I never thought I would say that, but after reading Reign's opinion piece in The Daily Beast I am convinced I'm onto something.
Reign is not your stereotypical porn star. She has a degree in Women's Studies from UCLA, and she will soon earn her master's degree at USC. But, her most important credential is that of teacher. She visits college campuses across the country to teach fraternity boys what sexual consent actually means.
It sounds so animal house, but it's not. There is no hanky-panky. It's just Reign and a group of young men, who happen to be in a fraternity, talking frankly about sex. She says they trust her because "they see me in a sexual light because they see the videos that I make... So, maybe they just feel like, 'Oh, OK. She gets it. She gets me. I can ask her questions.'"
And they do ask her questions in a way they can't ask their parents.
"Many young men don't get enough sexual education in high school or beforehand to really fully understand how serious sex is," Reign told me on HLN. "Unfortunately, I think they learn sex from adult videos, and that is not why I make movies. It is for adults that are media literate viewers, people that are looking for entertainment. And so, I just see that there's this disparity."
Reign told me young men don't understand porn is fantasy -- not reality. This begs the question of whether some men realize the sex they see depicted in adult films - especially rape porn -- is not what young, inexperienced women crave.
This month, Christine Blasey Ford testified under oath that two drunken boys pinned her down, covered her mouth, and tried to take off her clothes. In the world of fantasy porn, that is what a young man might see, but it is not consent in the real world.
Yet, there are grown men who say it's no big deal.
"If someone did not commit sexual assault in high school, then he is not a member of the male sex," Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor at Brooklyn College, wrote this on his blog. "The Democrats have discovered that 15-year-olds play spin-the-bottle, and they have jumped on a series of supposed spin-the-bottle crimes during Kavanaugh's minority, which they characterize as rape, although no one complained or reported any crime for 40 years."
Langbert later claimed his comments were satire, but neither his university nor his students got the joke.
Lest you think Professor Langbert's ignorance is just run-of-the-mill crazy, it's not.
Dan Turner, whose son, Brock, was convicted of raping a young woman, wrote a letter prior to Brock's sentencing to the judge asking whether "20 minutes of action" should warrant a prison sentence.
The judge handed down a six-month jail sentence and probation, but that price was apparently still too steep. Turner blamed his actions on his inebriated state and appealed his sentence on the grounds his actions weren't rape, but "outercourse."
This argument is outrageous, especially when you consider what Turner's victim wrote about her attack.
"I was found unconscious, with my hair disheveled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, that I was butt naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart, and had been penetrated by a foreign object by someone I did not recognize."
Reign is not surprised by any of this. The number one question she says she is asked is, "How do we have consensual sex ... while we're drunk? While the woman is drunk?'" she told me. "The answer is, you can't have consensual sex when you're drunk and drinking beer. It doesn't work that way."
I admit her answer surprised me because it is possible to have a few beers and consensual sex. "Do they get it?" I asked her. " I think they get it after we talk about it," Reign said. "Who knows how many people I reach on a quantitative level? But I think that this is something that changes a lot of people's perspectives. And I even get messages afterward from Instagram and Twitter that are like, 'oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming. I didn't know that information."
If you don't like the idea of Reign teaching your son about consensual sex, she gets it. But she urges parents- especially fathers -- to drop the macho act and tell their sons it's okay to ask a young woman questions in the heat of the moment. "Before each act, ask if it's okay," she told me. Put simply: Can I kiss you? Do you mind if I hug you? Do you feel comfortable going forward?
Take it a from a porn star -- or not -- but, please have the conversation.
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