Reframing Risqué/Risky: Queer Temporalities, Teenage Sexting, and Freedom of Expression

Laws

Lara Karaian²  Katherine Van Meyl¹ 

[1] Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, B750 Loeb Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada; E-Mail:;Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Carleton University, C578 Loeb Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada

关键词: teenage sexting;    adolescent sexuality;    risk;    queer time;    queer temporalities;    freedom of expression;   

DOI  :  10.3390/laws4010018

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Canada recognizes young people’s constitutionally protected freedom of expression and consequently their right to engage in a narrow subset of consensual sexually expressive practices without being prosecuted as child pornographers. Nevertheless, numerous anti-sexting campaigns decry the possibility of voluntary and “safe sexting” let alone the affordances of adolescents’ self-produced and consensually shared sexual imagery. In this article, we argue that these actors have erred in their construction of youths’ risqué imagery as inherently risky and thus governable. We propose that anti-sexting frameworks—which conflate consensual and nonconsensual sexting and which equate both with negative risks that purportedly outweigh the value and benefits of the practice—rely on a calculus that is fundamentally flawed. This article consists of two main parts. In Part I, we map and trouble the ways in which responses to consensual teenage sexting emphasize the practice’s relationship to embodied, financial, intimate and legal risks. In Part II, we suggest that research examining consensual adolescent sexting and young people’s rights to freedom of expression consider alternative theoretical frameworks, such as queer theories of temporality, when calculating the risk of harm of adolescent sexual imagery.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.