“Youth-Involved Sexual Imagery” – A Better Term to Challenge Blame Culture in Youth Sexting Cases?

Abstract

Given that minors who generate and share sexual images of themselves are frequently blamed when images are spread further, terms such as ‘youth-produced’ and ‘self-generated’ do little to move the focus of responsibility away from the victim. While there is undoubtedly involvement by the victim in the generation of the image, these terms fail to acknowledge the production might have been as a result of, for example, pressure, coercion or extortion. We propose the term “youth involved sexual imagery” as a more realistic term and one that reflects the complexity of the context in which an image might be generated.