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Some Sanity Around Sexting
While in DC we’ve got THE TEA PARTY & THE CIRCUS, in other news…
The NYTimes reports on a real problem that needs to be addressed, not criminalized:
In most states, teenagers who send or receive sexually explicit photographs by cellphone or computer — known as “sexting” — have risked felony child pornography charges and being listed on a sex offender registry for decades to come.
But there is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook.
Slate’s Emily Bazelon reported this week on a federal court rebuke of a district attorney who cracked down on three girls over seminude photos. It’s an area of interest for her. Earlier she had a piece asking when should sexting be illegal?
TechCrunch links to a Pew report finding that kids who buy their own phones are four times as likely to sext. And NYMagazine reminds us that older people do it too. Radley Balko had a January column on “the boneheaded logic behind treating ‘sexting’ teens as if they were child pornographers.”
5 Responses to “Some Sanity Around Sexting”
Well, “boneheaded” is a pretty good description of anyone who would prosecute as a sex offender a teenage girl who took a picture of herself, or had her picture taken, in a bra or swimsuit. You prosecute perpetrators who take advantage of young people, not the young people who are doing something really foolish or being taken advantage of. What I cannot, for the life of me understand, is why this is so bloody hard for prosecutors and law enforcement to figure out. Maybe they don't enough real crime to keep them busy.
I can agree with that side. I've also read about some guys pressuring girls to give them the photos as trophies to show off, often assuring them that no one else will ever see them (yeah right). Sorry, but those guys are fair game in my book.
Prof E,
If they are being coerced to provide photos, those doing the coercing should be dealt with. Those being coerced are victims and should not be victimized twice by the tactics of over zealous law enforcement. The nuance is how you deal with the ones doing the pressuring. Sex offender labelling may be over the top in some cases. How about criminal coercion, prosecuted in juvenile court? Extreme cases, involving violence or physical threat to force the victim into compliance would ratchet up in my book.
As always, you raise an interesting subset of issues.
[...] Some Sanity Around Sexting (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
Well, of course things have to be balanced out. Right now, guys are circulating these things amongst themselves, usually without the girl knowing it. But of course, for every crime, there's an equal and opposite crime. People, probably more guys than girls, will attempt to frame other guys that they don't like. Many guys would attempt to say that the girl insisted on sending the pictures to them, and face it, a few would. I could even imagine some tricky girls using the pictures for blackmail purposes (stage 1: my boyfriend would have only my sexts on his phone. stage 2: do what I ask or I'll say that you forced me.)
Of course, there's always the parenting angle in here also. If a juvenile has a collection of pictures on his phone, what responsibility do the parents have? Can the girl's parents sue?
And yes, the guys are at a disadvantage here, but there's some physical differences that account for that, and I don't see them going away anytime soon.
Another interesting set of problems brought about by new technology.