Because all teens deserve independent nonjudgmental information about sexuality. Click here for more reasons. And here for even more reasons.
Protecting the kids - ur doin it rong
Audacia Ray has an excellent post on Waking Vixen that reports on two recent news stories involving teens and sex. The first was the story about teenagers sending naked photos of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends and being arrested and convicted of sex crimes. The second is the story of Operation Cross Country, which claims to be an attempt to rescue underage prostitutes but is much more effective at arresting adult prostitutes. In her post she asks this important question:
"Why are child prostitutes being rescued while adult prostitutes are being arrested? Why are kids who make porn of themselves being arrested while adult porn performers legally go about their business?"
I think part of what is going on here is the intersection of two different concerns in the policing of sexuality. That they intersect in the realm of sex work doesn't surprise me. One is the policing of teen sexuality, which our government does in ways that are harmful to teens. The arresting of teens for sending naked pictures of themselves to their partners is not about cracking down on child porn. Nor is it about protecting the kids themselves. It can only be explained as an attempt to deny teen sexuality and an attempt to contain it at all costs. If we cared about the fact that kids might be making decisions (releasing photos of themselves into the world that they'll later regret) then we would work to find ways to destroy the images while educating the kids about risk and long-term goals and so on.
The other is the policing of prostitution. Many kinds of sexual labor are legal but not that one, and when you can use the "protecting children" trope to bust lots of prostitutes, as Anthony Kennerson of SmackDog said in a comment on Dacia's post, you get lots of federal law enforcement goodies.
One thing that troubles me - in addition to the arresting of so many adult prostitutes - is that there is no clear reporting about what is happening to the teens who have been "rescued." This CNN story about Operation Cross Country reports the arrests of "464 adult prostitutes, 55 pimps and 55 customers" and notes that of the 48 minors, many are likely to be runaways. When kids runaway they often have good reasons for not wanting to be returned home. I want to know what the "rescuing" entails for each of those 48 teens. Does it entail health care, therapy, housing and education? Does it entail being moved through the juvenile justice system? Or does it entail being sent home? Again, it is hard to believe that any of these operations are being run for the sake of "protecting kids". That may be the rationalization, but as Judith Levine has written about so thoroughly , we are often doing more harm than good when we try to clamp down on sexual expression by using kids as our talismen.
