File under: too much education

Professor: "Sexting" is harmless

"Sexting" has been big in the news of late. In case you're not hip to the lingo, it's the practice of sending lascivious and revealing photos of oneself to someone else. Popular among teenagers, it's been roundly decried as the last step in the complete decay of the morality of the youth of today.

According to one recent survey, 20 percent of teens now admit to taking part in the practice.

But sexting isn't such a bad thing, says one extremely brave professor at a Toronto University. Presenting a paper at a Humanities and Social Sciences conference, professor Peter Cumming said the practice was largely innocuous, essentially an update on "playing doctor or spin-the-bottle."

Cumming's point is a valid one: Teens explore sexuality, and they always have and always will. The introduction of cell phones and other technologies in recent years doesn't really change anything, it just introduces a new medium in which that exploration will occur. In the future, I'm sure today's youths will bemoan a similar development occurring among their kids. As Cumming notes, legally branding two curious teens as child pornographers -- a common side-effect when sexters get busted -- for exchanging topless photos of themselves simply isn't helpful.

---

Your 14 year old daughter's nude pics all over the web forever. Just like spin the bottle back in the day. What a brave professor to point that out.

was above the waist, this wouldn't be a big deal in many countries of the world. What is it with women's bare breasts and the supposed American male intrigue and fascination? IMO it is highly overrated and certainly wasn't a noticable problem for Adam & Eve and several other Biblical characters in illustrations and paintings.

However, that being as it may, Joe makes a good point about teen fads and current morality.

being downloaded around the world by middle-aged guys. But it is true that different cultures have different standards of modesty. Though I've never understood how that meant we got to adopt their culture's standards for our own.

That's actually a really interesting topic to me, the way we think we can pick and choose from the various world cultures as if it's a smorgasbord and we can individually pick what we like from each. (Kinda defeats the idea of a culture when you chop it into the pieces that you want to appropriate.) I'd be more open to people adopting the modesty standards of another culture if they also adopted everything else that goes with it: like, sure you can be topless, but you also have to have your feet bound and live in a harem.

Obviously, Westerners pick the things from other cultures that are easier than our own culture's standards, not the stuff that is harder.

been a smorgasbord from the get go. Most of us are mongrels of different cultures, creeds and religions put in a blender continuously for several centuries. Even our Constitution came from the ideas of Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu and several others mixed with a little Jefferson, Adams and especially Madison. Making the melting pot really work, now that's unique to America. It still needs some tweaking but much of my pride of this country lies within that continual effort.

No, I wouldn't like my 14 year old daughter's or son's topless pictures on the internet.

Could that possibly be your "buddy" Bert on page A-12 of this mornings Post? Are you taking the family out for pancakes this morning to benefit the summer youth camps?

Saying our founding fathers used ideas common among the educated elite of Western Europe is not exactly the same as saying that if a culture halfway around the world has a standard of modesty that allows toplessness, I as an individual can import that standard into one that doesn't. Standards like the modesty standard are quite different than ideas alone. And it misses the point, I think, to say that because one culture has a different standard than another, that that difference can be the basis of a revision. What it misses, I think, is that EVERY culture has a standard of modesty, and one within that culture is well aware when someone is dressing immodestly. So, while it might me modest in some West African culture for women to all go topless, they still have a standard of modesty whereby they can tell when a woman is being immodest in her dress. But obviously no American woman can go out tavern-hopping in a topless state and claim to be dressed modestly because it would be modest to dress so in Senegal.

The point is, while the specifics are different, the idea itself is universal.

It's funny, because my wife and I watched a Dave Chappelle stand-up routine last night, where he talked at length about meeting a woman in a bar with her rear hanging out of her skirt and her breasts pushing out over the top of her shirt. And when the men would hit on her, she'd say, "Just because I'm dressed this way doesn't make me a whore." Dave compared that to him wearing a cop uniform walking down the street. When someone was in crisis, they'd run up to him and say "officer, we need your help," and he'd say "just because I'm dressed this way, it doesn't mean I'm a cop." Well, no, it doesn't. So he returned to the woman in the bar and said, "No, just because you're dressed that way, it doesn't mean you're a whore. But it is the whore uniform."

So I guess I'm a bit baffled by people who think they can decide individually to declare that their clothes or lack thereof mean whatever they as individuals want them to mean. Clothes (or their lack) are a language, a way of communicating with others. Just as I can't declare that the word "photograph" means "a round oat cluster eaten for breakfast in milk," I can't declare that walking around topless is modest for me. No, it's not.

There are of course other standards that are equally, obviously culturally bound. Men don't kiss men upon meeting here. Americans don't stand as close to each other when they talk as do Asians or Latin Americans. Five minutes late is late here, where you might have to be half an hour late for it to count as late somewhere else. Every culture has a whole lot of standards.

I used to think bert looked like this guy:

Now I lean more towards thinking he looks like this guy:

that the standard exists in this country (in most places) or whether your points are valid. As one who attended college for a semester in Scandanavia and who also has been among topless sun bathers on beaches around the world, it just doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. I don't know if you have that same experience in your travels but it's not considered provocative whatsoever. Wearing a thong? Well, that's a different ballgame IMO.

"I spent a summer in New Guinea where the men wore nothing but socks on their genitals, so it wouldn't be a big deal to me to wear a sock on my genitals to the stadium for a Chiefs game."

I suppose the whole "when in Rome" thing kicks in for me. Whereas for some people, "when in Rome" becomes "since they do it in Rome, why not here...?"

Conversely, it's also interesting to me the way Americans react to MORE stringent standards of modesty. As in, there's kind of a horror attached to the way those fundamentalist mormon women dress, and a kind of repulsion at some of the stricter forms of modest dress in Islam. But that gets back to my point that rarely do Americans opt for anything more demanding or modest. I've heard lots of people say "we should walk around topless like European beachgoers," but no one say "we should cover our hair and ankles." LOL Somehow, in the wake of the sexual revolution, we always seem to "celebrate the diversity" that allows us to be randier. LOL

But this gets a long way from the original post. Obviously, the whole point of these children taking nude and lascivious pictures of themselves is not to partake of Scandinavian cultural mores. It's to send porn pics to their boyfriends. That their boyfriends share the pics with others is hardly surprising.

but comparing New Guinea to Scandanavia made me laugh and don't get mad if I bring that up in the future for another LOL. A little head shrinking and cannibalizing in Armory Square if you please. LOL

Yesterday I was shopping with my daughter. We were waiting in line to checkout and the young woman in front of us was rudely blabbing away on her cell phone while the clerk was trying to ring up her purchases. I noted, first, that she was wearing a backless halter-type coverup, which isn't that unusual around here. But when she turned I noticed that her breasts were barely covered, Really barely, like a full-on naked waist.

This gave me pause. I looked at my daughter. She kind of smirked.

And I was thinking, there's a real disjunct here. Because this young, very rude girl (and the clothing and the attitude were all of a piece, I think) probably imagines that she's being very cool and free-spirited. But she just came across as an ass. And a piece of ass, as well, based on both her loud conversation and again, her dress.

Later in the day, I found myself engaged in a conversation with some family members about a young relative's choice to get a bikini this year. Some were expressing mild displeasure, which I thought was rather silly. It's beachwear, for heaven's sake.

Which gets me to the point, which I learned from a wise nun: in clothing, as in scripture, context in everything. Clothing is rhetoric, and so is sending a nude pic of yourself on your phone. As in all communication, it's silly to pretend gestures don't mean what they mean. If I give you the finger while you're driving like an idiot, it means what it means, even though it might mean "hello" in Sri Lanka (it doesn't so don't go there and try it). By the same token, a bikini on the beach blends in with all of the other bikinis, unless it's a thong and pasties--and again, it depends on where you are. We all also know that there's a difference between wearing a sleeveless shirt to Mass here in California where it may be 110 degrees, and wearing one in Amish country.

about not flipping the bird at anyone in Sri Lanka. Apparently, they're imploding as a country right now.

This notion of whether or not we can decide what words (and other communication forms like clothing) mean is an issue I am a bit sensitive about, dating back to my youth. My one brother and I used to say that our dad threw "invisible daggers," meaning that he would use language in such a way that it was obviously and intentionally meant to hurt you in the moment, but it always had a kind of deniability built in, so when we'd go crying to mom, he'd say "all I said was this..." and repeat the words with a slightly different inflection that made them seem harmless.

That's why I really found myself hating a certain poster on syracuse dot com who would always "just ask questions" or post links and deny that there was any editorializing by posting the links she did or asking the questions she did. She was always nasty and always trying to hurt others, but she did it in a way where she could say "oh, no, I didn't mean THAT, you're just sensitive." I actually think that kind of behavior is evil. Because first, it's trying to hurt someone, and second, it's trying to tell them they're wrong for being hurt. As you all will know, I prefer the "you're an evil, immoral swamp hag" approach to expressing my feelings. Not very sly, I know. No deniability. LOL But that's quite on purpose. My daggers are very visible.

And therefore, I've got my eye on you.



No wearing a sock to the ballpark.

First, in honor of the melting pot, smorgusboard comes to us from the Swedes. Thank you Swedes

Now then, although we are a melting pot, the one thing that has made America work (up to this point anyway) is we have been able to reach a concensus on moraltiy and decentsy (sp).

Paul Johnson in "The History of Christianity" brought up this point as to how America was able to deal with religous differences. That true religous freedom is only possible if there is a shared morality. Some religons may have to concede certain practices if the majority feels the practice is immoral or indecent. One example of this is the Mormons giving up polygomy.