Sex Cells « Kevin Tracy

Sex Cells

Posted By Travis Gearhart at 1:08 pm on February 8, 2010

Sexting. I never, honestly, thought that such a thing would become an issue worthy of passing state laws over, but apparently it has become enough of a problem that such laws are necessary.

“Sexting” is the phrase given to text and picture messages that contain lewd acts/words and/or nudity. I’ve read other pieces that asked if this was a high-tech version of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” and from what I can ascertain that is apparently the case.

The big question, however, is whether a new law regarding these instances will eradicate the problem and whether a law violates individuals’ freedom of speech.

I’m not sure I’m qualified enough to throw my five cents in on that question in particular, but I have to say the idea of children sending nude pictures to other children is alarming. The parents should shoulder a good portion of the blame (whether the parents will admit to their own neglect is another question entirely), but the children who send the messages have to be held accountable and have it explained to them why their actions have consequences.

In this new age of technology, future employers are scanning people’s Facebook and MySpace pages and are looking up their job hopefuls on Google before considering whether to hire them. A Facebook page with pictures of an individual doing a keg stand (or, with the issue of “sexting,” a picture of an individual in the nude) does not put that person to the front of the line for a job, to say the least.

Is it disheartening to see that it may take the passage of a law to make this fact apparent? Of course! Everyone likes to think that people have more common sense than that! Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, and one has to weigh internally which of the two scenarios he or she favors more: a law against “sexting” which might, technically, have the chance of infringing on a persons rights, or a new flock of job seeking young men and women who can’t find any serious employment because of stupid mistakes made when they were younger whom we, as society, must now pay for in the form of welfare and unemployment benefits.

Neither sounds particularly pleasing, and I’m not the type of person that usually favors societal infrastructure, but when given the choice between two very bitter pills, I find the former a bit more palatable.

Besides the societal effects of not passing legislation regarding this problem, there is the blatantly obvious reason that pops into one’s head: children shouldn’t be sending pictures and messages of a sexual nature anyway!

Written for and originally printed in the NWI Times

Comments (5)

5 Comments »

Comment by Kevin Tracy on February 8, 2010

I can’t believe you still want to use that title.

Comment by Laurie on February 8, 2010

Travis,

You weren’t specific about the attempts or where. The attempts I’m aware of seek to clarify the consequences of “sexting” and to prevent (for example) a 16 year old boy/girl “young idiot” from having to register as a sex offender if they get caught. Sounds extreme, but locally we have seen one case where a 15 year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend sent each other pictures, the boy shared hers with his friends, it got “around” and the parents of the girls were furious and wanted legal action.

If I recall, your kids are young so perhaps you haven’t had to go all counter-culture on them yet. Counterculture used to be synonomous with “hippie”, but now it pretty much just means responsible parenting. Technological advances-five and six year olds with PC access and even cell phones-make it imperative that you stay one step ahead of the STUPID and dangerous-to-their-future things that kids do with it.

It used to be that kids would say cruel and stupid things to each other, and the parents and/or teachers involved would sit them down, hash it out and mete out the punishment. Now, though, these cruel, thoughtless, or sexually explicit things are apt to end up in an easily saved document. Once these are saved for posterity, emotions run rampant. So you’ll end up educating you children on exactly WHY you should never say anything “controversial” or gosssipy in any social marketing form. My rule? If you wouldn’t share it with your grandmother, don’t say it in a text. Sounds simple, but you would be amazed at the problems that are created because kids ignore this.

Comment by Laurie on February 8, 2010

Travis,

Forgive me-I was on a conference call as I wrote and forgot to address a point.

While I dont’ think freedom of expression is at issue with minor children and sexting, I do think it is between consenting adults. Rather than making it illegal for adults to “sext”, I think laws could be passed whent dealing with unauthorized distribution of what can be construed a private event. Thus, if my husand and I want to share racy pics or messages with each other, so be it. But should one of us decide to send them to our buddies or make them public in anyway without the other’s consent, that should be against the law. Are there existing laws that you know of that already deal with this?

Comment by Travis Gearhart on February 8, 2010

Kevin-they didn’t, lol, I just used my original title for all my internet posting of the article.

Laurie- I could care less about what adults sent to each other. To my knowledge no specific laws deal with sexting of minors as of yet, but there are several people at the state level that have suggested such a thing, and I happen to agree: there should be some kind of law to prevent this from becoming something bigger than it really is. I agree, there should be some kind of system set up to distinguish between those that are 16 and up to receive lighter/no punishment, but since I could only write up to 450 words for the article (and I used every last one, lol) I couldn’t address that issue in particular.

Comment by Kevin Tracy on February 9, 2010

Yeah, in Travis’ defense, we sometimes write things that get published in journals or papers. When that happens, we’re given certain limitations to how much we can write. My typical blog post runs about 700 words. Travis is closer to about 550. Semp rarely writes anything fewer than 1,500 words (that’s why he doesn’t have time to write often).

Needless to say, when we’re limited to 250-450 words for an article, we’re going to have to cut some stuff out. Because of the nature of the publications we sometimes write for, our audiences are considerably more narrow than they are with this blog (which attracts people from across the country and even around the world with various different backgrounds and philosophies).

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