Large Percentage of Young Adults Posting Nude Pictures

A new survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has found that 22% of teen girls have posted nude or semi-nude pictures online. Most important findings from the survey are below.

Also check out research that was published in our own Sexuality Research and Social Policy Journal - Journalist or Panderer? Framing Underage Webcam Sites - which talks about new technologies changing social relationships and view of teen's sexuality.

Survey Findings:(Full survey summary is here).

• One in five teen girls (22%)—and 11% of teen girls ages 13-16 years old—say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves.
• One-third (33%) of teen boys and one-quarter (25%) of teen girls say they have had nude/semi-nude images—originally meant to be private—shared with them.
• The survey of 1,280 teens and young adults indicates that 15% of teens who have sent sexually suggestive content such as text messages, email, photographs or video say they have done so with someone they only know online.
• Teen girls are not the only ones sharing sexually explicit content. Almost one in five teen boys (18%) say they have sent or posted nude/semi nude images of themselves. One-third (33%) of young adults—36% of women and 31% of men ages 20-26—say they have sent or posted such images.
• What teens and young adults are doing electronically seems to have an effect on what they do in real life: Nearly one-quarter of teens (22%) admit that technology makes them personally more forward and aggressive. More than one-third of teens (38%) say exchanging sexy content makes dating or hooking up with others more likely and nearly one-third of teens (29%) believe those exchanging sexy content are “expected” to date or hook up.
• Sending sexually suggestive messages is even more prevalent than sending nude/semi-nude images. Nearly half of young people (49% total, 39% of teens, 59% of young adults) have sent sexually suggestive text messages or email messages to someone.
• Even more have received sexually suggestive messages: 48% of teens and 64% of young adults (56% total). Fully one-third of young teen girls (ages 13-16) have received sexually suggestive messages.
• Teen girls who have sent or posted sexually suggestive content provide a number of reasons why: Two-thirds (66%) say they did so to be “fun or flirtatious,” half (52%) did so as a “sexy present” for their boyfriend, and 40% as a “joke.”
• Even though nearly three-quarters of young people (73% total, 75% of teens, 71% of young adults) say that sending sexually suggestive content “can have serious negative consequences,” nearly one-quarter (22% total, 19% of teens and 26% of young adults) say sending sexually suggestive content is “no big deal.”

For effects of this sexualization, especially on girls, please see the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls: http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationsum.html

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National AIDS Strategy

More than 100 organizations called for a National AIDS Strategy. After all these years in the epidemic we still don't have one and the number of people that are being infected every year is not going down. Having given up on Bush, and who hasn't, they call

AIDS is a national crisis. The next President of the U.S. should develop a results-oriented AIDS strategy.

You can be part of this effort and sign the petition for a National AIDS Strategy.
Senator Edwards is the first of the presidential candidates to support this effort.

That is very good to see. Who can forget his vice-presidential debate with Dick Cheney. Gwen Ifill asked both men to talk about African American women's increased exposure to HIV. Don't talk about African women, she said, African American women, you know, who live in this country. Neither men could do it and it was a shameful moment (one of many to follow for Cheney to be sure). Edwards has learned and that gives me hope. I imagine that he actually did feel ashamed then and now is part of the action. What little hope we hold on to sometimes, when it comes to our national leaders.

Via POZ: Health, Life and HIV

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Never underestimate a political foe

When I read Amanda Marcotte's question on RH Reality Check

“How on earth could one of the most powerful political movements in the nation collectively be unable to string two thoughts together in any type of coherent form?”

I thought for a moment that she would be refreshingly self-critical. But alas. All she can add to the conversation about reproductive rights is that the anti-choice people don't think. How is that helpful?

Of course anti-choice people think. And they think real hard. How else can such a minority have been so successful? That is the more important question.

There are are two intellectual traditions that suggest another way of thinking. One is better known and suggests that all people interpret the world according to frames they have in their minds. George Lakoff is the one person I know best and he has tried to make frame analysis useful for progressives in his book Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives. Since anti-choice activists have a very different frame, they literally see the world differently than Amanda and I do. But that is no reason to suggest that they don't think. Worse, it is completely useless to suggest that they don't think. They think perhaps harder than we do, for they know that being right and getting it right are two different things. I am bothered by smug progressives who simply think that being right ought to be enough.

Of course, I would betray my own discipline of anthropology, were I not to suggest that we have a country with very different cultures. For the current purpose, proposing to think in terms of culture is not that different than talking in terms of frames. With one notable difference. The culture concept invites the consideration of a broader spectrum of emotions and cognitions than frame analysis. Anthropologists also take religion more seriously and understand its fundamental importance to people's lives.

Let's also recognize that the anti-choice movement is not anti-sex per se. That again is too simplistic. They often suggest that good sex is important. However, good sex for them means intercourse between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. That is where we disagree. For me, sex can be many things between all kinds of people as long as they consent and achieve pleasure. Anti-choice people have orgasms. Women too. They don't mind other people having orgasms either, as long as they are married. That fits within their frame.

Underestimating such a phenomenal political foe as the anti-choice movement is the last think to do.

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