In our classroom discussion on hooking up, we covered the article “Hooking Up: Men, Women and the Sexual Double Standard,” and we spent and extensive amount of time sorting through the double standard presented for men and women. Also, we covered how after a certain point in college women begin to have hopes of marriage while men continue to prolong the idea of this. There exists a part of hook-up culture today that we failed to even touch on though and it continues to grow as a phenomenon of hooking-up. As a class, that integrates a high amount of technology, we can all attest to the ease and efficiency that technology allows to occur. Well, this ease and efficiency has flowed into the hook-up culture to what we now refer to as sexting.
Channel 2 News here in Atlanta organized a feature back on April 22, 2012, about “the social media revolution” (which I happened to have been invited to attend). During the segment, Monica Pearson, Justin Farmer and Scott Slade moderated questions as they introduced risks associated with sexting through social media. They showed examples of girls who had been exploited by having their pictures unknowingly posted on third party websites, but these examples were not limited to just females. Examples of how men had been exploited through sexting and social media were also shared through testimonials. Instances such as this obviously break through though the gender double standard presented in the article mentioned above.
The rate of commonness that sexuality occurs now has sparked websites such as askmen.com to write an article called “Sexting Etiquette,” which provides men recommendations of how to avoid a scandal, and even GQ has published a similar article called “A GQ Guide to Sexting”. Now an interesting fact about this article is that is written by a female, but when it comes to giving advice to guys in a guys magazine, why not have a female write it? Fox News took a similar approach as well in their article “The Do’s and Don’ts of Sexting.” With this article though, you get an education beyond just sexting though, it even includes a list of acronyms to make sexting more efficient.
None the less, the evidence of how main stream culture has adapted to accepting sexting with relatively little opposition. This acceptance of sexting in our culture certainly adds a new dimension to the hook-up culture, but in this realm there would appear to be little to no double standard. Beyond scandals though, how does sexting affect our culture today? I briefly touched on how youth are now exposed and subjected to adult experiences sooner, but are they the only ones negatively affected, or are all of those who engage in this negatively affected in some way? Additionally, since adolescents are engaging in sexting now and seemingly unaware of its implications for their future, how does this affect our future politicians and “leaders” of the future?
http://www.askmen.com/dating/dating_advice_400/477b_sexting-etiquette.html
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201107/sexting-rules-when-to-sext
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/02/16/dos-donts-sexting/
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/online/channel-2-presents-social-media-and-your-kids/nMcfm/
This is awesome! It is interesting how this clip is presented to our fellow men. While I think the clip itself is rather cheesy and low played, I think that the information was easily explained. I myself was captivated while watching this video, and can point out reasons how this video is designed specifically for men. With the cute reporter and her flirty comments I wonder what all would change if this video were made for women. Would there be an Edward Cullen look alike whispering words of wisdom to women about their do’s and don’ts of texting in an enchanted forest? Oddly enough, I find this video to be very stereotypical of men and their thinking process. What if there was no cute reporter? What effect would it have? I’m curious to find out what (if any) rules of texting would apply to both parties. Thanks for sharing!
I’m team Jacob so hopefully he will be the one whispering words of wisdom. 🙂
Team STI : you bring up a really interesting point here about texting. Is it seen as less threatening because it can’t get you pregnant or give you an STI? Is it less dangerous because there is no “touching” involved (was the pun in your title purposeful or accidental?) and how does power “circulate” through texting? What I mean is this: is the playing field “leveled” so to speak because both parties (all parties?) engaged are acting through a virtual self in some way? I guess the “trouble” comes in when we have to deal with these “virtual” actions in our real lives.
Ver intriguing. Next time support your argument with direct quotes from the articles. This direct evidence will buoy the argument even more.
I believe in some ways it seen as less threatening, but the realistic threat goes unnoticed until some form of scandal arises. Yes, the was intentional on two levels, one we didn’t discuss it in class and two it literally involves no touching. The playing field to a certain extent does become leveled because both individuals are interested in the same exact thing with little variance.