Monday, February 05, 2007

Sexualised Inappropriate Behaviours Service = Worst Name for a Public Institution Ever

According to this article in the Sunday Times, British kids are canoodling like rabbits and filming it on their cell phones. It's child porn made by children for children:

Andrew Durham, a consultant practitioner at the Sexualised Inappropriate Behaviours Service, which deals with children’s sexual problems, said: “It is now a feature within young people’s culture that these incidences get filmed. It is similar to the way people use phones to film others being assaulted.”

This kind of thing could spread faster than the bird flu. It won't be long before 20/20 revs up its cameraphone-kiddie-porn panic machine this side of the pond, which will probably do more to encourage kids to copy the behavior than anything else. It always amuses me when people freak out about kids using technology to act out their depraved cravings, because there's this not so subtle implication that without the technology, the depravity wouldn't exist. Yes, kids 13 to 16 are sexing each other up. In fact, it is exactly what their bodies are designed to do right now. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I think it's a good thing. While their bodies may be ready for sex, their minds certainly aren't. However, if we continue to approach teenage sexuality with prudish backward moralizing, we will only succeed in further alienating the little bastards.

Technology isn't the problem. A lack of moral fortitude isn't even the problem. The problem is that kids don't grow up with any sense of cause and effect, of responsible self-stewardship or self-respect, or with the mental faculties required for critical thinking. If you sit a kid down and talk to him like an adult and teach him to face problems the way an adult would face problems, he may still make mistakes. Yes, he may even have sex at a young age. But he probably won't film it on his cell phone, and he'll probably use protection. Sometimes it's the small victories, folks.

I call this photo, "The Thing Coming Out of My House":

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

1 comment:

  1. "However, if we continue to approach teenage sexuality with prudish backward moralizing, we will only succeed in further alienating the little bastards."

    ...and causing them to propagate themselves...

    ReplyDelete