Cross-Posted from Yes Means Yes Blog.
The mainstream has started to pay attention to the abuse of child porn charges that Harper Jean Tobin and, more recently, I have been on about. This article is not perfect, but it makes two really good points: First, that this is wildly and willfully excessive.
Should Phillip be punished? Yes. Should the six teens in Pennsylvania face consequences? Yes. But let's kick them off cheerleading squads and sports teams. Make them do community service and take classes on sex crimes. Educate other teens on the dangers of sexting. Pay a price, yes, but these young people shouldn't pay for this for the rest of their lives.Second, that this ought to be a wake-up call that teen sexuality will develop, and that parents have a responsibility to shape it, which they cannot do by ignoring it:
The bottom line: We need to educate, not incarcerate, our teens and it has to start with parents.Don't let the culture indoctrinate your little boy or girl about sex before their time. So strike first as a parent.
As parents, if we want to do right by our kids, we have to communicate both our values and information. I've been saying it. It starts with telling toddlers about their bodies, so that we have the foundation to tell teens about all the other stuff -- not just sexting and STIs and pregnancy, but the big thing: how to go from being a kid to being a sexual adult; how they learn to make their own decisions. It's not a bunch of separate topics. It's a unified whole.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Common Sense on Sexting.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12964
I have a hard time understanding why we need to punish the 6 teens from Pennsylvania in the first place. I do, however, think that they need someone to talk to them about the consequences of sending nude pictures of oneself; mainly the fact that once you send something like that you no longer have control of its distribution (i.e. Phillip). And yes, parents do need to educate and talk to their children about their bodies, sexuality, etc. In Phillip's case, yes, he needs to be punished. It is malicious to distribute naked pictures of your exes without their permission. However, I'm not certain that punishment in the case of the 6 teens from Pennsylvania, even if it is community service, is necessary. Teenagers are sexual, and obviously, our society still has not come to terms with that (especially not female sexuality).
Kelsey, I agree that a lot of this isn't really even punishment-worthy, and falls into the category of risks that parents ought to talk to their kids about -- not once, and then breathe a sigh of relief and declare the duty discharged, but continually.
However, for the mainstream media, it seems a certain shocked and punitive attitude towards all expressions of teen sexuality, especially women's, is almost mandatory. See generally Jessica Valenti's new book, Purity Myth, which I loved.
(f/d I'm hardly objective; she's my friend and my editor, and she discussed my Yes Means Yes essay Toward A Performance Model of Sex prominently near the end of the book.)
The important part is that CNN has a really big megaphone, and the message that these prosecutions are abusive and irresponsible is, in my mind, very important. The general tone of moralizing intergenerational disapproval is so common that it's almost wallpaper: kids these days with those clothes and that music ...
I definitely think the most shocking thing about this case was the prosecution! I had a conversation with a friend who was saying that they were just trying to give the kids a lesson and scare them. A lesson? Great. Scare tactics? Not so good. But even so, I'm amazed that anyone could think that charging them as sex offenders is proportionate to the "crime" they committed. It makes me crazy! But how do we combat abusive and irresponsible prosecutions and the horrible messages these cases produce? I'm an activist, and I'm always learning new ways to be engaged, but it just seems like attitudes about sexuality are forever regressing or stagnant, despite the strides that feminists and other social activists have made. What else should we be doing?
I have three ideas.
(1) statutory exemptions. My proposal is here.
(2) a "prosecutor pledge" asking both local and federal prosecutors to agree that child porn and sexual abuse laws were not intended to apply to non-coercive sexual conduct or expression between teens and they will not charge them as such except in extraordinary circumstances. (Asking a prosecutor to agree to never do something is probably a fool's errand.)
(3) seek pardons and commutations. It's always tough for an executive to be "soft on crime," but I think ordinary folks would be shocked by these charges, and they call out for extraordinary relief.
I think that if a teen sends out pictures of themselves, they're stupid but not criminal. They should probably be given a lecture about why this is dangerous, and have their cell phone taken away for awhile or something. They should not be facing criminal charges.
If a teen sends out photos of another teen without their permission, that is much worse. Its not ok to send out nude photos of someone else against their will. In this case, I do think they should be in trouble, but I think child porn is still by far the wrong charge. How about sexual harassment or something like that? Is there ever a case where an adult is prosecuted for sending out pornographic photos of another adult without their permission? What would the charge be in that case?
while i agree that the boys who distributed photos without the girl's permission should face some form of punishment, as a teenaged girl, i find the suggestion that girls only 'sext' to get or keep male approval highly insulting. it implies that because of my age and gender, i can't express my sexuality without it being something i am being coerced into doing for someone else's benefit.
sexting is a practice i have ingaged in personally, not because i wanted to impress someone or i felt like it was expected of me, but because i was horny, bored and unable to see my "special friend" in person. probably the same reasons adults send sexually explicit texts/photos to each other.