Re:Hundreds of Nude Photos Jolt Colorado School
by tomku on Saturday November 14, 2015 @07:40PM
(#10567963)
I think you've severely misread my comment. I'm absolute NOT proposing any kind of "abstinence only education" regarding sexting.
I support what you said about teaching the risks and safer alternatives. If that's what "safe sexting" initiatives are teaching, great! However, that wasn't the impression I got from reading the article you linked - it talked a lot about the legal risks, a bit about trust and consent and a bit about taking "safe" sexy pictures that people won't be able to identify you in. My point in the comment above was that even if you do all of that, a lot of the risk is simply outside of your control. That's fine - people do risky things all the time, it's part of life. I just don't like taking an approach that's essentially harm reduction and calling it "safe".
Here's a canadian thing talking about it, and about the difficulties of abstinence only approaches: http://www.macleans.ca/society/how-safe-is-sexting/
> For Lauren Dobson-Hughes, president of Planned Parenthood Ottawa, it’s important to teach teens about the criminality of sexting alongside the topic of consent, and offer guidance, should they choose to do it anyway. “If you tell youth not to do it, simply that it’s illegal, they hear, ‘Don’t get caught,’ and it doesn’t help them understand the actual risks involved in sexting,” she says. That’s why her organization is taking a risk-reduction approach to sexting in the sex education workshops it provides to young students in local schools upon request. This means accepting that sexting is part of teenage life. “There’s an upside to this, or they wouldn’t be doing it,” says Dobson-Hughes. “We would rather youth talk about consent in an age-appropriate way, throughout their lives, so they understand that sharing a picture without someone’s consent isn’t right.”
And we've had years and years of abstinence only approaches to reducing teenage unplanned pregnancy, or to reduce HIV/AIDS, and we know it just doesn't work.