Consensual Sexting

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • April 13, 2013 • no comments

Slate writer Emily Bazelon makes a perfectly reasonable point in a recent article about two tragic deaths:

In a situation like this, where outrage is understandably everywhere, it’s hard to think about tempering justice with mercy. Believe me, I know that. And for these boys, child pornography charges may well be warranted. But most of the time, charging teenagers as child pornographers shouldn’t be the only option. We should have laws that offer a middle ground between no charges at all and heavy prison sentences with a lifetime on the sex-offender register. We should have laws that specifically and deliberately address teen sexting.

The key is to distinguish between one kid consensually sending one other kid a sexual photo and one kid sending out a photo that the pictured teenager has not consented to at all. It’s not that the first kind of sexting is a good idea—it’s that kids shouldn’t get caught up in the criminal justice system for it, whereas nonconsenual sexting is a different story. “We should draw the line between my daughter stupidly sending a photo of herself to her boyfriend and her boyfriend sending it to all his friends to humiliate her,” Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center told me. “The first is stupid. The second is more troubling and should be criminal.”

In the U.S., states have been trying to sort out sexting laws for the past few years. Levick says that not enough lawmakers are picking up on the distinction she makes. Pennsylvania, for example, passed a law with criminal penalties for juvenile sexting with malicious intent—helpful—but also made consensual sexting a misdemeanor.

I would love to see these issues discussed in Oregon, without the hysteria that is usually a part of discussions about teenage sexuality. Will that occur? This post will probably give you a sense how optimistic I am.