For more than 30 years, Professor Israel Nisand has patiently answered the questions of young adolescents encountered during his interventions in French schools, colleges and high schools, to which he continues to go to address questions of sexuality. “When a girl doesn’t want to, can a boyfriend hold her so we can do it?” ; “When a girl loves her father, isn’t it normal for her to have sex with him? “Does it feel good to ejaculate on a woman’s face?” he sometimes heard, disappointed by the lack of information given to the youngest on these subjects. In the book Talk about sexpublished on February 14 by Grasset, it describes increasingly specific questions, “arising from what young people see on pornographic sites”.
Crudely, he evokes the violence of videos which “convey false ideas and develop complexes”, of images in the service of “male domination”, which teach young people to use the “woman-object without her consent”. Above all, he positions himself for a massive investment within establishments on issues of sexuality, and campaigns for a “vaccination against silence and omerta, which currently allow sexual perverts to continue with complete impunity”. Interview.
L’Express: You have been working in schools for over 30 years to discuss sexuality, preconceived ideas, the fears and questions of adolescents. You write in your book that in France, “our young people are ignorant” on these subjects. For what ?
Israel Nisand: The 2001 law normally requires three annual sex education sessions in schools from primary school onwards. The reality is that due to a lack of funding, training and will, this is done almost nowhere. This law therefore decorates the shelves of the Ministry of Education, at the very moment when there has never been so much need for information on the subject in schools, at the age when minors most need to be protected and informed. I defend the idea that we must bring third parties into establishments: neither parents nor teachers will be able to establish the necessary complicity with adolescents to speak frankly and crudely about what they see on the Internet. For too long, under pressure in particular from the most fundamentalist parents or families, it was considered that sexuality had no place in school, and that it was a family affair. Which is absolutely false. Because I guarantee it: children all see pornography from the age of 10 or 11. And if we don’t educate our children, pornography will do it for us.
You rightly write that the porn viewed by adolescents is “the lexicon of male domination, of erection, of ejaculation, of the female object that we learn to use without her consent.” What consequences does this training in sexuality through porn have for minors?
The main negative consequences relate to young women. The more they are in ignorance, the less able they will be to defend themselves. Informing schools means above all telling girls that they have the right to say no. Telling boys that when they don’t hear that a girl says no, it could end very badly for them… Which is the opposite of the pornography they watch, which tells you that if a girl says no, you have to go anyway, because if you make her come she will end up saying thank you for forcing her. Porn for young teenagers is an education in non-consent.
At the same time, these images do a lot of harm: young people are very anxious since they will never be capable of the somersaults of porn stars. These videos convey false ideas and develop complexes, even anxieties, about the size of the penis for example or the physical performance of boys, while girls think that they must be subject to male virility at all costs. Young men end up asking you if it’s normal for a woman not to scream during intercourse or if it’s normal for sperm not to spurt three meters away, and these questions come up regularly.
In your book, you cover the questions that have been asked most often by students over the years. You observe that they “result more and more from what young people see on pornographic sites”, evoking in particular sometimes very violent scenes of sodomy, fellatio, even zoophilia. What is the influence of these violent pornographic scenes on the representation and practice of sexual acts among young adolescents?
The sites that some young people see are indeed nightmares of violence. They have access to them very easily, share them in the playground or on their smartphones, and it is extremely serious, especially since no adult is subsequently asked to explain that it is false, from rigging or simply rape. Facial ejaculation, they sometimes see it at 10 years old. With a single image, you show young people without any critical apparatus an illustration of male pleasure through female humiliation. Their sexual representations come out totally biased: the question of whether a woman appreciates being ejaculated in her face often arises. By looking at these violent images, which fascinate them, shock them, excite them, a mixture of emotions is created and can also promote addiction. The neurological mechanisms of erection constitution in these young boys are then constituted by the scopy of transgressive images: we did not let them constitute their psychosexual phantasmagoria, we gave them a sexual ready-to-wear, which can be turn out to be very violent. Subsequently, some confide to you that these images become their only way of obtaining an erection. They end up watching increasingly transgressive videos, which can trigger incredible violence against young girls who would not be able to offer them what they saw on video, or maintain their erection.
Is there a way to “reasonably” consume pornography?
Yes, in adults. I have absolutely nothing against pornography for adults, for whom it can serve as a basis for getting excited or masturbating. But young adolescents absolutely do not have the critical apparatus to distance the images that they view for free and effortlessly on the Internet. The only limit today is to click on a window that asks you if you are 18 years old, it’s scandalous. I am pleading for the establishment of a compulsory credit card number to be able to consume porn, which would limit access to all young adolescents who come across it by chance, out of curiosity, out of challenge.
In your book, you explain that these education sessions in schools also allowed you to stop or prevent situations of incest or rape. In your opinion, could better school prevention help limit these phenomena?
Obviously. In a country where 20% of adults have suffered sexual abuse, where we are perfectly aware of the physical and psychological consequences for the victims, I do not understand why we do not invest more in prevention at school. It is absolutely necessary to inform young people in all establishments, everywhere in France, from first grade, with this prevention of “Your body belongs to you”. The second way to do it is to inoculate everyone against the silence and omerta, which currently allow sexual perverts to continue with impunity. When I hear my fellow school directors say that I am going to “remove the mud of families”, it is the exact consequence of this generalized taboo around sexuality. Basically we believe that no one should “betray family secrets”, and this is a serious problem. I also emphasize that pornography only adds another layer of destabilization regarding incest or rape: there are videos which fictitiously depict sexual acts between cousins, between sisters, between parents, which completely “de-taboo” incest or rape, and can be viewed by minors.
How can we stop the taboo regarding these questions of sexuality among young people?
We absolutely must react, on the one hand, and stop pretending that everything is fine. This requires massive investment from the State, obviously, but also through training: not just anyone can talk to 12 or 13 year old adolescents about these sexual issues. If you go in front of a class and you don’t have the answers, if you yourself are embarrassed by these questions, or if you are tongue-tied, it will become counterproductive. We must not be afraid to use examples and harsh words, because these young people are confronted with this almost every day. There is this myth of incitement to debauchery in the case of sexuality training, but I guarantee you that it is the minors themselves who talk to you about sodomy, fellatio, zoophilia, who see it long before you do. ! They never have an adult to talk to about it, so you have to be frank about these topics. This is an issue of the sexual health of minors, and it should be a priority.
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