Liberal Family Values Have a Strange Definition of Modesty
One of the Left’s favorite pastimes is to sneer at conservative family-values rhetoric. It usually goes something like this: “How dare you suggest that we don’t have values, just because we believe in marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose?” But a recent piece by The Daily Beast’s Conor Friedersdorf illustrates that there is something deeply off-kilter about liberals’ notion of values, and it runs deeper than abortion or same-sex marriage.
Taking a look at the phenomenon of “sexting” (young people sending nude cell-phone pictures of themselves to one another), Friedersdorf concludes that there’s much ado about nothing—in fact, things only really go wrong when adults try to do anything about it.
In most cases, teens who conceal their sexting from authority figures suffer negligible adverse consequences; they’re hardly the first generation to play “I’ll show you mine,” and even Verizon’s 3G network cannot yet transmit sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy.
Perversely, however, tragic stories that begin with “sexting” are all too frequent when principals, police officers, or district attorneys get involved. The two known suicides attributed to “sexting” actually resulted from adults who exacerbated, rather than stopped, the abhorrent “slut-shaming” that peers callously directed at girls whose naked photos were spread around school; and authority figures in at least six states charge less troubled teens who send naked pictures of themselves with distributing child pornography!
Friedersdorf grants that he would naturally “advise against ‘sexting,’ even absent the legal dangers surrounding it, and punish [his] kid if he or she did it anyway,” but he insists that sexting is ultimately no different than the ways adolescents have always explored their sexuality. It’s certainly not “a shocking harbinger of promiscuity,” “evidence that my kid needs counseling,” or a sign that he’d “raised a teen bereft of modesty.”
He makes a fair point that legal overreach can “make the sex-offender registry less useful for all of us by wasting resources on harmless kids and diminishing what it means to be listed,” but if emailing naked pictures of yourself to others doesn’t indicate promiscuity or a lack of modesty, what does?
Yes, there always have been, and always will be, some kids who become sexually active before they’re ready. But it does us no good to claim sexting isn’t a sign of what it manifestly is, to imply that any consequence short of suicide is no big deal, or to casually dismiss the possibility that past indiscretions might come back to haunt someone.
Besides, the culture is different than it was a generation ago. Our kids aren’t sexting in a vacuum; they’re doing it in a culture where Planned Parenthood presents underage promiscuity as cool and natural, and where such ideas have powerful friends in US public schools and the White House. They’re being presented gratification at all costs as central to a truly fulfilled life, and that anyone who tells them otherwise is trying to enslave them. Does that sound like “family values” to you?
_____
Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks
- The Overreaction to “Sexting” - Conor Friedersdorf - Metablog - True/Slant
- Global Medical Book Announcing their Definition of Medical Tourism | Largestore Blog
- Conservatism Must Not Abandon the Cultural Front « Calvin Freiburger Online
- How Not to Raise Your Kids « Calvin Freiburger Online
- The Plant In The Middle Of The Culture Wars « Around The Sphere
- Liberal Family Values Have a Strange Definition of Modesty … | Drakz Free Online Service
“if emailing naked pictures of yourself to others doesn’t indicate promiscuity or a lack of modesty, what does?”
I’d say that someone can e-mail a naked photo of him or herself to a boyfriend or girlfriend and still be a modest person — indeed, many “sexting” teens are horrified when photos meant only for their crush are shown to others.
As for promiscuity, I’d say it should be indicated by actual physical contact. Is a “sexter” whose never been kissed, let alone had sex, really accurately said to be promiscuous?
“I’d say that someone can e-mail a naked photo of him or herself to a boyfriend or girlfriend and still be a modest person”
Really? Then what the hell do you call being immodest? Parading naked down the street? I know I’m just one of those nutty authoritarian conservatives, but it seems to me taking naked pictures of yourself period is immodest. Not to mention stupid. If you have a “crush” you send him or her a picture of your smiling face or a gift, not a triple x photo.
If you’re married, you don’t need to be sending nude pictures of yourself, but if a married couple did, I wouldn’t see anything wrong with that. The problem with a “crush” is you have no commitment. You shouldn’t trust someone who is only a crush with something as intimate as a nude photo of yourself. And if I liked a girl, and we were still dating, and she sent me a nude picture of herself I’d DX her right away.
Remember we are talking about teens, here. Teens do not have a fully developed frontal lobe. That is the part of the brain which processes the consequences of actions taken. That is why a teenager is not just a younger, smaller, adult. They are really just an older, bigger, kid with usually are larger vocabulary and better coordination. So they look and act like adults eighty percent of the time and then poof, they turn into a total retard and do stuff like send photos of themselves in the buff to people they really don’t know that well.
Liberals hate to hear stuff like that because they don’t want to be responsible for their children. They don’t won’t to be told they need to monitor and watch their child’s behavior and correct it. It cuts into their own pleasure time. They just want teens to be adults so they don’t have to hassle with them. It’s child abuse.
Children need structure and discipline, that’s real love. And it requires sacrifice.
You’re right about promiscuous, casual sexual contact is the dictionary definition. But voyeurism is a form a sexual contact.
They are really just an older, bigger, kid with usually are larger vocabulary and better coordination.
I meant to write
They are really just an older, bigger, kid who possesses a larger vocabulary and better coordination.
“Remember we are talking about teens, here. Teens do not have a fully developed frontal lobe.”
I burst out laughing when I read that. So true. I know from introspection.
Excellent post.
“I’d say that someone can e-mail a naked photo of him or herself to a boyfriend or girlfriend and still be a modest person — indeed, many “sexting” teens are horrified when photos meant only for their crush are shown to others.”
Indeed, the same way a good Nazi officer would have been horrified if photos of his handiwork of torture and murder were shown to his own dear wife and children. Of course, it would have been fine if the same photos were shared among his circle of brother officers.
Yeah, yeah, Godwin…
“As for promiscuity, I’d say it should be indicated by actual physical contact…”
Actually you may have a point there. Promiscuity is normally used for indiscriminate sexual physical activity. I believe a better word to use in this article would be ‘immoral’.
But that’s the point: you don’t send one of these pictures to somebody if you don’t know that person well enough to know whether or not they’d spread that picture around. At the very least, it’s not modest to share yourself sexually with somebody you don’t have that level of trust with, and while I’m sure some teens really do it out of deeply misplaced trust, others are doing it without such concern.
And while sexting itself might not fit the dictionary definition of “promiscuous,” it’s certainly a good indicator. Do you really think someone inclined to take naked pictures of herself isn’t at least open to the idea of actually having sex?
Sadly, ‘immodest’ has become a pejorative word of late.
A timely reminder:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “whiYou can use basic XHTML in your commentsch is to be master – - that’s all.”
Easy Cal. You, as someone who has obviously not had sex w/ another human being, should be the last one to be writing on this subject. Sorry, can’t resist a bit of an adhom. Your arguments are sophomoric, ill informed and poorly constructed. Here it is 2010 and you, little boy, are are stuck in the Victorian era.
Awesome argumentation skills, Sam.
I’d say that someone can e-mail a naked photo of him or herself to a boyfriend or girlfriend and still be a modest person
And I can call myself the Imperial Grand PooBah of the Bedrock WaterBuffalo Club, if I do so much violence to logic, reason, and meaning that the actual words become no more significant than random noise.
No one addressing this statement?….
“they’re doing it in a culture where Planned Parenthood presents underage promiscuity as cool and natural, and where such ideas have powerful friends in US public schools and the White House. They’re being presented gratification at all costs as central to a truly fulfilled life, and that anyone who tells them otherwise is trying to enslave them.”
Parents do realize their children of all ages are under ’sexual siege’ from all forms of media, right? Now it is in our public education from K up through H.S and through college, there is NO escaping it, especially when backed by this White House’s “safe school” Czar…a pervert himself. This is a ‘role-model’ for our children?
Parents must instill in their children, values, morals and ethics to stave off the forever-present influence of teachers, peers, doctors, counselors, and organizations PROMOTING demoralizing promiscuity and dangerous habits of drinking and drugs fostering illicit behavior.