Tuesday Debate: Sexting

By Glenn and Jake



Sexting is the act of sending nude pictures over a cellular telephone. This debate is not whether it is morally right or wrong to do such. I think we can all agree that it is very right. I would love it if somebody sent me nude photos on my phone. What we are here to debate is whether or not it is morally right to arrest 15 year olds who send dick and vag pics to fellow 15 year olds for child pornography.


Jake: Look, if these 15 year old Casanovas want to get beaver pics on their cellular telephones then they have to be ready to face the music when they get caught. It's illegal!

Glenn: Is love illegal? No matter how much Robert Greenwald might want it, we do not live in the novel A Brave New World. You can't arrest a teenager for being in love any more than you can arrest them for driving drunk.

Jake: First of all, that argument is completely ridiculous! Teens should be arrested for drinking, period. Everybody who drives drunk should be arrested and have their license taken away. These 15 year olds have no ability to be in love. They only know how to be in lust. Their lust mixed with their low self esteem causes a chemical reaction that forces them to sext nude photos to each other.

Glenn: You are correct that my argument is ridiculous; it was purposeful to make all ensuing statements I make seem more reasonable. I agree that teens should be locked up if they drive while intoxicated, but certainly drunk driving - which KILLS millions of teens a year - is worse than sexting, which has never killed anyone. In fact, it has done the opposite of killing to young libidos. If you want to make the case sexting kills more teens than drunk driving, I think we'd all like to see you try.

Jake: I would not make that case. I know sexting is not the game of a murderer. The point here is not to compare sexting to drunk driving, but rather to debate whether or not those 15 year olds should be incarcerated for getting images of nude males or females on their phone (ones that are also under 18). I say that yes, of course they should. They are committing a crime by having nude photos of <18 year olds on their phones, even Pete Townshend would agree with that (but he'd also still do it). As the old saying goes: you do the crime, you do the time.

Glenn: I will concede the technical point - nude pictures of <18 year olds are illegal - but think about the ramifications if we go to the extreme of arresting teens for sexting. Is it not unreasonable to think some teens will be arrested for simply owning naked pictures of themselves? What about teens who look at their own naked bodies in the mirror - are they not technically looking at child pornography? Where does it stop?

Jake: Much like a ferris wheel, it starts and stops in the same place. These kids need to get it through their meat headed skulls that owning a picture of a nude under 18 year old is illegal. If they want to look at nude pictures of women that look like they are under 18 they can go to the newsstand and pick up a copy of Hustler's great publication Barely Legal. That is illegal for them to own, technically, but the punishment is far less steep. If a young boy gets caught with an issue of Barely Legal then they'll probably just get yelled at by their mothers. Women can probably get a magazine similar called Twinks Monthly or Just Twinks. Something with 'twinks' in the title.

Glenn: I guess this all hinges back the earlier point you attempted to make and I, by failing to acknowledge, implicitly accepted: that teens are incapable of love. For me, love, lust, naked pictures or cell phones were never an option. But for the new generation, all of these things are happening more often and sooner. Children are getting cell phones as young as 11 and having sex for the first time as young as 10. Girls are getting their periods at the age of eight! You're trying to tell me that this theoretical 16 year old girl - having been menstruating for eight years, sexually active for six and talking on a cell phone for five - isn't ready to sext?

Jake: All I'm saying is the law is the law. While anybody under the age of 21 is legally incapable of love, they can still rub their genitals together awkwardly, as long as they aren't videotaping it (if they are under 18). Teens are growing up extremely fast, this is true. When I was 16 I was too busy wondering whether the Ultimate Warrior was the same Jim Hellwig as the late 80s and early 90s Ultimate Warrior. 16 year olds nowadays are basically rewriting the Karma Sutra and have never even read an Andy Capp comic strip. Perhaps I don't understand these children. I don't understand their sex bracelets or their mini-bikes. I never will. What I do understand is that we live in American, the land of the free. That freedom has a price tag and the price says "no children under 18 can have nude photos taken of them" and their is no bartering allowed. If there was don't you think Mark Foley would have bartered like a cowboy at a pelt shop?

Glenn: Unjust laws are meant to be broken. Moreover, obsolete or technologically unadapted laws do not NOT have to be enforced. It is completely up to school administrators and prosecutors whether these kids should be punished. Plenty of white collar criminals go free every day because they aren't prosecuted and plenty of school bullying goes on every day because school administrators choose to ignore it. I wish all child pornography laws would be repealed, but if that's unfeasible they should at least not be enforced upon children themselves.

Jake: While that makes sense, who are we to argue with the law makers of the USA? The only thing we can do is call our local officials and ask them to change the laws. If they don't then all we can do is to adhere to them.



Hopefully this has shed some more light on this decades-old debate. As Jake said in regards to local officials, if you are not willing to make your voice heard you must silently fume about injustice. Instead of keeping quiet, we ask that you use those fumes to power a turbine and use that energy to write a comment with YOUR opinions on sexting.

26 comments:

  1. i'll be like jake and say this is great and deserves COMMENTS!!!! nice work gentlemen.

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  2. Thanks Maddie. I would expect this to become a weekly series.

    Comments are like PCP to me, it's the only thing that can give me the power to write 13 articles a week and rip the door off of a cop car.

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  3. The best thing to do with difficult problems like this one is to throw it in jail! That way its not on the streets anymore and we don't have to come face to face with it! Besides, who's it gonna hurt if a 15 year old does a little time? Maybe he'll come out better Or maybe he'll learn how to use a knife and drugs and rename himself Spider or Rip. Or maybe he'll encounter sexting, but in real life instead of over the phone. These are excellent experiences for an already emotionally unstable boy to have. Like my dad would always say when something bad would happen, "Son, you're building character. Did you weedeat?"

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  4. It is still creating child pornography which has different ramifications than teenagers having sex with each other. At the same time it is not as socially unacceptable for teens to view other teens naked. Therefore there should be legislation lessening the punishment for child pornography for underage offenders or even create a totally separate charge.

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  5. Maddie, you need to also present your theory as to what we should to - even though obviously Bub just revealed the "correct" answer.

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  6. sorry glenn. i felt it foolish to comment because i figured anyone who knows anything about me would know that i am not only in favor of sexting, but also of child pornography. this section from allen ginsberg's wikipedia says it best:

    Association with NAMBLA

    Ginsberg also spoke out in defense of the freedom of expression of NAMBLA.[20]. He defended his membership by stating

    "Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance."

    Ginsberg stated "I joined NAMBLA in defense of free speech..." In "Thoughts on NAMBLA", published in Deliberate Prose, Ginsberg elaborated on these thoughts, stating "NAMBLA's a forum for reform of those laws on youthful sexuality which members deem oppressive, (it is) a discussion society not a sex club." Ginsberg expressed the opinion that the appreciation of youthful bodies and "the human form divine" has been a common theme throughout the history of culture, "from Rome's Vatican, to Florence's Uffizi galleries, to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art", and that laws regarding the issue needed to be more openly discussed. When he proved his point about free speech Ginsberg quit NAMBLA.[17][citation needed]

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  7. Allen Ginsberg is a child molester!

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  8. SO is Maddie!! AND NAMBLA#@!#!

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  9. New name for our website: One NAMBLA in Anal Bleaching

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  10. And our new tag line can be "the website for people who want to read about sexually explicit/violent/disturbed material!"

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  11. Sorry for being controversial, bleeding heart babies. Why don't we all go see Jay Leno do stand up!?

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  12. I don't think we should have any articles that wouldn't be appropriate for housewives in their 50s and 60s to email forward along to family and friends.

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  13. i would rather be molested as a child than see jay leno do stand up.

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  14. HA!

    Glenn, you're going to hate my article on scat porn that I'm writing for tomorrow. Then my article about self mutilation and the sexual gratification it can bring.

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  15. You know of course that I won't PERSONALLY hate it and that I personally could write articles that would make Chuck Palahniuk vomit. But not everyone is as deeply disturbed as you and me.

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  16. Those people are crumb bums and I wish them physical harm. The only thing that would make Chuck Palahniuk vomit is our correct use of grammar and lack of sentence fragments. That guy is a really shitty writer.

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  17. Zing! And word. And also only Kirk McC. and Joey P. think scat porn is funny!!!

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  18. Gosh guys, I liked that debate lots.

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  19. Wouldn't people under 18 "rubbing their genitals together awkwardly" be statutory rape? Technically speaking...if they aren't old enough to be "sexting" because it's child pornography, they shouldn't be having sex or even really touching because legally they are too young. There have been cases of outraged mothers pressing charges against their 15 year old daughters 15 year old boyfriend for this exact thing...

    I think that the arguement that if they aren't recording their sexual activity it's okay is wrong and void because it's like saying if they don't get caught it isn't a crime...which would be the same for sexting.

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  20. What happened to 15-year-olds stealthily having sex so parents wouldn't find out? The new generation deserves to go to jail just for being idiots.

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  21. Anonymous, if you murder somebody and don't get caught it's legal. I was just going off of that argument.

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  22. see, sexting could work for the instances where one mother wants to sue her daughter's ex after he 'broke her vulnerable young heart'. these teens should probably start recording their sexual encounters as opposed to just spreading around nudie pics of each other. this would save a lot of innocent kids un-necessary jail time and maybe open up lil' suzie's mother's eyes to the fact that her daughter's just as much a whore as that guy.

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  23. Kal, that makes sexting not work. Sexting if for ejaculation purposes, not for legal action purposes.

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  24. These kids should be able to take cellphone pictures of whatever they want while they can still reach those spots.

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