Thursday, February 23, 2012

Sexting

Recently there were some male high school students who took a sext of a female student and said if she didn't have sex with them, then her picture would go viral.  She was afraid and the young men raped her. The trail has past and some of the young men (I believe their were 4 ranging in age from 14 - 18) are either serving jail time in juvenile hall.  During the trail, another student testified that "everyone sexts" it's "no big deal."

Is this really the case in our era? Is sexting "no big deal?"

Late in the fall, I was asked to speak about cyber-bullying to a church congregation as part of a Sunday morning lecture/preach during their regular worship hour. There were over fifty people, young, old all different backgrounds, colors etc.  To the group, I defined cyber-bullying and sexting.  I was greatly surprised that the majority of listeners voiced their opinion during my definition of sexting.  They felt that sexting was simply an art form between two or more individuals.  That man and woman were not clothed when they arrived, so what is the big deal? "Everyone has essentially the same parts."

Talk about not knowing what to say, I was in some ways speechless.  I recovered with a wimpy reply like, "not everyone wants to share their body." Which was then countered with "then don't."  I tried to say that a brain isn't fully developed until the twenties; kids sometimes make irrational decisions w/out thinking it through which gets a lot of them in trouble (hence the above case -- I AM NOT SAYING THE RAPE WAS THE GIRL'S FAULT --- IT WAS NOT, IT WAS THE BOYS FAULT) and there are times when kids do not realize what is happening.   The conversation continued without being resolved. However, on my part, it was an eye opener.  Here were adults and teens not seeing a thing wrong with sexting,

It blow my mind until this week when the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit model ? Upton appeared in a barely there swimsuit.  My husband doesn't get the swimsuit addition because he thinks it's a type of porn and we don't need it around our kids.  However, because the model's family is a prominent family around here, Ms. Upton's (forgive me, her first name escapes me, but her last name is all over the town so that is what I remember)     picture was plastered all over with several interviews of her and her family.  Interesting that three stripes of cloth totaling maybe six inches is accepted and seen as beautiful but if a teen had sent a picture of herself wearing a swimsuit of that size, it would have been considered a sext ---

HMM, what is society saying about sexting and what is being accepted?

What do you think? 

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