[Megatron]

Originally Posted by lisarea

She was thirteen years old. Thirteen. A middle schooler. A child. That's a fucking horrible age for girls. They wake up one day, and all of a sudden, they're not kids anymore. They get rushed with hormones that they're supposed to have some preternatural ability to control, and they're also supposed to navigate the adult world like adults. Nobody expects anything like that from boys until they're well into their thirties or so.

I realize a huge double standard exists here, and always has, but that's really not the point I was making, and I can only hope you see that.

So not only does everyone expect girls to make responsible adult decisions, but they're supposed to be able to predict and prevent sexual harassment and violence as well? Why aren't the kids who distributed the pictures or the boys who harassed her (reported to be in their late teens) in jail right now, waiting for their trials?

Because no one treats this sort of harassment like the crime it is, I think we all agree here.

Most of the kids who passed the pictures around were children too, but the big difference is that their actions were malevolent. Hers weren't. And the fucking victim blaming came from the adults.

I realize that.

The fact that she took her shirt off for a boy doesn't mean she's fair game. It doesn't make it OK to distribute what is legally considered 'child pornography,' or to sexually intimidate a child (which, in many cases, fits the legal definition of sexual assault). How the fuck is that her fault?

I never said it was.

And you're dead fucking wrong about the wolves. They come no matter what you do. And the reason they do is because of attitudes just like yours. Wear the wrong thing, act the wrong way, or just be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you are responsible for someone else's acts of violence? That's fucking disgusting. It really is.

WHOA. Stop the fucking boat.

First off, the illegal distribution of child pornography started with her. Not the second time when she was harassed into doing it, the first time when she did it of her own volition.

Second, I never assigned any blame or said she was responsible for any of the shit that happened. I said that if she hadn't taken pictures of her tits and sent them over a cell phone, no one would have been able to send them around and use them to harass her. Or, to use a direct quote,

Originally Posted by Megatron

an ounce of common sense could have prevented a ton of shit here.

Is it her fault what happened afterward? I'm fairly sure we all agree that it's not.

Finally, "attitudes like mine"? What the fuck? What attitude in particular? Is it wrong somehow that I think 13-year-old girls shouldn't be sending nude pictures over cell phones? Are you really fucking saying that? Because other than that, I've pretty much agreed with everything said in this thread, and I'm just as pissed as anyone else that no one is doing anything about the asshats that drove this girl to suicide.

This isn't the same as "wearing the wrong thing" or "acting the wrong way".

Remember: She didn't hurt anyone with her actions. At worst, it was ill-advised, but only because of disgusting puritan double-standards like yours, by which females displaying any type of sexual behavior are asking to be victimized.

You certainly have a knack for incendiary language. That worked me up to the point of xanax.

Double-standards? Are you fucking serious? I'd say the exact same thing if you reversed the genders here.

The "puritan" part I'll eat, at least a little of it. I honestly don't think anyone in their right mind (and yes I realize she was a kid, god dammit) would be sending naked pictures out in the first place. Call it puritanism, call it xenophobia, whatever gets you off.

Also, of course she didn't hurt anyone, but if there's one thing I've learned in the age of identity theft and fraud, it's to be extremely prudent with what you put out on the wire. Names, numbers, naked pictures, whatever.

My point before was that no one is telling the kids about this. Instead, they're just handing them the keys to the world wide network and saying "have fun!" - It's a lot like giving them the keys to your car without teaching them how to drive it.

And again, this was a child. Children frequently do things without fully thinking them through, and at her age, she had little experience with how the world works. Kids tend to think the world is fair, and haven't been fully indoctrinated into the sort of bullshit you're spewing here.

But even if she were an adult, what she did didn't hurt anyone. The fault lies entirely with those who distributed the pictures without her consent, with the older boys who terrorized her, and with the adults who chose to punish her rather than those who actually did something wrong--who actually did something to hurt another person.

I'm not arguing that at all.

No, that's a crock of shit.

I don't blame bloggers--especially those who post about about sexual violence--for moderating victim blaming comments. It's always the same disgusting, pointless bullshit. Always. Read some unmoderated comments about rape or harassment or pretty much any 'women's' issues sometime. It's fucking disgusting. Everyone's heard the disruptive shit about how women ask or deserve to be harassed and raped. Those kinds of things get moderated for the same reason that Jewish blogs would moderate Neo-Nazi trolling.

Nobody is required to provide those fucking gibbons with an anonymous podium for their bullshit.

That's some fucking gonzo hyperbole there, and if you're actually comparing me to that, then fuck you. Seriously.