Show notes
This episode contains frank discussion of porn culture, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse, approached with care and for educational purposes. Listener discretion advised. If you or someone you love needs support, please reach out to a licensed mental-health professional or a crisis resource in your area.
If you're talking about the Cornell 7 in terms of consent training, you are missing the damn plot. Consent training isn't wrong. It's about thirteen years too late. By the time our boys are five, they've already learned the rules of patriarchal world culture: you have to exert power OVER someone else. Women are worth less. Vulnerability is weakness. And you belong by making someone else feel smaller.
Last week I could have worn a hole in the carpet of my office trying to put words to my rage. I have two daughters, 21 and 22, and a son who's a freshman in college. I am smack dab in the middle of this conversation. So I reached out to Cindy Pierce. We'd been introduced, but we weren't close, and she's the only woman I know who is a true expert in this. I laid on my couch, we talked for an hour, and when we hung up I thought... fuck. I wish I'd recorded that. So I texted her over the weekend, and we did.
Cindy goes INTO fraternities and sororities for a living. For 22 years she's been in real, deep conversations with these kids, so when she tells you what's really behind this, she's not guessing. She's hearing it from them. And the first thing she'll tell you: our kids can recite consent in their sleep. That was never the missing piece.
Go listen. And then send it to every mom of a son you know.
What you'll hear:
🔥 Why consent education isn't failing for lack of repetition, and what actually makes it vanish under social pressure
🔥 The default sexuality educator raising our kids (hint: it's not us), what it's teaching them, and how to interrupt it without shame
🔥 Boys' drama is real: group chat kings, targets, and the daily survival pressure nobody is allowed to name, plus the masks underneath ("that's safety in numbers, that's fear dressed up as strength")
🔥 Compliance training: be into it but don't be a slut, be strong but stay thin, speak up but be nice about it, and what that training costs our daughters
🔥 The practical toolbox: social courage in steps, the five-minute timer talk, open-ended questions that actually work, letting kids pay consequences, and raising humans who are kind 98 percent of the time and difficult when it counts
The framework: This episode lives in The Rise. Women our age are the torch bearers, and this is the work: changing the culture our kids inherit, one kitchen table at a time.
About Cindy Pierce: comic storyteller, social sexuality educator, and author. She speaks at schools, colleges, and organizations across the country (yes, she does living-room talks too), and she runs an inn in the New Hampshire woods with her husband. [Check Cindy’s website]
Resources mentioned:
Loved this episode? Rebels Rising is where we do this work together in real time. And a 5-star review is how another torch bearer finds this show. Thirty seconds, and it matters.
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