From The Providence Journal: Dec 06, 2009 –
Has “sexting” become the new love note? No longer content with sending e-mails or letters to boyfriends, women are discovering that the practice of transmitting provocative nude or semi-nude self-portraits via cell phones is a popular though risky trend.
Meghan McCain twittered her breasts. The former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, sent a sex tape to an ex-boyfriend several years ago. He released it anonymously to the press. Let’s hope his name surfaces so that women can put him on their danger list. Gossip over the alleged Tiger Woods affairs has been fanned by what was called cell phone texting and sexting. Right now, teens are running the Internet gamut with sexting and sex tapes.
Dr. Mary Muscari noted in Medscape’s Public Health and Prevention Journal that the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmogirl.com conducted a survey of 653 teens (ages 13 to 19) and 637 young adults (ages 20 to 26) to better understand the connection between sex and cyberspace.
They found that 20 percent of teens (22 percent of girls and 18 percent of boys) electronically sent or posted online nude or seminude photos or videos of themselves. Eleven percent of young teens (ages 13 to 16) electronically sent nude/seminude photos. Even more teens (39 percent overall, 37 percent of girls, and 40 percent of boys) sent sexually suggestive text messages, e-mails, or instant messages: Forty-eight percent of teens stated that they received sexually explicit messages. The numbers were higher in all areas for young adults.
What most students do not realize is the danger inherent in sending nude or semi-nude photos from cell phone to cell phone. In a digital world those photos might be around for years or surface on the Internet.
But even more serious than having photos show up on the Internet or passed around to other students are the charges in some states being levied against those who send soft porn electronically — child pornography. Teens are being prosecuted or sent to juvenile detention centers for indiscreet transmission of explicit photos.
And it gets worse. With social networking and the ease of text messaging, a new form of inappropriate behavior is taking place in the world of teaching. For years, we knew of insecure professors who had affairs with students. But now high school coaches and teachers are becoming involved more intimately with their students through sexting and texting. The list of communities in which teachers are being chastised or sentenced is too long to report, but the indiscretions are becoming all too common an item on the nightly news.
Why the sudden surge in passing along sexy photos and the pursuit of passion? Many attribute the new openness about sex to the entry of soft porn into mainstream America. Porn is no longer a dirty little secret of seedy store-fronts with peep shows for men. Now adult movies are available at local video shops that are geared to both women and men. Erotic toys are available in pharmacies, and book stores now carry a full selection of sensual literature.
Violet Blue’s “Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn” and Alison Tyler’s “Red Hot Erotica” are two of the more popular titles. But books about sudden sex and spanking are high on the list of sought-after titles.
Dr. Muscari sees sexting and the new soft porn in America as an extension of a society where parents grew up as part of the free-loving Woodstock generation. Oprah Winfrey noted last week that “one in three consumers of online porn in our country are now women.”
Why the trend?
William Hurt Sledge, M.D., is a psychiatry professor and medical director of the Yale Psychiatric Hospital. For three years, at Yale’s Calhoun College, he taught a course with Dr. Ruth Westheimer in which they explored with students “Twentieth Century Family, Marriage, Intimacy, and Fulfillment.” One of the sections taught by Dr. Sledge focused on pornography and erotica.
“The Oprah show report does not move, surprise or seem newsworthy to me,” Dr. Sledge said. “If you look at the scientifically collected data (Kinsey, et al; Masters and Johnson, and others) on ‘sexual outlets’ you would find that, in general, women are doing the same things that men are, and have been doing it for a long time.”
Copyright 2009 Rita Watson/ All Rights Reserved