的皮膚因為 沙子造成輕微癢癢的感受, 接著我就想起了我的姑姑幫我梳頭。 我爬到她旁邊, 我把沙子灑到她的另一隻手臂上, 接著是她的雙腿上。 接著,我說:「嘿, 你想要我把你埋起來嗎?」 她的眼睛睜得好大,說:「好啊!」 所以我們挖了個洞, 我用沙子和貝殼把她蓋起來, 畫出小美人魚的尾巴。 接著,我帶她回家, 按摩她的頭皮, 用毛巾把她擦乾。 我心想: 「啊,每天我日復一日這麼做- 幫她洗澡,把她弄乾- 但我是否曾經停下來留意 她現在的感受? 我對待她的方式, 彷彿她正在一條裝配線上, 需要被餵飽送上床 睡覺的孩子的裝配線。 我突然意識到, 當我像情人般溫柔地 用毛巾把我女兒擦乾時, 我就是教導她去期待那樣子的觸碰。 在那一刻,我在教導她什麼是親密。 教導她如何去愛、去尊敬她的身體。 我了解到,「那場談話」 有一部份是無法用文字傳達的。
In her book, "Girls and Sex," writer Peggy Orenstein finds that young women are focusing on their partner's pleasure, not their own. This is something I'm going to talk about with my girls when they're older, but for now, I look for ways to help them identify what gives them pleasure and to practice articulating that. "Rub my back," my daughter says when I tuck her in. And I say, "OK, how do you want me to rub your back?" "I don't know," she says. So I pause, waiting for her directions. Finally she says, "OK, up and to the right, like you're tickling me." I run my fingertips up her spine. "What else?" I ask. "Over to the left, a little harder now."
佩吉奧倫斯坦寫了一本書, 叫「女孩與性」,在書中,她發現 年輕女性會把焦點 放在讓伴侶愉悅上, 而非讓自己愉悅。 當女兒們再大一些時, 我會想要和她們談, 但,現在,我希望協助她們 認識愉悅的來源, 以及如何表達她們的需求。 當我哄女兒上床時, 她說:「揉搓我的背。」 我說:「好,你希望 我怎麼揉搓你的背?」 她說:「我不知道。」 所以我暫停下來,等她的指示。 終於,她說:「好,向上向右, 就像你在搔我癢一樣。」 我把我的指尖順著她的脊椎向上移。 我問:「還有呢?」 「移去左邊,現在再用力一點。」
We need to teach our children how to articulate their sensations so they're familiar with them. I look for ways to play games with my girls at home to do this. I scratch my fingernails on my daughter's arm and say, "Give me one word to describe this." "Violent," she says. I embrace her, hold her tight. "Protected," she tells me. I find opportunities to tell them how I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, so we have common language. Like right now, this tingling in my scalp down my spine means I'm nervous and I'm excited.
我們需要教導我們的孩子 如何清楚表達他們的感受, 她們才知道如何表達。 我希望我可以和她們 在遊戲中達成這個目標。 我用我的指甲抓我女兒的手臂,說: 「用一個詞來形容這感覺。」 她說:「暴力。」 我擁抱她,緊緊摟著她。 她告訴我:「被保護著。」 我會找機會告訴她們我的感受、 我的體驗, 我們才會有共通語言。 就像現在, 從頭皮延著脊椎一路下來的輕癢, 意味著我很緊張也很興奮。
You are likely experiencing sensations in response to me. The language I'm using, the ideas I'm sharing. And our tendency is to judge these reactions and sort them into a hierarchy: better or worse, and then seek or avoid them. And that's because we live in this binary culture and we're taught from a very young age to sort the world into good and bad. "Did you like that book?" "Did you have a good day?" How about, "What did you notice about that story?" "Tell me a moment about your day. What did you learn?" Let's teach our children to stay open and curious about their experiences, like a traveler in a foreign land. And that way they can stay with sensation without checking out -- even the heightened and challenging ones -- the way I did, the way so many of us have.
你可能也會我的感受 而有些共鳴。 我使用的詞語、 我分享的想法。 我們傾向將這些感受分級, 把它們分類、分階層, 較好的、較差的, 接著去尋求或避免它們。 那是因為我們住在二元文化中, 很小的時候,我們就被 教導要把世界分成善與惡。 「你喜歡那本書嗎?」 「你今天過得好嗎?」 為什麼不說「對那個故事, 你注意到什麼?」 「你今天有什麼特別的事。 你從中學到什麼?」 讓我們教導孩子 對他們的經驗體驗保持開放和好奇心, 就像在異地的旅人。 這麼一來, 他們就不會逃避自己的感覺- 即使是很強烈很挑戰的感覺- 不要像我以前那樣, 不要像我們許多人那樣。
This sense education, this is education I want for my daughters. Sense education is what I needed as girl. It's what I hope for all of our children. This awareness of sensation, it's where we began as children. It's what we can learn from our children and it's what we can in turn remind our children as they come of age.
這種感覺教育, 是我希望我女兒能接受的教育。 我小時候需要的就是感覺教育。 我也希望所有我們的孩子都能得到。 這種對於感覺的意識, 是我們身為孩子的起始點。 是我們能夠向孩子學習的東西, 也是我們能夠反過來 提醒她們的東西, 當她們逐日成長。
Thank you.
謝謝你們。
(Applause)
(掌聲)