I Swear I Won't Screenshot!

For many years, women have been told what to wear and how to act. Girls have even gotten in trouble for showing their shoulders at school or have been label a slut for flirting with boys. To continue, during my time in high school, I have witnessed teachers and principles forcing girls to wear school gym shirts or sweat pants because their shorts were deemed as sexual or distracting. While the school system has been vilifying girls for wearing summer-appropriate clothes, high school boys were always made the victim.

In the case of sexting and privacy, I believe that you should be able to do what you want with your body as long as it is consensual. But other people see girls that sext as the one to blame when their photos are shared with a third party. “girls who sext are often viewed as both lacking agency and as blame-worthy” (Draper, 2012; Goldstein, 2009; Hasinoff, 2015; Karaian, 2012).

One of the things that I found very interesting about this article is that “In one survey, 63% of people thought that teens and young adults who shared a private sexual image with a third party should not be on sex offender registries” (Comartin, et al., 2013). Although I agree that if you share private images of someone else with a third party then you should be placed on the sex offender list, I also think that the sex offender list could be made into a tier system. I think that the tier would start with the least atrocious sex crimes and then move to the most atrocious crimes such as pedophilia. I believe that the tier system would be beneficial to the public and to the people on the sex offender list because they will be grouped into a tier that is a proper representation of their sex crime.

In the article, they say that “The stigma attached to being labeled a child pornographer is lasting. Few crimes carry such a pejorative marker, and members of the public often link child pornography with pedophilia and other heinous crimes” (Richards & Calvert, 2009, p. 36). Although that being label as a child pornographer is a lasting label that will stay with you forever. Receiving images of an underage girl's body and sending them to her friends, family, and teachers has a permanent effect on a person's psyche, relationship with parents, teachers, and possibly their future. If I were the girl in this situation, I would want the outcome to end with my ex-boyfriend being placed on the sex offender list. Not only would I want the ex-boyfriend to be placed on the sex offender list, I would want a public apology and I would also sue them for revenge porn and defamation of character as this matter was turned public. My thought process during this time would be to make sure that my ex-boyfriend knows that there are consequences to his actions.

Hasinoff, A. A. (2017). Sexting and privacy violations: A case study of sympathy and blame. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 11(2), 202–217. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1037391