Northwest Herald | Sexting hysteria

Letter to the editor:

When I first heard about this new scourge being practiced by 20 percent of kids around the country, I sat down with my five children and told them that once the numbers reached 80 percent, no one would care any longer. Until then, I warned them to be careful of the pictures they take and send, because our culture of hysteria about sex is out to get them.

Bill O’Reilly responds–to the prof quoted before me in the Post article

Bill O’Reilly thinks that National Post article is a “Sexting Shocker.” He doesn’t mention me, but he all but calls for prof. Cummings to resign.

I am quoted in the National Post on sexting

Article in the National Post describes key points of my project fairly accurately:

Ms. Hasinoff argues that … the media are likewise doing more harm than good by portraying a girl’s sexual self-expression as an invitation for sexual harassment.

Harassment, she said, could involve the non-consensual distribution of a private photo by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, for example.

I am particularly happy that the reporter included this part:

“The media and society seem to talk about girls as sexually naive and innocent,” she said. “Then as soon as they become active, we deem them as deviant and blame them.”

Article continues:

Although child pornography laws were designed to protect children, she explained, they are sometimes used against teens and deny them a full expression of their sexuality.

Indeed, according to the December survey, girls do appear to see sexting as a way of expressing themselves sexually. Slightly more girls than boys engage in the practice, and roughly 52% of those girls did so as a “sexy present” to their boyfriend.

Girls were also more likely to send suggestive photos and messages because it is “fun or flirtatious” — not because they felt pressured by friends.

I was also really glad she used data from this survey–which the press has repeatedly misinterpreted  as finding that  “50% of girls felt pressured to sext.” But that number is how many teens thought other teen girls were pressured, not how many girls actually reported feeling pressured themselves–a much smaller percentage. Indeed, most girls reported on this survey that they did it for fun and to flirt.

And this part too:

Rather than place the responsibility on girls to protect themselves against exploitation, public service announcements like cybertipline.com’s ‘Think Before You Post’ and recent episodes of talk shows like Dr. Phil and The Tyra Banks Show should instead have focused on teaching boys to respect girls and their sexuality.

“This kind of advice denies girls actually have sexual desires,” Ms. Hasinoff said, adding that this approach erroneously links self-respect to a girl’s ability to censor her sexuality.

I was at first concerned about being interviewed, thinking that I could be misquoted and misrepresented, so I am actually really happy about how my points about girls’ sexual desires being perceived as deviant, the need to teach boys/men to respect girls/women’s sexuality, and even the problematic link that is made between self-respect/self-esteem and sexual self-censorship were included in the article.

Legislative efforts to criminalize images of nude minors and seniors

Ohio Senate Bill 103

No minor, by use of a telecommunications device, shall recklessly create, receive, exchange, send, or possess a photograph, video, or other material that shows a minor in a state of nudity.

Though the charge is less (from a felony to a misdemeanor), this proposed Ohio law would require much less explicit sexuality than the federal definition of child pornography. Ohio is now considering outlawing visual representations of mere nudity–not just sex acts and genitals, as in the federal definition.

Judith Levine also explains that nudity is on the table to be criminlized for seniors as well:

Massachusetts state representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein (D-Revere) has introduced a bill making it a crime for anyone over 60 to pose nude or sexually for a film or photo. The person taking the photo — whether a lover, artist or commercial porn maker — would also face jail time.

Province of Manitoba makes child porn reporting mandatory

Manitoba is the first province to enact legislation that makes it mandatory to report child pornography, Family Services and Housing Minister Gord Mackintosh announced today.

“Child pornography is child abuse,” said Mackintosh. “In any of its forms, it is an affront to humanity. Any delay in reporting child pornography gives a green light to those who take pleasure from the rape of children.”

Now that we all know that teens sometimes create child porn of themselves, how can this new mandatory reporting law be productive? Is a 17 1/2-year-old teen taking an explicit picture of herself–one of the many “forms” of child porn–really “an affront to humanity”? Does that 17 1/2-year-old “take pleasure in the rape of children”? If 20% of teens are sexting, as that oft-reported survey claims, this is going to clog up the legal system with reports from school officials who, rightly terrified of prosecution, won’t be able to choose to deal with such incidents in-house.

Toronto Sun adds:

Prosecuting teens in these cases is a mistake and will not stop them or others from sexting. The new Manitoba law is clear that any teen that receives a sexting message is required to report it as child pornography or go to jail.

Sexting and the “fallen woman”

Feminist Law Professors asks:

Why does our society seem so fascinated by “fallen women” and so magdalene01concerned to take stern remedial action at the first sign of a “fall.” Why do we hammer down on teen-age girls who, though perhaps not yet worldly wise, probably know what they want about as well as most people? Launching prosecutions for crimes that can bring a decade or more of imprisonment, and decades after that of sex-offender registration, residency restrictions and other miscellaneous hounding by government is no minor thing. It is certainly no way for a nation to treat its children.

Sexting Hysteria Falsely Brands Educator as Child Pornographer | Threat Level from Wired.com

From Wired.com:

Rumors had been flying at Freedom High School in South Riding, Virginia that students were distributing nude pictures of each other on their cell phones. It’s a phenomenon, known as “sexting,” that’s become increasingly worrisome to educators across the country, and Ting-Yi Oei, a 60-year-old assistant principal at the school, was tasked with checking it out.

The investigation was inconclusive, but led to a stunning aftermath: Oei himself was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes — charges that threatened to brand him a sex offender and land him in prison for up to seven years. Transferred from his school and isolated from colleagues, Oei spent $150,000 and a year of his life defending himself in a Kafkaesque legal nightmare triggered by a determined county prosecutor and nurtured by a growing hysteria over technology-enabled child porn at America’s schools.

… [T]he first charges were filed against Oei: failure to report suspicion of child abuse, a misdemeanor. The charge alleged that Oei had a legal duty to report the girl’s photo to her parents, and to state agencies or law enforcement.

“First of all, nobody thought this was reportable,” Oei says. “Who would have thought this was suspected child abuse?”

Oei also hadn’t known the girl’s identity and therefore wasn’t able to notify her parents.

The prosecution looked like an error right out of the gate.  The photo didn’t show sexual activity or genitalia, and even the sheriff’s office conceded it was “inappropriate” but not “criminal” — making it unclear what the “child abuse” was supposed to be. In any event, as a matter of law, Oei was only required to report suspected abuse to his principal, which he’d done.  It was then Forester’s job to report it to authorities if needed. Oei said Forester didn’t step in to defend him to authorities. (Forester didn’t return phone calls for this story)

… Even in this environment of prosecutorial excess,
Oei’s case stands out as likely the first to entangle an adult who came in possession of an image that even police admit wasn’t pornographic, and who did so simply in the course of doing his job.

ACLU suing overzealous sexting prosecutor

Parents of three teenage girls and the ACLU are suing a Pennsylvania prosecutor who threatened to bring child pornography charges against the girls unless they agreed to probation and counseling. The complaint filed by the ACLU explains:

In February 2009, [DA] Skumanick sent a letter to the parents of approximately twenty Tunkhannock students, including the ACLU’s clients, threatening the students with criminal felony charges if they did not agree to be placed on probation and participate in a counseling program he devised. A course outline indicates that the program will help the girls “[g]ain an understanding of how [their] actions were wrong,” “gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today’s society,” and “[i]dentify non-traditional societal and job roles.”

The complaint also argues that the photos in question don’t fit child pornography laws and that if convicted, the girls would be required to register as sex offenders if the state adopts the guidelines of the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act by the July 2009 deadline to retroactively include all offenders over age 14 on the registry.

More info at Daily Kos, ACLU, and a Reuters story. The US District Court hearing is today.

Sexting, the Latest Innovation in Porn

From David Rosen at Counter Punch:

Sexting is the first innovative form of pornography to organically emerge in the 21st century. … Sexting not only subverts corporate technology, but democratizes it. 21st century media technology makes everyone a moviemaker, distributor and presenter. Sexting makes everyone, including teenagers, pornographers.

Shaming, not “sexting,” was behind Jesse Logan’s suicide

Commentary from Sex in the Public Square:

Jesse Logan killed herself last July not because of the “dangers of sexting” but because of the dangers of sex stigma and “slut shaming.” … Jesse Logan did not fall victim to the “perils of the Internet”. She feel victim to the perils of cruel high schoolers who used our culture’s negative messages about women’s sexuality to shame her mercilessly over something that lots of teens do. This was not about the “electronic exploitation of kids.” This was about ordinary teenage exploration and unfortunately also about ordinary teenage cruelty.