This story is just ridiculous. Three girls ("14 or 15" years old) apparently took nude pictures of themselves on their cellphones and sent them to three teenage boys. "Police said the girls are being charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys face charges of possession." While someone, somewhere (parents and friends, maybe?), might legitimately be concerned that there is something inappropriate going on between the teenagers, it seems patently absurd to me that the girls would receive child pornography charges for taking pictures of themselves. From the article, it sounds like they weren't even engaged in any kind of sex act in the photo -- "It was a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude." Is a girl taking a nude self-portrait harming herself? If we think so, what does that reveal about how we think about teenage girls and their bodies?
Furthermore, it looks like the girls are being punished for what other people might do with the pictures -- sort of a preemtive "blame the victim" mentality.
'It's very dangerous,' said [the police Captain]. 'Once it's on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture. You don't realize what you are doing until it's already done.'
That's right -- watch out, girls, because every individual that might react to your behavior, even in the distant future, even through many degrees of separation, is not responsible for their actions -- you are.
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I completely agree that it is ridiculous the girls are being charged (and possibly the boys too, since you can't necessarily control what is sent to you over a cell phone, so we don't know how much of an 'accessory' these boys were to the crime).
When I've discussed this case with other people (and even reading discussions about it on feminist blogs), lots of people don't think there is anything wrong with the girls being charged. Most people seem to make comments like "we need to deter young people from doing this" (which may be true, but just because someone thinks young people shouldn't do something, doesn't mean it should be illegal). Secondly, people defend the charges by saying these pictures could be viewed by pedophiles, but as you've already said, that's blaming the victim for something that may happen in the future. I've also heard the argument that if they girls don't get charged, then pedophiles will just make children take the pics of themselves no crime would be committed. But that is wrong, even if children take pics of themselves, under coercion of a pedophile, it is still only the pedophile who is committing a crime (exploiting children).
If these girls had just taken their clothes off for these boys (in person), in most places it wouldn't be illegal (since they are close in age). Another thing that comes to mind is if a 13 year old 'willingly' had a sexual relationship with a 30 year old, they only charge the 30 year old with statutory rape, they don't charge the 13 year old with 'exploiting herself'.
Wow, I hadn't considered it from the point of view of a pedophile making them take pictures of themselves. That could be even more problematic if the kids taking the pictures are charged for what a pedophile forced them to do.
Other than that, I agree that it is ridiculous. Girls are constantly being told that they do not get to make decisions about their own bodies. We need to be helping them to make choices that are right for them, rather than continuing to shame and punish them, whatever reason they chose to do this.
What a mind f**k for these girls. Everywhere - EVERYWHERE they see pics of naked and half naked women (even on skateboards!) that tells them indirectly it's Ok and what makes them valuable - but then... Really though shouldn't this be something for the parents of all the children involved to sort out why on earth is it criminal? Oye!
The judicial system really must learn how to differentiate sex crimes and innocent teenage sexual exploration.
No, it's not wise to post photos you may regret over the internet, but criminalizing the girls for doing it?!? On one hand we have a culture that tells girls they are the sum of their body parts, which compels them to post these sort of photos to seem "daring" and "sexy", and on the other hand we prosecute them, sending the message that not only are they the sum of their parts, but that they shall have no say in how those parts are used.
I feel bad for these girls.
As a side note -- I think it's interesting to consider that we have absolutely no clue what was going on with the girls when they did this or why they did it. This is a little personal, but I know that I might've done something like this at that age if I were a little *more* comfortable with my body, since I was going through a pretty intense sort of sexual discovery period. I had a long-distance boyfriend when I was 15 who I absolutely would've sent suggestive phone-pics to (maybe not full-on nudity, but still) if I wasn't so anxious about whether I looked the way I was "supposed" to look. My point is that at the very least I'm not convinced that there's anything *inherently* wrong with what they did, and that it's not necessarily indicative of them giving into pressures or seeking attention or whatever -- maybe they're just exploring doing sexy stuff or something. The situation could of course also be totally sketchy -- I just think that jumping to conclusions about that is sort of revealing about the underlying assumptions we make about teenage girls and sexuality (which is, of course, very much related to assumptions made about grown-up women and sexuality, since we were all girls once).
(It's probably also relevant that we didn't have camera-phones when I was 15, haha).
I read that not an insignificant number of boys are sending around sexually suggestive photos of themselves too. It's not just the girls, although they do seem to wind up getting into more trouble over this. But I suppose Photoshop never crossed anybody's mind, eh? I mean a couple of dark bars over your face should be enough to keep out of too much trouble if in the event you do get caught up in a careless moment.
I wouldn't count on the legal system to come to the rescue. I think the best bet is to educate young people to the real life assholery of many people and the consequences of this.
And folks it ain't just kids. Who knows how many photos, sex tapes, etc have made their way of the hands of the original owners? People have taken their computers in for service and had stuff snatched of their machine. In a tech magazine ( the december edition, but I don't remember the name, sorry) it was reported that a student was charged for rigging friends' laptops (said he could repair them) with some kind of device such that the camera would record when it detected motion and send him a feed (how is this even possible??) He got countless intimate moments of several women and sold that shit online. This just goes to show how low people are.
Confiscating banned electronic devices is one thing, but the fact that the school can just look through the students' pictures and messages for no real reason is simply disgusting. As is the rest of this story.