Head Inside Mental Health
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and behavioral health expert hosts #Head-Inside Mental Health featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care.
Head Inside Mental Health
Unmasking Tech-Facilitated Sexual Trauma: Conversations with Dr. Kristen Zaleski
The digital landscape has created an entirely new frontier for sexual violence, one that leaves lasting trauma without physical contact. In this eye-opening conversation with Dr. Kristen Zaleski, Chief Clinical Officer for the Mental Health Collective and recognized expert on sexual violence, we explore the disturbing world of technology-facilitated sexual violence and AI-generated pornography.
What began as Polaroid pictures passed around high schools has evolved into sophisticated algorithms capable of creating fake but convincing sexual imagery of anyone—celebrities, teachers, ex-partners—with devastating consequences. Dr. Kristen Zaleski, Co-Founder of the Neurodivergent Collective, shares shocking insights from her research: 90% of tech-facilitated sexual violence targets women, making it uniquely gendered compared to other forms of sexual assault. Perhaps most surprising, adults over 55 represent the second most victimized demographic after teenagers.
Our conversation extends beyond the problems to explore solutions—from Meta's facial recognition technology that helps remove reported content to the critical importance of education. Dr. Zaleski emphasizes that parent-child conversations about consent and healthy relationships don't require lengthy, uncomfortable "big talks"—just consistent, straightforward information.
Listen to understand how this growing epidemic affects everyone from teens to seniors, and what we can all do to protect ourselves and our loved ones in an increasingly digital world.
Hello folks, thanks for joining us on Head Inside Mental Health, featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment, with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care. Broadcasting on WPVM 1037, the voice of Asheville independent commercial free radio, I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant, behavioral health expert, my distinguished guest and friend and co-conspirator in the endeavor to make the world a better place, dr Kristen Zaleski joins me on the show today.
Speaker 1:Dr Zaleski is the chief clinical officer for the Mental Health Collective a residential treatment program in Southern California, providing attachment-focused, evidence-based treatment for adults living with mental illness and trauma disorders, as well as the chief clinical officer and co-founder of the NeuroDivergent Collective, providing evidence based therapeutic care to diagnose, support and assist neurodivergent adults and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit too. A psychotherapist and researcher by trade, dr Zaleski is a recognized expert on sexual violence in American society. Her current research focuses on technology facilitated sexual violence in American society. Her current research focuses on technology-facilitated sexual violence, with a particular emphasis on AI-generated non-consensual pornography. That's interesting stuff. What a world we live in.
Speaker 1:She is the author of Understanding and Treating Military Sexual Trauma, now in its second edition, the first social work text dedicated to the subject. Her second book, women's journey to empowerment in the 21st century, published by Oxford University Press in 2019, examines global human rights abuses through transnational feminine, through a transnational feminist lens. Her peer-reviewed research explores sexual violence treatment frameworks and qualitative analysis of unique trauma experiences, including child marriage and online sexual violence. An active figure in the Los Angeles clinical community as a consultant and trainer, she's nationally recognized for her contributions to military and online sexual violence research. She serves as the chair of the Military Sexual Violence Division at the Center for Law and Military Policy, is an active board member of the META's Global Safety Data Interest Group on online sexual violence and sits on the advisory board of ASHAO, a global advocacy organization combating female genital mutilation and cutting. Additionally, she is the founding director of Forensic Mental Health and the USC Keck Human Rights Clinic, where she conducts psychological evaluations for asylum seekers who've experienced human rights abuses. Dr Z welcome.
Speaker 2:Wow, you did the whole thing. That's a mouthful. Thanks for the warm introduction.
Speaker 1:No, well, I mean, I know that you're like this cool lady who's fun at parties.
Speaker 2:Or the boring one at parties, or the boring one at parties.
Speaker 1:You know, you know I like nerds unite and we just find ourselves kind of like over in a circle somewhere talking about whatever interests us the most. But you know I, we have got there's so much to unpack, and not only what you research and what your specialty is in, but also the work you do with Mental Health Collective, a program we collaborate with on a regular basis. You and I have worked together, which I completely enjoy. I don't think I actually know what is AI porn. Tell me what that is. First of all, I have no clue and I'm grateful not to have a clue, but you're going to give it to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So to introduce that I need to introduce sort of the bigger picture which is non-consensual intimate images, ncii Another term in the literature is technology-f technology facilitated sexual violence. So you know it's a play on what maybe you and I knew in our high school days of a Polaroid picture that got passed around of you know some naked imagery, non-consensually right. Or those released videos of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, for example, right. These were all non-consensual examples of sexual and intimate imagery, but with technology it rapid fires across the world, right?
Speaker 1:So I've got kids in high school, so you know there've been a few expulsions as a result of somebody sharing something that was inappropriate to share. It was not, and not only was it inappropriate, but it was also shared without the person's consent.
Speaker 2:That's right. So with high school, middle school and high school kids. That's where a lot of the advocacy focus is right now on this topic generally, because you know part of exploring your sexuality as the Polaroid picture example exemplifies is, you know some kids choose to share a sexy photo with someone they're dating to sort of tiptoe into. You know how to negotiate sexual boundaries and when that gets taken advantage of. We then consider that child pornography and schools are taken by surprise when they get this report that this is happening, because it's a whole new universe of how do we stop this. You know, do we go into every student's phone and tell them to erase this text message? Is it in a group chat? Do we go into every student's phone and tell them to erase this text message? Is it in a group chat?
Speaker 1:You know it's a terrible epidemic and parents and law enforcement are having to play catch up really quickly to get on top of this. I guess it gets complicated because that's technically child porn right, yeah. Some two 16-year olds are doing whatever they do.
Speaker 1:They take a picture of either themselves or one another and then now that's an image that's recorded. That's technically child porn? If it's. If it's nudity, yeah, then they share it. So now they're sharing child porn. Those are pretty serious offenses that are hard to get out from underneath If you get them as an adult. I wow. That's just that opens up a whole world of like legal problems and manage and like discipline problems and everything else for schools Like so what's, what are we doing about it?
Speaker 2:Like what's the what's the way forward? Well, the laws are trying to get a hold of it and you know I'm not an expert on sort of all 50 states laws, but I can tell you that it's hard in most states to convict somebody who is purposefully distributing and creating, you know this, this type of abuse. This type of abuse, if the person let's say, you know a partner took the intimate image by some state laws, they own that image and they can share it with whoever they want, including the internet, right. So there's ownership pieces to this. And then we have had, as advocates I think we're doing a better job in 2025.
Speaker 2:But in 2017, it was a brand new topic and people weren't understanding how victims of this crime could be traumatized without ever being touched. You know, people who have had this happen to them are absolutely showing symptoms that you would expect a sexual assault, face-to-face sexual assault victim to show. And it took a lot of convincing and it still does in some cases for people to understand how having a naked image of yourself, you know, in your whole high school, would negatively impact you and give you stress-related, trauma-related symptoms. So you know there's different sort of dives here and different police departments. You know I live in Los Angeles. I still will make a report with a client and I'll come across a responding officer who has never taken this case and doesn't know the law and doesn't understand how to do it. And that's in a pretty big city where you know this happens pretty frequently.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine. You know a small town. It doesn't do anything, right? Is that like it's like the rape kit cases? You know they just sat there and never anything was done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's rape kit is a good example. Right, and for the listeners who don't know what a rape kit is, when someone's sexually assaulted, there's sort of a standard of care that you can go into a hospital and every hospital across the nation does certain things. You know prophylactic medication to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, dna collection through the use of swabs, and you know things like that medical care generally for any injuries. We are developing a rape kit for technology, facilitated sexual violence as well. Those do exist, but a lot of law enforcement agencies don't know about them, so it has to be an advocate that usually tells the victim, hey, you can do steps. You know ABC to help sort of create evidence and maintain it. But it's hard.
Speaker 1:Well, I imagine it's not just hard to kind of like navigate the law, it's also, I bet, it's hard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like it's probably hard for for law enforcement officers officers to wrap their head around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right Because it's. You know, the issue is consent, always when we're talking about sexual violence, and so in most of these cases, a consensual image was created right, but the non-consensual part is the wide distribution to the high school group text, or Pornhub, you know. So that becomes the non-consensual piece, and officers have a hard time understanding that. Also, when you get to the internet, we're no longer talking about local police departments, we're talking about the FBI, you know, and that system's pretty overwhelmed and overloaded. So, unless it's a pretty popular case, not much is going to really happen. So you know, again getting better. And if you watch policy discussions, melania Trump, in February, I believe, came out against revenge porn, which is what this is called in AI, generated images and is asking our national leaders to create laws to protect victims from this crime.
Speaker 1:Well, victims are DEI, so we got to get rid of victims now too, isn't that right?
Speaker 2:So AI is an interesting discussion. So artificial intelligence can create images of kids, you know, engaging in sexual acts. The question is is that harmful? The answer from advocates is, if you have somebody who is searching for and creating and distributing sexual images of children, that that is harmful as a whole to children. Oftentimes AI-generated pornography of children is based on some real photos, so the faces might actually be a child that exists in the world and then all of a sudden they're engaging in this disgusting act.
Speaker 2:So states like the state I'm in in California it's sort of a gray area we have to report the consumption of child pornography. The question is do we have to report the consumption of AI-generated child pornography? As the state law exists in California right now, we have to report it if someone's creating it and distributing, distributing, disseminating it, but the consumption of it so far does not appear to be in the law. But it's complicated and so all of us get stuck when we meet a person usually a man who is consuming AI generated child pornography, and how we begin to help them, and when we have to do that mandatory report as clinicians. Adult AI-generated porn usually is done with a sextortion or revenge porn angle. It's rare that it's a random generated image. For the most part, it's usually partners or predators.
Speaker 1:Taking someone crafting an image.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They'll take a female celebrity's face, put it on a pornographic movie and then it looks like someone we know and see in the movies is having actual sex, right, and that's obviously harmful to the person whose image it is. And in the cases that I can tell you with clients that I've worked with, I always talk about a school teacher that I worked with where she lost her job. It was a small town. She was a well-known school teacher. Her ex-boyfriend put her image on these pornographic videos but because the town isn't educated on AI-generated porn, they assumed she had created a pornographic movie and so she immediately got reported. Because she works with kids, she lost her job. She had to leave her hometown. Her whole life was destroyed because of this revenge porn, ai generated video Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:What's wrong with people. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's an interesting piece in the literature so far too. You know, in sexual violence in the military we see men and women equally being victims, right? If you look at the statistics, it's a bit misleading because women have higher statistics of being sexually assaulted in the military than men, and that just has to do with the number of the end.
Speaker 2:But if you look, at like the raw numbers. There's equal there with children who are sexually assaulted, with women or girls it's one in four. With males it's one in eight. So still pretty comparable. But when we're looking at technology and sexual violence, we're looking at nine out of 10 cases women are the victims. Sexual violence we're looking at nine out of 10 cases women are the victims and I find that very fascinating that it is if we talk about gender-based violence. Technology and sexual violence are very much gender-based, at women specifically.
Speaker 1:What fascinates you about that? What is that?
Speaker 2:That.
Speaker 2:I mean, this might sound silly, but in two decades of doing sexual assault research, I've always been dispelling the stereotypes that it's. You know, it's just women. You know I've been trying to show that this is an epidemic that is non-discriminatory of gender and in this case it's not that way. It is absolutely a form of gender-based violence. So I just I guess my 20 years of trying to dispel that myth I can't right now and it feels harmful and hurtful. Right, it's like. This is, this is. I mean, all forms of rape, of course are violent and personal, but you know this is so premeditated. Right To create a video, to harness an image. You know there's so much emotion, hurt, length of time, you know, to do these things and to distribute this material and you know a lot of the survivors I work with.
Speaker 2:they will work with like internet companies like Reddit or Pornhub, and try to get the images down and the perpetrators are watching and they'll repost it. So it's not just the single incident trauma, it is ongoing and as a treating therapist I'm really stuck because, you know, with sexual assault there's a start and end point, right. Domestic violence it's a bit longer, you know. They might be in that relationship for years, but usually by the time they get to me there's been an end point. With technology and sexual violence there's rarely an end point. You know I am now working with mothers who are having to tell their teenage sons hey, if you ever consume porn online, I just want to warn you. I'm one of the most watched videos on Pornhub and it was not consensual. Those conversations are crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, let's say, actors don't Google mommy, right? Okay, I think what you're talking about to a certain extent, in trying to dispel the myth is about how we want to have an answer and categorize something. Oh, this is something that men do, something that women suffer from, this is something that women do and men suffer from, and never the twins shall meet. We want these simple answers, and none of them are simple. They all exist on a spectrum. It's not. Men suffer from sexual violence. They absolutely do. And for children, depending on the environment, it's what's available.
Speaker 1:Boys in the Catholic Church, they're more over than females. And so you can start picking apart the numbers and nuance it by category, nuance it by, by what is happening for a person in a school system or in a church system or in a or something else, and you can find the numbers. And then you look at this kind of you know this large scale and even transnational if you will, and you start to get these kind of piece out. Do you think that the AI generated porn piece? Being more male being? You know, being the co-founder of the Neurodiverse Collective, you know that by and large, from a brain scan standpoint, men have a tendency to be a little more visual by nature.
Speaker 1:We suffer from tech addiction a little more than females, numbers wise, and so there's also the disconnect piece. I can sit here and perseverate on something that's in front of me. It's not a real human being, it's a screen and I can do. You think that there are linkages to this kind of being on the being on a spectrum and having this stuff kind of show up and be OCD, like it's obsessive. It keeps showing up, the person keeps reposting it and creating more and everything else. Do you see linkages in one diagnosis to this trauma area?
Speaker 2:You know I think that's a better question for someone who studies perpetration more than I do, but I can tell you that in the autism community I'm dealing with way more victims than I am perpetrators. It's you know we have found that sexual violence is much more common than we anticipated and seen more readily than you know. We treat trauma at the mental health collective. We're known for that. So we have a lot of survivors at the mental health collective, but the neurodivergent collective, it's you know, just as much or more. I do understand where you're going, though I think that I do understand where you're going, though I think that you know that could maybe be the case 15 years ago, they know how to grab an app.
Speaker 1:Follow the directions, can do it. Pick some pics and say hey, create this and they'll get they'll get a product they'll get a product.
Speaker 2:That's right. So you know that and I think there's a responsibility on us, as are really on tech creators, on how they can monitor that. You know, with my consulting with Meta, one of our first meetings it was pre pandemic, which feels like 100 years ago, I don't remember who's 17, or 18, or 19, but one of the they were asking, you know, when these things get posted on their platforms, what are the advocates ideas of taking them off? And because Meta has that um base recognition software right when you can update, you know, I don't, I don't know if you're on Facebook, but you know you can upload an image of yourself and it'll identify everybody in the picture right Based on who's been tagged before, and so they.
Speaker 2:They can now use that technology when someone reports a sexual image and try to find it and take it off their platform that way, but a lot of other platforms won't take responsibility for it, and so you know. So that, I think, is something we need to have a bigger conversation about. It should not be this easy to create harmful pornographic material, and with AI, it can easily detect if it's porn. Right, we can put those filters on these platforms. So let's do that to create a, a sense of you know, not a porn platform.
Speaker 1:You can't post it here, um, and then probably on platforms that are porn platforms like porn hub, some measure, some additional measure of validating source. You know, I I really don't know anything about that end of the world, honestly, but you know it's harmful and it gets out there. I mean, you've got major industries advertising on Pornhub. Now you had some guy run for office and he put some of his advertisement on Pornhub. That's how prominent, it is.
Speaker 2:It's prominent and Pornhub has been in a lot of lawsuits. Uh, because they have, you know, in some. I don't want to entangle in these lawsuits, but you know, it is believed that Pornhub is aware that some of the videos that they put for free, you know, to get people to pay for their platform, those videos have been reported as sexual assaults and non-consensual. But Pornhub, you know, with my understanding, has not been motivated to take it down.
Speaker 1:Hands off. It generates revenue, right, right, right. So what you're telling me is, the problem is revenue generation.
Speaker 2:Capitalism at the end of the day. Capitalism at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Capitalism is the problem. I knew it.
Speaker 2:Capitalism is the problem, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we were talking earlier about men and women and you know how we sort of separate this in a sexual violence lens and I think you know there's a lot of tech companies are owned by men, right? A lot of people who code and create the algorithms are male. Tech is still very much a male-dominated industry and I'm not sure that the awareness and the empathy of the effects of this are there, like a female-dominated industry might be more conducive to lean into. Industry might be more conducive to lean into, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do we titrate that in what's your? What's your thoughts about the solution for something like that?
Speaker 2:Well, we haven't talked about senior citizens, and we don't have to, but I do think it's important to note older adults above the age of I think it's 55 are the second most common victims of revenge porn. Really yes, no kidding.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, I think we talk about it from a child perspective and we should, because they're developing minds and their safety in the world really matters. But I think as a society, we need to be talking about this generally. You know, in the same way that you hear about, you know, STD epidemics and nursing homes, Right, and that's doing education about sort of how to how to have safer intimacy. You know, I think we need to have that discussion too. I'm a big proponent of tech education at a school level, you know, as part of sex ed, for example. But I also, you know you're not required to take a class as a parent, but I do think we need to push more parent education and vis-a-vis, hopefully, grandparent education and what this is and how to keep yourself safe and what this is and how to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1:Well, pushing sex ed is always. It's this big topic, I mean, I know why it is. It seems silly that it gets restricted in the way that it does, because it's really important that kids know. You know, one of the things and I think this is, if we're talking about porn addiction and we're talking about these images, right, something I told my, my kids, my two, my two boys, is, it said look, you're gonna run across it, it's gonna happen, it's out there, it's all over the place, it's free, it's accessible, there's no stoppers, not really. You press a button, says I'm 18, doesn't check. The thing that you need to realize is that the more you train your brain and your eye if you will quote unquote to utilize those images for stimulation, for where you get your arousal, the more that image becomes the thing that arouses you and the less the real the real thing one day doesn't stimulate you and you can create a problem for yourself. You can create a cognitive issue for yourself.
Speaker 1:If you spend too much time with this material. My advice to you is stay away from it and you know, and even if you do run into it, impose limits for yourself, because one day you'll have a partner and that partner will look nothing like anything that's online.
Speaker 2:That's right, and won't want to have sex in those ways that you're seeing.
Speaker 1:In those ways either. You know all these are. These positions are designed for camera. That's right For the little amount of porn that I've seen in my life. I can promise you that's not what you're going to probably do in the pet trip.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I'm just guessing, I don't want to know, but let's separate these two things. Yeah, yeah and in order to have, you know, healthy intimacy and a healthy sex life. And you know, intimacy is not just about sex, it's about touch and it's about togetherness and it's about all these other features, none of which exist in Videos online right. Almost almost none. There's very little out there that would. That shows things that include intimacy, include relationship and all these other things it's like. So please be careful and don't cause a problem for yourself.
Speaker 2:That will cause you also, and has caused for many performance issues in the bedroom I was going to say erectile dysfunction is causally causally linked to the amount of pornography that you consume. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. So when they heard that, they were like whoa, wait, you know, and it, like that's just that, didn't take me a minute, like that's just a dose of education.
Speaker 2:Well, todd, I want to compliment you because I think having sons is such a responsibility I mean, being a parent is a responsibility generally but you know, I I bring it reminds me of my good friend's interaction with her son, where he was a teenager and in his first relationship, and she checks his text messages from time to time and she came across this conversation of hey, I want to send you a sexy photo. And he was like are you sure I don't want to pressure you to do that? And she had, you know, called me and was like I'm so proud of my son because of all the ways that I've been trying to tell him about this. He liked it was like the the girlfriend was pushing for let me send this to you already, you know, and him trying to talk her out of it. And you know, having those conversations with boys is so important.
Speaker 2:You know and we know from, like, a sexual violence standpoint, that perpetrator intervention is so key, and especially college age sexual assault at bars and fraternity parties and things. But you need to know about it, right, you need to have conversations about it. And when it comes to your own personal sexual health, like how amazing, todd, that you were able to have conversations with your sons about being intimate and sharing intimacy. I mean God, how many parents actually sit down with their kids and separate what is sex and what is intimacy? Those are two important topics that I'm not sure get talked about the dinner table and where do they?
Speaker 2:get talked about At parties, you know, with other people who are just learning too, and I bet intimacy and connection and love is not part of those younger person conversations, you know. So anyway, compliments to you for doing that.
Speaker 1:Well, I, you know I say this it's like I appreciate being complimented. Everybody likes compliments, right? Um, but to me it's an awful low bar. Yeah, to me like's an awful low bar. Yeah, to me like having good conversations so that your kids are educated about things and they're prepared to be in the world in a healthy and sustainable and, you know, adaptive kind of way. Right, just makes sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, I'm trained, I've worked with adolescents, I've worked with large populations of people with various levels of mental health and and lack of health conditions. Um, and I'm a, I'm well educated and I've got all the benefits that that that might entail. Uh, and, but I also a lot of what I know is not what I got from school, what I got from from, you know it's it's. It's what I got from being drawn towards things that caused me to address issues of my own or feel healthy, or have better relationships, or do explore being a human being on this planet, being a responsible male, which is, which is just, you know, for all the males out there, it's just as much about being vulnerable as it is about being tough. It's like this mythology that's out there for males, it it? I know why it's there.
Speaker 1:I wish I knew how to solve it for guys, because I think what they're? They're, they're desperately afraid and they don't know how to behave. And they've got these, this dichotomy of of conflicting kind of roles they're supposed to embrace Tough and tough but not sensitive and you can't cry, and you know you've got all these messages and none of that's sustainable and none of it's real Right and vulnerability is just as important to a healthy human being as anything else. And so you know where's the place for all that stuff that can live?
Speaker 1:You know, I got a group of friends that we talk about how to help males, but there still seem to be a large crowd of guys out there that are just following this party line, the red pill societies and those you know, and even people who are educated are. You know, I give Jordan Peterson a hard time because I'm like you know, not all his points are not necessarily bad. He makes some good points, but he's just a jerk about it and he's aggro about it and he's he's all he's. He's got this very male centric approach and I think he just doesn't do people any services. He's not, he's not really making the world a better place.
Speaker 2:So having those role models I think is so important and I don't know that parents I mean, I'm curious your thoughts here as a parent, coach and educator. But you know, I'm not sure parents recognize how much of a role model they are and how much you know their own conversations with their kids about their marriage or their divorce or their dating life has an impact on how kids create their own internal world of intimacy and relationships. You know, and it's, it's, yeah, it's hard to help parents recognize because, as a, you know, I'm raising a teen now and I know she loves me but, man, she does her best to make me feel insignificant sometimes, you know, and and only because I'm in the field that I'm in, it's like, I know I'm not. You know, I know all of these interactions matter, but if I didn't have the education I would throw my hands up too, you know and so I'm curious how do you work with parents in that way and tell them that what, what are the obstacles of them recognizing their own?
Speaker 1:influence. A lot of times, parents are, of course, dealing with crisis, as you know, when we, when they're working with us, but, you know, a lot of times it's all about the, the fear of making your child uncomfortable or engaging in conversations that are sticky or setting limits or any of these other things. And if you're, if you're afraid to set healthy limits and boundaries with your child, the chances are good you're also afraid to have those kind of close, touchy conversations with them. Um, and I, one of the solutions I think is actually important to name uh, in my experience at least, is that, um, there's always the big talk, right? You know you gotta have the big sex talk, you've got to have the big. You know, whatever talk it is that you have to have with your child, responsibility, talk, don't drive your car too fast. Talk whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And you know I, I'm a big fan of information Like, look, you're going to be in plenty of places where you're going to decide what you do. I won't be there to tell you or to manage it or to control it. Yeah, whether it's drugs or it's sex or it's how fast you drive your car and all these other things, let me just give you some information. Yeah, if you do this, the more chance you do this, the higher risk you are of getting a car accident. How fast do you drive when you hang out with friends? If somebody hands you drugs? You don't know what's in it, you don't know where it came from and there are all kinds of substances out there. They can literally kill you.
Speaker 1:The buyer beware goes for everyone. If you're out there doing these things, if you're out there engaging in intimate relationship, you need to. It needs to be consensual. People don't think you need to tell your children that that sex needs to be consensual. I'm like but you do, but you do not because it's a foreign concept. So they don't, they don't know anything. And and giving them anything and I they, they don't have to be big conversations Like, let me give you a chunk. I want to give you a chunk of information right now. You do with it what you will, but this is what you need to know about what's going to happen and what happens to people and what are the consequences of the these behaviors. And that takes me. It takes me two minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good luck, son. Enjoy the prom. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's politically relevant right now too. You know there's conversations in school boards and, um, you know, school districts generally, around taking consent out of sex education, you know, and that is a scary proposition idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's um working with sexual assault victims as long as I have. I can tell you that um there have been many instances when I hear um the experience from the victim where in no, I'm not questioning her experience that it was a non-consensual act, but when I hear sort of the events on the other side of the man's side I'm not sure he even knew to ask for consent. Look for consent, recognize that. You know when you're this intoxicated. You know when someone freezes. They need to be responsive to you. You know things like that, that.
Speaker 1:Clueless to any of that.
Speaker 2:Just clue, yeah, just overwhelmed by their own sense of sensory experience and maybe what they've seen on Pornhub, and not paying at all attention to the person that they're with.
Speaker 1:Which baffles me.
Speaker 2:but Right, right, but it's like that consent conversation of like, are you okay with this? It's a simple question, you know, and the fact that we would remove that from education and schools is beyond me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that are beyond me these days, but, yeah, my favorite video about consent is the british one about tea yes it's like if you ask the person if they wanted tea and they said no and still give them tea if they were asleep, you wouldn't even ask them if they wanted tea. You know it's like it's perfect it's absolutely perfect, oh lar.
Speaker 2:Larry David does a great on Curb your Enthusiasm His character. Did you see that? Is it okay if I unbutton your blouse? Is it okay if I put my right hand on your left breast?
Speaker 1:It's a very exaggerated consent conversation but a great parody on you know this conversation generally well, I think that we opened up a series of remaining rabbit holes that you and I could go start running out for a little while, but, um, I have, like you, opened a world up to me that, uh, I think I need to be more aware of, just so I can educate people that are dealing with it and everything else.
Speaker 1:But I certainly look for solutions and sound like you know, I'm grateful to be with you as one of those people that's out to make a world a better, co-conspirator. Making the world a better place, um, good to be your co-conspirator.
Speaker 2:Thank you for nerding out with me on this very important conversation in my mind and um very important conversation in my mind and we're not having it enough, so thank you for bringing it to this platform and talking about it.
Speaker 1:Well, Dr K, we call you Dr K because you're Dr Kristen.
Speaker 2:Dunn Master Weatherly.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. It's been great to have you on the show. I really appreciate you being here and I'm sure we're going to do it again.
Speaker 2:Thanks again, it's been fun.
Speaker 1:It's been Headed Side Mental Health with Todd Weatherly. Hope to see you next time, thank you. I'm used to the legal arts in here in here, I'm a little power. Oh, oh, oh, I'm used to the legal arts in here in here, I'm a little power. Oh, oh, oh, I'm used to the legal arts in here in here, I'm a little power. Oh, oh, oh, I'm used to the legal arts in here.
Speaker 2:In here I'm a little power. Oh oh oh, power, oh oh oh. Thank you. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here.
Speaker 1:I need to find my way home. Find my way home.