* Via BLOgT: Even ex-gays are allowed to wear fabulous scarves.

* Feministing points to a Brightest Young Things piece on how some LGBT folks define queer virginity.

* At Tiger Beatdown, Silvana reacts to a piece in the Washington Post about a victim of trauma who built an anti-terrorism career out of her fascination with "evil and violence":

Ironically enough, reading an article about someone else’s fascination with terror caused me to feel a little terror of my own. What if this explained it all? What if my fascination with detention and corrections, and compulsion to fight for people who are locked up, was all a complicated outgrowth of my history of trauma? I was harassed almost every day as a teenager, groped, assaulted, and in my late teens and early twenties raped repeatedly by a boyfriend. I was surrounded by people who had done bad things to me. But instead of being repulsed by criminals, rapists, terrorists, I identify with them. Because, just like women are the sex class, to be the recipient, the dumping-ground for male aggression, men of color and especially mentally ill men of color are the dumping ground for white male authoritarian state-sanctioned violence.

* At Jezebel, Irin Carmon interviews former staffers about The Daily Show's boys club. Head to the comments to read a deluge of defenses of this "progressive" product with a gender problem.

* Tracy Clark-Flory on a man who allegedly hacked into over 100 computers in search of private sex tapes and photos (44 of the victims were underage):

When we come across stories about violations of people's sexual privacy, whether on the news or in our personal lives, there's a tendency to go, Oh, well, that was stupid of them — they shouldn't have filmed that, they shouldn't have taken that photo, etc. And then you feel a bit safer, thanks to your superior wisdom, which tells you that you should not let your boyfriend keep a copy of your homemade sex tape and that you should decline that guy's request for a sexy photo (and maybe you even follow this advice, most of the time). The reality, though, is that precautions—no matter how sensible, no matter how self-righteously we trumpet them—are no match for someone set on exploitation.

The AARP has finally figured out a way to deter all those crazy tweens from sexting their chastity away: Inform them that a bunch of totally old people are doing it, too. In the November issue Online at AARP.org, reporter Jessica Leshnoff interviews a handful of first-name-only seniors who admit to sending photos of their boobs to other old people through text messages.

There's Roger, the 59-year-old divorcé who need only tell a date that she has "amazing breasts" to be rewarded with an unsolicited photo of them. There's Jill, 50, who suggests sexting dirty thoughts while "sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food . . . and no one knows what you're doing." And then there's sexting-skeptical Richard, 66, who received a sext while "with a group of colleagues after hours at a restaurant," and "surprised himself by being less than thrilled."

These aging sexters have got a good half-century on the subjects of most sexting paranoia pieces, but their story is the same. The "old people are sexting" trend story operates under the same premise as the teenage sexting story. Find a group the public doesn't enjoy considering being sexually active (minors, the elderly). Reveal that they are sexually active. Then, add technology—the second-scariest topic next to sex— and voilà—something else for David Brooks devotees to clutch their pearls over.

The AARP isn't slut-shaming the elderly here, but it does insert a good deal of skepticism into the piece. After all, it wouldn't be a "sexting" article without a degree of alarm. Elder sexting can't be policed through the traditional avenues—you can't ground them, and you can't threaten to slap them with absurd child pornography charges. But surely, there must be some way to convince old people that sending dick photos may not be the way to spend their lunch hour? "But beware, the experts warn," Leshnoff writes. "Sexting has its dangers, too, especially when it comes to people in the dating world."

Those dangers? "False advertising." "Too much, too soon." "Not everyone likes receiving a sexually charged text." Someone could steal them and put them on the Internet. And in a sick twist of fate: "the possibility of your teenage kids innocently flipping through your texts." The article ends on a downer, via Richard: After actually receiving the money shot, "It was like the fun kind of went out of it," he says.

But despite the pitfalls, the AARP has recognized that old people will probably send photos of their genitals anyway, so we may as well help them sext safely. Their tips: Slowly transition from "I still want to go to the prom with you" to "Forget chocolate, I am craving the taste of you!" Take care to periodically delete nude texts every once in a while. And always remember to "keep expectations based on sexting in check."

I really like that. Our culture has a tendency to infantilize men and women "of a certain age," and that includes treating their sex lives as either an unspoken taboo or an inflated cause for concern. I get it: My parents get AARP magazine, and I don't want to think about them giving these sexting tips a text ride, either (except for the part where they delete the evidence). And the idea of my grandmother sending a perfectly chaste text message is hilarious to me. That being said, aging can present some pretty specific challenges to a person's sex life—and, like with teens, the worst we can do is refuse to talk about it.

Photo via Ethan Prater, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

This Spanish PSA, which warns of the dangers of  "sexting," follows a similar trajectory to domestic anti-sexting initiatives: There's the ill-advised nudity, the mass tween sext, and the shame, oh, the shame. One difference: The Spanish version drops a lot of nipple.

The televised spot follows a sexy Spanish cartoon heroine, who takes a bare-breasted cell phone pic on a whim—complete with exposed cartoon nipples (ding ding ding!)—only to find her cartoon titis land on—where else?—TopTitis.com. As a result, all her tween amigos turn to leprechauns and her familia is paralyzed forever.

While this situation ends up being pretty tragic for our señorita, the overt sexiness of this illustrated sext—cartoon nipple!—may only encourage enterprising young sexters. One danger concerned padres won't have to worry about: In the real world, TopTities.com appears to be—research purposes!—little more than a spam porn site.

Drumming up a good teen sex scandal for the nightly news ain’t what it used to be. A couple decades ago, a news anchor could scare the shit out of some parents by just turning to the camera and posing a question: “It’s 10 o’clock. Parents, do you know where your children are?”

Nowadays, the advent of e-mail, cell phones, and GPS has ensured that parents always know where their children are. And so, local news reporters have been forced to dig a little deeper than that old rhetorical question for their parental scare tactics. Below, how to engineer a teen sex scandal using only a cell phone, a pair of blue jeans, and a few good "experts."

NBC Washington: “Gossip Site Causing Concern, Controversy in Montgomery County”

Rumors: Is your child spreading them? NBC Washington reports on this concerning new trend, noting that Montgomery County high school students “call each other names, spread rumors, and recently, a former Whitman high school student posted death threats.”

What’s to blame? A dangerous element that lurks, unseen, around us all: the Internet.

Andrew Ship, a high school counselor and “Internet safety expert,” walks solemnly down a high school hallway as he explains to parents the grave dangers of kids spreading rumors. “There’s nobody monitoring this stuff.…There’s no Internet police,” Ship says.

There is no “Internet police,” but there are real police—and like NBC Washington, they’re surfing teen boards, too. NBC reported that cops have “temporarily shut down the Web site twice in the last five months after a photo of a topless underage teen popped up.” Police have since monitored the site for illegal behavior. What the report fails to mention is that the new teenage forum for circulating gossip is actually far more regulated than schoolyard note-passing ever was—now, parents are let in on the notes, too.

In that way, the move from mail to message boards has actually encouraged teen sex scandals: It puts underage improprieties only a Google search away from a local news reporter hard-pressed for a sex story. Now, kids aren’t the only ones who can spread rumors about kids on the Internet!

—

Fox 5: “What Texting Acronyms Are Kids Using?”

Leather: Is your child lusting after it? Last month, Fox 5 D.C. published two stories on its Web site covering a list of online chatroom “codes,” titled “50 Acronyms Parents Should Know.” The acronyms included such standard kiddy fare as “A/S/L” (Age/Sex/Location), “POS” (Parents Over Shoulder), and “FOL” (Fond of Leather). This teen sex scare is constructed of a delicate local news logic: Teens use acronyms on the Internet. Sadomasochistic leather fetishists use acronyms on the Internet. Could your teen be couching his sadomasochistic leather fetishism in intricate abbreviated text-speak?

Even Fox 5 can’t be sure. The first story on the acronym blow-up, published May 23, took a novel approach to the teen sex scandal: reporting the trend while simultaneously debunking it. “Many people who see the list wind up howling with laughter, since many of the terms are completely unknown to most people, teenaged or otherwise,” Fox reports, before blaming “some local TV news reporters” for furthering the scandal.

In the second story, published May 25, “some local TV news reporters”—also from Fox—take a more traditional approach to the trend. “It may be an old list, but it doesn’t change the fact that parents want to decipher what it is their kids are reading and how they’re communicating online,” Fox reported. “Erin Jansen, founder of NetLingo, acknowledges that not all of the terms on the list are used by everyone.”

So, are your kids secret Internet sadomasochistic leather fetishists, or aren’t they? There’s only one way to be sure: Don’t ask them.

Combined, the two stories quoted the following sources: PC Magazine editor Sascha Segan; NetLingo’s Jansen; several Digg commenters; 21-year-old Arizona State University junior Jason Parks.
None of these people are teens. But many did think the list was ridiculous. “It looks like a lot of them come from online sex chat rooms, and not just any chat rooms, but sadomasochistic ones,” Segan said, in the second story.

What does a local news station do when even its adult “experts” won’t help further its teen sex scandal? Remember that a picture can say 1,000 sadomasochistic online acronyms—even if your kids don’t know any of them. Fox paired its overblown warning of youth Internet use with a shot, plucked from Flickr, of three blond-haired children gathered conspiratorially around a laptop. All are several years shy of tweendom—and decades away from serious leather play.

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Fox 5: “Jeans May Cause Tingling Thigh Syndrome.”

Jeans: Are your teens suffering from them? This recent Fox 5 story is a typical “hidden danger of teen trend” piece: This time, wearing fashionably skinny jeans may make your thighs tingle.
If you’ve noticed your teen suffers from a compression of the “lateral femoral cutaneous nerve,” he may have been donning these super-tight, sexy leg coverings—under your own roof. The condition, known as meralgia paresthetica, or “tingling-thigh syndrome,” “usually affects obese people or manual laborers.” Now, numb thighs are beginning to afflict a demographic you actually care about. Tingling-thigh syndrome “is cropping up in younger people,” Fox reports.
How long has this condition been “cropping up” in younger people? Since you, too, were a younger person. “Skinny jeans are not the first pants to cause the condition,” Fox reports. “Super-low-rise jeans, popular in the late ’90s and early 2000s, were linked to meralgia paresthetica; and in the 1970s, there were rumors that snug jeans caused infertility in men and yeast infections in women.”
Older people lucky enough to have escaped sterilization by skinny jeans now have a new set of young denim enthusiasts to worry about. That is, until they reach the end of the story, which completely invalidates its premise. “Salon.com does counter that the condition may not be affecting very many people.”

WJLA-TV: “Sexting: New, Dangerous Teen Trend”

Teens: Do you hate raising them? Published May 15, this teen sex scandal story broke on WJLA-TV a full year after teen “sexting” hit the scare cycle. Sexting, or sending explicit photographs via cell phone, evolved from a centuries-old teenage pastime: creating and sharing nude depictions of sex partners. This tactic preys on society’s weakest—those who think their children are far more difficult to raise than any generation before them.

WJLA-TV works hard to make millennial parents feel sorry for themselves, calling the trend a “new” and “dangerous” “risqué game” that has “invaded middle schools.” According to WJLA-TV, “the phenomenon is raging as wildly as their hormones,” and boy, are modern hormones wilder than ever. This ostensibly local adaptation of the national teen sex trend story is devoid of place, names, or evidence of sexting. Of the 10 12-year-olds surveyed by WJLA-TV’s Julie Parker, half had “heard” of sexting. None had actually sexted.

Thankfully, a couple of anonymous parentals—who declined to stand by their boilerplate shock on the record—provide the necessary outrage. “It’s alarming. They’re not protected,” says one. “It’s really disappointing! It’s hard to be a parent today,” whines another. But not as hard as it is to be a local news reporter in search of underage smut.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Via Pukeimmediately: MyFoxAtlanta has published a valuable cheat-sheat for parents wondering what all the acronyms in their child's texts really mean. Is your tween a Fond of Leather ("FOL") Marijuana-smoking ("420") Nude Club-attending ("1174") Penis ("Banana"))? Are you reading your kid's texts right over her shoulder ("POS") as we speak?

Just don't let your kids know you know, or they'll change the code! What crazy new abbreviation for "I Am Easy, Are You?" ("IMEZRU") will they think up next?

The full list of "Text Acronyms Parents Should Know" is after the jump (number 15 mysteriously not present—possibly just too real).

Photo by clairity

I've always said that the best way to prevent teen pregnancy is to turn 20, am I right? But for those still stuck in their 13-to-19s, the campaign's Web site offers a quick quiz to help you determine how likely you are to get teen pregnant.

If, like me, your teen years are mercifully behind you, take the quiz anyway. I used it to determine whether or not I can boast more emotional maturity than a 16-year-old.

And . . . I cannot! I took the quiz and scored as "Sort of a Sexpert." (Sort of a Sexpert? Do you people have any idea who I am?) According to the campaign, that score means that "Most of the time [I] know what the right choice is, but [I] don’t always make it when it comes to sex." Yeah, that actually sounds about right.

But hey, maybe I'm just too fucking old to know how to prevent teen pregnancy. There is, after all, a "sexting" question:

Laura and Amy are bored* one Saturday afternoon so they start taking goofy pictures of each other with Laura’s camera phone. At first its just funny faces and model poses, but then Amy lifts up her shirt and Laura snaps a picture of her. “I’m so sending this to Mike,” says Laura.

A. “Ha! Do it! He’s so hot. Maybe he’ll return the favor and send me a picture of his naked butt.”

B. “No, don’t! I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. I like him, but I’m not ready to hook up yet.”

C. “You have to delete that picture immediately. That was really dumb of me. I don’t want that pic to get
forwarded to everyone at school. Don’t you watch Gossip Girl?”

D. “Go ahead. Now he’ll see what he’s missing.”

I actually got that one right. But only because I watch Gossip Girl.

* oh, boredom.

Banfield also suggests, in her title ("Drinking Age? We Need a Texting Age!") that there ought to be a minimum age that adolescents can send text messages. "We’ve already decided they can’t be trusted to drink in moderation, drive before age 16, or make many legal decisions before age 18," she writes. But Banfield doesn't suggest what age would be appropriate!

So: At what are are teenagers old enough to handle the technology that will inveitably ruin their lives?

Parents! Do you know what felonies your tweens could be committing with their very own cellular telephones, and what stupid name the you will coin in order to facillitate freaking out to the newsmedia? Hint: the felony is "child pornography," and the stupid name you have chosen is "sexting."

Before, your children were simply sending naked photographs of themselves to each other in pursuit of eagerly snatching at adulthood. Now, they may be listed as sex offenders well into their adult lives. Good job, team!

Allow Sady of Tiger Beatdown and myself, of The Sexist, to take you back to a simpler time, when a child could only be a child pornographer for taking photgraphs of other children, and scoolgirls had to deliver naked photos of themselves to their classmates uphill in the snow both ways. [Bonus! Read Sady's take on sexting here].

AMANDA: Sexting!

SADY: oh, yes. the sexy teens, sending each other sexy messages. is there no way we can stop it? perhaps through ridiculous charges of child pornography!

AMANDA: that ought to do it.

SADY: what strikes me, with this, is the way that so much of the burden of shame – and sometimes actual, legal guilt – rests on the girls who send naked pictures. instead of the dudes who "accidentally" send these naked pictures to every other dude they know!

AMANDA: yeah, it is a weird double standard. first they're told, don't send naked photos of yourself! it is a form of "dating violence" against YOU. then, don't send naked photos of yourself! you are a pornographer, the objectifier!

SADY: hah, yeah. oh the violence of maybe sending a dude a photo of your boob! oh, the slutty pornographer you will be if you do so! it reminds me of the conversations people are having about "hooking up." (did you know the young people are doing this now?) first, girls are told they're being taken advantage of by men, who are of course the only people to actually experience a desire for sex. THEN, they're told that they're making it impossible for any man to ever NOT treat them like crap, by putting out!

AMANDA: i also wonder how much this is condescending to teens, too. is this a "teen" epidemic? don't older people also regrettably send naked photos of themselves to their significant others?

SADY: i have spoken to many adult women who are in the practice of it, yes.

there was an episode of 30 Rock about it, so you know it is a pressing social concern.

AMANDA: the name is really, really dumb. it smacks of Parent. with the aid of Fox 5 at 10.

SADY: I know, right? It's very late-night-local-news, seven-ways-your-dishwasher-can-kill-you. SEX + TEXTING = SEXTING! Great work, Bob!

AMANDA: yeah. the whole thing really is just old news repackaged for a "new generation." teens have always gotten naked in front of each other. teens have always talked about it to other teens. teens have always coerced other teens to do something they're not really ready to do, in some cases. now their parents can just find out a little bit easier.

SADY: yeah, precisely.

AMANDA: they should just make some iphone app and get over it.

SADY: haha, "THIS TEXT MESSAGE HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO CONTAIN NIP SLIP. ACCESS DENIED." i could use that one, actually.
AMANDA: yeah. another point of concern that i have is: my phone is busted and i can't take photos. why do these teens have way sweeter phones than i do?

SADY: it's their darn permissive parents, i say! in my day, we had to use polaroids, or make crude etchings of our privates!

AMANDA: hahaha

SADY: i think that it's way easier to see the hysteria underlying ANY sex when we look at TEEN sex, because teens are supposed to have bodies specifically under control of their parents. as opposed to everyone else, who is supposed to have a body under the control of DEEP SHAME.

AMANDA: yeah, it takes about 18 years to get that ingrained in you.

SADY: haha

AMANDA: this most recent case in spotsylvania though (real name) one of the girls whose photos were spread around is twelve years old. and even i, as a relatively young person hip to the underage sex, have to pause at that one

SADY: yeah, that one gives me pause. and i think that this is a weird thing, because girls, specifically, are under pressure as soon as they hit any region vaguely definable as "puberty" to be sexy. but not SEXUAL. be hot. but DON'T GIVE IT UP. and i wonder what combination of intimate and social pressures were happening to make this girl think she needed or wanted to do this. because one thing you can't do at that age is walk a line that charged without getting confused or fucking up. and now, obviously, she's being punished for it.

AMANDA: lock her up! lock her up! this all makes me very glad i'm not in school anymore. if my naked photos were sent around to people, i can at least know that most of them would not be people i'm forced to sit still with for six hours every day of my life. it would probably just be on some blog or something. whatever.

SADY: i really think that the technology aspect of it is part of what causes the furor. i mean. not that i've never woken up and thought "oh, god, what did i do last night and is it on facebook?" but you're right, the access to a technology which allows you to notify the whole school of your boobal region, combined with the fact that none of these kids is probably even sure of how to handle sexuality ANYWAY, because they receive NINETY-SEVEN CONFLICTING MESSAGES on a daily basis, makes it scary. particularly for the olden-timey folks who are raising them!

AMANDA: i know, i'm sure they are so very confused. it's just how everything is.future employers can google you, future boyfriends can google you, stalkers can google you. things you do stick around longer but they also get buried in so many things that also stick around that i think they can become less important. not that this isn't a shocking and terrible thing for a 12 year old to go through, but i think shocking and terrible things are just changing.

SADY: right? i mean, i recall passing a note to a boy when i was maybe twelve. because i had a crush on him. and i think it contained the phrase "i wish we could make out." also, maybe lyrics to janet jackson's smash hit "if?" I WAS TWELVE. anyway, the moral of the story is that he did not return my affections and consequently read it out loud to the entire school bus. but AT LEAST IT WAS NOT AN E-MAIL, JESUS.

AMANDA: adolescence is tragic, i tell you. at least we weren't prosecuted for it

SADY: yeah. that note has been lost in the sands of time. only the memory does not fade. unlike some of these girls, who are maybe going to be on a register of sex offenders that shows up, ON THE INTERNET, for the rest of their lives! because that will show them.

Photo by KB35

Ribeiro's partner-in-crime is young enough not to have his name released to the papers, but he's still old enough to be charged with child porn.

The "sexting" trend was only recently declared a Very Scary Teen Trend by the newsmedia; now, authorities are cracking down. The two Spotsylvania teens allegedly "had nude pictures of underage girls on their cell phones," which they acquired by asking the girls "to take explicit pictures of themselves" on their own phones, "then text the pictures to the suspects." The suspects then "sent the photos to various other people." One, two, three, sexting!

Though one of the "underage girls" is actually older than the youngest suspect—she's 16—another of the victims is considerably younger—only 12 years old.

The ABC 7 story on the arrest follows up with the obligatory quote about why this Very Scary Teen Trend is actually a widespread epidemic. "County residents and parents say they fear sexting is becoming more and more common. 'Nowadays, it happens a lot more than people would think. A lot more,' said Eric Dent, a Spotsylvania County resident."

Spotsylvania police said they "seized a total of seven cell phones," and that "more young people could be charged in the case." Stay tuned as the case of the first busted sexters unfolds.

Fox 5 has a hilarious trend piece out on a new and disturbing trend among youth: "Sexting." Award for lamest old dude opener goes to this treatment: "[Beeping noises] You see it so often: kids texting, their fingers doing the talking," Fox reports. "But a new survey shows, many are actually Sexting."