In a confronting new documentary, sex therapist Jo Robertson examines the radically changed sexual behaviour of New Zealanders, the role of the internet, and how dangerous practices like choking, as well as hitting and verbal abuse, are being normalised, culminating in what one clinician calls a “looming public health crisis”. Jo Robertson talked to Julie Hill.
In the documentary you interview young people who've had very dark, violent sexual experiences. What do you think it was like for those people to tell their stories?
For some it was for some really liberating and cathartic. For others there was shock, mortification, shame. One of the girls felt so ashamed that she’d verbally encouraged some behaviours from her boyfriend, then upon reflection was like, ‘How could I let this happen?’ There was almost a sense that she’d violated her own values.
The doco explains how 'choking' as a sexual act can be fatal, or have extreme long-term health dangers. How did something like choking go mainstream?
In my adolescent years, choking was not a thing. Cosmo was not talking about it. We are products of our culture and what we consume has an impact on who we are. What a lot of parents don’t understand is that you don’t have to be a direct consumer of content like porn or Dark Romance in order to be impacted.
Most of this sexual violence involves boys hurting girls. Do they think girls enjoy it?
I wasn’t expecting the boys to say so frequently that they’d been asked to do these things. The message is that female sexual pleasure is important, therefore they should do what’s asked. Whereas the girls said that if they asked to be strangled or hit or called names, it was often because they thought that’s what the boys wanted to do. So it was like this dance of two people thinking they’re doing what the other person wants – and neither party really thinking about what they want to do.
Sometimes people will agree on a 'safe word' or 'safe action' that they can use during sex if they don't like what's happening. Does that work?
That’s one of the most painful misconceptions. The young people I interviewed said, ‘We had a plan for if I wasn’t enjoying it.’ But if you lose control of your limbs and you can’t speak, that plan is not going to work.
Are parents talking to their kids about this?
Many parents say they’re taking about it – but they think that doing it once is enough. They hand a book over or send a text or share a website and think that’s going to meet their kids' needs, but it doesn’t. Our kids forget about 90% of any conversation we have with them. So if we want to clearly communicate a message, we need to say the same thing at least 10 times.
You have three boys. What kind of chats have you had?
My oldest is 12 and we recently talked about dating. I said if you’re going to spend time with a girl one-on-one, you need to meet her family and let them get to know you. He was mortified and said, ‘Why would I do that?’ I told him if girls get harmed it’s mostly by their boyfriends and if I’m a parent of a daughter, I want to know that the person who’s taking her out is someone I can trust. If you’re not up for doing that, that’s a signal to me that you’re not ready.
Are we still a pretty sexist society?
Professor Nicola Gavey [who's quoted in the documentary] said she felt we’re in a worse place now than we were 10 or 15 years ago. She was struggling to feel hope, particularly for young women, and that was really sad.
What I come home to is my boys and the way conversation does shape them. I see how they correct each other, challenge friends when they say something, push back on ideas, so I do see the impact of adults turning up and doing the education.
Does there need to be more sex education at school?
At the moment there are guidelines that have been set by the Ministry of Education and schools apply those in whatever way they want. It’s not a required curriculum and until now they’ve been required to consult with the community on what they teach. What that communicates is all of this is up for debate. But we need some basic principles. Safe sex is not negotiable and consent shouldn’t be optional or up for debate.
The final curriculum hasn’t yet been released and it will be rolled out over the next three years. Community consultation has been taken away so schools will be able to teach what they want. It will be set to a curriculum but we have not seen that yet.
And what should politicians be doing about it?
I’d love to see three things: frontline training of school counsellors, social workers and police, even midwives, because the risk of strangulation when there’s pregnancy is so high. Secondly, some top-quality academic research that’s quantitative. And the last one, which is super important, is a nationwide prevention and awareness campaign.
Young people don’t know they’re more likely to end up having a stroke, have memory loss, experience depression and anxiety [from choking]. They don’t know it’s a crime. So they’re just trying stuff out and creating a lot of damage in the process.
Watch What Happened to Sex? on TVNZ 1 on Monday (August 24), 8.30pm; or stream it on TVNZ+.
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