Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Unlimited Sexting: What to Do About Teens and Their Dumb Naked Photos of Themselves

levite · 02-17-2009, 08:28 PM

Well, first off, the notion that kids who are stupid enough to text each other some nude pictures deserve to be treated by the police as criminal sex offenders is repugnant, and it is also overkill to the point of extreme stupidity. Kids are going to mess around. It's happened since Day One. Trying to pretend our little darlings are, or ought to be, icons of chaste innocence and purity until they walk out the door to go to college is stupid enough-- trying to enforce that with draconian laws demanding sexual puritanism is even stupider.

What does it solve to give a 14-year-old boy an indelible stigma that will follow him forever, not to mention the psychological trauma that must go along with being arrested and labeled a pedophile-- while you're still an adolescent!?! How will it make things better that instead of the two kids being terminally embarrassed that their principal and their parents have seen fit to confront them about their emergent sex lives, and have all seen them naked in a sexual context; instead they also have to know a bunch of policemen and women have seen them, are privy to their private sex lives, their pubescent mistakes and stumbling attempts at erotic play?!

Do I think it is sensible or desirable that adolescents be sending each other home-posed sex pictures? Not really. But I also think we are all entitled to make our own mistakes, to experience our own voyages of sexual self-discovery, for better or worse. All we can do is talk to our kids early and frankly about sexual responsibility, and make sure they know we're there, and give them the trust to do what they think is best when they can, and to come talk to us if they can't-- which we then have to make sure they'll do, by establishing that it's safe for them to tell us things, and that we won't fly off the handle and punish them for help with the hard decisions.

This is a tough balance: they live in a world that's technologically very different from the one we all grew up in; but some things don't change, they just change shape. We all messed around as kids. Maybe the reason we didn't send each other nude pics at 13 is because we lacked the technology. But certainly not for lack of desire. Kids will do this. Why every generation seems so surprised by it is a mystery to me.

I lost it at 13, myself, complete with some stupid risks and a little grown-up sex play, and you know what? It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't the best choice I ever made, but it wasn't the worst. And the world kept on turning, and I grew up, and became the modestly functional and mostly ethical rabbinical student I am today.

No reason anyone and everyone else shouldn't be given the same opportunity.

02-17-2009, 08:28 PM	#44 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	Well, first off, the notion that kids who are stupid enough to text each other some nude pictures deserve to be treated by the police as criminal sex offenders is repugnant, and it is also overkill to the point of extreme stupidity. Kids are going to mess around. It's happened since Day One. Trying to pretend our little darlings are, or ought to be, icons of chaste innocence and purity until they walk out the door to go to college is stupid enough-- trying to enforce that with draconian laws demanding sexual puritanism is even stupider. What does it solve to give a 14-year-old boy an indelible stigma that will follow him forever, not to mention the psychological trauma that must go along with being arrested and labeled a pedophile-- while you're still an adolescent!?! How will it make things better that instead of the two kids being terminally embarrassed that their principal and their parents have seen fit to confront them about their emergent sex lives, and have all seen them naked in a sexual context; instead they also have to know a bunch of policemen and women have seen them, are privy to their private sex lives, their pubescent mistakes and stumbling attempts at erotic play?! Do I think it is sensible or desirable that adolescents be sending each other home-posed sex pictures? Not really. But I also think we are all entitled to make our own mistakes, to experience our own voyages of sexual self-discovery, for better or worse. All we can do is talk to our kids early and frankly about sexual responsibility, and make sure they know we're there, and give them the trust to do what they think is best when they can, and to come talk to us if they can't-- which we then have to make sure they'll do, by establishing that it's safe for them to tell us things, and that we won't fly off the handle and punish them for help with the hard decisions. This is a tough balance: they live in a world that's technologically very different from the one we all grew up in; but some things don't change, they just change shape. We all messed around as kids. Maybe the reason we didn't send each other nude pics at 13 is because we lacked the technology. But certainly not for lack of desire. Kids will do this. Why every generation seems so surprised by it is a mystery to me. I lost it at 13, myself, complete with some stupid risks and a little grown-up sex play, and you know what? It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't the best choice I ever made, but it wasn't the worst. And the world kept on turning, and I grew up, and became the modestly functional and mostly ethical rabbinical student I am today. No reason anyone and everyone else shouldn't be given the same opportunity. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)