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What is your opinion on sexting?

I've been watching a series about problems with sex education and how to improve it. One episode was about sexting. One side wanted to teach students to never take any photos you don't want to become public because leaking is common. The other side wanted to teach recipients to keep intimate photos between them and the sender, and that it could then be a fun and exciting addition to a relationship.

I'm ideally for the latter, combined with prosecuting the perpetrator and supporting the victim if a photo gets out anyway. But society isn't currently like that. People who share someone else's photo get more praise than heat, and people in those photos get more blame and shame than support. As long as that's the reality, I tend to agree people shouldn't take any nudes, but that it should become possible with very low risk.

The first form of education prolongs victim blaming, but the second form isn't safe until everybody attended those classes and most people alive will not do so anymore. So I'm not sure what's best.

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HootyTheNightOwl

It's already illegal for me to share or threaten to share any nudes that are sent to me - whether I want to receive them or not...

https://www.police.uk/ro/report/rsa/alpha-v1/advice/rape-sexual-assault-and-other-sexual-offences/revenge-porn-intimate-image-abuse/#:~:text=It%20is%20illegal%20to%20share,by%20text%20or%20e%2Dmail

NerdyPotato · M

@HootyTheNightOwl that's happening in more and more countries thankfully. That is a big step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it's enough to make sexting safe just yet.

HootyTheNightOwl

@NerdyPotato Having read your post again - and the fact that it's stated that the people involved are "students", I wonder if there might be some common sense to encouraging them to not take naked pictures of themselves in the first place???

Possession of child pornography is a major issue in many countries - and the fact that it's your own underage body doesn't absolve you from potentially getting prosecuted and forced to sign the sex offenders register for the rest of your life.

Another thing that concerns me about the revenge porn law is:- How do you know where the source of the leak was??? Unless it's one unique picture that you shared with one person and you know there's no other place it could've come from, it's going to be a lot harder to prove that it came from this person if you shared it with fifty others without watermarking it - which happens on SW.

NerdyPotato · M

@HootyTheNightOwl oh, they wouldn't encourage students to take photos while they were minors. The lessons were given to 12 to 18-year-olds, but in preparation to enjoy sex their entire life, not to try everything right away. Sharing photos before you reach adulthood wouldn't only put the recipient in trouble, but yourself too. It doesn't matter if it's your own body and you took it yourself: it still counts as possession of child porn.

But you do have a good point about the effectiveness of the revenge porn law. The burden of proof is going to be tricky, so not a whole lot of perpetrators may actually get sentenced over it.

HootyTheNightOwl

@NerdyPotato Yes... and it's important that children are taught this and understand it because if they're found to be in possession of child porn, then they throw away their whole life just for the sake of a few pictures. It's not really worth them giving up potential career choices in the future if they're convicted - and I know that children are tried and convicted of child porn crimes... even though they were the "victim".

Awareness of the law as it currently stands is a good thing, though, because it gives adults who are sharing nudes the chance to consider how they might respond to providing proof that their pictures were leaked from the source that they say they were leaked from and not any other potential sources. That could potentially increase the number of overall convictions the courts are able to award.