I had my first internet boyfriend when I was 12. We met on Neopets, where we would swap rainbow paint brushes and write filthy messages about what we wanted to do to each other. I was a sheltered kid who had never been kissed, but these were my earliest memories of being reciprocally sexual with another person, separated though we were by oceans and wires. I learned how to be comfortable talking about my body, my sexuality and the things I liked and didn't like, all of which proved useful when I got older and began to explore these things in "real life".
Fast forward to 23, I was moving cities and left my long-term boyfriend back home. We conducted our relationship across state borders for a year, and sending each other intimate photos and messages helped us feel close and connected, despite the distance.
![We know abstinence is the wrong approach for physical sex education. The same goes for digital interactions.](/web/20161105180824im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/g/5/h/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsfqr1.png/1478065982320.jpg)
Though these two scenarios seem radically different on the surface, being that one was with a boy I knew only online and the other was with a serious partner, they both allowed me to control and express my sexuality autonomously.
Growing up in the age of the internet, I've never dated without mobile or digital technology, and online interactions have informed and shaped my sexual understanding as much as the physical has. So it makes complete sense to me that sex education in schools should now incorporate safe digital practices - and that doesn't mean abstinence.
When I was in high school, sexting was still a nascent phenomenon; I would never have dreamed of telling anyone what canadian_joe and I got up to behind closed e-doors. But these days, with the advent of digital communication technologies like Kik and Snapchat, sexting is a major part of how teenagers are interacting sexually – and the moralists are pearl-clutching like never before.
A new report from Yfoundations says we need to change the way we approach talking to teenagers about digital sexual culture, as federally-funded resources currently in place promote archaic and problematic ideas around gender.
To illustrate the nature of the existing framework, we need look no further than the recent teenage pornography ring scandal in high schools and the tut-tutting many teenage girls found themselves receiving in its wake. Once again, young women were shamed and blamed for the horrible things that happened to them, when the focus should be on educating all teenagers and young adults about sexual etiquette and consent, which is not limited to physical sexual contact.
We know abstinence-only education doesn't work. At my Anglican high school, we were simply told that sex before marriage was immoral and we shouldn't do it, but that didn't stop my peers from steamy backseat sessions. The same principle needs to be applied to teaching young people how to behave respectfully towards one another when exploring their sexuality through new technology.
Telling young women simply not to take nude photos firstly doesn't work, and secondly sends a clear message that if they're silly enough to do it, any and all consequences are their fault; that someone else betraying their trust is something they can - and should - avoid.
The report describes this approach as "coercive and judgmental", in that it "holds young women morally culpable for taking the image, and for expecting some kind of privacy from their partners or friends" while letting young men and boys off the hook. Especially if those boys are white and well-off.
It is the same gendered logic that blames women for their own assaults and rapes, chastising them for not being more careful, and reinforces the troubling notion that women are solely responsible for their own safety and have no one but themselves to blame if anything goes awry.
Quoting the Rape Crisis Centre, the report suggests the response to a young person who has had images shared against their will "should resemble first response for a survivor of sexual assault". It is critical that we do not minimise the trauma that comes from digital violence.
I wish someone sat me down and told me these things when I was a teenager – that it didn't make me a slut to want to express my burgeoning sexuality in a way that made me feel comfortable, even if it seemed odd to others.
I also wish someone had told me, as an adult, that it didn't make me a prude to not want to send nudes to a partner who continually pushed for them; I knew I was well within my rights to not want to get physical with him if I wasn't in the mood, but somehow sending photos felt different, and I wondered if it meant I wasn't sex-positive. The truth is that, just like having sex, sometimes I feel like sending photos and sometimes I don't.
I wish someone had told me that my digital expression of sexuality is my right as much as the physical, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of, no matter what choices I make for myself.
For as long as sex has existed, teenagers have been thinking about it, talking about it and doing it, and that's not going to change. In 2016, a vast majority of these interactions are happening through new media, and we can't ignore them. It is remiss to exclude this enormous part of modern youth culture from conversations concerning the respectful and safe navigation of sexual relationships and exploration.
We have the power to change the way we approach educating young people about sex in the digital age. We need to move towards a sex-positive, inclusive methodology that supports and encourages the exploration of sex in a safe environment, rather than a shame-based model that implies revenge porn and other forms of digital violence are a punishment for daring to express sexuality online at all.