Boys & Sex
by Peggy Orenstein
Ask boys about sex. Then listen.
For you if
you're raising a boy, or were one, and nobody gave you the real talk
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Orenstein does what almost nobody does: she asks young men about sex and listens. Her interviews cover locker-room talk, porn as the sex education they actually got, hookup culture, what they understand consent to mean, and their experience as both perpetrators and victims of assault. The boys in this book get their education from porn and from each other, with little language for what they want or what a partner wants. It is the boys' half of the thesis, in the boys' own words, and it ends with what parents and schools could do differently.
Where This Book Lives
Adult nonfiction that older teens read: a crossover. Content note: frank discussion of porn, assault, and sexual behavior.
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Last Exit to Brooklyn(1989)
dir. Uli Edel
The American Dream's discarded people.
In 1950s Brooklyn, a closeted union organizer, a teenage sex worker, and a pregnant factory girl move through interlocking stories of poverty, violence, and desperation during a labor strike. Adapted from Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in refusing any redemptive arc — this is 1950s Brooklyn stripped of nostalgia, populated by people crushed by poverty, homophobia, and violence with no way out. Pedagogical, with a real content warning, in showing what "the good old days" actually cost the people the myth left out.
Roll Red Roll(2018)
dir. Nancy Schwartzman
A phone in every hand. A hand over every mouth.
In 2012, members of the beloved Steubenville, Ohio high school football team raped a sixteen-year-old girl at a pre-season party. Schwartzman rebuilds the night and its aftermath from the teens' own texts, tweets, and videos, from police interview footage, and from the work of crime blogger Alexandria Goddard and Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell. Then she follows a town as it closes ranks around its football heroes.
Why it’s here: The crime is only half of what this film is about. The rest is the audience: the kids, parents, and coaches who watched, filmed, laughed, or looked away. It's punk in Goddard, a Steubenville native who keeps posting the evidence while her own town sues her for it. It's pedagogical because it shows how complicity gets built out of small, ordinary choices, and what it costs to refuse them. Heavy watch. Preview it before you share it with a teen.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack
Richard Ovenden
Knowledge was always the target.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
She wrote herself alive. They tried to erase it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Know My Name: A Memoir
Chanel Miller
She took her name back from the case.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus
Jennifer S. Hirsch & Shamus Khan
Not a few bad men. A system that works.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
Consent (for Kids!): Boundaries, Respect, and Being in Charge of YOU
Rachel Brian
Consent as a skill, not a lecture.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
My Body! What I Say Goes! (2nd Edition)
Jayneen Sanders
A no a four-year-old can say out loud.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
When Sadness Is at Your Door
Eva Eland
Sadness arrives at the door. You can let it in.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST