The increasing connection between digital media and the publics, especially adolescents, has raised certain concerns. Boyd suggests that the conditioning power social media has on teenagers is derived from the urge of sociality. Despite the exclusion of technology as a major factor in her theory, …show more content…
The fear of anonymity and online predators are exacerbated by the victimization of young females. In the majority of the admonitory campaigns against the practice of sexting, the idea of females being frail is deeply rooted. Furthermore, many of the mid-2000 online safety advice instruct teenage girls to remain anonymous by downplaying or neutralizing their identity, and distrusting any online encounters. (Shade as cited in Hansinoff, 2012, p. 452) One the other hand, contradictory can be seen between the victimization of girls and the concern of their inhibition. Girls are repugnantly considered simultaneously defenseless and aggressive, however, in both cases they are blamed for their production of sexually explicit contents. This echoes with the gender imbalance of women being depicted as sexual temptresses throughout the history in several religions. For instance, in Christianity, influencer Augustine of Hippo firmly believed that women are fundamentally subordinate to men for the fact that Eve was the one who avariciously and foolishly prone to temptation, and the serpent only approached her due to her gullibility. He argued that females are dependent on males because a man himself represents God, yet a woman can only be in the image of God when bonded with a man. (Dawes 2011, p. 496) Nonetheless, the fact that St. …show more content…
Defamatory of all forms of sexual representations before the direct crackdown of specific problems will only normalize the actual malicious acts such as abusive sexting. Consequently, sexting should never be judged as simply aberrant (Slane as cited in Hansinoff, 2012, p. 460) and the Australian child pornography law considering all parties involved guilty undeniably failed to adhere to this point. The varied scenarios of sexting should all be taken into account under the setting of defining sexting as a form of media production in order to nurture healthy sexual citizenships and to improve the excessive policies. Sexting could be positive in maintaining intimacy and connection, and both romantic relationships and friendships apply to it. The function of communication should be valued in the era of gender equality, when sexting could possibly recompose the patterns of female subordination and oppression of their