You're Wrong About - Sexting

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

“We’re uncomfortable with the evidence that teen girls have sexual agency.” Special guest Amy Hasinoff tells Mike and Sarah how a moral panic became a legal nightmare. Digressions include Cosmo advice columns, Grindr etiquette and the revolutionary hugging of the "Avengers" movies. Due to the ongoing hex placed on this podcast, the sound quality is worse than usual.Continue reading →Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

Yeah, I did a diagram of love actually recently in like over half of the relationships in that movie are between like a man and a woman he's never spoken to. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we reveal that the lies we believe the most are the stories we tell ourselves every day. Hmm. I fucked that up. Yeah, I was supposed to be a Steven J. Gould quote, something about how we get the stories the wrongest that we tell ourselves the most.

Yeah, I think that's true. As I got to my friend's house where I'm now recording this episode, she was like, what are you talking about today? And I was like sexting and she was like, ooh, sexting is having a moment, isn't it? And I was like, I feel like sexting has been having a long moment for 12 years and this is definitely a consistent narrative, although maybe there's a archetypal evolution that I'm very sure about the subject matter. I am Michael Hobbs.

I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. I am Sarah Marshall. I am working on a book about the satanic panic. And today we have a special guest, Amy Hassanoff. Hello Amy. Hi, thanks for having me. Amy is a researcher at the University of Colorado Denver and the author of Sexting Panic.

Yeah. And she got in touch with us about a week ago, two weeks ago after she listened to our episode for Halloween last year about the rainbow party panic. And she pointed out that we are in the midst of a teenage sex moral panic about sexting that has been going on for as long as any of us have been alive. Well. At least of sexting age. As long as any of us have been legal sexting age, this has been happening.

I love the long panics. Well, thanks for having me. I'm really sad that I've almost listened to your entire back catalog. Oh my God. It's like it's going to be over and I'll have to wait like a normal person for each new episode. I feel like I was just old enough when I started having texting capabilities that I managed to miss this one because I like first was able to text like my freshman year of college.

So I feel like growing up like right before the camera phone was super a thing. It gives me in the dark for just like what the hell has been going on since then. So you've never sent a sext, Sarah. I can neither confirm nor deny that let's say this, I've never sent a teen. I've never been a sexting minor. How about you, Michael? Tell me about your sex. I am a gay man in the 30s.

I mean, I think we can all be clear, statistically speaking, I am extremely likely to have sent and received one or two sexts in my dating life. I am a great defender of sexting. I think sexting is great. It's a way of flirting early in the relationship. It's a way of keeping in touch with your partner when you're on a business trip or whatever. It's sexy and fun and I've always thought that it was fine. Me and Amy were talking the other day about how we're both defenders of Anthony Weiner,

at least in the early like stage one Anthony Weiner back when all the sexting that he was doing was consensual. Stage one Weiner. Yes, stage one Weiner. My formative thing with this is I remember this podcast that I listened to, a very popular politics podcast. I was talking about Anthony Weiner way before the sexting of the 15-year-old came out and they were saying, oh, well, he's obviously a sociopath.

He's obviously needs help. He's obviously really troubled and it's like, is he? It seems like lots of people are sending consensual sexts to their partners or people they're online dating and it seems like a relatively normal thing to do at this point. I think of that being sold to the public as something that's gross or predatory or embarrassing as opposed to just like a way that people need to communicate and now this is the best way to do it. Right.

Amy, is that what you tell the teens when you go to school to talk to them about sexting? Not exactly, but that's definitely kind of one of the implicit messages because there's technically a legal risk in trying to advocate safer sexting. I heard from lawyers who are giving me advice that if you advocate for safer sexting, that's basically telling teenagers, well, here's how to do heroin more safely. You're advocating that they commit a felony in a way that's safer. I don't go there with people under 18, but when I'm talking to high school students, I'll usually just have them spend a while thinking about the risks and the benefits

of sexting and what's kind of radical about that, even though it sounds very simple, is that they've never really been asked to think or talk about the benefits. It's only just been the risks because they're usually just getting that sort of just don't do it, just don't sext. Just say no. Yeah. It always works. This is your brain on sexting.

Yeah. Basically, no, that message is just like so common. It's either they were just told nothing at all, and more commonly they were told, well, just don't do it. It's illegal, which of course it is illegal, yet a third of them, 16 and 17-year-olds, are going to do it anyway, no matter what we tell them. It's still illegal, but some of them are becoming sexually active, and then, of course, sexting is just how people communicate with their partners or would-be partners.

And among young adults, the numbers are even higher. Some surveys will be over 50%, over 70%. It depends how you ask the question and who you're asking, but this is not a behavior that is just done by a couple weird people. It's pretty common at this point. Right. This is not deviant behavior. No.

This is normal behavior, and not sexting is, statistically speaking, the deviant choice. Well, I don't know that it's deviant. I mean, it is still risky, so I- I just want to be on record as saying people who don't sext are deviant at this point. I just want that to be crystal clear. I don't know that that's fair, but I see what you're saying. So my understanding of the definition of sexting is you basically stand in front of a mirror naked.

You take a photo of yourself in the mirror, and then you text it to someone you're chatting to online or your partner or a random person on the internet, right? Whether it's consensual or not, I guess the term still applies. So is it sexting if you're only shirtless, but you're in your underwear? Is it like, what are the technicalities of the definition? Are we applying this only to photos, or if I'm sending someone, you know, something describing my feelings and desires, does that fall under the umbrella? Like my boobs are really big right now?

Your understanding of straight sex is, uh, worrying to me. I have no idea what straight people's sex is. Yes, that's what- yes. My boobs are the biggest they've ever been. It seems like a- that seems like a cute thing to send. Yes, my boobs are so big for you right now, exactly. Yeah, so technically sexting could be either messages or pictures, but it's not like- it's a word that's been recently invented, so there's like- you can look on- you can look in the

dictionary for a definition, but it's just kind of- it's used in both ways to mean images or images or text messages. You know, it probably should be of a sexual nature for it to be sexting. I think like shirtless in your underwear, that's probably sexting. I mean, it's- I would think of it as like, would this photo be embarrassing if your parents saw it? It's like PG-13 sexting. Yeah, oh for sure, yeah.

And then it also should be personal, so it shouldn't be something that was produced as a commercial product. It doesn't- it doesn't really seem like sexting if you're just downloading porn off the internet and sending it to your friend or your partner. Does it have to be self-taken? Like if some creep is taking photos of someone else in a locker room, those aren't sexts, right? That's just-

Surveillance? I wouldn't call it sexting. Right, so it's a photo of yourself, always. Yeah, I would say it's photos of yourself. But at the same time, like what if you are with your partner and they are taking photos of you, you know, consensually as part of a- something kind of sexual situation that might be still sexting because then your partner has photos of you that they took of you? What are some examples of sexting behavior?

Examples? Yeah. I'm pretending to be dumb about this, but like, I'm- I know what sexting is, but like for our listeners, what are the reasons why people send sexts to each other? Oh, what are the reasons? So there are many reasons someone might sext. Basically, in a broader sense, it's just like any other sex act. They'll do it because they find it pleasurable.

They do it because they like it. They do it because they think it's fun, because they think it's flirty. So sometimes people in, you know, a long-distance relationship might send each other sexy photos, just like you might have phone sex. Sometimes people will send photos when they're starting a new relationship, though that's more risky. I have only sent risky sexts. Yeah, no, I mean-

My sexting practices have not been great. Yeah, no, that's fair, but also like as a male human, your- the repercussions are gonna be different. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely true. And it's someone who's like already out. There's like not a huge risk that you're gonna be outed by sexting with other men, right?

Yeah. Which is one of the biggest risks for men who are not out is like, oh- Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. This outs them, right? For women, the risk is more just, oh, you are human female with sexual agency. That must be bad. It's like the complete ruin of your life.

It definitely can be. That's the problem with revenge porn. Whereas for me, if my sext leak, they'll be like, well, Mike looked good in his 20s. It's like- Right? I mean, basically, yes. I'm exaggerating, but not that much, right? Like the consequences are gonna be completely different.

Exactly. That's the definition. So where does the panic originate? When did we hear about it for the first time? Yeah. So I think basically I would date it to the release of this survey that was run by Cosmo Girl in 2008 called Sex and Tech that found that a non-trivial amount of teenagers were sexting and the word had been used in sort of isolated instances through the 2000s like

Tiger Woods. If you remember that scandal was sexting. Oh, I didn't know that. And that was like really a conversation about, you know, celebrities and their infidelity. Okay. The panic about teenagers really started in 2008 with the release of that survey finding that, oh, all these teen girls are sexting and this is something we need to be worried about and concerned about.

But Cosmo Girl was the one that conducted this study though? The Sex and Tech survey was Cosmo Girl and the national campaign to prevent teen and unplanned pregnancy. This is an interesting bedfellows. Yeah. The idea that any of the Cosmo family were doing their own studies aside from having people write in was seemingly made up stuff because I, I mean, speaking of like moral panics, I grew up reading adult Cosmo and just like the things I learned that you're

supposed to do to straight men's penises were just like, so it was like they had to come up with a new thing every week and it just got so baroque. I know the ice cubes like nobody wants that. It was like sex tips written by like an alien who had learned about sex by watching a bunch of Mickey Rourke movies. I mean, I have to assume that like they don't actually expect you to use the tips. It's more just like a way to sort of read erotic fiction. It's like watching recipe videos on YouTube.

You're not going to make those. It was exactly like, yeah, it's like watching all the tasty videos. You're like, I'm not really going to put a bunch of crescent rolls inside of a deep dish pizza pan and fill it with mozzarella, but like it's interesting to think about it. But then I feel like the way these moral panics, there's always like a little Genesis seed, but then the ramp up is always sort of where the panic really happens, right? Like when the when the idea gets popularized and stripped of all of its nuance and methodological complexity.

So where was that? Was it like, was Dr. Phil involved? Like what was the ramp to becoming a moral panic for sexting? I would put really good odds on Dr. Phil being involved just based on nothing. It seems like the kind of thing he'd get his fingers into. Yeah. Dr. Phil was involved. That's those, when your cynical assumptions get confirmed, it's always so depressing.

But I don't, I wouldn't, I don't know that he's like the major player. I think this survey was really what launched it into sort of national prominence. And also it started getting discussed in the UK and Australia. There was a number of sort of key incidents that sort of amplified the panic about it. One of them was the suicide of a girl who was basically sexting with someone. And then this partner, a boy from her class, basically like distributed the photos. And she was sort of, of course, blamed and slut shamed for it and sort of told by her school that she had done something wrong and there was basically no consequences for the

boy. Oh wow. He sort of suffered from bullying at school and slut shaming and sort of ostracized by her peers and ended up ending her own life by suicide and then, of course, this became a big media story very briefly. And so this was sort of associating with all of the risks, right, about sexting is like basically the consequences for sexting are you will die. Because the moral impetus is always on women in these things to do something differently.

Oh, absolutely. It's never like if you're a boy, delete them immediately after you receive them or never, ever, ever show them to anyone else. Like the actual moral problem in that whole scenario is the boy that knew the kind of damage that would have to a high school girl decided to do it anyway. Or the school full of grownups who can be like maybe we shouldn't shame this teenage girl and act judgmental about the fact that she possesses a sexuality. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Yes, that's like what the whole panic about sexting is, is that we're constantly very, very uncomfortable with the evidence that sexting provides that like teen girls have sexual agency. And so they're making these choices to sexualize themselves, right, which like we're totally okay with if it's like an advertisement for genes, but if like girls create sexual images of themselves, that means that like we need to panic and that they're total sluts and that we have to like teach them a lesson and like make this illegal to make sure that

they don't do it again. You know, we have like so many sexualized images of women and girls and everyone's like, yeah, that's fine. That's for commercial purposes. That's for like selling cars. Like we're cool with that because that's not like female sexual agency. That's just objectification, which like is not a problem at all. Right.

And also if girls are aware of their sexuality or their own appearances, then they might develop some sense of their own power, which seems like it's too dangerous to bear. Yes. But Amy, what are the other, what are the other events on this path that contributed to it? The other events that were part of the sort of early sexting panic was this court case that made it to a third circuit court in 2010. And what had happened was a couple of girls were at a sleepover party and had taken some

photos of themselves in sort of various states of not being totally dressed. And one involved like someone who just got out of the shower and had like a towel, maybe I think only around the bottom half. So she was like topless in this towel. And another one was like a girl in her bra, I think. Basically like the photos got passed around at school. A bunch of parents got a letter from the district attorney saying, quote, your child has been identified in a police investigation involving the possession and or dissemination of child

pornography. Oh my God. Those parents agreed to basically like a plea deal that involved like an education program and six months of probation and random drug testing. Was prosecution on the table or like some kind of a sentence? Yeah, I think he basically threatened to prosecute, but I don't think he actually pressed charges. He just sent this letter, right? And so he used the letter as like this leverage to say, okay, if you agree to complete this

education program and serve six months of probation, including random drug testing, then I will not press charges. So he was just kind of one of those deferred prosecution agreements. Yeah. Exactly. So most of the students and their parents agreed to this deal, but three students and of course their parents really got the ACLU involved and they were trying to basically resist having to do this.

You know, the ACLU was successful in getting a restraining order against this district attorney preventing him from filing child pornography charges. Wow. Their main argument was that the photos didn't actually meet the definition of child pornography. So child pornography has to depict a sex act occurring or a lascivious focus on the genitals. And none of the photos actually had either of those things. So they did have a girl who was topless, but that doesn't count as a lascivious focus on genitals.

Yes. So those like, let me Google that for you cases. Oh, I know. And prosecutors do this all the time because they just see a sexual image of a child and they'll sort of say to the parents and the teen, like, this is child pornography and if they don't have a good lawyer, they don't know. And so they're just freaked out and they just agree to whatever deal is being offered because who wants a child pornography charge?

Some teens have of course like been ending up like on sex offender registries for sexting because they've created or disseminated child pornography. The idea of conflating child pornography with two teenagers flirting with each other through photos they take in the bathroom mirror seems wildly inappropriate, right? Like they're two completely different things with different purposes being done by different people. I mean, they're just not the same thing. And this sort of logical mobius strip of like, we have to punish you really harshly for doing

this terrible thing, which is creating and distributing child pornography of yourself. And that child pornography is in my understanding of it in my moral universe, primarily abhorrent because it is so abusive to its subjects. And so it feels like there's a contradiction just baked into that. Yeah. And some of the legal scholars who are more on the conservative end of the spectrum will say, we have to make sexting illegal because if we don't, we will create a source of legal image, sexual images of children that will fuel the child pornography and abuse market.

So the presumption is that if adults can see images of children that are sexual, that are even legally and consensually produced, that will incite them to abuse. And I think like there's not a lot of clear evidence that that's how child abuse works, that you do it because you've seen sexual images of children rather than there is a lot of evidence that it's about abusing a power dynamic. Right. And really child pornography is a fairly recent invention. I mean, it didn't, not no pornography existed before film existed, right?

But child sexual abuse is not a new phenomenon. It's not like we didn't have any child sexual abuse or sexual violence or rape before pornography existed in any form. This is not a new problem. This assumption that what we can't have these images out there is I think like well-intentioned as these kind of laws and policies often are, but at the same time, like when a third of 16 and 17 year olds are sexting regardless, like what does it actually do to make it illegal, right?

Right. What it does is it makes it more victim blaming when a privacy violation happens because then if a privacy violation happens, you can just say to both the boy and the girl, oh, you both did something wrong. You both did something illegal. When what happened was the girl sends the photo to the boy, they break up, and then he sends it out to all of his friends because he's a jerk. So the like school authorities and the law can say, oh, you both did something wrong.

Right. It's a sledgehammer. Yeah. You're just going in and saying, well, everybody involved in this act must have done something wrong without looking at where the actual moral implications are. Well, it's also in the long tradition of, you know, holding women and in this case holding teenage girls responsible for any of the damage or violence that their physical being might attract to them, right?

That like you need to control yourself to such a degree that, you know, no one has any reason to hurt you or assault you or humiliate you. And then if you keep things under control, then no one will have to hurt you. Right. Have there been a lot of these cases? I mean, these cases tend to make it in the media, but is there an iceberg of just routine prosecutions of teenagers for this sort of stuff underneath it? That's a great question.

And I wish I had better data on it. There was a study that came out 2009 or 2010 that showed that a significant proportion like something around 10% of child pornography prosecutions for a certain period of time were of teens who are consensually sexting with each other. So I don't know what has been happening in the 10 years since then. My sort of anecdotal impression is that what happens is child pornography charges just like this case in Pennsylvania are sort of used as a specter for prosecutors to like get teenagers to do what they want.

The other thing that's changed since 2009 is that most states have passed really ineffective and unfair misdemeanor laws to address sexting. So the majority of states have these now. People sort of realized quickly that child pornography charges are a bit excessive for sexting and they, you know, it's easy to sort of have sympathy, especially for like teenage boys who are sort of caught committing privacy violations and then the local prosecutor wants to charge them for child pornography because there is no other charge. And people are like, well, he did something bad, but it shouldn't be child pornography

because that's a felony and it's terrible. Oh, okay. So you want to create like an intermediate thing? Yes. So a lot of states in the time between 2008 and now have passed these new misdemeanor laws about sexting, which in theory are better because child pornography obviously is a ridiculous charge for a minor creating an image of themselves. But the problem with the misdemeanor laws is that they still don't distinguish between

consensual sexting and privacy violations. So it's still just illegal for everyone. So you have the same like slut shaming logic of like, whenever anyone finds out about sexting, it's usually because there's like been a privacy violation, right? Because like most of the time people are sexting and no one ever finds out about it because they just keep it on their phone, they delete it and no one ever sees it. And it's like how you never hear about the good acid trips, right? You only ever hear about the guy in the news who jumped off a building because he thought

he could like, if sexting goes well, then it's never anyone else's business. Yes, exactly. So so now we have a lot of these states have misdemeanor laws, which I think prosecutors are using those now instead, because you know, I don't think they're going to have a lot of community support for these felony laws unless someone is doing something extremely egregious. I mean, that's some improvement, but it's not good. It's an improvement except that what worried me about it at the time and still does to

this day is that because the misdemeanor charge can be pretty minor, then the prosecutor might be feeling empowered to apply it to everyone. Because if you have a case where a girl sends a photo to a boy and he later distributes it, it's like literally absurd to apply a felony child pornography charge to the girl for sure, but also to the boy, right? Because the level of harm is probably not so high that it should be a felony. At the same time, when you have a misdemeanor charge, if it's pretty minor, it's easier for the prosecutor to say, well, everyone was doing something wrong.

These are like impulse buy stuff, aren't they? Exactly. It's like, you know, why not? I kind of need gum. Yeah. Every, all these teams were doing something they shouldn't have been doing because it's child pornography, but now we have this misdemeanor charge and I don't have like solid data evidence on that this is happening more, but this is my strong suspicion is when you have like

a lesser charge, you're more likely to apply it. So it might have been better to just keep it as child pornography and then prosecutors would have been scared off from actually using it because it's so harsh. Okay. How do you feel about laws criminalizing the revenge porn aspect of this? Because morally speaking, it is appalling to take a naked image of someone else, whether or not they're a teenager and distribute it. How do you feel about criminalizing that?

I think it's probably better that the laws exist than not, but the problem, the problem with revenge porn laws is the same problem that we have with all the laws that apply to sexual violence is that like people don't usually report, then like prosecutions tend to be, they tend to unfold in a discriminatory way, right? So we have like who gets actually prosecuted in cases of sexual assault. If you look at the data, it's like if the victim is white and the perpetrator is black, like the rates of prosecution are way higher than for anything else. If the victim is a black woman, the prosecution rates are way lower.

Oh wow. We have this really discriminatory system that already kind of doesn't work with sexual assault, right? Like conviction rates are super low, reporting rates are super low. And then at the same time, these laws don't necessarily serve the interests of survivors of sexual violence. So the main problem is that the perpetrator is usually someone you know. And that's the case with sexual violence, of course, but it's also the case with revenge

porn. It's slightly more likely to be a stranger from the internet with revenge porn for obvious reasons. And so then you have all the same problems with sexual violence laws, which is do you want to send your maybe ex-boyfriend who you're still sort of in love with to jail for 10 years? Oh right. Yeah.

Or who's just a member of your community. Right. Or someone who's a prominent member of your community or just like someone who is loved and respected by your friends. And so if you send that person to jail for 10 years, you're going to be the pariah in the community. Because the problem with child sexual abuse too is that it's usually someone who has some very close relationship to the family, if not a father, stepfather, etc.

What does it mean to send your stepfather who might be the sole income earner to jail for 10 years? Right. It was so much easier when it was Satanist doing all this. Yeah. So I think revenge porn has the same, those laws about revenge porn have the same problems is that if the laws are super harsh, right, it's like people don't want to use them because you still have a relationship with this person.

I mean the people that harm us, we have a relationship to them. Yeah. It's so rare that it's actually just strangers that we just like, yeah lock them up for 30 years, I don't care. But you also want a law for deterrence, right? Otherwise, presumably, if we believe the theories of deterrence, then that behavior would happen more. Yeah.

I mean, if we believe those theories. That's a big F. It's as big as my boobs when I'm sexual with someone I care about. No, I mean, that is a big F because especially with the sexual violence laws, I mean, if you look at the stats from RAIN, they estimate that like, I can't remember one or 3% of sexual assaults are actually convicted. So essentially, like, is that a deterrent, right, if 95 to 98% of the time you can rape someone and get away with it, essentially, are the laws against rape actually a deterrent? I mean, I don't know, right?

And I think like, if rape is going to be illegal, like revenge porn should be illegal. That's at least consistent, right? But I think like both laws and the whole criminal justice system architecture around those laws, like they both just suck. Right. Yeah. So why do you think that we have chosen to impose felony charges on teenage girls before we have been willing to talk to them about what feels good to them and how to get it?

Like, why do you think we swerved so much on this one? Yeah. So like, are you kind of asking like, why is patriarchy a thing? Yeah. Start with the beginning in Babylon. All right. It with sexting, it's like, clearly, I think we're just importing all these sort of sexist ideas about women and girls and sexuality, right?

And we're importing all this slut shaming that we have so much baggage about. I mean, in that sense, it's not surprising at all that our responses to sexting would be basically terrible because we want girls to be like basically sort of the gatekeepers of sexuality who are just able to sort of say no to the boys. And that's kind of our plan for preventing unwanted pregnancies and STDs among teens. It's just like, convince girls that they need to say no better. You have to be an immovable object to stop the unstoppable force, basically, because the unstoppable force isn't going to handle itself in any significant way.

Exactly. I mean, I think this is the narrative that we sort of give to girls, especially is that like men's sexual desires and violence is just this inevitable force. And your job is to say no. But that's like a pretty impoverished version of sexual agency, right? Because if all you can say is no, then you then you have no option to say yes, right? And so that's not actually agency. That's just you're supposed to say no until you don't.

And then you've failed. I feel like one of the things that we let one of the patterns that I see over and over again as we do this show is that the untrammeled greed culture of American capitalism or sort of the patriarchal values that allow for rape to be seen as an inevitable part of male sexuality to name just to all of these are recurring ones that, you know, this is the way it is. This is nature. And if you are victimized by these things and it is your problem and you're the one who has to lock yourself down and avoid being victimized.

And then that way society is we know what America is. We know it sort of American manhood. That can stay how it is. That's inevitable. Everyone else has to change to accommodate that that just protects us over and over again from being like, can we make men suck less like they would be happier if they were nicer and like consensual sex is great actually, you know, just it feels like this is a this is sexual occurring thing.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think the models of masculinity that we have are of course like bad for women because rape and murder, but like they're also bad for men because like they have this sort of all these limitations on the type of emotions that they're like allowed to feel that are culturally sanctioned, right? Like the only one is anger, like men aren't really supposed to feel sad or afraid. That's why I love the new Avengers movie so much that thing is like all hugging. And so then that's really like emotionally stunting.

And then your sexuality has to be a form of anger as opposed to anything else. Right. Like it can't be vulnerability because like masculinity is about dominance. It's not about communion or communication or mutuality or respect. It's about dominance, right? And it's about everything that's not feminine. And of course, like feeling sadness or fear is feminine. Yeah.

You know, people hear about like, oh, patriarchy, feminism, gender. You're saying like men have it easy and they have no problems and that it's like, oh, we need to like get rid of men. And it's like, no, the problem is gender, right? The problem is this binary construction of like this gender behaves in this way and this gender behaves in this other way and never the tween shall meet. And that men under patriarchy are the most miserable of them all. And every time you try and have a conversation that allows that misery to maybe get shipped

away at a little bit, they're like, no, go away, airbud. So one thing I'm really curious about, when you go to high schools and give talks to kids, other than the super obvious advice of like, don't maliciously send around your ex-girlfriend's naked photos of her and like, don't sexually assault people, what advice do you actually give to boys? Like, how do you think boys should sort of think about sexting and deal with sexting beyond like, don't be a complete asshole? Yeah.

I mean, I think beyond the sort of just basic consent stuff is it's really about, I think, talking about those sort of deeper expectations at stereotypes about gender, because people who sort of tend to believe in those gender stereotypes are actually more likely to commit sexual violence. There's some interesting research on that, is that if you are strongly believing in gender stereotypes, and if you believe in rape myths, you're more likely to perpetrate sexual violence. So I think like sort of deconstructing some of those myths of like, she was asking for it or all of those myths about rape can potentially help address some of these social problems.

But I mean, I can only do this like 25 students at a time, and it's only like a one hour thing. So if someone comes in with a bunch of rape myths in their head, I don't know that an hour is going to fix it. Well, do you tell them, I mean, logistically speaking, given the legal realities, do you tell them like, delete her photos from your phone immediately, because it's really it's really hard in a situation where like, these laws are such bullshit. But they also are laws. And if you get caught in the maws of the criminal justice system, that can really derail your

entire life. Oh, absolutely. And we talk about that, you know, and I talk to them about the fact that if they're sexting with someone of the same gender, they're more likely to get caught and to get prosecuted. If they're sexting with someone of a different race, they're more likely to get caught and prosecuted. If they're in foster care, they're more likely to get caught. You know, teens are smart, right?

Like we don't give teens a lot of credit, but they understand that it's illegal and that the consequences are severe. But they also understand that the odds that they're going to get prosecuted are low. They're making a calculated risk. And it's as we all are every day, right? Yeah. They're making calculated risks. And I'm not going to say to them, like, yeah, go ahead and sext, like you're unlikely to

get prosecuted. I can't say that, right? Because they could be the unlucky, like, gay teen that ends up being prosecuted because his parents are homophobic and that happens all the time. Like they need to be aware of the risks, which is what I talked to them about. But they also need, I think it's helpful for them to hear someone acknowledging that, like, I understand there are benefits. Yeah.

Well, I guess, I mean, to kind of, to make my earlier, how does, why does patriarchy exist question more answerable? What do you think that people are afraid of about a world where teenage girls are not told, no, no, no, it's bad. There's no reason to want it. It's terrible. Don't. And instead are able to grow up with ideas about like, this is what feels good to me.

This is what feels bad to me. I'm going to do what feels good and what makes me feel respected. Yeah. We're so afraid of the sexually liberated teenage girl. Like what do we think is going to happen if they're allowed to feel their own sexualities and act accordingly? Yeah. That is a fantastic question.

The way I would look at this is I think there's two things happening. One is people think that if they allow these sort of floodgates of female sexual, sexual agency to open, then there'll be no countervailing force to the sort of male sexual desire and sexual violence sort of force of nature model. Cause if we see male sexual desire and violence, which is of course like kind of a continuum as this force of nature that women and girls have to put barriers up against, then if women and girls take down the barriers, then there will be like way more sexual violence. And so I think people who are afraid of this are really genuinely worried about girls becoming

victims of sexual violence because that is a real thing that happens. Of course we don't like think about it in the right way and we assume that it happens in all these sort of different like strangers type scenarios when in fact it doesn't. But we don't want to think about that. What we want to think about is what we have to protect girls. So people who are criminalizing sexting, they really believe, I think they believe that what they're doing is protecting girls from sexual violence. But I think what they're actually doing is they're just policing gender boundaries because

it's all built on this binary distinction between what female sexuality is supposed to look like. It's supposed to be passive and receptive and like saying, no, no, no, no, no, until OK, maybe. And male sexuality is supposed to be like, you know, aggressive and dominant culturally in terms of our narratives. And I don't mean just in porn. I mean, look at any romantic comedy, right?

Like, I mean everywhere. Yeah, I did a diagram of love actually recently and like over half of the relationships in that movie are between like a man and a woman he's never spoken to essentially. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. One gender is the agent and the other gender is the object. Right.

So if we destroy gender as a binary prison, essentially, then I think there would be less sexual assault. Yeah. I mean, sexual assault is so gendered, right? Like there are male victims, of course, but almost all the perpetrators like 98% are male. So this is not just like something that humans do to each other that just it's just inevitable, right? Then it would be 50-50.

Well, the reason I think sexual violence would get reduced in a world with less rigid gender norms is that the guys would get laid more because women wouldn't have to be worried about having sex or being seen to want to have sex and they could actually have sex with who they wanted to. Like I lived in Denmark for six years where they have much less rigid gender norms than we do and like they fuck the hell out of each other. It's incredible. Everybody's getting laid there.

There's like so many fewer in cells because if a girl wants to get with a guy, she can just do it without this terrible like three layer game theory in her head of like, is she going to think I'm a slut if I say that I want to sleep with him? Like you don't have to make as many of those calculations. And so the women sleep with more guys and the guys get laid more and there's less pent up ridiculous like in cell anger coursing through their veins all the time. And the guys don't have to see women as like these pelts that they're carrying as totems of their dominance.

Yeah. Gender is bad for everyone. We just have to all keep sexting each other constantly to break down all those barriers just every time you text somebody, I'll be there in five, boom, attachment. Yeah. I mean, I think my advice to everyone is basically just think about consent more. So you definitely want to make sure you have the enthusiastic consent before you take a photo of anyone, obviously, before you send anyone a photo of yourself.

So don't send dick pics that are unsolicited yet. That's an easy one. I mean, you'd think there is no cynicism. The scenario in which an unsolicited dick pic is like going to improve your situation. How do you solicit a dick pic verbally? Sarah, we need to get you an account on like a gay dating app. Okay. There are a number of ways to do that.

Okay. Let's put a pin in that. I'm excited. Continue. Yeah. So I mean, just like consent at every level really and being explicit about the way you talk about consent. So asking direct questions like, can I send you this photo?

Do you want to see this photo? Can I share this photo with my friends? Like probably not. But if you want to do it, make sure you get permission. Oh yeah. We have to let you go though. Don't we, Amy? Yeah, we do.

Amy, thank you so much. You've been amazing. My boobs are so big right now.