Meet Michal
She/Her/Hers
The Porn Talk Expert & Sexuality Well-Being Advocate
I’m passionate about empowering parents to have ongoing conversations with adolescents about pornography and other sexual topics. I love the connection that is created with parents, and when I started my journey, as a young mother, I realized that there wasn’t a lot of support for parents. We, as parents, might be struggling to start The Porn Talk or feel insecure to discuss pornography and other sexual topics with our teens. We might find it awkward and feel discomfort or shame to talk about it. For many of us, no one actually talked to us when we were teenagers. This is why I’ve become an expert in this field, so I can provide all the information and tools for YOU!
I believe that parents should be the number one SOURCE & RESOURCE of their children’s sexual education. I believe that talking to your teenager openly and honestly about pornography and other sexual topics will strengthen your connection and will support your teen in making healthy sexual decisions.
I follow my vision that all parents should have a loving, supporting and open connection with their teenagers so that their children can make better sexual choices in their lives. And I live my vision by leading sexual education workshops for parents and creating the online community Better Talk The Talk.
And every time I help a parent, I get connected to myself, as a parent, and to how I can support my boys in their sexual journey. I know it can be a challenge, I know it can be awkward because I’m a parent too. As a mother of two boys,
I’m also scared about my children’s future, as I realized that my boys were growing up in a completely different ‘sexual’ world than the one I grew up in.
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How Did I Discover My Passion?In 2009, I participated in a conversation with two young women about men's sexual behavior towards women and sexual expectations from them after they and their partners were exposed to pornography. At the end of that conversation, I realized that these young women, who were only six years younger than me, experienced the sexual world completely differently from how I had experienced it. I love to research, so I went home and started researching about exposure to pornography and its influences on teenagers’ sexuality. I was a young mother with two young boys, and the findings from my research scared me. I realized that if we, the parents, won’t talk about our real sexuality, our children will believe the fake sexuality they see online. So I started to talk with other parents about sex and sexuality. Fast forward to six years ago (by then I had moved to the States from Israel and figured out how to start life from scratch in a new country) when I started working with parents and supporting them in having The Talk with their children.
Over the years, after I have earned my Master’s Degree in Public Policy, I have worked with many parents. For several years I worked with Planned Parenthood of New York City as a Parent Peer Educator, supporting parents in different communities and neighborhoods to have The Talk with their children. I also started to lead workshops for parents both in Hebrew and in English, focusing not only on The Talk but also on the Digital Age and online pornography and its influence on our children’s sexuality. I met and talked to many parents around the City: many of them spoke other languages besides English, some were born in the US and some were not. I realized that no matter where you are from, the language you speak, your religion, or your skin color, we, as parents, want the same thing – that our children will be safe and will grow up to be independent and can make responsible decisions for their future.
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We also share similar struggles when it comes to having The Porn Talk with our children: awkwardness, embarrassment, feeling insecure since our parents didn’t talk to us, and sometimes shame or judgment.
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Today I also teach sexual education in some middle schools in NYC. Teaching students helped me realized even more how much teenagers are curious about this topic, they want to know, and they are also willing to LISTEN!
This is why I want to help YOU, the parent, to have a powerful connection with your child. A connection that has loving, supporting, and open conversations with your children, so that they can make better sexual choices in their life.
