Teenage Sexuality
Speaker: Ron Johnson (click here for biography)
Primetime Summit 1

Transcript of Proceedings
June 4, 1999

SONNY: When I first saw Ron Johnson, I was attending some sort of a conference in LA, and Ron was one of the speakers. I just said, this is a man I've got to meet.

I found out that Ron had spent most of his teenage years doing terrible things and spending a lot of time in jail. One day he woke up and decided it was not the way he wanted to live. Ron changed his life, came out here, got a Masters in Public Health, has started a non-profit organization that works with young fathers. Ron is one of my heroes. These are the guys who are working at ground level, one-on-one, with the young men who are part of this equation of teenage sexuality and teenage pregnancy. I will not go on with my glowing fan talk about Ron, but you will, I think when you're finished with him, become equally an adherent of Ron Johnson. Ron.

RON JOHNSON: Good morning. Oh, we have so little time and so much to say but I am really glad that you are here so that we can engage in this dialog because the medium that you are involved in certainly has impact on people. I don't think anybody can argue that. Let me say some things about the last subject we spoke about first, and that is violence. A young lady here asked a very important question earlier. She said tell me about the history of your husband. Tell me about the history of this man. And when we examined his history, we found out that, yes, his father abused him and so the cycle goes on. Later in our talk, we heard some stats about homicide rates amongst African-Americans.

And it becomes important to me, as an African-American male to point out that, if you look at the history of my people in this country, we have been the victims of violence and that attitude has been internalized. I work with young men on the street and now they now commit that violence against each other. Your medium has tremendous impact because in the changing of the mind, you need a changing of the song, a changing of the thinking and a changing of images. So that's my take for you on violence. If we have more time, I'll come back to that. But I would like to speak to you about young man and It becomes very, very important that one of the things that we become concerned with in this medium is that we are not just there to occupy a young man's time, but rather to develop that young man. For the young, for the women that are in this room, look at the men in this room as I talk about the four things that boys learn on the street about manhood. It matters not if that boy is black, white, red, brown or yellow, there are four things that boys learn on the street about manhood that impact violence and sexuality. Number one on the street, boys learn that if you want to be a man, and be accepted as a man, and acknowledged as a man, you have to have some money. The more money you have, the more man you are. In fact, on the street it, it matters not how you got the money or from whom you got the money, it just matters that you have money. And that's why little boys can tell you the kind of shirts they want or jeans they want or shoes they want, because they received the message that says, the more things you have, the more man you are.

Number two on the street, boys learn that if you want to be a man and be accepted as a man, you must be violent. And now, if there's anybody in the room who's a mom who's saying, oh, no, Ron, not my son. I work in Hollywood, I write scripts. Your son, too. You go to any school in America, look at boys K through six, K through five and one of the things that you'll see that, if a boy perceives another boy as a punk or a chump or a mark, he'll shake him down for his loose change, shake him down for his lunch, shake him down for whatever he wants from him because boys receive a message very early in life that says, if you are not violent enough, at least to a point where you can defend yourself, you will not be respected as a man. And that's why you and I were taught when we were kids, if somebody hits, what? Hit them back. And it becomes important that we no longer teach that to kids because, as I tell parents all the time that kids no longer hit back, they shoot back. They drive by your house and shoot back. And because so many of them can't read, they wind up at the wrong address, shooting at the wrong people.

On the street, number three is, if you want to be a man and accepted as a man and acknowledged as a man, you must be sexually active. There are no boys walking around on the street saying, hey, check it out, my name is Big Bank Hank, I have a lot of money, I'm real tough, and I'll punch you in your face, but you know me, I'm a virgin. And this why boys lie so much about how sexually active they are. In fact, if you were to ask the women in this room, most of you had an experience when you were a teenager that some boy on your block, in your church, at your school told his friends he had his way with you, had sex with you, and he lied about that because he thought that would increase his standing amongst his friends.

And so it becomes important when we try to develop young men that we teach them, and I'm going to talk to you as I talk to young men, that we teach them to think with the big head and not the little one. And it becomes important that we really work with them and understand that the same messages that we send to girls, we cannot send to boys because boys and girls have a separate and distinct reality. You know, when we try to tell boys, don't have sex because somebody might become pregnant, they know it's not true. Just think about those of us in the room who are sexually active. Just think about if you had a child every time you had sex. This would be your living room. Then we tell kids, well, don't have sex because somebody may contract some disease and that is true. But when you're 15, 16, 18 years old, you're really not concerned about that so much. And then tell kids don't have sex because God said so. And that's good, but kids need to know why. And when you're talking about boys, it has to be couched in something that's masculine. I'm concerned that one of the things that we do amongst boys is raise the mantle of abstinence. And people say to me all the time, Ron, that does not work. I work with boys within that context and it does work. But here's the context. And it's right on T.V. Before the big match between two boxers, the trainer tells his fighter not to have sex. Why? Because we want your heart and head focused on the fight. If you watch the Super Bowl, every year during the Super Bowl, there's a segment that shows that the team players and their families are separated. The family's in one hotel, and the team's in another hotel. Why? Because they don't want that football player to have sex and they want his heart and head focused on the game. And so with the young man that I am working with, who are severely at risk, I have to work with them around that idea that your sex drive is linked with your most primal drive, your drive to survive. But if you can master your sex drive, you can master anything in your life. And so the package is masculine, it's attractive, and so it becomes very, very important that we understand our impact.

And then, number four, of course, on the street, if you're really severely at risk, there are boys who think that you have to be sent off to jail and that will make you a man. And as I explain to my students all the time, in jail, your manhood is defined by your capacity to protect your anal cavity. And that's too narrow of a way for us to decide who is and who is not a man. You may think, but, Ron, this also is not my son. Haven't you noticed all of a sudden, everybody wants to be a gangster? Everybody wants to be hard. If your son wears baggy pants and a big plaid shirt, what do you think that dress comes from? It comes out of the jailhouse.

So, when I meet young man who think that money and violence and sex and jail make them a man, I tell them all the time, go home and conduct an experiment. Go home and lock yourself in the bathroom and pretend you're in jail. Take your penis and two dollars, place it in your hand, make a fist and pretend to be violent What you'll find out is that these four things don't make you a man, they make you a fool locked in the bathroom with two dollars and your penis in your hand. And if you get real violent, and you're of age, you'll end up with a wet two-dollar bill.

So, the question becomes that in this medium, what should we do with respect to boys and sexuality? I say two things to you. One of things I would urge you to do is to really sit down, to make some time, to visit communities and sit with young people and learn about them. Llearn how they think because I work with kids everyday and one of the things that they say and a thing that I said when I was a kid, by the time it's on the screen, it's old news. Because you are not linked with kids who are on the street now

About sexuality, to shoot for the optimal outcome, you can entertain and educate. There's no romance amongst a lot of our children. Between the violent rap music and the hard core rock music, there is no room for romance. If you don't believe me, stop at a mall and look at how many kids you don't see holding hands. Think about that when you and I were kids, it was a big thing to hold hands. In fact, in our music, the songs said from her, nothing you can do can make me untrue to my guy, no handsome face can ever take the place of my guy, he may not be a movie star, but when it comes to being happy, we are. You know the song. There's not a man today who could take me away from my guy. And then I said, you know, uh, when it's cold outside, I have the month of May, I guess you say what could make me feel this way, my girl. The most popular song out today amongst young people is a song by a group called 112. The title of the song is called, it's called, it's called Anywhere. The song talks about, we can have sex anywhere. I want to pull your hair, I want to drag you across the floor. I want to make you holler. There's no romance in their music, there's just sex in their music.

Something was said yesterday that becomes very, very important. It's context. You see, I'm against violence just for the sake of violence. Context is important. Do you realize that if we took all the violence off the screen, we would not be able to show Hamlet on TV or the story of Moses on TV, Or the story of Martin Luther King or Ghandi on TV Because in those stories there's violence. But it's in the context. So, if I had to make an appeal to you, what I would do is this. Link up with someone like me, or someone like Jerry, or link with an agency that works with young people so you can get up to date information about those young people. Number two. Do more than occupy their time. Use that time in this script, in the story to develop that young person. Terminator 2, Arnold Schwartzenegger is a film I use in my program because the violence in the movie was in context, and we show the end of the movie over and over and over and over and over and over, where they're talking about trying to save the world.

It becomes important. My staff told me that my students would not sit down and watch the movie on Gandhi. Ron, it's too long, they won't like it. They loved it. Why? Context. He was a man. Use the medium to teach them about what it means to be a man. Make them understand that you are not a man because you have a penis. You were born with your penis, you'll live with your penis, and if you're lucky, I teach my students, you'll die with your penis but having one will not make you a man. Make them understand, through your writing and your productions, that manhood, just like womanhood, is a social function. It is that which you do as a man, as defined by the needs of your people. If you cannot meet the needs of self, the needs of your family the needs of the group from which you come, collaborate and meet the needs of the world, you cannot call yourself a man.

But understand this in your writing. Birds teach birds how to fly and fish teach fish how to swim, and it's men who'll teach men how to be men. And so, the role models that are placed in front of these young men are very important because they do mean a lot to them.

Because boys can't just be fathers. He must be taught what it means for him to be a father. But the story starts when that baby is born. Once you engage a young man around what it really means to be a man and a father, and he's 17 years old, the last thing in life he wants is another baby. We had 105 teen fathers for three years and we had no repeats, and people were startled by that, and I was not startled at all. I knew it would happen because once you engage a young man into what it really means to be a man and a father, he is willing to wait to have children.

The images that we project to young people are very important. Because we know that young people in America, and particularly young people in the African-American community, are part of the engine that drives popular culture in the world. That's a tremendous responsibility I teach my students. They began to wear baggy pants, now the whole nation and the whole world wears baggy pants. They said rap music would die, wouldn't live, and it's one of the top selling forms of music in the country. In fact, 60 percent of rap music is bought by white teenagers. And your medium affects that engine.

And so, we just need to think about what we want as outcomes for young people. As we portray sexuality, I say portray this one important fact that young people need to learn. How to express affection without having intercourse. If you watch teen movies, there's nothing about romance, it's straight about sex, and they need to learn how to express affection without having intercourse. When you and I were kids, it was a big thing to hold somebody's hand, it's a big thing to kiss and then to tongue kiss. Well, they go straight at having sex because it's in their music, it's in their film, and that's the thing they're being taught on the street. You are not the full solution and nor are you fully the problem. But there are two types of animals in the forest, adults and children. And whether you're a film maker or a parent or a school teacher, a therapist or a counselor, as an adult, you are responsible for the children. Because wherever you see crazy kids, look for crazy adults. Thank you so much.