Dan Savage on the moral outrage about sexting

Dan Savage speaks about the response to sexting:

Savage makes excellent points that the sexting panic is really a panic about girls’ sexuality. None of the concern, he notes, seems to be about pictures of boys, despite the fact that in surveys teens report sexting at similar rates regardless of gender.

He notes that the concern with political figures who’ve admitted drug use seems to be slowly but surely declining, and suggests that sex tapes will follow the same trajectory. Unfortunately, we are still sending lots of people to prison for things that recent US presidents have inhaled or not-inhaled. I would be less surprised to see sex tapes normalized for male politicians than female. The larger question is, could a female politician survive any sort of sex scandal? All it takes to raise questions about female political figure’s propriety seems to be appearing in public in a sleeveless dress while also being African American. I hope Savage is right that everyone will get over it eventually with the next generation, but i think we will have to get over sexism as well–and reform child pornography laws to prevent prosecutors from charging teens for consensual sexting.