Eps 481: Let’s talk about porn with Amy Lang and Christy Keating

What does joyful courage mean to you

 

I think that joyful courage, to me, means that having courage is hard.  Being courageous is hard, and it feels hard.  So, if you can have some kind of anticipation of, “if I do this hard thing, it’s going to feel good.  Even though it’s going to be hard, I’m going to feel good after I do the hard thing.”  The joy is after the courage happens.  If you do the hard thing, like talking about the porn, and you do it, then what happens?  I did it!  A little spark of joy! – Amy Lang 

I think in the context of what we’ve been talking about – sugaring and porn, which is probably not most parents’ favorite thing to discuss, courage is the thing that really comes out for me in that phrase.  I’m going to steal a definition from a podcast guest that was my podcast that I interviewed her just yesterday – Teri Schmidt – and we were talking about leadership professionally and in the family.  She said, “Leadership is courageously making a way or using your talents and gifts to make it easier for others to use theirs.”  I think that fits so nicely with the idea of joyful courage.  We as parents are courageously stepping into our role as parents so we can allow our children to step into their power, into their joy, into their awesomeness.  I think that’s what joyful courage is meaning for me right now. – Christy Keating

 

Resources

Part 1: Exploring “sugar dating” 

Birds & Bees & Kids

BBKPros 

Just Say This Podcast

Amy’s Books 

The Heartful Parent Collective 

The Heartful Parent Podcast 

The Heartful Parent Podcast Episode 43: Parenting & Leading with Courage with Teri Schmidt 

Heartful Parent Coaching

Savvy Parents Safe Kids

The Heartful Parent Academy

The Safe Parenting Summit

Culture Reframed

Bark  

Amy’s Porn Talk Info Kit

Subscribe to the Podcast

Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
talk, kids, parents, porn, pornography, amy, sugaring, conversation, christy, sex, podcast, brain, child sexual abuse, work, child, people, year, listeners, christie, sites
SPEAKERS
Christy Keating, Casey O'Roarty, Amy Lang

Casey O'Roarty 00:02
Hey, welcome to the joyful courage podcast a place for inspiration and transformation as we try and keep it together. While parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people and when we can focus on our own growth, and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact. My name is Casey already I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent leader at Sproutsocial. I am also the mama to a 20 year old daughter and 17 year old son walking right beside you on this path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting. This show is meant to be a resource to you and I work really hard to keep it real, transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is an interview and I have no doubt that what you hear will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please pass the link around snap a screenshot posted on your socials or texted to your friends. Together we can make an even bigger impact on families all around the globe. I'm so glad that you're here. Enjoy the show.

Casey O'Roarty 01:23
All right. Welcome back listeners. I am so excited. You are here for part two with my friends your friends, Amy Lang and Christy Keating. Christie is the founder of the heartful parents collective which includes heartful parent coaching savvy parents Safe Kids, the heartful Parent Academy, the safe parenting Summit and the heartful parent podcast. Christie is a licenced attorney turned certified parent coach, positive discipline educator and fair play facilitator. Christie serves as a board member for the National Coalition to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation. She is a fierce advocate for women and families and loves working with parents on a wide variety of issues from behaviour issues to balancing competing life demands. She loves helping parents and professionals discover new found energy in their work, personal lives and parenting. Christie is a strong believer that we are all parents and professionals alike deserving of support and that we never go wrong when we lift another parent up. Christy lives in the greater Seattle area with her husband of 17 years and their two amazing daughters. And then we have Amy Lange, a sexual health educator for over 27 years, Amy helps parents learn how to talk with their kids about sexuality. With her lively engaging and down to earth style. She shows parents they really can become their kids go to birds and bees source. Amy is certified in neuro diversity and sexuality and helps parents of neurodiverse kids tackle this important part of parenting. Amy is the author of three books and has online courses her podcast just say this reaches 1000s of listeners a month Amy is still married to her first husband and they are getting the hang of parenting their recently launched manchild. She lives in Seattle, Washington and you can learn more about her work at birds and bees and kids.com and BBK proz.com. Ladies here we are back again. For more conversation about Good times.

Christy Keating 03:25
Good times

Casey O'Roarty 03:27
good parenting arena.

Christy Keating 03:31
Passionately good times. I mean, what more would anyone want to talk about than porn? Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 03:38
man. Well, you know, we already went through the sugar dating episode. So part two, we're bringing the Convo to porn. And I feel like I was telling you guys this kind of in our prep conversation. I haven't really talked about porn, even here in the podcast in a while. But you guys are you're still talking about porn, right? Because it's kind of Amy's.

Christy Keating 03:59
We talked about it all the time.

Amy Lang 04:02
How are you doing?

Casey O'Roarty 04:02
What's the latest on the scene?

Christy Keating 04:04
Porn? What's the latest? Amy, I'm gonna let you answer that. When the latest

Amy Lang 04:11
you Well, I just actually took part in this conference by cultural reframed about pornography and kids and impact and all that stuff. And it's bad. And yeah, I'm going to kind of go backwards here. Like, I just really want people parents to please Please believe us when we say your kids gonna see pornography. Like, please believe me. Everybody believes us believers believe

Casey O'Roarty 04:33
us. Do parents still think their kids aren't seeing porn? Yeah, they think

Amy Lang 04:36
they won't see it. They do. My kid would never. And if they do, oh, well, so it's kind of if they do, they'll stop looking. They'll tell me and if they do. You know what I saw it so I'm fine. That's the worst. Yes, that's the worst or

Christy Keating 04:52
they know it's not real. So it's okay. I hear that one a lot. Yeah,

Amy Lang 04:56
they get it? Yeah, they've context they have no content unless you Been talking to them about sex, and then they still have any context because it's not real sex. I'm trying to like good news here. I'm not in a real good space about the good news about this.

Casey O'Roarty 05:09
There's no better trends. There's no like, since we've been educating people these past five to 10 years, I

Amy Lang 05:15
would say there is a little bit more awareness. But if you looked at parents as a whole, I think that it's a lot of head in the sand still, I do think parents know, like, their big fear of their kids being online is that they're going to be exposed to porn. And that's as far as it goes. Like, I'm afraid they're gonna see porn. Yeah, sorry. This is great. Yeah, Christie. Yeah,

Christy Keating 05:36
I don't think there's a lot of good news in the space, frankly, and I'm sorry to say that, but I do think there are some families that are more aware, you know, and obviously, Amy, and I work really hard to get the word out the safe parenting Summit, which you are both a part of in 2024. Like, we're working to get the word out in that, you know, what it is, what to do, how to talk about it, et cetera. But I would say the overwhelming majority of families are either head in the sand or I don't know what to say. So I'm just not gonna say anything, and the kids will be fine. Right? They'll be fine. And the reality is that the industry is bigger than ever, it is completely unregulated, like the shit that the cigarette and tobacco industry was pulling 50 years ago, like, that's kind of where we are with the pornography industry, they are intentionally hooking kids, because that serves their bottom line. The other thing I hear parents say, Well, you can't get on those sites unless you're 21, which is absurd, and so naive, because not only is it free in many spaces, but the most violent misogynistic, awful parts of it are what's free. And the problem with that, and the problem was some of the excuses are the things that Amy was saying that parents have said, like, oh, well, I thought I'm okay. Well, first of all, is way different than when we were growing up. But also, I was part of the same conference that Amy did, and savvy parents Safe Kids was a sponsor for it. And one of the speakers was talking about perceptual learning, and like, it's changing the brains of our children. So even if we try to give them as much context as we can, it's changing their brains in a way that can't be like backed up really, you know, can't reverse that really easily. So yeah, not a lot of good news.

Amy Lang 07:19
I mean, I just feel bad for kids, bad for parents. Sorry. Like, we almost didn't have done this today, because I'm sort of flooded and disappointed. And I mean, I don't want to be all gloom and doom. And so I feel like this is one of those situations where you do need to talk about it, you've got to do everything you can, and say all the words and use all the products and do all the monitoring, filtering and all that and talk openly about it, because that is all you can do. That is literally all you can do, you're not going to be able to prevent the exposure, you can't decide how your child is going to react to it because they're going to react, how they're going to react. And so it's like, okay, this is going to happen, like they're gonna have sex, they're gonna see porn, let's get them ready for it. Yeah, ready for it. Let's give them the best shot at it that they can possibly have. So let's be here with this. But you know, one of the takeaways from this conference is how far behind it's 2023. I already outraged at Christie. This is 2023. To do you, Casey, the people who do forensic interviews and work with children who have been sexually abused or dealing with kids like healthcare providers, they don't ask them, have you seen porn? A child is doing some kind of sexual acting out? They don't say, have you seen porn? And their reasons for that. But the main reason is that their chicken it doesn't occur to them didn't even occur to me, one person said did not occur to me. And I'm like, Oh my God, it is 2023. Where are you? You work with children. It didn't occur to you to see if the kid might have seen porn as they're acting out the four year olds acting out violent sex stuff with another kid, right? Sorry, trigger reverse trigger alert, right? Like, where are your heads? Even profession, even where they're there for child safety? They're like, Oh, great. Oh, who knew? Knew? But this is my universe. Right? Like, right? Of course. I think that was the first thing I think now when people say my kid is sexually acting out in some way. It's like, oh, they saw porn. When

Casey O'Roarty 09:10
I listened to you as I listened to you. And I think about habit of use. I mean, kids are keeping it a secret. That's the logical thing to do. If you're a kid or a teen, and you're in the corner, and you're in the bathroom, and you're, you know, having your porn time and it's so you know, as a parent, you might not see it, right? It might not be any kind of acting out. So waiting for it to come up to have the conversation is a mistake, because they're gonna do everything they can to keep it a secret.

Christy Keating 09:42
I mean, adults keep it a secret, right? So of course, kids are going to keep it a secret. And also porn is in all sorts of hidden spaces that parents don't realise that it is. Right. So you know, you're like, Oh, don't go to Pornhub right, we've got Pornhub locked on the things that were good? Well, they are accessing porn in places that most parents would not even think of. And I've had calls from parents who are like, Oh my God, my child has like an Amazon Kindle device and is accessing porn on that. And not always visual either. Some of it is written pornography, like extremely graphic pornography. It's in fanfiction on fanfiction sites that, you know, kids are like writing their own stories. And then, you know, seeing a reading really, really graphic, not sort of run of the mill SEC stuff that, you know, you might see in a 40 year old beach read book.

Casey O'Roarty 10:43
Daniel steel did not get into it. Did not they lay down and then it's the next morning, right. But Outlander,

Christy Keating 10:49
they got Outlander or the Klan don't even get started on

Casey O'Roarty 10:54
Jamie Fraser because I oh my gosh, yeah, me too. I'm gonna go to Scotland with me. Sidebar.

Christy Keating 10:59
I did go to Scotland. Last summer.

Casey O'Roarty 11:01
We'll talk about that. Anyway. So middle aged women talking about Scottish? Hey, you never know what's gonna come

11:11
out when the three of us get together? Right. Here we go and save us. Okay. Oh, my God. Right.

Casey O'Roarty 11:16
So let's break down the why I mean, Amy, you said it changes the brain. You know, I'm thinking about our kids having their first IRL sexual encounter. And if they've had a healthy diet of pornography, what are they expecting? Right? I mean, what's happening there? So what are the kids are reporting? The ones that are reporting around? Like for sexual encounters? Is there a difference?

Amy Lang 11:44
Everyone thinks that teenagers use porn, a sex ed. So that's, they think that they literally use it for sex ed. So they think that's how you do sex. So you're hanging out with your first person and you're fooling around and you're making out and things advance and then part of the initial early on sexual activity can include really violent, awful stuff, like choking, and biting and name calling, and all this terrible, terrible stuff. You know, they think that's normal, because that's what they've seen. Somebody at this conference just said that she had a person and I'm going to pretend I misheard her about the age of the person because it was too young, which says, Should I have first front sex or back sex? Right, like that shouldn't even be in the equation. So that's what they think sex is. And so one of the things you have to talk with your kids about aside from talking about sex is like the progression of things. It goes from hand holding to over the shirt under the shirt, consent, consent, consent, and then maybe parts and holes. There's so much fun you can have without putting parts in holes, and nothing violent. Right? No violence. Yeah. Right. That's not part of being a learner. So they report that because report that and it's really hard, you can't unsee things and like Christy was talking about the brain stuff, but you can talk more about that, like if these ruts in their brain from using and watching it and want to talk more, a little bit more about that how it relates to the

Christy Keating 13:01
yeah, I'll give an example of this. But you know, for thinking of what these kids are getting in their minds is sort of what's normal, what a lot of them report to sort of build on what Amy was just saying is that it is assumed that it is normal. And again, this is in the context of a heterosexual relationship. But for the male party to ejaculate on the face of the female right? Now, I don't know a single 14 year old or 15 year old, 16 year old 17 year old that's like, yeah, I really want to have that all over my face and rubbed on my face. Sorry to be so graphic and gross. But that is what they are seeing in nearly every pornography clip, right? That's sort of the predominant thing. So they're getting this idea that that's what you do. And so one of the speakers in the conference that Amy and I attended had a really amazing, I thought it was a really sort of beautiful analogy. And he showed an x ray of somebody's like Cibona your femur, right? And one was just the x ray. And I'm looking at it going out looks like a femur. I mean, look at me, amateur radiologist, right, look like a femur. And then in the second picture, it had these red circles all over it. He was actually a neurosurgeon who was giving this talk and he said to a radiologist, they would take one look at that x ray of a femur and know that there was bone cancer all over that bone. right that there were these little spots because they are trained because they've seen it over and over and over and over. And so their brain has been conditioned to recognise that and to see that.

Christy Keating 14:42
And that was his way of sort of describing the types of brain changes that we see that our kids think, Oh, I'm okay. You know, I have the context for this or, you know, I wouldn't do that. But when they see these images over and over and over, it is training their brain To see that as sex, to recognise that that is what happens in a sexual relationship, and especially in a brain that is not yet fully developed, right, because the most recent brain research and you've probably talked about this multiple times on the podcast, Casey, but the most recent brain research is showing that the brain is not fully developed, the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until age 25, at best, sometimes later, especially for those of the male gender. And so you've got an undeveloped brain. And the other thing that this speaker shared is that when we are in our pleasure centres, the prefrontal cortex is not engaged, it's turned off. And so when your

Casey O'Roarty 15:47
hoo ha, is

Christy Keating 15:48
turned on, your brain is turned off.

Casey O'Roarty 15:51
I love listening to sex educators use the word hoo ha.

Christy Keating 15:57
Which, of course, is not what we teach parents to do with their young children. But anyway, when those pleasure centres are activated, the rational thinking that, you know, our kids, even with undeveloped brains might engage in it's not available to them. And so I think that's really important for parents to recognise that this isn't a no big deal thing, both because of the brain changes. And because of the, what pornography has become. And, you know, if you asked a parent, any parent, you know, when we were growing up was Playboy, and Hustler, and penthouse, and whatever, most parents, most I'm not saying all, but most would probably not have given their 11 year old or a 12 year old, a subscription to hustler. But they will happily hand over a cellphone. And what the kids are seeing, like what pornography is today is not what was in Playboy and Hutzler. Yeah, it's really different. And it's changing the brains. Yeah, that

Amy Lang 16:52
brain stuff like with the femur and stuff, that's really good, a really nice descriptor of how you can learn you learn something like that. I mean, they just think they know, right? I mean, it's just terrible. And then, you know, the other thing is that how degrading it is to women, and then all the racism and then all of the additional ship they're learning. They're not just learning how to do sex. They're learning about how to see women primarily. They're learning that people shouldn't have pubic hair. They're learning that hairless. hoo ha is attractive. People with no hair on there who has our children? Yeah, want to point that out? No pubic hair equals child that is not sexy. It's gross. That's just my personal opinion. And so it's teaching kids to be boys to to be ashamed of their bodies of their natural growing normal bodies, because they're growing pubic hair. And it's the whole the whole of it. It's not just the sex. It's this expansive, huge thing. And we don't want to get in front of it. And you know, I mean, Christy, I hear you talking about, like, the prefrontal cortex and all that stuff. And then the, like, the hustler comparison and all that, like, this isn't about you. But I'm fucking sick of saying that. I'm sick of saying that, like, sure. It's a point of reference. I maybe I don't know, sweet listener, did that resonate with you? I don't know if it did. And if it did you believe us? Like, I'm listening to this stuff today. And they're telling you terrible stories. And I'm like, Oh, should I tell parents that? No, you know, why not? Because they won't believe me. They'll say Not My Kid. Not My Kid. Any tale from the trenches? Not My Kid, Not My Kid, not my kid. So how do you help someone? Say, maybe my kid, like maybe my kid? Yes, my kid, like embrace this crappy thing that you can help. You can help. You know, I also think that one of the places that we can help folks kind of come to consciousness around this was talking it was one of the panels and this woman named Louise something she was British. And she said that she talked to some middle school boy and he said that sure that his parents talked to him, it didn't really matter, you know, he knows what to do or whatever, but because when he's out on the playground with his friends, they all are looking at porn on the playground. And if he doesn't look at porn with them, he will be rejected. So we're sixth graders, right? They want to fit in and so here he is a physician if I should not look at this, I can't not look because I will be pushed out of my peer group. And so what do we do with that? Right? Like that makes me think we need to teach our kids how to watch it in public with other people and maintain faiths

Casey O'Roarty 19:29
or have an out that maintains fit. I mean, well, I talked about that all the time. You know, like because there's all sorts of things that the group think you know, so what does it look like to say no, what does it look like to say no and still feel cool or whatever right to still feel like you're not being rejected? And listeners, I'm thinking about you and I'm thinking I'm hearing you Amy and I got a great listenership right there tuned in. They might be like, Oh, God, I know. I

Amy Lang 19:56
know you do. I know you do. But I'm also tired. I've been doing this for seven years. yours. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 20:00
So it's horrible. And it is the reality, like we're saying was something that you said, I think the first time you were on this podcast, which was probably like seven years ago, was porn is harder to not see for kids today than it was for us to find as kids in the 70s and ad. So that being said, people, we have to have conversations. So is it the same conversation for boys and girls? Where is it nuanced? Why would it be nuanced? I don't know. I think maybe it is, though. So okay, okay. I'm engaged. I'm an engaged listener. Okay. My kids probably seen porn right? There a teenager, maybe we've had conversations, maybe I did some work when they were younger, because I heard that great podcast with Amy and Casey. And, you know, I talked a little bit about it. And now there's 1516 year olds, what does it sound like to engage them in the conversations about the exploitation of women? I mean, I can talk at my kids all day long. I want to know how to talk in a way where they can receive the information, right, and it makes a difference. Oh, my

Christy Keating 21:04
God, if Amy and I had the magic formula, we would be so damn rich. First of all, it's important to recognise that the conversations around pornography need to start much younger than parents think. Right? We're they're estimating that the average age kids are first exposed to this online accidentally or on purpose is somewhere between the ages of nine and 11. So right, so

Amy Lang 21:27
it's early earlier. That's what we're

Christy Keating 21:31
what we think it is. Yeah, the research is, you know, whatever. Anyway, it's way earlier, right. And there are tools, Amy and I both have books recommended on our websites, and all of that, that parents can use to kind of dive into this conversation with younger children. So obviously, the so I have a six year old at home as well, the conversation I'm gonna have with my six year old about this is gonna look very different than the conversation I'm gonna have with my 14 year old, you know, and that might even look different than the conversation, Casey that you're having with your, you know, 18 year old son, and that might look different than the conversation that you have with a, you know, 20 something, you know, if you're still able to get to engage. By the time I know that with my 14 year old, you know, she's my daughter, she is a girl after my own heart in many ways, and gets very fired up and passionate about causes feminism, LGBTQ rights, like she is, and racism, right? Those are like three things that matter in a massive way to her. So what I've done is I've figured out what's important to my kid what her values are. And I've used that as an in into these conversations, which I think is you can do at any age, at least with the tweens and teens and above, right? You figure out what are their values, what matters to them, and then you use that as a way in. So for my kid who cares deeply about feminist issues, and would never want to be thought of as a racist, then we can have a conversation about the racism, rampant racism that is present in pornography. And I can give you specific examples, you really want to go down that road, but like, it's, let's just say like light skinned folks, even like if we're going to talk about bipoc people, right? Black indigenous people of colour. So black women on pornography sites, if they are light skinned, they are talked about very differently than if they are dark skinned. It's disturbing. And so I know that with my kid, that's a weigh in, you know, if you have a son, who cares very deeply about being seen as a feminist and being seen as a promoter of equal rights and, you know, equality, and you know, wants to be a partner in a relationship where there's equity in that relationship, then the misogyny present in porn might be a way into that conversation and the exploitative nature of it, but I think one of you said, I think it was uksc like, we can't just talk at them. We have to talk with them. Yeah.

Amy Lang 24:00
Man. Another thing too. I love all that. I think it's so clever, right? And one thing to remember is that they don't know what's happening. They do not know you have a plan. They do not know you're being clever. They don't know you've thought about it. They don't know you're being sneaky because they are so self centred. Now sometimes they do get honest like are like, Oh, what are you up to? Oh, here she goes again, right? That can happen but they're still really self centred. I love that idea of of like figuring out their values. The other thing too is to ask them, not about themselves to say like, you know, I'm just wondering, are these three amazing people

Casey O'Roarty 24:35
brilliant women, like women,

Amy Lang 24:37
these grown ass women, celebrity crushes? And just see you know, they were talking about this Do you know what's going on with this with your friends or what have you heard? Never say are you have you never say because in that conversation if you can stay chill and curious and say you know, just really casually man, you know, this can be rough stuff for folks, you know? If something's going on, you can let me know. And then shut up. Right? This all dropping hints and using a peer to peer style communication style, like you wouldn't? Well, I mean, I would because it's just my personality, but you wouldn't say to your bestie what's going on with the porn? Who's using porn? Is your husband using porn? What's going on with the porn, right? But you might say fucking a like, what's the porn thing? Right? People using porn? What's going on? It's freaking me out. Like I'm worried. Do you know if your your spouse is using like, you find another way to have the conversation? That's gentler? Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 25:31
Well, there's space to step in. It feels safer.

Amy Lang 25:36
Yeah. And also, sometimes you just have to say, Hey, if you are looking at porn, or you see porn, and you feel weird, or whatever, please just tell me you will not be in trouble. Lots of kids have trouble with this. It's really common, it can really mess you up. Just let me know. We'll get you help. Right. You can also be straight up about it. Because sometimes they just need to hear those straight up words, instead of posting floating around for the ship has sailed so much. My kids 16 The ship has sailed. The ship has sailed the ship has sailed. There's nothing I can do about it. There's always something. I mean, again, like for me, like in my parenting life is like I tried to do everything. So they could say it tried to do everything. Yeah. Right.

Casey O'Roarty 26:15
Yeah. So I'm thinking about encounters, right, like the teen first timers are. And I'm also realising as we talk that I'm really picturing the porn consumer as a boy. Yeah. And I realised that's not always the case.

Amy Lang 26:33
So they said 90% of boys have seen it by what I don't remember the age and 80% of girls. So everybody sees it. Do you know everybody

Casey O'Roarty 26:42
sees it? But the the chronic users?

Amy Lang 26:45
Yeah, boys, the regular

Christy Keating 26:48
users do tend to be more boys than girls, but girls are at an increasing rate using it. And we also see that the LGBTQ population tends to have higher pornography watching than straight kids. And I think the explanation for that is they, because of the fabulous culture that we live in, they tend to be more ashamed of their sexuality, or they are not as likely to have an adult who's talking through those things with them, or telling them what does gay sex look like, right? And so they are trying to figure it out, because nobody's talking to them, or it's not even okay to be who they are. So I think that's the explanation for that. It's certainly not that LGBTQ people are more perverted or whatever, for you know, that they're more inclined to pornography. It's just, I think that those kids are looking for information. Yeah. And that's really how this often starts for kids, is they're looking for information, right, it has become the go to teaching, learning, you know, experience for the overwhelming majority of youth. And we, as parents play a role in that, right, because we're not doing a great job, in many cases of talking to our kids or talking consistently to our kids. And so they are looking for, you know, information, and then once they find it, then it triggers those pleasure centres in the brain. And then, you know, it's sort of a dopamine snowballs, yeah, it's a dopamine hit. And it really like I wasn't exaggerating, when I said earlier that the tactics that the pornography industry is using really mirror what the tobacco industry used to do. And I think we need to see and in fact, you know, people that really exclusively work in this space, like cultural reframed, which is run by Dr. Gail Dines are saying, like, we need to see more lawsuits around this because it's not a regulated industry. They don't care. They don't, they don't care.

Amy Lang 28:49
So one little thing that did come out today during this conference was that there is a bigger push to use age verification. And to use real age verification, where you have to provide an ID that proves how old you are, you get a chip, a digital chip that you have to use to get into Pornhub to get into sites like that. So that's coming. And a few countries, they have that in place already. So you can't just go to Pornhub, you actually have to have a verifiable ID. And so ultimately, we will probably end up there, but it's going to take as we should, as we should have, right? As we should have. So there's a little bit of stuff happening, it's gonna get better. But you know, this is one of those things where it is not upon the world to take care of your child like this is absolutely one place where the only recourse is you your protection, which sucks and also is good though because if you want your child to have a healthy, be healthy, whole adults, you have to talk about sexuality. You have to talk about this and how it can be so bad on their little brains and hearts and minds thing, give them space for that and give them education and then you know, honestly, you have to use monitoring and filtering. I mean, I don't need And we actually have a colleague who will remain nameless, who says that, you know, kind of why bother a little bit around the monitoring and filtering, which is absolutely. It's like getting in the car without a seatbelt. It's security. It's not 100% monitoring is watching where they're going, you should have monitoring on every single device, they can access the internet on every single one. And filtering is like filtering out or search terms and sites and all kinds of stuff like that.

Casey O'Roarty 30:24
Yeah. What are your favourites? Just for listeners? Like oh, shit,

Amy Lang 30:29
and custodia. Bark, bark, bark, bark?

Christy Keating 30:31
Yeah, bark is really good. It is a little tougher on Apple devices. Unfortunately, it works better on Androids, which is unfortunate because Apple is so you know, they've got so many protections, but it's still better than nothing. And it's important. It's important that people use it. You know, I want to mention something that just keeps coming into my head as we're talking about this that really loops us back to our first conversation around sugaring. And I think, you know, if we want to address sugaring, and we want to like, talk about relationships with our kids. And why sugaring is not a good idea. We have to be talking about pornography, because pornography is teaching our children that sex is transactional, right? That it is emphasising that this is not about relationship and connection, that it is simply about, as Amy says, parts and holes, right, that it's transaction only, and so that I think the explosion of the pornography industry has laid the groundwork for the explosion of this sugaring thing. And for all of it, I as a former prosecutor, who, you know, I spent years prosecuting sex offenders and sexually violent predators, like I keep coming back to why in the fuck are we not looking at this from a criminal standpoint? Because there is child sexual abuse material, which is the proper term, not child pornography, pornography gives the illusion that it's consensual, there's Child Sexual Abuse material on all these porn sites. And then when you look at something like the sugaring sites, that's I mean, it is illegal in most states to sell sex. And yet, that's what's happening on these sites. I don't know how criminally This hasn't been looked at by the Feds yet. But that's just a side note from my lawyer brain going, what the hell,

Amy Lang 32:19
I love that connection between the transactional idolization of sexuality and making it normal, right? Like an porn we don't see, like the way they see the porn, they're not paying for it. Nobody's paying no kids paying for it, because they request money. And the transaction they're seeing is just the sex for sex sake. Right? And just seeing it cut out like that. Like, it's just a thing, right? Like you said, quoting me parts and holes, it's just this thing we do. It doesn't matter. Right? It doesn't matter. There's no emotion attached to it. It's just pleasure. It doesn't matter. It's just like a thing. It's like, here's your glass, which what's mine going to be full of after this conversation? Just kidding. We're going Amy, are we all meeting at a bar, and then we can watch me? disagreeing, you can watch my powers

Casey O'Roarty 33:20
that we'll see if you're full of shit, or really can't draw them in, we'll see. Sorry, man was

Amy Lang 33:27
just rough, you know, kids, and I feel bad for parents. But I do mean I can't stop believing like the more all of our work is so important, like Casey with your work with helping parents can do better communication and connect and all that and your same thing, Christy, and with added bonus of less safety and the body boundaries and all that stuff. And then the me with the sex talking, like, I just have to believe that this trifecta, it's gonna make it better. And I have to believe that parents are gonna believe me, and you and you, they're gonna believe us, when we say this is a thing it can fuck your kid up? Well,

Christy Keating 34:04
I do want to like, put it sprinkle

Casey O'Roarty 34:07
some various sprinkle some glitter on this with a little,

Christy Keating 34:11
just a little bit of hope in here. So, you know, it wasn't until the 90s or really early 2000s That body boundaries and safety and all the kinds of stuff that I teach on a regular basis became much more prominent, and where we were talking about what child sexual abuse is, what it looks like, what the red flags and warning signs are, how to stop it, how to prevent it. So that's fairly recent. If we think historically right, that's fairly recent, some of the most recent research that is being done and Dr. David Finkelhor is one of the biggest researchers in this space. And what he has shared and he's also a member of the National Coalition that I'm a part of what he has shared with our coalition is that gradually and I mean it's slow and it's small, but we are starting to see small decreases in the amount of child sexual abuse So, that is happening, because parents are talking, parents are aware, you know, there have been big expos as around, you know, all sorts of Boy Scouts, you know, the Catholic Church, you name it, all these big organisations, right. And now, they're much more tuned into prevention. And so that's making a difference. And so the sprinkle of fairy dust hope that I want to throw in here is that, as we all become more aware of the role that pornography plays in all of this in healthy relationships, in sugaring in child sexual abuse, and in just the mental health of our young people, I'm hopeful that we will eventually start to see similar downward trends. We're not there yet. But listeners, you have the ability to start to shift the trend, right, like, by believing us, as Amy said, listening and having these conversations, we can all start to make a collective difference. Because even if the Feds step up, and we have, you know, the real age verification, and even if lawsuits start to make a difference like they did with big tobacco that is years in the making, and our kids can't wait that long. Yeah. So we got to start shifting it now. Yeah, that's my, I don't know if it's helpful. I hope that is a little chalk. Talk. Thank

Amy Lang 36:14
you. I don't want to say anything else. I think that is Thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 36:17
Thank you. Yeah. And I do want to say something else. And actually, I'm saying something that I learned from my friend, Amy Lang, which is short and frequent people, like it's not one talk. It's many, right. And I love that side by side, keeping it you know, some broad strokes, create a safe environment where you're not freaking out, so your kids know that you can handle it if they do need to come to you, because they do stupid things because they have teen brains. So they will make mistakes, you want to make sure Christy and I did a whole podcast about this. You want to make sure not only to do the preventative work on the front end as well as you can, but also to mean it and to have your kids believe it when you say and if you get into trouble come to me I can handle it. I can hold it because there's weird shit that's happening. Our kids are being targeted. And they don't see that any out and they're making decisions that are you know, ending their life. So, on that note, thank you for listening to the podcast. I'm

Amy Lang 37:18
gonna go get some vodka. With me.

Casey O'Roarty 37:22
We love you listeners.

Amy Lang 37:25
I mean, I do like there is hope here and it is us. It's us. It's parents. It's being taking it just do one little thing, right? You know, love my baby homework. One little thing today, what can you do? Go just go look at the resources that are in the show notes. You don't need to do anything else.

Casey O'Roarty 37:39
Yeah, yeah, they'll all be there listeners, check out the resources in the show notes. Before we leave, though I have my final question. I didn't ask you during part one. I saved it for part two. And, and I'm laughing just because of the content that we just got passionate about. But what does joyful courage mean to the two of you?

Casey O'Roarty 38:06
You want to go first, no levity. Come on. This is my big question.

Amy Lang 38:10
I think that joyful courage to me means that having courage is hard. Like Being courageous is hard. It feels hard. And so if you can, like have some kind of anticipation of like, if I do this hard thing, it's going to feel good. Even though it's going to be hard. When I do the hard thing is I'm going to feel good. After I do the hard thing so that this space of the joyful the joy is after the courage happens. So that's kind of what that means to me. So if you do the hard thing of like, Oh, God, we're going to talk about the porn. And you're like, okay, okay, I'm gonna do it. You do it. And then what happens? Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 38:49
I did a leaf. Yeah,

Amy Lang 38:50
I did it. Right, a little spark of joy. So how's that?

Casey O'Roarty 38:55
Yeah. Thank you. Well, what about you, Christie?

Christy Keating 38:58
Well, you know, I think in the context of what we've been talking about sugaring, and porn, which is probably not most parents, like favourite thing to discuss. Courage is the thing that really, you know, comes out for me as well in that phrase, and I'm gonna steal a definition from a podcast guest that was on my podcast that I interviewed her just yesterday, Terry Schmitt, and we were talking about leadership, both professionally but also in the family. And she said that, you know, leadership is courageously making a way or courageously using your talents, or your gifts to make it easier for others to use. There's, and I think that is such a like, fits so nicely with the idea of joyful courage that we as parents are courageously stepping into our our roles as parents, so that we can allow our children to step into their power into their joy into their awesomeness. And I think that's what joy courage is meaning for me right now.

Casey O'Roarty 39:54
Both of those yay. Well, is there anything either of you want to mention? You both have podcasts you Both have websites, all the links will be in the show notes. Is there anything in particular, this will go up before the before the start of the year? So Christy, if you want to mention the summit? Yes, thank

Christy Keating 40:11
you. So I started running the safe parenting summit that is for parents of kiddos from like toddlers to teens, both Amy and Casey have graciously agreed to be speakers for the 2024 summit, which I'm so thrilled about. And we will be talking about all the different aspects of safety. So the way I define safety is really raising kids who are both brain and body safe, right. So all the positive discipline that we talked about all the body safety stuff, and those will be married together in the summit, it will be the first full week in March. So March 5 through the eighth. And we just have some incredible speakers signing on so people can find more information at the safe parenting summit.com. But also Amy and Casey and I will all be sending out information to our mailing lists about this when you can register, which you can't do yet. Because we're just getting all the good stuff together. But I think that would be a great next step for parents who are like, you know, what do I how do I keep up these conversations? Where do I go now? Yeah, beautiful. I'm

Amy Lang 41:10
just gonna, I'm gonna plug my own thing. So I have done over the years, a million parenting summits. And this is the one that I have had the most wholehearted promotion and support of it is absolutely terrific. It's useful. It's important, Christy has really good sense of who to talk to and get lots of information. So yeah, do it. Do it, do it. Meanwhile, back to me. So I have something called the porn talk info kit. And there is a link in the show notes and it is everything you need to have the porn talk. So there's videos with great, there's information about monitoring and filtering, like I teach some stuff and then some other folks as well. So it's all you need sits at your fingertips, because this is never enough. It's never enough. So

Casey O'Roarty 41:51
go check that out. All right, ladies, thank you so much for hanging out with me. This was awesome traumatising, but useful. Thank you. AC

Christy Keating 42:01
thanks for being willing to have these conversations.

Amy Lang 42:03
Yes, please. Thank you.

Christy Keating 42:05
Thank you

Casey O'Roarty 42:12
thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you to my spreadable partners as well as Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected at B sprouted.com. Tune back in later this week for our Thursday show and I'll be back with another interview next Monday. Peace

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