Sexting and Sexual Networking
Posted By jss on January 16, 2009
Spotted on a Yahoo group yesterday afternoon, one catering to swingers:
Young married couple looking for same for friends, fun, and excitement if interested please contact us
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile (Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:55 pm PST)
The response came six minutes later:
Where r u from…where I the fairfield area…
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed (Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:01 pm PST)
Where, indeed?
groton
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
Hmm. OK, They’re both in Connecticut, no more than about a 90 minute drive. The conversation continues:
Cool any pic,s..please send
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed
But then there’s a spoilsport, a third party:
Can you talk in private not to everyone on yahoo!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!
Well, damn. It was just getting interesting. We’re left to wonder. I removed the email addresses from the above messages, of course; but any one of the 1,197 members of the Yahoo group on which these two people were conversing could, and can, see them.
Sexual networking on the Internet is often hidden in plain sight.
A few years ago, I got a Yahoo instant message from a stranger, a woman … surprisingly, not a webcam girl, no sort of scam or spam involved. She’d noticed my Yahoo profile. I looked at hers. An hour later, I was in my car, en route to a memorable midnight tryst that included a blow job so completely wonderful that I had to ask her how she got so very good at it.
“I read a lot,” she replied.
Not an experience or an explanation that I’ll ever forget. We saw each other one more time. She moved on, in search of someone who would be more of a boyfriend, less of a … well … midnight snack.
We’re part of each other’s sexual network now, part of each other’s history. I don’t regret it and I hope she doesn’t.
But the cell phone sexual networking — I’m just not up to speed on that. I’m tempted to contact the folks above … did they exchange pictures? Are they meeting, maybe tonight? Have they done this before?
And maybe I will …
Speaking of cell phones, a story in the news that has bothered me for a few days is this one:
According to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, “21% of teen girls and 18% of teen boys have sent/ posted nude or semi-nude images of themselves.”
Given those statistics, I’m thinking that busting teen-agers for child porn is probably not the answer. There are just too many of them. Moreover, they’re just getting started, since the survey also found that “One-third (33%) of young adults—36% of women and 31% of men ages 20-26—say they have sent or posted such images …”
I’m probably supposed to be horrified but it didn’t work on me. Teen-agers are sexually active. Young adults, more so … and so on. I’m as opposed to unwanted pregnancies as anyone, but the answer isn’t, and never has been, to suppress sexual behavior or cover it up. That’s why the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the U.S. is in Mississippi, not New York.
And yes, I have “sent or posted such images” and received them. Kids would probably be shocked. People in their 40s and 50s do this? Probably the best way to discourage teens from posting nude photos is to have them find out their parents are doing it.
(See also: Feb. 11 — Sexting Hysteria)
"Into Temptation" is a usually-but-not-always safe-for-work forum about evolving social-sexual networks and how they have changed and are changing lives. It will also loosely chronicle the research, writing and publication, I hope in 2011, of a book by the same name.
We run three adult Yahoo! groups, and we enjoy it whenever people carry on an open dialog in an attempt to hook up. It lets us know that people are putting the groups to good use. Besides, people generally don’t post stories, editorials and essays unless they are publishing a blog, so what else is there to post in a Yahoo! group?
Talk about micromanaging!!! People need to spend energy on the things that matter, like keeping kids safe, not reading bathroom walls.