Young Writers Society

I think that age of consent laws should be done away with or at least lowered. If a person consents to sexual encounters, as long as they are aware of the consequences, then it doesn't matter. So you send a naked picture of yourself to someone? Like no one knows what tits looks like, or what a ball sack looks like.

We're trying to protect our kids from imagined dangers! What is wrong with the human body, what is so terrible about it that we must hide it an be ashamed of it? We all know what we look like under that cloth. It's no surprise. What's so scary about it? We need to stop trying to protect younger teens. There is nothing that we can tell them not to do, that they won't do. That's the end of that.

Sext away, my little sexual monsters. I say never apologize. #YOLO, b******-- but in all seriousness, stop caging kids in.

Well the reason I wrote this is cuz I sext a lot and ik its bad and I stopped and i got in major trouble so don't do its considered child porn so don't do it

It's only child porn if you're a child.

Karzkin wrote:It's only child porn if you're a child.

Well, yeah. Still, that's an issue people are legitimately worried about.

Another issue is that people have been sued here in civil courts because of sexual harassment from this.

Those are the only connotations which I can think of which would be inappropriate. Sexting is still completely idiotic and stupid, mind you. But, stupidity isn't outlawed, so you are free to be stupid in your idiocy!

Firstly: If you got in trouble for sexting, why in the world would you reveal that to the entire world through the internet?

Secondly: If a child (by child I'm meaning someone from the age of 12-16 mostly) takes a picture of themselves and sends it to their boyfriend or girlfriend to get some freaky gratification, not only is that sort of extremely creepy depending on how young they are, it could have negative consequences.

However, it's also none of my business if a twelve year old girl wants to take a picture of herself and send it around her whole school.

I think child pornography is wrong, yes. But I don't think you can really call it child pornography when they've given their consent or even sent it out themselves.

As long as everyone involved knows what kind of consequences they could receive, I think that its to each his own. As long as I'm not receiving any of those pictures or messages it really doesn't effect me.

Note: I still think its really silly to admit to sexting online while saying 'don't do it!'. Like most sexual acts, its sort of one of those things to keep between yourself and whoever else is involved. Especially if you still do it a lot but are trying to preach against it... So if you're going to sext just sext. But I would advise against telling the whole world.

I think child pornography is wrong, yes. But I don't think you can really call it child pornography when they've given their consent or even sent it out themselves.

Legally though, they are not the age of consent, which means that their consent is basically worthless. They may consent all they want, but they are not in charge of their bodies, legally, until they become of the age of consent.

...see the trickiness of it all?

"I think child pornography is wrong, yes. But I don't think you can really call it child pornography when they've given their consent or even sent it out themselves."

Can you imagine if consent was actually this wishy washy? It's like the old legal arguments that prostitutes couldn't be raped because they were "asking for it", and wives couldn't be raped because their marriage vows provided for eternal consent.

To clarify, I would contend that a young teen, who probably hasn't been educated in the safe use of the technology she or he has access to, shouldn't be taken to consent with whatever is done with an image after they send it to someone they think they can trust.

In the end you've got to accept that some relationships are creepy, and some partners are sexual predators. You've also got to accept that some people can make terrible decisions with brutal consequences and that it's incredibly cavalier to wave that off as their own fault. This kind of law is intended to put some kind of limit on sexual exploitation, which is why a lot of cases that might technically be statutory rape aren't prosecuted (because it isn't sexually exploitative, and thus isn't in the public interest to prosecute), and sexting between consenting partners probably wouldn't find it's way to court without other transegressions