Recently the St. Petersburg Times, a Florida newspaper, covered this story.
For those who don't feel like reading the entirety of the article, it explains the tragic story of 13 year old girl who commit suicide following excessive taunts and bullying from her classmates after she text messaged a photo of her breasts to a male classmate she had a crush on and the photo was dispersed among her peers.
What is almost as unfourtunate as Witsell's death is the way in which her story seems to be covered. For the most part, the article focuses on the social problem of "sexting" or sending sexual images by cell phone or email amongst youth. At the end of the article, tips are given to parents to make sure the same heart-breaking end doesn't happen to their kids:
Steps to prevent your child from sexting
1. Take an inventory. Ask your children to show you all of the gadgets in the house that can take or store photos or videos. These can include cell phones, Webcams, video game consoles and iPods.
2. Ask them to show you images they have stored. Promise you won't hit the roof if you find something bad — then keep your word.
3. Have a talk. This should be a conversation, not a lecture. Be sure to mention a range of unintended consequences, which could include criminal charges that would jeopardize admission to college.
4. Watch what you buy. Think twice before purchasing devices that can take or send images. Drop the image-sending capability from your child's cell phone service.
But was Witsell's a cell phone-caused death? A digital image-caused death? Will taking away all iPhones from teenage girls prevent future suicides? It is dangerous and completely misleading to suggest that the above list could help prevent suicide. The apparent reason Hope Witsell killed herself was the intense harassment from her peers--not the sheer technological fact of having sent a sexual image via a cell phone. I didn't know the girl, but I can imagine that Hope Witsell's cell phone was not the major factor determining her self-worth. Society told her that she would only be worthwhile if she showed her naked body to her peer, then after she did this, what with her parents grounding her and taking away her cell phone and computer, she was given the message that she would only be worthwhile if she never did anything sexual whatsoever. This story is an old one for women. The technological aspect is actually the least relevant part of the story, but it is the best way for the newspaper to be able to pass off the story as though it is something new. The fact that people can now send sexual pictures of themselves on cell phones only means that our gender oppression can now express its dynamics in a new medium. Above everything, this piece on Hope Witsell's death reveals the single biggest fault of our mass media: how suitable news is defined as freak events, one-offs, spectacle, trends; while the ongoing social relationships plaguing large parts of our society remain unreflected.
Admittedly the author of the article mentions this:
The Witsells are coming forward because they feel Hope's sexting incident is a just a symptom of a larger problem: the hyper-sexualization in media aimed at young teens, which they believe forces young minds to contend with ideas of lust and love that they have trouble understanding.
But this is just one sentence in a 3,000 word article, and even in itself is still a little misleading. I feel it could have been better rephrased as follows:
-The immense pressure teenage girls have to present themselves sexually, yet at the same time the total discouragement they have from actually learning about their own bodies and desires.
-The immense pressure that teenage boys have to constantly desire commodified female bodies, to the extent that they are almost encouraged to be rapists, yet at the same time the total discouragement they have from developing a sexuality which strays in anyway from this.
-The double standard between men and women whereby men's promiscuity is encouraged and women's virginity is glorified.
Some of my proposed solutions and advice to parents that might actually prevent outcomes such as Witsell's:
-Widepread sex education, with a focus on pleasure rather than harm, whereby masturbation is encouraged and explained as the safest sexual activity and the best one for learning about desire, so that young women can learn to value their own pleasure and distinguish it from the pressure to appeal to a commodified version of heterosexual male sexuality.
-Widespread promotion of contraceptives for young women and men.
-No more abstinence only sex-education.
-Positive female and male role models in the media who challenge the stereotypes of the "emotional, helpless, boyfriend-obsessed female", and the "emotionless, brave, sex-obsessed male".
-A giant, fundamental societal shift whereby our notions of gender radically change. Likely only possible under a new economic system.
No comments:
Post a Comment