sexting: death by text, in other words

Music: Sharon Van Etten: Epic (2010)

Yesterday the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Senator Kirk Watson held a press conference to announce their bipartisan effort to change a Texas state law that has been sending teens to jail with felonies for the possession of child pornography. The law---passed some years ago before smart phones came to dominate the gadget market---was actually designed to help bust and sentence adults possessing bona-fide kiddy porn; it included a provision for the possession of under-age nude images on portable devices, including cell phones. After two cases in Texas---and a host across the nation---in which teens were busted and given rather harsh sentences for "sexting" their peers, lawmakers are trying to adjust the law so that the punishment fits the crime. The problem, of course, is what kind of crime we should consider sexting to be?

Or, is "sexting" among minors a crime at all?

The presumption of Texas state politicians is that sexting is crime and against the law. "Sexting"---the sending of nude photos, lewd text, or both on a smart phone or cellular device---is legal for those above the age of 18. At issue here is the "age of consent," which is the point in a person's life in which he or she can legally have sexual intercourse. This standard has been extended to pornographic imagery as well, and in the United States this varies from state to state (the age in Texas is 17). Under the proposed revisions to the Texas law, sexting among minors, or between an adult and a minor, can lead to a sentence of up to a year in prison and a fine of $4,000.

Technically, then, if we use the age of consent standard, a 17-year-old exchanging lewd images with his or her 16-year-old lover are breaking the law and can be persecuted for it as trafficking in kiddie porn.

I have a problem with the original law, and appreciate the attempt to make the penalty of violation more reasonable. I mean, after all, sneaking nudie magazines out from under pop's bathroom sink as a minor is technically illegal here (I'm guilty!). Some young folks "play doctor" long before they understand what goes where and why; and who among us has not had relations before the age of 17? Well, I know there's some who have not, but c'mon: I remember my peers having sex in sixth grade. That 17 year old kid can get whacked with a felony for texting pictures of his lover seems unreasonable.

And while I'm relatively certain "being reasonable" is the real rationale behind the revision of the law, that's not how it was announced. In the press conference, rather, Watson explained that the bill would make it a misdemeanor crime for minors to sext; it defines sexting among minors specifically as a crime. He explained that under the current law, teens could (a) either be prosecuted for child porn; or (b) not be prosecuted at all. This new law allows the state to punish teens and make them (and their parents) go to sexting education classes; "first time" offenders can have the crime expunged from their records before they apply to college. The senator suggested this bill was a wake up call for parents to pay attention to their child's phone habits and to talk to them about sexting. Abbott followed that many teens didn't realize what they were doing was wrong and, potentially, criminal.

In short: tell them to stop that, or they'll go blind!

There are some pragmatic and, admittedly, morally problematic dimensions to minors sexting one another. Stupidity is a factor. Distraction is a factor. Preventing crime by adults who prey on young people is a factor. But the politics here is informed by the sex education debates at a distance. It's difficult to read news stories about Watson's bill without being reminded of the abstinence versus protection debate, whether teachers are allowed to explicitly discuss genitals in sex education programs, and so on. By extension, there are also whiffs of the pornography debates here. All of it swirls about a deep-seated, cultural narrative of "youth in crisis," their inability to control their sexual desires, and the loss of some sort of innocence (that never was).

Hasn't everyone seen Friday the 13th by now? Or its many remakes?

Young people, like all people, are sexual; one often explores one's sexuality in . . . gasp . . . one's teens. It makes sense that the gadget at the center of teen life---the phone---would become a tool of exploration, much like scrambled cable television channels and the back seats of movie theatres were for my generation. Officially criminalizing this exploration continues a tired fantasy (and if you want proof, just look for someone who cites sexting and teen pregnancy in the same speech).

I've been making these "death by text" observations for years, citing Virillio, Baudrillard, and Freud along the way. We should also add Larry Rickels' many sharp observations about the very close linkages made in the West between youth, sex, and technology (for example, in The Vampire Lectures Larry has a very intriguing reading of Mina-the-mediator and her typewriter in Dracula): young people are always responsible for perverting the latest technological innovations for pleasure seeking. (And so-called adults try to retrofit themselves with the latest gadgeteering fad in search of youth.)

Or rather, the young seem to be perverting the gadgeteering of the times toward their crotches. But in many ways, this is the fantasy projected by adults. Evidence of the adult enjoyment of the new "death by sext" is easily located with the Attorney General's clarification of Watson's law: to paraphrase Abbott, "we want to protect the innocent recipient of an illicit image too, so youth who receive such images have 48 hours to report it to the police, thereby creating a paper trail of their innocence."

Here's how a teen is going to understand this "protection": "Rat out your friends, or you'll be prosecuted for kiddie porn."

What such a "provision" demonstrates is that the interests this law really serves are the fantasies of grown-ups.

What if the lewd images sent by minors to each other are really not about "sex" or even exploring their sexuality at all? What if, rather, it's about discerning the limits of one's identity, finding the edge of the mirror, "feeling out" the boundaries? What if the nude photo is really the piercing or mohawk of our time?

I'm tempted to say sexting is the Wikileaks of the Great TeenAge. But that really only makes sense from a formal, or perhaps a legal, standpoint. Formally they both concern secrets and the fantasies that orbit their revelation. I reckon the difference is that one leak is about human lives and the other is not.