Last year I was stumped when a high school teacher asked if I had heard about the new thing kids were doing call "sexting". I never had heard of sexting - but I could imagine what it entailed, sending sexually explicit pictures via phones. My immediate reaction was to chuckle at the cleverly apt name, and to muse that Cosmopolitan magazine had been instructing women to send suggestive texts to boyfriends since the capability had been invented. Why wouldn't middle and high school youth be catching on, that's how you're supposed to be attractive, right?
Unfortunately, as information and research have emerged, it has become clear that teens aren't just mimicking adults and experimenting with their sexual presence.
While numerous studies are confirming that the majority of girls who are sending explicit texts are doing so because of pressure from a boyfriend or interest,
Rihanna is confirming how widespread and acceptable sexting has become. ("if you don’t send your boyfriend naked pictures, then I feel bad for him") At the same time, we're realizing how damaging the aftermath can be if photos or messages which were meant to be private are then shared with the world.
And this is what I think deserves some more thought. While the high school teacher's immediate thought was "don't these girls know better?!" I don't see "these girls" as the problem. They're doing what the culture is expecting of them.
Rather, the youth who are circulating private exchanges without consent, the youth who take it upon themselves to slut-shame, humiliate and bully the victim. The schools and parents who punish victims for "bad choices" rather than the bullies and abusers for taking advantage of a vulnerable girl.
This is problematic, and as we've learned recently,
tragic.
Sexual violence doesn't follow the script that we've written for it. Sexual violence in the form of forwarding pictures and harassing the victim can be as invasive and tormenting as any other. We need to shift our focus from what "choices" the victim made, to what violence others have perpetrated.