Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent

Feminist Media Studies

by Amy Adele Hasinoff

Sexting Panic illustrates how anxieties about technology and teen girls' sexuality distract from critical questions about how to adapt norms of privacy and consent for new media. Though mobile phones can be used to cause harm, Amy Adele Hasinoff notes that criminalization and abstinence policies meant to curb sexting often fail to account for the distinction between consensual sharing and the malicious distribution of a private image. Hasinoff challenges the idea that sexting inevitably victimizes young women. Instead, she encourages us to recognize young people's capacity for choice and recommends responses to sexting that are realistic and nuanced rather than based on misplaced fears about deviance, sexuality, and digital media.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2015

Reviews

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is atrocious. Indeed, at least three sentences per page start with, “Indeed”. On top of that, the author is exceptionally long winded and redundant. She says the same thing. Indeed she says the same thing over and over. She might even say it another time. Which makes it slow - very slow.

If you can get past that and the small matter that she fails to offer solutions, it’s actually a very good essay. This is an important conversation not because it matters who is texting but because it matters when we assign blame and assume certain people shouldn’t be texting.

The author does an excellent job of offering well thought of examples to challenge some long held views. For instance, if a private sexy photo is shared to many people beyond a young woman’s boyfriend, many would be inclined to think the young woman ought to not have engaged in something so foolish. How often would we feel the same if our bank data was leaked?

One fault I did see in the book is the failure to go much deeper. The author carefully curated her arguments and research to hit specific notes. But true depth was lacking from this conversation which continues to slow crucial shifts to social norms.

Definitely worth the read if you can ignore the dry, bad writing.

[Ty Burshar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy Adele Hasinoff’s "Sexting Panic" critique’s assumptions about sexting, empowerment, and agency by challenging the notion that sexting inevitably victimizes teen girls’. Often, people negate the fact that sexting requires two phones—two consenting participants—only focusing on the consequences after privacy rights have been violated. In retaliation, shame is placed on the exposed victim, rather than the distributor. By recognizing sexting as a choice refutes the assumption that teen girls are the blame. She states, “The common sense ideas many people fold about technology, sexuality, and youth can lead to responses to sexting that are largely ineffective . . . Such reactions often ignore privacy violators while implicitly erasing girl’s sexual agency and blaming them for sexting in the first place” (1). While it may seem affective to implement consequential policies and advise girls to abstain from sexting to protect them or protect themselves, stopping there does not address the entire problem.

Hasinoff uses the notions of privacy and consent to ask us to rethink responses to sexting by forcing us to rethink the assumption that everything digital is public. She states, “Sexting raises key questions about privacy and consent in networked digital social environments, but these vital issues can get buried beneath the widespread anxiety about girls’ sexuality” (1). Privacy and consent is an important element in the possession and distribution of private images. Reforming policies on privacy and consent can eliminate blame and prosecution of girls who sext, and focus on the individual who malevolently distribute private images without permission. While our responses to sexting function as a seemingly gender neutral way of shaming sexually active girls, Hasinoff suggests, “adopting the standard that explicit consent should be required for the circulation of private images” which can “result in radically different responses to sexting and profound implications for social media polices and architectures” (1).

[César Galicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

El mejor texto que se puede encontrar relativo al sexting y sus implicaciones, además, por tener una mirada feminista sobre el tema, el libro evita caer en los clichés de la narrativa mainstream sobre sus riesgos e implicaciones (considerándolos, sí, pero centrándose en ellos), y presenta la conducta más bien como una práctica sexual con diversos puntos a tomar en cuenta. Es una lectura MUY académica, por lo tanto, sólo sugiero entrarle si el tema es de interés (Amy tiene videos en youtube y una página personal donde se puede consultar información más digerida).

[Scott Vine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a well argued and provocative book that is not afraid to tackle head on changes to child porn laws or the assumption that any girl who sends explicit photo of herself is morally corrupt and at fault if that picture is then distributed by the person in whose trust she had placed her privacy.

[Kel Munger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed in the Colorado Springs Independent:

http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings...