French porn star Nikita Belucci is calling on parents to better educate their sons about sex. Most especially about respect, harassment, and consent. The lack of lessons on sexuality for boys has led to more kids verbally harassing other people on the internet, she says, in a tweet that has now gone viral.
Bellucci stated on Twitter that she’s tired of receiving lewd messages from boys as young as 12 years old. She believes parents should be responsible for teaching sexuality for boys and teaching them how to behave appropriately, online or offline.
Bellucci also noted that parents should be able to handle how much access their kids have to the internet.
“I’m getting fed up with educating your kids,” Bellucci tweeted. “Stop offloading your responsibilities onto sex workers.”
Parents should take care what their kids see on their devices.
Harassment from boys
She goes on to explain that although access to pornographic content isn’t strictly controlled enough, that doesn’t mean it’s right for young boys to talk to anybody that way.
It’s not right for young boys to harass people (in this case, porn stars) online and message them asking for nude photos. Asking probing questions like their first sexual encounters, or asking for sexual favours is also wrong.
“There is a complete lack of teaching and prevention, and it’s not our job to educate your kids,” she added.
Bellucci does admit that anybody can find porn too easily, including children, which left her with one question. Where are the measures that parents can put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen to women everywhere?
“I will carry on living and I won’t lower my head under the idea that I should be ashamed,” she said.
Sexuality for boys: Teaching these lessons is parents’ responsibility
Bellucci called on parents to be more responsible about teaching sexuality for boys. She also called on parents to “reflect on what your kids are doing in private, and the consequences of that.”
Along with her post, the actress shared screen grabs of just a few of the messages some kids sent her on social media.
In one screen grab, a 13-year-old boy introduced himself to Bellucci as a fan. He then asked her to give him nude pictures of herself. Bellucci responded with a stern “no.” Then she threatened him saying she could send a screen grab of their conversation to his parents.
“Reflect on your actions, do your homework and don’t contact me again, if not I’ll send [the screen grab],” she said.
Sexuality for boys
Bellucci’s Twitter rant on the state of parental education on sexuality for boys quickly went viral. This drew both criticism and praise from netizens.
One person accused her of asking for pity. Meanwhile, another user said she’s disgusted by the boys’ messages to Bellucci.
It seems no matter what regulations are in place to control pornographic content, if men’s attitudes towards women and sexuality remain unchanged, nothing will happen. This is also evident in boys who are not educated well enough on this matter.
As a parent, you can provide your children with sex education. Does it freak you out? It shouldn’t. It’s better than them getting it from their peers, who are as misinformed or ignorant as they are.
Provided that you know enough about sex education that’s based on science, then you shouldn’t have a problem. So if you’re teaching a delicate subject as this, make sure you can back this up with facts.
Start with sex education
Proper sex education is effective and does not promote sexual risks. Studies already show that comprehensive sex education does not increase rates of sexual initiation, does not lower the age at which youth initiate sex, and does not increase the frequency of sex or the number of sex partners among sexually active youth.
Parents must also remember that abstinence-only programmes are dangerous, ineffective, and inaccurate, according to the Society for Adolescent Medicine. They also declared that “abstinence-only programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life.”
Sex education experts believe that abstinence-only programmes convey:
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- False information about the effectiveness of contraceptives
- False information about the risks of abortion
- Religious beliefs as scientific fact
- Stereotypes about boys and girls as scientific fact, and
- Medical and scientific errors of fact
Characteristics of effective sex education
Experts have identified critical characteristics of highly effective sex education and HIV/STI prevention education programmes.
According to Advocates For Youth, such programmes:
- Offer age- and culturally appropriate sexual health information in a safe environment for participants
- Are developed in cooperation with members of the target community, especially young people
- Assist youth to clarify their individual, family, and community values
- Assist youth to develop skills in communication, refusal, and negotiation
- Provide medically accurate information about both abstinence and also contraception, including condoms
- Have clear goals for preventing HIV, other STIs, and/or teen pregnancy
- Focus on specific health behaviors related to the goals, with clear messages about these behaviors
- Address psychosocial risk and protective factors with activities to change each targeted risk and to promote each protective factor
- Respect community values and respond to community needs
- Rely on participatory teaching methods, implemented by trained educators and using all the activities as designed
Fathers can help teach healthy ideas about sexuality to their boys
Meanwhile, fathers should especially take care with the language they use around boys. Dads commonly joke about protecting their daughters from boys who don’t mean them well, often saying “we know how boys are.”
A joke like this tends to teach boys that it’s okay to sexually harass someone, and teaches girls that it’s normal for boys to sexually harass them.
This trickles down to how men and boys treat women verbally and online. Fathers then must teach sexuality for boys better by trying to become role models of nonviolent and nontoxic masculinity.
They can do this by showing how a healthy relationship between a man and woman works (and what it looks like), by talking to to their spouses (and other female family members and acquaintances) with love and respect.
Dads can also help break gender stereotypes by showing their boys how equal distribution of household duties and chores works.
Teaching sexuality for boys shouldn’t be that hard
We must always remember that sexual abuse, harassment, and violence are not just a “women’s issue.” Men and women are both involved in preventing sexual harassment.
Prevention must begin in early childhood and then continue for life. As parents, we must teach our children skills to prevent violence and harassment. We can do this by teaching them empathy for others, better communication skills, and problems solving.
When it comes to promoting healthy sexual behaviour and teaching sex education, we must put values at their core. This can be built on respect for the self and other people, communication, and consent. There are many programmes out there that empower youth in making positive changes in you community that can help prevent sexual violence.
YOU CAN ALSO READ: What to do if you catch your child watching pornography.
