2295 Sexting (I hate that word!)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The plumber came by. He's going to put a new silt filter in on Friday, in a more accessible spot. Another $300.

Why do people feel like they have to make up new words? "Sexting" = sending text messages with sexual content. It's not just sending text, though. It includes emailing and posting on the internet.

The Massachusetts Berkshire County DA has decided to get tough with teens (and anyone else) who sends, receives, or forwards photos or messages with sexual content involving minors. The kids are taking explicit photos of themselves or others and passing them around, or posting them on social sites like Facebook, and he's threatening to charge them with kiddy porn. Very good story here, the official DA site, with (what I find to be) shocking statistics.

A lot of people are blaming the technology for the rash of topless teens out there.

It's not the technology to be blamed. It's worse. It's a whole social atmosphere of "anything goes", and "why not". It's ordinary street clothes that look like lingerie. Office attire that flashes parts of the body normally kept private. It's expectations out of control, expectations expecting to be met.

It's not the technology. Victorians sketched. It's what one did. And it was not unusual for a young man finding himself alone with a woman and a sketch pad and a pencil to ask her if she'd be willing to take off her top for art. And the young lady would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

When I was in high school and college, every so often a guy would get hold of a Polaroid camera, and he'd ask, beg, hopping from one foot to another in anxiety, and the girl would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

Now the girls often are taking the photos themselves. Nobody has to ask.

There's something very wrong with their thinking.

I blame Madonna, and all those who followed in her footsteps.
.