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Seems to be the latest popular news buzz is 'sexting'

Apparently there have been a couple instances now where teens have been charged with creating or distributing child **** because of fairly innocent cell phone pictures of themselves or friends.

The debate centers around the lack of appropriate laws and the intent of the perp.

Here is one such story - but there are oodles hitting the front pages.

What's the answer?

Are teens committing a crime when they snap a cell-pic of themselves or a friend that reveals a boob a butt or perhaps more?







Edited, Mar 12th 2009 5:32pm by Elinda

It's ridiculous.

The ONLY consideration should be whether the kid involved was coerced.

What about it?

Should five year olds playing "doctor" be charged with sexual assault? No, in my opinion.

Should teenagers exploring sex together be so charged? No, it's stupid. It's a non-issue. It's an artifact of Puritanism.

I was thinking about this after reading that story early this morning. All kids, especially teens, have some sort of underlying obsessive curiousity about sex. Some act out on it, some just think about it, while others are vocal about it. When I was in school it was whispers and people braggin' about screwin' the popular guy/girl. It's always been there. Kids have access to internet ****, magazine ****, so on and so forth. It's been like this for a very long time.

Now just because technology has given kids access to alternative ways to flirt/tease/etc., it's suddenly a horribly atrocious act of child pornography? The overly sensitive way in which we handle things like this is absurd. Kids will be kids...this is a fact of life. They'll do what they're not suppose to, defy the rules...most times simply because they want to be defiant. It's stupid to think "Oh, some 15 year old girl texted a pic of herself to some 15 year old guy...FELONY!"

Well, yes, it is. How much more sane would it be to demystify sex and treat it as a matter of (wonderful, essential, and very important) fact?

But, you know. Without all the surrounding angst, terror and shame we'd probably lose out on some really good art.

The thing is, a lot of these pictures can end up circling much wider than initially intended. A guy goes, "Dood, look what I hit last night", sends it to a friend, who sends it to another friend, who puts it on photobucket...

Is just sending them between friends a problem? Hell no. But when the photographed person feels threatened or exposed when the whole world has access to nude pics of them, and can't get them taken down, things get complicated. And I believe that's what the article's main concern is.

Well, okay. Maybe there needs to be some punishment in place for distributing someone's likeness without their consent (maybe there already is; I dunno). But it seems to me that again, this is the sort of thing that parents should be able to discuss with teenagers.

Don't trust a guy you barely know to keep his mouth shut. Don't trust a guy you barely know to keep your pictures to himself. And don't trust a jilted lover to act like anything but a braying jackass.

I think when both parties are under the age of consent, but they both swear it was consentual, and they're more upset that the pictures were leaked than they are about them being taken in the first place . . . any charges should be thrown out.

When I was in first grade, me and the girl next to me had a newfound fascination for penises and we doodled them in the notes we passed. Damn, if Mrs. Avery had ever seen those notes, she would have had a heart attack.

That, of course, opens the wide world of "He says it was consentual, she says it wasn't". Or vice versa.

That's generally the case, but the problem has been with child pornography where the pictures of children that look innocent but become objectified by pedophiles and predators.

There was a federal case a couple of years ago that flew under the radar and I wish I could find it to link. But the main defense being used was that the pictures of the children were not sexually explicit in anyway, but the prosecution was arguing that because these pictures were in the possession of sexual predators, the intent of these sexual predators were to exchange these pictures for some kind of sexual gratification. I don't remember if there was a conviction, but it's clear that intent and reason of why these pictures are being passed are a factor.

This is a common concern with child entertainers. Let's say that my daughter did a photo shoot in her swimsuit. The pictures are harmless for our uses, they are for her portfolio. But if a sexual predator somehow got his hands on those pictures, I certainly would be flipping out. Look at what happened with Miley Cyrus with her Vanity Fair shoot. It started a debate as to whether those pictures were appropriate for a 15 year old girl, even though she, her father, the photographer and others thought the shoot was fine.

Back in high scool my friends and I relied on the 'stud' in our group to supply us with pictures, and the occasional video, of him getting down with some of the popular girls in the school. While I wasn't unpopular, I just didn't fit in with any of the predetermined cliques to be able to date any of the desirable females.

The girls never knew about it, we never leaked them to other people, and to be able to sit next to these girls in class knowing what they looked like naked was kind of redeeming in a way. It was for us, that is, not for the girls. They were total sluts.


These days I wouldn't do anything like we did back in high school. But that's the point, isn't it? It was in HIGH SCHOOL. We were immature ************ 16 year olds who didn't know any better. There are very few 16 year old males that will not take the opportunity to see naked pictures of their preferred gender, especially if they were people they knew and are attracted to.

My example above is, in my opinion, worse than what's described in the article because the subjects didn't know that we'd be looking at the pic and watching the vids. I'm sure that if we had been caught there would have been consequences; privacy was breached, and the trust that some sluts placed in a handsome studmuffin was broken. I doubt any of us involved would have been charged with felonies though.

For teenagers that are just trying out new things regarding their sexuality, I don't think there shouldn't be a fear of getting charged with crimes looming over their heads. Only if the sexual acts were non-consentual or performed in inappropraite places should there be consequences.

But that's the whole point of this. In order to stop a growing source of child pornography on the internet, they want to make them realize that even images of yourself or your friends are illegal.

I know it's meant to be normal to do stupid **** as a teenager, but seriously.