This story is absurd.
And from WISN...
I'm not going to excuse the boy's actions, although someday his smooth-talking ways will make him the superstar of his fraternity. I'm also not willing to buy into another article that paints the girls as innocent, doe-eyed victims.
A boy goes up to a girl and says "text me a naked photo of you or I'm going to say bad things about you," and when the girl just rolls over and sends the photo, I'm supposed to believe that she's helpless and had no other choice?
What happened to good, old-fashioned, ratting the boy out to a teacher or other adult? What does it say about these girls, how they've been raised, and how their schools are run that they would apparently prefer to send the photo than stand up to a low-tech bully?
As best we know, this boy wasn't physically menacing. He wasn't making threats of violence or actual harm. He started with sweet talk that then turned into threats of rumor-mongering. Are today's young teens so emotionally fragile that they'd rather float naked pictures of themselves around school than have someone say something bad about them?
Or does physical modesty matter less to today's kids than it used to? Is there an ethos among pre-teens and teens today that we adults struggle to comprehend because it's not the prevailing ethic that we grew up with as children?
In the bigger picture, the boy is doing something that boys have tried to do in one form or another since the beginning of time. What's interesting to me is whether how girls respond to that behavior is changing.
Greenfield - A 14-year-old Whitnall High School student is accused of coercing teen girls into sending him sexually explicit photos of themselves.
Greenfield police on Wednesday said they suspect the freshman boy obtained nude and semi-nude photos of at least seven girls who sent the pictures from their cell phones or over the Internet. Police believe at least one of the girls sent the photos voluntarily...
The boy obtained nude photos by telling girls he would spread rumors about them, Wentlandt said. He also told some girls that unless they sent him nude photos of themselves, he would distribute nude photos of other girls that he already possessed, Wentlandt said.
And from WISN...
"Our suspect is just very good at complimenting these young girls and telling them how pretty they look. It starts out with him just asking for clothed pictures and then, 'Can you send me one a little more risqué, maybe in your bra and panties, and then from there he tries to get nude pictures,'" Greenfield police Detective Sgt. Dave Patrick said.
I'm not going to excuse the boy's actions, although someday his smooth-talking ways will make him the superstar of his fraternity. I'm also not willing to buy into another article that paints the girls as innocent, doe-eyed victims.
A boy goes up to a girl and says "text me a naked photo of you or I'm going to say bad things about you," and when the girl just rolls over and sends the photo, I'm supposed to believe that she's helpless and had no other choice?
What happened to good, old-fashioned, ratting the boy out to a teacher or other adult? What does it say about these girls, how they've been raised, and how their schools are run that they would apparently prefer to send the photo than stand up to a low-tech bully?
As best we know, this boy wasn't physically menacing. He wasn't making threats of violence or actual harm. He started with sweet talk that then turned into threats of rumor-mongering. Are today's young teens so emotionally fragile that they'd rather float naked pictures of themselves around school than have someone say something bad about them?
Or does physical modesty matter less to today's kids than it used to? Is there an ethos among pre-teens and teens today that we adults struggle to comprehend because it's not the prevailing ethic that we grew up with as children?
In the bigger picture, the boy is doing something that boys have tried to do in one form or another since the beginning of time. What's interesting to me is whether how girls respond to that behavior is changing.
1 comment:
All good points, but kids are effed up these days when it comes to this kind of behavior. Remember the story of the boy in a Milwaukee suburb who was able to coerce other boys into performing sex acts on him lest he show their naked pictures (which he obtained under false pretenses) to other kids?
I have no problem with gays, but it would take a hell of a lot more than the threat of slight embarrassment for me to give another guy a blowjob. There's something unique going on here, whether it's a consequence of modern youth culture, the "online persona" phenomenon, or a culmintation of the two, and I think it's going to require us to adjust our (relatively) old guy lenses to understand it.
I'm sure that "show me yours and I'll show you mine" has been going on since the dawn of human modesty, but obviously a threat of force corrupts what would otherwise be a product of mutual curiosity. Maybe we need to redefine what constitutes force for this new generation, because these tactics wouldn't have been successful when I was a kid.
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