Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

This chapter—"A Better Man”—focuses on the story of Sameer. Sameer hooked up with a woman named Anwen. Instead of asking for consent and assessing her comfort level, Sameer forced Anwen to touch him, such as by pushing her head down toward his penis. Anwen was traumatized. Only months later, after attending a training on healthy sexuality, did Sameer understand that he had committed sexual assault. Eventually, Sameer apologized to Anwen, and she forgave him. However, she didn't want his remorse, his shame, his guilt—she wanted to know if he fully understood the impact of his actions.

During the next few months, Sameer and Anwen occasionally interacted. Sameer sought to become an advocate in the area of sexual assault, speaking as someone who had committed assault himself. He and Anwen eventually went through a process of restorative justice; they met to process the experience in an effort to provide healing to Anwen and restoration to Sameer. Sameer tells Orenstein that even as he actively sought to make amends, it was still incredibly difficult for him to not see himself as a monster.

This chapter is the book's most thematically complex: It brings together sexual ethics,