News From Great Britian

I came across the link to this story on Free Range Kids, a must read if you haven't found this blog yet. They titled their story with "What will they think of next?" I wonder when we will hear this of a scheme like as the newest best way to monitor people who come into contact with our children? They've taken it from a list of Former Offenders online to one where everyone can be checked. Potentially even reporting false or unfounded accusations as facts. Read on.....


Wednesday 3 March 2010 The paedophile panic: a product of elite hysteria

The government’s sex offenders disclosure scheme should remind us that it isn’t ‘the mob’ who are obsessed with paedos (not a misspelling but the way they spell it in the UK).
Tim Black
And so the British authorities’ sick obsession with child sex abuse continues.
After a year-long pilot in Warwickshire, Stockton-on-Tees and parts of Cambridgeshire, the UK Home Office’s sex offender disclosure scheme is set to go nationwide. What this means is that parents will be able to get information from the police about anyone who has access to their children. In short, they can check whether that person is a threat to their child – that is, whether they are a paeodophile. A kindly neighbour offering sweets, the guy who plays football with the kids at the local park, the woman at the nearby newsagents… it’s official: all can now be legitimately viewed as potential threats to YOUR children.
For deathly-looking home secretary Alan Johnson the rolling out of the sex offender disclosure scheme was akin to the launch of a new fleet of luxury, ocean-going ships: ‘The UK already has one of the most robust systems in the world for the management of sex offenders’, he announced yesterday, with barely concealed pride. ‘We’ve already seen that children are better protected and sex offenders more effectively managed because of this scheme, which is why it is rolling out nationwide.’
Yet despite the rhetorical appeal to ‘protection’ or ‘safety’, these kinds of measures do not reassure people. In fact, they do precisely the opposite: they encourage fear and foster suspicion. They suggest that if people aren’t worried about the lolly-pop man, or the neighbour offering to run the kids to school, they ought to be. To not fear, to not suspect other adults, is subtly transformed from being a recognition of commonality and basic human solidarity into an abrogation of parental responsibility.
Not that we should be surprised by the Home Office’s willingness to inculcate and institutionalise fear and suspicion. The paedophile panic, right from its emergence in its current form during the 1980s, was always an elite panic, a hysteria endorsed and exacerbated by – in no particular order – government officials, police officers, social workers, left-wing activists, children’s charities and both the broadsheet and tabloid press. The obsession with child sex abuse was not, as we are sometimes led to believe, a popular phenomenon: it did not arise in the depths of the social world, it trickled down from the top.
After all, as Brendan O’Neill wrote four years ago, it wasn’t the mob who, in the 1980s, rounded up adults in Cleveland, believing them to be practising ritual Satanic abuse of children. That was the act of social workers. And it wasn’t a paedo-suspecting mass who spent time churning out verbiage on the supposed existence of Satanic and witchcraft sects. That was the work of Marxism Today.
During the 1990s the same pattern of elite-sponsored fear and the subsequent issuing of false accusations was all too apparent. And again, it wasn’t local communities coming together to unmask the paedophiles at nearby children’s homes, such as Bryn Estyn in North Wales – it was an unholy alliance of purpose-seekers, from the police to left-leaning journalists. Dave Jones, then the manager of Southampton Football Club, was only the most famous casualty of these witch-hunts; the lives of many more innocent, well-intentioned care workers were also tainted with the nasty, grubby suspicions of officials and journalists.
However, these wrong-headed, pernicious pursuits of fantasy child sex abusers did nothing to dampen the ardour of the paedophile-obsessed. In the UK, we now have that unwieldy testament to elite suspicion, the Sex Offenders Register, a document that defies both natural justice, inasmuch as punishment is lifelong, and common sense, given the sheer range of offenders listed. And since 2006, any adult who works with children, anywhere from schools to youth clubs, now has to be vetted. Thanks to the Home Office, and the army of campaign groups such as the NSPCC, suspecting another adult of being a paedophile is not exceptional – it is routine.
The fact that even the popular face of the campaign behind the sex offender disclosure scheme, Sara Payne (the mother of Sarah Payne, the young girl killed in 2001 by a convicted paedophile), was chosen by the government as its official Victim Champion, illustrates the elite origins of this sorry fascination with child sex abuse. It must be galling for the Home Office, then, that despite the formalisation of suspicion and fear, despite the almost-weekly press releases by those scaremongers-in-chief at the NSPCC, so few people actually bothered to take advantage of the sex offender disclosure scheme during its trial. In fact, there were only 315 applications over a whole year, a figure so low that even the Home Office wondered whether the scheme was worth it.
The Home Office, campaign groups, charities, tabloids and broadsheets seem oblivious to the fact that their attempts to ‘protect children’ not only have a limited effect – they also corrode adult relationships. One does not just suspect the dodgy-looking fella at the park; one is encouraged to suspect neighbours and even friends. These measures undermine trust. Trusting another adult, whether the neighbour with the sweets or the guy at the park, is not something that can be guaranteed by an official intermediary, police or otherwise. It relies, rather, on assuming that other adults are like oneself and will behave likewise. And given that almost all of us are not interested in sexually abusing children, why should we constantly suspect others?
Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.

Why are People So Terrorized?

I was reading a short article tonight about a man who was accused of molesting a child. There weren't many details but in the comment section afterwards there were many hateful comments. This is not a new thing I do understand that but I got wondering why people responded this way? This is the link to the article and the responses  http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=114928. Today the mere accusation of any sex offense heaps scorn and fury onto the person proported to have committed it. There was a time when you were innocent until PROVEN guilty. But today there exsists such terror and hysteria that anyone accused is got to be guilty even if they do "prove" they aren't. People will forever hold onto the accusation and always wonder if they really were guilty after all "Where there's smoke...." Forget that many are falsely accused by someone with an agenda, like an ex who wants custody or someone else who for whatever reason you got angry with you. If it wasn't such a serious thing I would feel sorry for the responders but it raises a spector of vigilantes. I wish the media would think before they issue statements about people caught in these deliemas. There are crazy people out there who take these situations as a license to kill. Like Herbert Jones who showed up with a gun last May to hunt down a man who served time for a sex offense. Luckily he was stopped before anyone got hurt by an alert school officer. Jones told reporters he had seen a documentary on "child molestors" and decided it was his life's mission to kill them. The question I ask is are we safer in knowing who has done time for sex offenses or even who is accused of them? If Jones had not been stopped before going in the AA meeting do you think he would have left without killing someone? The man he was hunting for was in jail for a probation violation and was not at the meeting. The orginal registry was intended as a tool for Law Enforcement only. As a way to rule out those who had sex offenses when a child went missing. I believe that until the registry is rolled back to it's orginal intent then all of us are less safe because of the crazy people out there who feel that they are the judge and jury, once that happens there will be less instances of this hatard and lunch mob mentality that this article and it's responses promote.

A Video About the Perceived Dangers of the Internet

Burn Your “Sex Offender” Map

Great blog post on the Free Range Kids blog, in response to the articles I posted below from the Economist. The writer of this blog is one of the few voices of reason in these days of over protective parents. She has gotten tons of flack over letting her son take the subway in New York. She's well worth reading.

Burn Your “Sex Offender” Map

Read here on the Free range Kids Blog

Posted on August 8, 2009 by lskenazy

Okay, here is some weekend reading to sink your teeth into. It’s an article from the Economist:

“Unjust and Ineffective: America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offdenders. Does It Work?”

The short answer is “No.” We are putting people on sex offender registries who do not belong there at all. People who peed in public. Streakers. Johns. Teenagers who had consensual sex. The registry does not discriminate between violet pedophiles and once-horny young folk who are now 30-year-old housewives, like one of the people profiled in the piece. Wendy Whitaker was 17 when she had sex (at school — dumb!) with her underage-by-three weeks boyfriend. She was arrested for it and her lawyer told her to plead guilty to get it over with. She did. But it was never over.

One of the plea bargain conditions was that she check in regularly with her probation officer. When she didn’t, she was thrown in jail for more than a year. She finished probation in 2002 but she’s still on a public registry that does not exmpain what she did. So, as notes the article, “it looks like she did something terrible to a helpless child.”

In all, according to the Economist, about 5% of the people on the sex offender registries pose a serious risk to children. Usually, when not in jail, these people end up wearing ankle bracelets. But when you pull up one of those Sex Offender Maps — really easy to do on the Web (and now on the iPhone!)– it looks like wherever you turn, there’s another child rapist. Which, of course, leads to more fear on the part of parents. That is understable. Our pig-headed insistence on lumping everyone together on these lists and never taking them off is not. Especially because — get this: “Registering sex offenders and warning their neighbors cost millions & had no effect on the number of sex crimes.”

No effect. One more quote from The Economist, which says that the sex offender laws, “get harsher and harsher. But that does not necessarily mean they get better. If there are thousands of offenders on a registry, it is harder to keep track of the most dangerous ones. Budgets are tight. Georgia’s sheriffs complain that they have been given no extra money or manpower to help them keep the huge and swelling sex-offenders’ registry up to date or to police its confusing mass of rules. Terry Norris of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association cites a man who was convicted of statutory rape two decades ago for having consensual sex with his high-school sweetheart, to whom he is now married…. “We spend the same amount of time on that guy as on someone who’s done something heinous.’”

From a Free-Range standpoint, it is appalling that these sex offender registries make it seem as if children are unsafe on any street. From a humanitarian viewpoint, it is appalling to think of our government is not ready to revamp the whole thing. Kids — and grown ups caught peeing in public — would all be safer. — Lenore

15 Shocking Tales of How Sex Laws Are Screwing the American People

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Warning for Parents! CRIMINALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY

All parents need to read this and be aware of what is going on in our communities. I found this on the website Ethical Treatment For All Youths. A must read for all of with children in our lives.

CRIMINALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY

Article by Dr. Marshall Burns Link

As previously shown, the language used to label children who behave in a sexual manner typically confuses indecent or socially inappropriate behavior with coercion and violence.⁴ It is one thing to prohibit such behavior and discipline children for it. It is quite another to describe almost any sexual activity among children, even when it is mutually desired, as “molestation,” “abuse,” “assault,” and “rape.” Such language is a slap in the face to those children who have been truly victimized by real abuse. It also misleads the public into thinking that all children who act sexually are dangerous and merit criminal charges.

Prosecution of children

A recent sexual abuse conference defined “limited exploratory behaviors committed primarily out of curiosity” by juveniles as “deviant sexual behavior.” It referred to these children as “young sex offenders,” adding that “society needs interventions to respond effectively...focusing on protecting the community...”

One article in a professional journal says:

While filing, criminal prosecution, and involvement of the criminal justice system may not be considered necessary for some of these child perpetrators, it should at least be considered. Not only does this type of intervention demonstrate to the girls the seriousness of their sexually abusive behavior, but it also makes their parents take heed of the behavior...The parents of these children also need to be mandated to treatment.³

The criminal justice system follows suit.

• ”Even children under age 12 are prosecuted for rape first degree and sodomy first degree for sexual conduct with each other. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a 13 year old who has sexual contact with an 11 year old to be prosecuted for a class A felony...A youthful offender convicted of rape or sodomy in the first degree is a "violent offender" who must serve at least 85% of his sentence before he can be paroled...Youthful offenders are subject to "Megan's Law" requirements.”
  --Attorney Gail Robinson

• ”Their names, addresses, and pictures are all on-line, on the state's Sexual Offender's page. Seemingly, they are pre-pubescent predators, but juvenile probation officer Richard Garcia says, 'We got kids on probation for doing stuff that all of us did at one time or another'...it can end with a child labeled as a deviant, stuck with the stigma through their adult years...81% of San Antonio adults say all sex offenders, regardless of age, should be registered, and their information should be public.”
  --WOAI-TV

• “A ten-year-old kid plays doctor with his kid sister. A senior in high school has consensual sex with his sophomore girlfriend. Dangerous sex offenders? Yes, say the nation's toughest sex laws. And some states' punishments include posting the juvenile offenders' pictures on websites for the rest of their lives.”
  --Journalist Seamus McGraw, runner-up for the 2002 Casey Medal

Some jurisdictions believe that all childhood sexual activity warrants criminal investigation.

• “Kansas can require health care professionals to report all suspected underage sexual activity...”
  --Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kansas

• “The agency is required by law to investigate all episodes of sexual contact between children...“
  -- The Reporter, Fon du Lac, Wisconsin

According to the research on child sexual behavior, authorities may have to place 20% to 50% of all children in their jurisdictions under investigation.

Prosecution of teenagers

Teenage sexual behavior is not seen as a disorder to the extent that prepubescent behavior is. Nevertheless, it is not unusual for teens to be prosecuted for non-coerced sexual behavior and labeled as sex offenders.

In its brochure for teenagers, one state's attorney general's office issues the following warning (bold in the original):

Even if you are a minor, if you have consensual sexual contact with someone under the age of 15, you can be charged with gross sexual imposition in juvenile court. If your case then is transferred to adult court, you will be treated as an adult sex offender and will be subject to the same penalties as an adult. The law does not make an exception for you because you are in love..."Second base" can get you arrested! Although it may seem harmless to you, you can be charged with a sex offense!...Even if your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to have sex with you, your friend's parents can still have you arrested if they find out.

In addition to behavior that is abusive, the brochure lists the following as crimes: consensual sexual contact, fondling, and fornication. It describes the following possible penalties: imprisonment of up to 20 years, fines of up to $10,000, registration as a sex offender, and notification to police when moving for the rest of one's life.

In two separate incidents in Wisconsin, both young teenagers in sexual relationships were recently charged with sexually assaulting each other.

• According to police, a 14-year-old city of Pewaukee boy and a 13-year-old village of Pewaukee girl allegedly engaged in sexual activity in a residence...Police are seeking to charge both with second-degree sexual assault.
  --Lake Country Reporter

• ...authorities say their prosecution is meant to help...The boy is being held in secure detention on a charge of attempted second-degree sexual assault...The girl pleaded guilty to fourth degree sexual assault.
  --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Parents have a right to teach their children their moral values regarding sex, but police knowingly labeling non-violent mutually desired behavior as assault is dishonest and purposely misleading, and makes a mockery of true assault. Lying to the public about young people's behavior and treating them like criminals on the pretense of helping them can ruin lives, and has no place in a democracy.

• Gorcyca had overreacted by bringing criminal charges for what amounted to consensual sex between promiscuous teenagers...all four defendants were notified they'd be registered as sex offenders...Justin Fawcett of West Bloomfield, was particularly devastated...Friday night, his parents found him dead of an apparent overdose...the criminalization of teenage promiscuity is destroying young lives. And if you're a parent, wake up. Because if you think this couldn't happen to your teenager, you've missed the whole point of Justin Fawcett's story.
  --Detroit Free Press

See also: “In Memory of Justin M. Fawcett,” Citizens for Second Chances

Inflated statistics

The U.S. Department of Justice relies on states to identify juvenile sex offenders, defining as “sexual assault” any sexual activity done “not forcibly or against that person's will where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his/her youth.” Such definitions were originally intended to protect children and teenagers from exploitation by adults. However, they are now applied even when the supposed offender is too young to give consent. The Department notes that virtually all offenses by juveniles involve family members and acquaintances, confirming that many may be incidents of sex play among siblings or friends, or sexual activity within romantic relationships.⁶ So it is not surprising that statistics would seem to show that our society is being overwhelmed by violent, sex-crazed children and adolescents.

• One expert writes that “at least a half-million juveniles commit a hands-on sex crime every year.” ⁷

• Another claims that 1 out of every 20 boys is or will be a child molester.¹

• Both the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Center for Sex Offender Management state that one-third to one-half of all child molestation is committed by children themselves.^2,5

• The U.S. Department of Justice finds that of all ages 7 - 60, “the single age with the greatest number of offenders from the perspective of law enforcement was age 14.” ⁶

No one doubts that coercive behavior should be prohibited, but one cannot know what fraction of these statistics involve non-coerced behavior. This may explain the confused attempts to understand juvenile offenders shown below, and why criminal sexual behavior seems most often to begin between ages 6 and 9:

O'Brien and Bera defined seven categories of juvenile sex offenders: naive experimenters, undersocialized child exploiters, sexual aggressives, sexual compulsives, disturbed impulsives, group influenced, and pseudosocialized. Graves suggested three typologies: pedophilic, sexual assault, and undifferentiated. Prentky et al. used six categories: child molesters, rapists, sexually reactive children, fondlers, paraphilic offenders, and unclassifiable. Weinrott suggested four general types: juvenile delinquents in general, those who have deviant arousal, those who are psychopathic offenders, and those who fit none of these categories...In a study of 127 children ages 6-12 who had evidenced sexual behavior problems, Pithers et al. identified five subtypes: sexually aggressive, nonsymptomatic, highly traumatized, abusive reactive, and rule breaker. Recent surveys suggest an increase in the rate of preadolescent children who evidence sexually abusive behaviors. Available studies have reported sexual aggression in children as young as 3 and 4; the most common age of onset appears to be between 6 and 9...Victims of preadolescents...typically were siblings, friends, or acquaintances.
--U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice

A rational approach

All of this is not to imply that sexual aggression, indecency, or behavior among children of different ages is acceptable. However, labeling children as sexually deviant—essentially criminally ill—is not the best way to teach them proper behavior.

A better approach would seem to be for parents to teach their children proper sexual behavior in the same way they teach them proper non-sexual behavior—by conveying to them their values, explaining why socially inappropriate behavior offends others, and using appropriate discipline when necessary. Treatment should be sought only when behavior is truly violent or a sign of a scientifically established disorder.

Unfortunately, not only is this not the case, but an array of extreme, scientifically unsupported, and potentially damaging diagnostic and treatment methods are used that are disturbingly reminiscent of the approaches used with homosexuals 50 years ago.

Free-Range Kids or How I learned to stop hovering

Free-Range Kids or How I learned to stop hovering

link to article here
Free-Range Kids
Author Lenore Skenazy discusses her parenting approach, including letting her 9-year-old take the subway by himself
-Julie Ryan Evans

How long do you think it would take your child to get abducted by a stranger if you just left him standing on a street corner unattended?

24 hours? 100 hours? A couple of weeks?

Not even close.

It would take 750,000 YEARS to happen, according to statistic probability. This is just one statistic that Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, points to when discussing the overprotective, overparenting that many of us (myself included) are practicing today.

Skenazy drew international attention after granting a request to her 9-year-old son, Izzy - to let him get home from someplace by himself, by subway. In New York City. She left Izzy in the handbag department of Bloomingdale's with a subway card, a map, $20 for emergencies and a bunch of quarters in case he had to call home. (Quarters because, ironically, they didn't trust him not to lose a cell phone!)

"The subway station is right under the store, so Izzy got on, no problem, and came home about 45 minutes later, ecstatic with independence," she says. "I'm a newspaper columnist so a few weeks later, on a slow news day, I finally wrote about his little adventure. Well, I thought it was little."

Two days later, a media frenzy erupted, and suddenly she was defending her decision to media around the world. Some called her "America's Worst Mom".

But beyond the sensational headlines and initial outrage of a few, there were many parents that related to and agreed with Skenazy's approach to parenting. She started a blog on the topic www.freerangek ids.com, which morphed into her book.

"The basic premise of Free-Range Kids is that, despite what you hear and read and see and get totally clobbered over the head with in the media, we CAN give our children the kind of freedom we had as kids," Skenazy explains. "The real world is a lot safer than the one on TV, and many of the ‘childhood dangers' we worry about turn out to be infinitesimall y small - like the risk of getting cancer from baby bottles, or being seriously injured by a merry-go-round, or, of course, being abducted by a stranger."

As she throws out "cancer from baby bottles", I gasp, then laugh at how much angst I've had over baby bottles since my daughter's birth five months ago. And I think how I don't even let my nearly 6-year-old son go to the mailbox by himself, yet when I wasn't much older than him I left the house in the morning on my bike with a pack of kids. We rode to the cemetery, ran through the neighborhood, played in an old abandoned shooting range, walked along the railroad tracks and didn't come home until the street lights came on. Does anyone let their children do these kinds of things anymore? I don't know anyone who does, and I have a hard time imaging EVER letting mine.

But Skenazy says we should, and that holding them back in our efforts to protect them is actually harming them.

"Constant hovering actually gives kids the message: You are never safe without me around - a message that makes kids feel scared and vulnerable," she says. "We need to remember how competent and capable our children can be, and how much confidence they gain when we allow them to do things by themselves. Most of us remember the first taste of being a grownup, when we did something all by ourselves, but in the interest of keeping our kids safe, we're talking that self actualization away from them."

But what about all the dangers lurking out there, the abductions and accidents and missing children? It's a different world out there, right?

Yes, Skenazy says, but different in a good way. She says the world is safer today than it was when many of us were growing up, and she has the stats to back it up. She says crime has been plummeting - by as much as 50 percent - since the early 1990s. So if you grew up in the 70s or 80s your children are statistically safer than you were.

And some of the "truths" we think about the dangers are just flat out unfounded. Did you know that there has NEVER been a case in which a stranger poisons a child's Halloween candy? Not even once! Yet think of all the time you've spent pouring over your children's loot, perhaps even making them go to a mall because it's safer? (totally guilty here!)

In her research she called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (you know, the organization who put the pictures on the back of milk cartons), expecting them to push back on her theories. Instead, they supported them vehemently. She says the center interviewed children who had been abducted and got away, and found that it was their confidence and a feistiness that allowed them do things like kick and scream and, ultimately, get away. "That comes from being out in ‘the wild' a bit," she says.

She blames the media for much of the parental paranoia today and the fact that in the interest of ratings they saturate us with the sensational stories that pull at our biggest emotions - over and over again. Those images get imprinted on our brains and soon she says, we can't cross a parking lot without thinking about Carlie Brucia being abducted. But there are trillions of kids out there that are just fine about whom we're not thinking.

She says the kiddie safety industry is also part of the problem in their promotion of things like helmets for babies learning to walk to special baby Kleenex. "We're so anxious to keep the child alive, that if someone says they need it, we jump to say OK." As well, she says "books and magazines put out all these things you can do wrong, under the guise of advice, but really they're just instilling fear."

Holding handsSo is she just tougher than the rest? Didn't she get the same worrying gene most of us possess? "Please, tell me you worry about something?" I pleaded with her.

"I always have and always will worry about cars: when we're in them, when we're near them and I just hate thinking about when they'll be driving ‘em," Skenazy says. "I'm not at all immune to worry. In fact, I think of myself AS a worrier. Just a little less so, since researching the book."

But shouldn't we do everything we can to keep them safe? Accidents do happen.

"I do believe in trying to keep kids safe - I love safety! I'm a helmet/seat belt fanatic! But when once in a while weird accidents happen, I find it sad that we blame the parents and tell them the should have been more vigilant - as if there is no such thing as fate or bad luck or, well, accidents. And as if it is a reasonable thing to ask parents to watch their children - literally, sit there and watch them - every second of every day until they are 16 or so."

Sounds so simple, right? Skenazy doesn't assume that you can just stop worrying; after all, that's just part of the parenting gig. In her book she offers practical, graduated steps for parents to try (Free-Range Baby Steps, Free-Range Brave Steps and One Giant Leap for Free-Range Kind Steps), acknowledging that all children are different and that there are no hard-and-fast timetables.

I find myself repeatedly referring to and thinking about this book, this approach, as I go about my daily parenting. It has made me laugh at myself a little bit more when I find myself telling my son I don't think he should go in the pool because it hasn't been cleaned in a few days and perhaps some of the leaves that have fallen in it may harbor some kind of bacteria ("Hello, what about lakes?!" my husband offers); and it makes me loosen my grip a little on the imaginary safety reins that permeate my every decision. My children just may not have to hold my hand forever, after all.

Watch Out another Stupid Bill

Can you just imagine? You're an older lady and you and your boy friend take frisky photos of each other. But this law says you are not capable of being in your right mind, so your friend is now going to go to jail and he's a sex offender? These law makers need to get a clue! Stop criminalizing human behavior. And btw being 60 doesn't make you feeble minded. My grand dad died at 96 and he was more clear headed and with it then most 50 year olds.

Decent Exposure?

By Judith Levine [04.29.09]

I’ve been peeved all month about the latest panic: “sexting.” More and more states are bringing child-porn charges against teenagers who take racy pictures of themselves and send them electronically to lovers or pals. Child pornography is a far more serious crime — in terms of penalties, anyway — than is having actual sex. Sentences run to years per image, and after prison the person must register as a sex offender, a kind of life sentence in itself.

You might call sexting a dunderheaded act — who knows where your immortalized nipples might end up — but also a victimless “crime.” Yet here is the amazing part: Child-porn law is based on the minor’s inability to consent to being photographed; the model is ipso facto a victim of the photographer. Sexting, in which the model is also the photographer, is a crime in which a person can be both perpetrator and victim at the same time.

U.S. sex law is like a black hole: Once reason falls in, it can never re-emerge.

Can all this get any stupider? Just as I was asking myself this question, a post arrived from sex therapist Marty Klein’s blog, Sexual Intelligence, confirming that it could:

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.

Adding insult to injury, the proposal amends a bill designed to punish those who make child pornography. It treats fully functional adults who happen to be over 60 the same as children under 18; it explicitly takes away their right to consent to be photographed in a lascivious way.

What Klein doesn’t mention is that the bill precludes consent not only by “an elder” but also by “a person with a disability.” Massachusetts law defines an elder as someone over 60; a “disability” is “a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents or restricts the individual’s ability to provide for his or her own care or protection.” The bill is an obvious violation of the First Amendment, says Florida Constitutional lawyer Marc Randazzo, who notes that among the consent-stripped could be his own mother, whom he describes as a 60-plus sexually active “knockout” with a lung condition. Representative Reinstein, by the way, is 38.

We can hope this idea languishes in committee — and, if not, is ridiculed to death. Yet, once impassioned, Reinstein does not rest. Her 2006 proposal to honor the Fluffernutter as the state sandwich failed; it is back on this session’s calendar. Now that senior advocacy groups have informed her “elder exploitation and pornography is on the rise,” she told the Boston Herald, the necessity of her new bill is a “no-brainer.” This is an indisputable fact.

It is axiomatic that anything you want to outlaw is widespread, on the rise or both. Once reported, the proliferation of said pernicious activity will be re-reported until it becomes “fact,” with or without substantiation. Like elder porn, sexting is alleged to be widespread and increasing. Among many others, CBS News recently told its audience that “roughly 20 percent of teens admit to participating in ‘sexting,’ according to a nationwide survey by the National Campaign to Support Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.” It called sexting “shockingly common.”

Is 20 percent shocking or common? Is the number even accurate? Journalist Debbie Nathan did what every reporter should: She checked the source. Turns out the datum was derived from a grand total of 653 survey respondents ages 13 to 19. These kids were among a randomly selected subgroup of a self-selected pool of 375,000 teens and young adults who have told a polling outfit called TRU that they’re willing to answer online surveys. Of the young people TRU sent questions regarding their electronic sex lives, 90 percent chose not to respond. But 653 teens were moved to disclose, and about one-fifth said they sent sexy self-portraits to lovers and friends.

Bill Albert, the Campaign’s chief program officer, defends the survey’s credibility but stresses that it “represents just one point in time. For all we know, the practice could be decreasing.” Yet sexting prosecutions are proliferating as fast as sexting is rumored to be. And by the time Reinstein’s bill reappears, granny porn will also be recognized as a serious public safety threat, warranting strong laws to combat it. Mark my word.

It is easy to make fun of the Keystone Komstocks who write and enforce vice laws. Yet this recent pair of virtue-rescue missions deserves serious attention because the same misguided principle lurks behind both efforts.

That is, anyone who displays her body in a sexual way cannot possibly be doing so on her own volition. Somebody somewhere must be coercing her to remove her clothes, dance around the pole or aim the camera and press “send.” That the disrober-aimer-sender is usually female only compounds the suspicion that she is not in possession of her own mind and body.

Nearly three decades ago, pro-sex feminists defeated two municipal ordinances enshrining the idea that pornography is violence against women. Adults generally have refused to be protected from self-exhibition for fun or profit. Voyeurism is also a popular entertainment: Commercial pornography, one of the enduring legacies of the sexual-liberation movement, is flourishing. Sexting, you might say, is a 21st-century offspring of both these phenomena. For better or worse, pornographic tropes, including the defining elements of exhibitionism and voyeurism, are part of the lingua franca of teen sexual self-expression. And the digital revolution has turned every girl, boy, woman, man or transperson into a potential pornographer.

These truths are evidently disturbing to America’s upholders of decency. Turning their attentions from adults to children, they’ve vastly expanded the universe of minors in need of supervision. Everywhere, the sexual age of consent has risen from 13 or 14 to 16 or 18. Clipped at the bottom, the age of sexual majority might now be shorn at the top — at 60 — and around the edges, where bodies and minds have differing abilities.

Older and disabled people have long been infantilized, and sexual neutering is part of it. They (or should I say we; I’m 56) are considered cute, weak and dim — also attributes of innocence, which is to say ignorance and incompetence. This condescension shows itself in various forms of discrimination, which has led to the designation of the disabled and people over 40 as “protected classes” — legal categories of people, such as racial or religious minorities, who may suffer discrimination based solely on who they are.

But legal protection often is distorted into legal protectionism. As in anti-sexting and elder-porn laws, that usually means protecting people from themselves.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a 16-year-old taking a semi-nude picture of herself and sending it to her 17-year-old boyfriend would be prosecuted under child-pornography laws,” Bill Albert told me. Neither, apparently, did Vermont’s legislators. They are now scrambling to carve out an exception to state child-porn laws that decriminalizes the consensual exchange of graphic images between people 13 to 18 years old.

Although skeptics are already worrying that “predators” will get in on the sexting game, I predict the amendment will pass. Vermont has been more lenient to juveniles than have other states. But at the same time, we can expect to see more sexual behaviors criminalized — and more classes of people protected from what might be their own desires. This year, in clauses regarding sex-crimes victims, the phrase “or a person with a mental illness or disability” has been inserted after “a child 13 years of age or under.” That could be a good thing, guarding people who really need it, and Vermont’s legal definition of mental disability is far narrower than Massachusetts’. But who will define the consent of the disabled? And what will we be shielded from next? Baby-boomer porn?

And then, what will the next legal do-over look like, as the state attempts to scrub its politically motivated, unnecessary and harmful sex-crimes laws of their unintended consequences?

Overreacting.....

Beware the Sex Offender Hysteria is Spreading to Those Not on the Registry

Paranoid Police Defamed Him, Man Says

Article here

NEW ORLEANS (CN) - A man claims Terrebonne Parish and a Houma police officer warned school districts that he was "essentially a child predator" because the cop saw him resting after a 2-mile run on a public jogging path near a school.
Ronald Stuard, 47, says he took a break after a 2-mile run on a public jogging path near St. Gregory's School, where students were playing sports. Stuard says a teacher asked him what he was doing and though he told her "he was merely resting between running intervals on the public track, the teacher called police."
Stuard says Houma city police came and told him not to go there again. Then, he says, Houma police, including defendant Officer Angela Domangue, sent his photo, birth date and information about the car he drove to "several schools in the parish."
"The communication also indicated that Mr. Stuard had been 'watching school children outside.' It further indicated that if Mr. Stuard was seen near the recipient's school, he or she should contact the Houma Police Department," Stuard's complaint states. "The communications further indicated that the police department recognized that Mr. Stuard was not a registered sex offender, but that they wanted to 'keep the kids safe' and 'be in his face' if he was near a school.
"These actions by the defendants resulted in Ronald Stuard being named and published as essentially a child predator."
Stuard demands damages for defamation and privacy invasion. He is represented in Federal Court by R. Glenn Cater.

Ever notice How far some will go in the name of Keeping Children Safe? This quote is taken from Nazi Germany's plan to rule the minds of people....

“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the
government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure
almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation”

We must stop having a knee jerk reaction to the media and politicians when they say they are protecting the children or if it protects one child. We must ask ourselves hard questions. Does what they are saying make sense? Is this the best way to protect children? Will what they are proposing hurt other children i.e. collateral damages? Do these people have some other motivation other then protecting children, like selling newspapers or getting votes!? Lets stop letting them cow us into blindly excepting their word for what will protect the children, let's step up, stand up and let our voices be heard!

Follow Up Message from Peter Cumming on His Sexting Speech

This afternoon I received a follow up e-mail from Peter Cumming regarding what's been happening since he gave his speech on Sexting.
I have now put the following note and a link to my conference paper at the top of the RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS page of my York University - Faculty of Arts - Peter Cumming - Faculty Website page. Here is the link that I would encourage you to share with people interested in accessing the whole of my conference presentation: http://www.arts.yorku.ca/huma/cummingp/research.html .

Conference Paper About Teen "Sexting" (May 26, 2009)

• On May 26, 2009, as part of a panel on Youth, Sexuality, and Technology, a joint session by the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People (ARCYP) and the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), at the 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, I delivered a paper, "Children's Rights, Children’s Voices, Children’s Technology, Children’s Sexuality." The paper has received considerable legitimate media attention, but it has also "gone viral" around the Internet and so around the world. Unfortunately, in doing so, many of my ideas have been taken out of context and misrepresented.
• A conference paper, in my opinion, is a "test drive" of ideas, an opportunity to encourage public discussion, debate, and even disagreement. It is in that spirit I presented this paper. While I have met many wonderful, caring, thoughtful people from various walks of life--lawyers and workers in children's justice and rights, law enforcement officers, social networking workers, activists working on behalf of children--through the rapid spreading of my arguments through various media (newspapers, radio, and television) and the Internet, selective readings of parts of my conference paper have led to violent and abusive reactions from some quarters. This has ranged from a questioning of my motivations to ridiculing of the name my parents gave me to personal attacks. Rather than engage in civil discourse, some parties have chosen to make public and private ad hominem attacks.
• For people interested in vital issues related to youth, sexuality, and technology, I am making available here the complete conference paper as presented in Ottawa--so that people can respond based on more complete knowledge than is available in press releases, interviews, and wire copy. Although I prefaced my presentation by indicating that "children's voices" were not in the presentation as I had originally planned and hoped, the written copy of the paper below is a full and accurate reflection of the presentation I made.
• All I would ask of anyone downloading this paper is that they leave it complete, including my name, and that they link to the article here if wanting to refer the article to others. (I would like, for example, to post a complete bibliography with the paper as soon as possible.) Download "Children's Rights, Children's Technology, Children's Sexuality."

Best,
Peter

Preditor Panic

Here's a very insightful article on what lies behind the whole move to pass more and harsher laws concerning RSFOs. Benjamin Bradford gives some of the history and refutes many of the oft cited statistics. This came out awhile ago but it is still relevant. The author has also published a book Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us is available at Amazon.


Predator Panic: A Closer Look

Benjamin Radford

“Protect the children.” Over the years that mantra has been applied to countless real and perceived threats. America has scrambled to protect its children from a wide variety of dangers including school shooters, cyberbullying, violent video games, snipers, Satanic Ritual Abuse, pornography, the Internet, and drugs.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent protecting children from one threat or other, often with little concern for how expensive or effective the remedies are—or how serious the threat actually is in the first place. So it is with America’s latest panic: sexual predators.

According to lawmakers and near-daily news reports, sexual predators lurk everywhere: in parks, at schools, in the malls—even in children’s bedrooms, through the Internet. A few rare (but high-profile) incidents have spawned an unprecedented deluge of new laws enacted in response to the public’s fear. Every state has notification laws to alert communities about former sex offenders. Many states have banned sex offenders from living in certain areas, and are tracking them using satellite technology. Other states have gone even further; state emergency leaders in Florida and Texas, for example, are developing plans to route convicted sex offenders away from public emergency shelters during hurricanes. “We don’t want them in the same shelters as others,” said Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw. (How exactly thousands of desperate and homeless storm victims are to be identified, screened, and routed in an emergency is unclear.)
An Epidemic?

To many people, sex offenders pose a serious and growing threat—especially on the Internet. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made them a top priority this year, launching raids and arrest sweeps. According to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, “the danger to teens is high.” On the April 18, 2005, CBS Evening News broadcast, correspondent Jim Acosta reported that “when a child is missing, chances are good it was a convicted sex offender.” (Acosta is incorrect: If a child goes missing, a convicted sex offender is among the least likely explanations, far behind runaways, family abductions, and the child being lost or injured.) On his NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” Dateline reporter Chris Hansen claimed that “the scope of the problem is immense,” and “seems to be getting worse.” Hansen claimed that Web predators are “a national epidemic,” while Alberto Gonzales stated that there are 50,000 potential child predators online.

Sex offenders are clearly a real threat, and commit horrific crimes. Those who prey on children are dangerous, but how common are they? How great is the danger? After all, there are many dangers in the world—from lightning to Mad Cow Disease to school shootings—that are genuine but very remote. Let’s examine some widely repeated claims about the threat posed by sex offenders.
the rest of the article is here. It was too long to print the whole thing.

Five Safety tips From The Jacob Wetterling Resource Center

If current laws and policies aren't working to keep our kids safe what can we do? I found this educational information on the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center's website.
This site has a lot of really good information for families and community members. I highly recommend visiting them and reading what they have to say. They advocate being SMART not scared.



Help Keep Kids Safe: Five Tips for Parents and the Community

By Nancy Sabin, Executive Director, Jacob Wetterling Resource Center

1. Set the tone Use a calm, vigilant and reassuring tone. When people are scared or stressed out, they don't think and act as smart as they otherwise could. Children pick up our cues, so if we’re scared, they’ll be scared. We need to act SMART, not SCARED so we make the choices that are in our best interests. When news is difficult, children need reassurance that "We’re doing everything we can to make sure you’re safe."
2. Talk about the rules for your family. Tell your children:
* Don’t go with any adult who asks you for your help....adults should ask other adults for help, they shouldn't ask kids.
* Most of the people in this world are good, but some are not. I want you to stay away from dangerous situations and behaviors, not certain kinds of people, just because they’re strangers. Remember on the first day of school when you met strangers who were your bus driver and your new teacher? They turned out to be good people who helped you. Remember that some people are strangers, most of them are good and they can help you too when no one else is around. A child is most likely to be sexually exploited by someone they know or have seen. They don’t think of them as a stranger such as a priest, a coach or a neighbor. Throw out the word, "stranger" because kids just don’t understand what it means.
* It's ok to keep surprises, but never keep a secret. Surprises don’t hurt others and are usually for just for a short time. Secrets are usually kept for a long time and they often hurt people. If someone asks you to keep a secret, tell your parents right away.
If you’re separated from me (the parent or caregiver) in the Mall or somewhere else, try to find a mom who has children and tell her you’re lost. Never leave the building with ANYONE except me, your caregiver.
* Let's hold hands wherever we go in public, because then people know I’m taking care of you. Don't go off to play by yourself unattended.
* Check first with me, your caregiver, before going anywhere with anyone or before accepting anything from anyone.
3. Play interactive "what if" games throughout your child or teen's life, in order to continuously reinforce personal safety. For example, ask your child when you're in the Mall, "What if we got separated, who would you run to for help? Why would you pick who you did?" Again, one of the safest bets is to run to a mom with children.
4. Reassure and regularly communicate with your children at all stages in their lives. Communicating only in times of crisis doesn't encourage children to come forward with needs and concerns in everyday situations. Ask them to show you how to go online and where some of their favorite places are.
5. Report any unusual activity that you witness, related to children or adults within your community. If your intuition or "guts" tell you something is odd or wrong, it probably is. Speak up. Check things out further. Trust your instincts and tell your kids to do the same! When trying to head off "risky situations", look for these types of Red Flags:
* Don’t go with any adult who asks you for your help....adults should ask other adults for help, they shouldn't ask kids.
* Adults who want to spend time with your child in unique or isolated situations
* Children who suddenly withdraw from other children and want to spend more of their time with a particular adult
* Children who are receiving unexplained gifts, cell phones, event tickets, clothes, etc.
* Adults who take children to special places where they do not take other children or adults
* Adults who spend long periods of time alone with a particular child in private places (i.e., long trips, overnights, secluded parks/buildings)

Let these five steps be your beginning to helping us create a safer world for our children.

Complete Speech on Sexting, By Peter Cimming

I came across several articles on a speech given on Sexting by Peter Cummings to a conference in Canada. click here to read an interview he gave. Of course much was being made about what he said and many where overreacting. So I decided to send him an e-mail asking if I could read it and see what was said in context. He responded right away and send me the text version of his speech. This is what he had to say about the speech and what he'd like as conditions of reusing his information. Please respect his wishes.....
Please feel free to share my paper for non-commercial uses with individuals provided you leave the paper complete with my name on it and the context in which the paper was presented. (I may post it on my own Website so that more people can access the full argument directly rather than merely seeing threads of it on the Internet.

As I mentioned, it is a conference paper--an opportunity to test out ideas and encourage discussion and even agreement; it is not a referreed article in which every last fact has been checked and double-checked. Unfortunately, I haven't yet had the chance to develop a full bibliography for the paper from my research notes; however, there are markers in the paper itself for sources of information quoted or borrowed. In fact, my paper was largely about how decisions are being made about "sexting" without reliable research and knowledge. Rather than everyone repeating "20% of Teens are Sexting" from a single, online survey that included 18- and 19-year-olds as "teenagers" (I know that literally they are teens, but under laws, including child pornography laws, they are adults!) and used as its definition of "sexting" the sending of "nude or semi-nude photos via cellphone", we should simply say, "We don't know how many teens are sexting. We don't know exactly of what that sexting consists. We don't know how many private exchanges become public. We don't know what sexting means to teens themselves." Moreover, our obsession with a purported epidemic of teen sexting obscures the fact that "young adults" (20-26) are doing this far more frequently than teens, and we don't have any knowledge whatsoever of what "adult adults" are doing vis-a-vis sexting.

Best,
Peter Cumming
It was nice to hear someone of his stature speak out with a voice of reason. It is so hard to have rational discussions when it comes to these issues especially when it comes to teens and sex.
His speech in full follows.....

Roundtable on Youth, Sexuality, Technology

Joint Session of Association for Research in Cultures of Young People (ARCYP)

and Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE)

Congress 2009, Carleton University, Ottawa

May 26, 2009, 10:30 – 11:45 a.m.

Children’s Rights, Children’s Voices, Children’s Technology, Children’s Sexuality

by Peter Cumming

The title of today’s panel, “Youth, Sexuality, Technology,” sounds like a recipe for moral panic. And it is moral panic about a recent phenomenon, a purported epidemic of young people’s “sexting,” I wish to respond to briefly today. In particular, I want to contextualize teen sexting and adult responses to it by highlighting significant gaps in children’s rights discourse, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in relation to children’s provision rights to healthy sexual exploration and expression and children’s participation rights as determinants of their own sexual being and behavior. Finally, I visit these issues as an embodied human being with his own distant history of childhood and sexuality—even if this occurred considerably before the invention of “digital technology”—though I fear that those of you came to this paper because of the abbreviated abstract’s promise that the author would contrast his own “childhood experiences exploring sexuality in 1950s rural Ontario with those of tweens in 2008” will be sadly disappointed at the few and tame revelations to come (while those of you who didn’t read the abstract and stumbled here because you thought this was a Geography panel may be equally relieved to hear this reassurance).

First, who are these “children,” including teenagers, adolescents, young people, young adults, about whom I am speaking, and why do I insist on calling them “children” in a panel on “youth”? The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines “children” as human beings under the age of 18: and it is to all these “children” I am referring. For better or worse, people under 18 all live in the confines of children’s rights discourse and child pornography laws. While there may well be significant distinctions to be made between prepubescent children and post pubescent youth, they are not distinctions I want to assume or reinscribe regarding sexuality and technology in relation to sexting: Following Freud, I recognize both children and youth as sexual beings, whatever that means differently to both, and I have no doubt that both children and youth (and adults, for that matter) are using digital technologies as part of their sexual repertoire.

Second, what is this “sexting,” which so neatly brings together the “sexuality” and “technology” dimensions of this panel (and to which, I believe, the third paper on this panel will also speak)? “Sexting,” a 21^st-century combination of “texting” and “sex,” has been defined variously as the sending of nude or semi-nude photos or videos and/or sexually suggestive messages via cellphone texting or instant messaging. Although the word “sexting” is only a few years old, a handful of recent incidents in the United States, some misplaced and heavy handed legal overreactions charging children exchanging consensual nude photographs of themselves with the production, dissemination, and possession of child pornography, a single recent American online survey commissioned by the unusual alliance of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl magazine, a media feeding frenzy, and even a May 6, 2009 episode of Law and Order have all served to create the impression that in the past few months there has erupted an epidemic of sexting among youth and that this is a thoroughly bad thing.

Although depicted in the media as a “nationwide” epidemic, in the last year or two there have been major police prosecutions for sexting with a limited number of individuals in at most a dozen U.S. states. There have been no cases of that kind in Canada. (I’ll leave the Australian cases for our colleague from Australia; significantly, I have not found instances from Europe except a single reference surmising that “the practice is not thought to be prevalent in Britain” (Times Online). Thus, the “epidemic” of sexting consists, according to breathless print and online sources, of four Grade 6 and 7 students in Alabama; three Pennsylvania girls (aged 14 and 15) and three male classmates (aged 16 and 17) (Wikipedia); 14-year-old Michael Harmon who received a photo of a classmate which showed her bare breasts (GASP); a 14-year-old Florida boy who sent a photo of his genitalia to a female classmate because he was “bored” (YAWN) (Macleans); a teenage boy in Indiana (Wikipedia); a 15-year-old Ohio high school girl —from the questionably named Licking Valley High School (“Porn Charges for ‘Sexting’); a 17-year-old Ohio girl; “two Ohio teenagers who had nude photos on their cell phones of two 15-year-old classmates” (Wikipedia); “dozens of white-faced 12- and 13-year-olds and pimply 14-year-olds with twitchy legs” in Colorado (“’Sexting’: A Disturbing”); two 16-year-old girls who took side-profile pictures of themselves naked after taking a shower (“’Sexting’: A Disturbing”); a group of 11- to 17-year old boys who traded photos of semi-nude or nude teenage girls (Sexting Girls); a 14-year-old New Jersey girl who posted 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com (Sexting Girls); six 12- to 14-year-olds from Massachusetts (Sexting Girls); a Texas eighth-grader who spent the night in a juvenile detention center after his football coach found a nude picture that a fellow student sent him on his cell phone (“’Sexting’ Shockingly”); a Wisconsin 17-year-old (“Sexting Craze”); a New York 16-year-old (“Sexting Craze”); and 18-year-old Phillip Alpert of Orlando, Florida who received unrequested naked pictures of his 16-year-old girlfriend but who mass-emailed the photos to the girl’s relatives when they broke up.

One of the major problems with public reactions to “sexting” is a complete conflation of nudity with sexuality and pornography. Thus, snapshots of two Pennsylvania 13-year-old girls which showed the teens “in their white bras” resulted in threats from a district attorney of charges of child pornography (Sexting Girls Facing). The photo of a 17-year-old in the same case showed “her just out of the shower, with a towel wrapped around her waist and her breasts exposed” (Sexting Girls). As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in its suit against the overly eager District Attorney, “Neither of the two [pictures] depicts sexual activity or reveals anything below the waist” . . . However, according to ACLU, “The district attorney told a group of parents and students … that he has the authority to prosecute girls photographed in underwear . . . or even in a bikini on the beach, because the photos are “provocative” (ACLU). Clearly, these photos do not fit under Pennsylvania’s child pornography law, which defines this felony based on photos “of a minor engaged in sexual activity, ‘lewd exhibition of the genitals,’ or nudity that is meant to titillate” (Sexting Girls).

Legal responses to teen sexting in the U.S. have been sledgehammer-like, including production and possession of child pornography, a felony which in some states can result in these children being labeled as registered sex offenders for decades; felony obscenity; being declared an “unruly child”; contributing to the delinquency of a minor; “sexual abuse of children… or open lewdness” (District); possessing and distributing material of a child in a sexual act (Sexting Girls); and disseminating indecent material to a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. The 18-year-old Florida man who sought revenge by emailing nude photos of his 16-year-old girlfriend to her family was convicted of transmission of child pornography, resulting in jail time, a label of “sex offender” until he is 43, which results in his inability to live with his father because his father lives near a school and with him having to attend classes with convicted sex offenders (Commentary, Mike Galanos, CNN). As Lithwick concludes, “the criminal justice system is probably not the best venue for addressing the sexting crisis. . . prosecutors have charged the senders of smutty photos, the recipients of smutty photos, those who save the smutty photos, and the hapless forwarders of smutty photos with the same crime: child pornography. Who is the victim here and who is the perpetrator? Everybody and nobody. (“Textual”).

In fairness, there has been some pushing back against this legal overzealousness. The ACLU was successful in making its case that the teenaged girls in question did not consent to having their pictures distributed, their images were not pornographic, and that the photos were protected under First Amendment speech (Sexting Girls). Several states have recently moved towards aligning their laws more closely with teenagers’ practices in relation to sexuality and technology, Vermont legalizing consensual exchange of graphic images between people 13 to 18 (Wikipedia) and Ohio and Utah reducing sexting from a felony to a first degree misdemeanor. Although one online writer has argued that “case law has not kept up with the impact of digital media on teenage behavior” (“Sexting Craze”), I would argue that this has the order reversed: case law has not kept up with the impact of teenage behavior on digital media. Or, more precisely, as David Oswell argues in “Ethics and Techno-Childhood,” “Childhood is never disclosed in isolation; it is always accompanied by technology. Technology makes childhood visible as a problem. In doing so both technology and childhood, like leaky vessels, leak into each other. I refer to this as techno-childhood: the interrelation between, and the mutual constitution of, technology and childhood” (170). When Toronto criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan quips that “the only way to stop teens from sexting is to take away their cellphones, and teens would sooner give up a lung,” he unwittingly recognizes this tight connection between children and technology, technology being what Nick Lee calls “an extension of childhood.”

What interests me most about the purported dystrophic epidemic of sexting is how these widely publicized legal cases—cautionary tales writ large—and a single online survey about teens, young adults, and sexting have fuelled and shaped a media frenzy resulting in articles with titles such as “The Sexting Scare,” “Sexting Craze Leads to Child Pornography Charges,” “20% Chance Your Child May Be a Sex Offender!,” “Sexting Poses Risk to Teens’ Health,” “Sexting Teens Face Prison and Sexual Predator Status for Nude Photos,” “Want to Stop Sexting, CyberBullying & Digital Disease?,” “Textual Misconduct: What to Do About Teens and their Dumb Naked Photos of Themselves,” and “ Technology Fuelling Sexting Craze.” Not to mention a Website: sextingisstupid.com.

In spite of these headlines, as Macleans magazine rightly notes, “the statistical proof of a sexting epidemic is scant: one lone survey.” Indeed, a much more careful reading of the “Sex and Tech” survey is called for. . . . It was conducted completely online; its commissioners no doubt have vested interests in the results; it is clearly not directly applicable to Canada; its definition of teens as ages 13 to 19 and young adults as 20 to 26 may fit the literal definition of “teenager,” but it also perversely skirts legal definitions of “childhood” including those in relation to child pornography, thus skewing statistics about teen sexting accordingly; most importantly, the very broad category of “nude or semi-nude” photos used in the survey questions recognizes no distinctions between nudity, sexuality, and pornography. However, even if we accept the survey data, there is much more to learn than most media reports suggest. Article after article expresses shock that 20% of teens sext, none recognizing that that implies a more amazing fact—that 80% of teens do not. The survey shows that far more young adults (33%) than teens (20%) are sexting, yet no comparable alarm about young adults has emerged. The survey indicates that twice as many teens and young adults send sexually explicit text messages (39%of teens; 59% of young adults) as send nude photos (20% of teens, 33% of young adults), yet all media attention focuses on visual images. According to the survey, more girls sext than boys: 22% of teen girls vs. 18% of teen boys; 36% of young adult women vs. 31% of young adult men. Although most accounts explain this as boys pressuring girls to sext, more girls in the survey consider sexting “fun and flirtatious.” (51% of teen girls give pressure from a guy as their reason for sending, while 66% of teen girls and 72% of young adult women claim the activity to be “fun & fliratious.”) Children’s and particularly girls’ sexual agency are not generally or comfortably acknowledged in North America, and the findings of this survey call out desperately to be analyzed in terms of girls’ sexual agency in relation to sexting.

While Canadian media responses have generally been more muted to the sexting epidemic, they too easily fall into the trap of assuming that what is true in the United States will necessarily be true here too. And so, the Vancouver Province says that sexting “has Canadian officials on the alert” even though “there have been few [no?] publicized cases in Canada to date.” “Cpl. Annie Linteau, the RCMP B.C.’s spokeswoman, said she hadn’t heard of the trend. “But I’d be surprised if it wasn’t happening here,” (O’Connor). Indeed, there may be critical differences between sexting in Canada and south of the border. It is not a crime in Canada for consenting young people under 18 to exchange nude photos, for example. And in Vancouver, “… local school officials said unlike their American peers, they would be reluctant to report sexting as a crime to police.”

There are a few sane voices in the furor over sexting. JSS writes in an online column “Sexting Hysteria,” “the hysterical and infectious drive to stem sexting among teens and to put it on the level of child pornography has accelerated in just a few weeks. . . . Nothing has actually changed except that the kind of adults who do not engage in sexting, themselves, found out that teen-agers were doing it….Teen-agers fumbling with their sexuality and technology is not something that should scare anyone into legislation, and schools shouldn’t be overreacting either.” (jss, “Sexting Hysteria”). Indeed, one could argue that in some ways virtual sexual activities are safer for teens than actual ones: nobody ever got pregnant or received an STD directly from an online exchange. In “Is ‘Sexting’ Same as Porn?,” Goodman writes, “There is nothing particularly new about young people taking pictures of themselves. It’s as old as the Polaroid.” In fact, I’d argue it’s older than that. Goodman also argues that “The panic not only erases the line between stupid and criminal, it dilutes the real horror of child pornography.” Lithwick raises concerns that girls are being punished disproportionately, being charged with producing while boys were merely charged with possessing pornography. Clearly, a key danger in sexting is not in the initial exchange of nude photos between two partners or potential partners but in the dangers of losing control of those images in the powerful, immediate, omnipotent, eternal, digital world. In a blog, Dann writes, “these kids don’t get the idea that everything you do online becomes a digital tattoo. ….Sexting is a dumb thing to do, not only because it effectively gives your body away to everyone else, but because you have no control over what happens after you hit the send button.” (Dann’s Blog) .

To contextualize youth sexting we should remember our own sexual histories as young people. Apart from digital media’s power to disseminate information quickly and broadly, there may be nothing radically new about sexting. The closest I ever came to being expelled from school was in Grade 2, when I was hauled before the authorities for looking up girls’ dresses. In 1957, in an Ontario village, as the seven-year-old son of a Protestant clergyman, I was trying my best to learn about sex. At 18, as a don at an Ontario University, I tried to make a political parody of a student council election by posing for the student newspaper—they had cameras then, only the cameras needed film and the newspaper needed to be printed—clad only in a jockstrap; although I was thinly disguised by freckles to make me resemble Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, I had to go underground for several days until the Associate Dean cooled off. These events, notably, were before television, minicomputers, the Internet, and digital photography. However, much as contemporary nostalgia might view this as an “earlier, simpler time,” and much as current moral panics about youth sexuality might consider children’s and youths’ current sexting behaviors as depravities signaling the end of civilization, I would suggest that the “innocence” and “experience” of my ancient childhood might actually not be so far separated from the “experience” and “innocence” of many or most sexting exchanges.

Perhaps, then, adult alarm about technology and youth sexuality is a red herring—except insofar as it relates to cyber-bullying and sexual harassment: one 18-year-old American woman committed suicide when a nude photo she sent to her then boyfriend came back to haunt her. Are there, for example, significant differences between teens learning to kiss while playing “Spin the Bottle” face-to-face and teen “chicks” and “dudes” going online to “Espin.com” to “spin the bottle and start flirting!” with “Over 4 Million Hotties”? Are there differences between youth playing face-to-face versus online “Strip Poker,” or between children investigating each other’s body parts while playing “Doctor” and teens sharing cell phone images of their naked bodies? As one Macleans reader writes, “Young people are showing each other their naked bodies! When did that ever happen before?”

Child pornography laws arise out of human rights legislation, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, children’s rights advocates have been more preoccupied with “protection” and “prevention” than with “provision” and “participation” rights in relation to children and their sexuality. The CRC explicitly advocates protection of children from sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, coerced sexual activity, unlawful sexual practices including child prostitution, and being used in pornography. Guiding principles of the CRC include “the best interests of the child,” the centrality of children’s participation rights, and the “full and harmonious development” of the child’s personality. Yet where in the CRC are children’s provision rights to healthy sexual being and participation rights in exploring and expressing that sexual being? Article 12’s right of the child to express his or her views freely? Article 13’s “freedom of expression . . . freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice”?; Article 16’s right to privacy – “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy . . . or correspondence”: as online writer DillthePill writes, “what the heck were the teachers doing looking through the students phones?”; Article 24’s “the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health”? Article 28 and 29’s rights to education?; Article 31’s right to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child ?

Is nudity pornography? Not necessarily. Are consensual exchanges of naked photos between young people child pornography? Not in the first instance. Should child pornography charges be leveled against young people sharing naked photos of themselves? Definitely not. Can young people get into trouble by sharing sexually suggestive digital text, images, or video? Yes. Can this have real world consequences? Absolutely. However, teenagers have no monopoly on foolish choices and devastating consequences. Think, for example, of the infamous, intercepted cellphone conversation between the future King of England and his paramour in which he fantasizes about being a tampon so he can “live in her trousers”: no doubt that would have been sexting had the technology existed. When, we must ask, in Western culture, did nudity become pornography, youth sexuality perverse, digital technologies the tail wagging the dog, and when and how and why have we forgotten children’s participatory rights as sexual beings?