In the Durham and Wake County Nude Photos Story, What Matters Is Consent.

Photo: The Associated Press

Over the past week, stories have emerged in North Carolina about the existence of nude photos of teenagers posted on Instagram. Cases have been brought to light throughout Wake and Durham counties and police say they're investigating the "criminally inappropriate use of photographs" on certain Instagram accounts that seem to have been created for the purpose of spreading child pornography.

For anyone who knows a teenager and is not in the habit of pretending that teenager lives under a rock, nude selfies are not news. Teenagers have been making the decision to share their bodies with each other forever - sexting is just a new platform for doing that from a distance. But in these cases, their private photographs were shared against their will with a vast online audience.

Unsurprisingly, the bravery the students and their parents showed in coming forward has been met with an onslaught of slut shaming. A lot of that slut shaming has assumed that all the victims were girls, despite news reports that the Instagram accounts included nude photos of girls and boys. Some examples from the comments section (never read the comments section!) include:

• "They take the pictures and think no one is going to distribute them. Basically they're the guilty parties, no one else. I haven't one iota of sympathy for them. Send the pictures to their fiancees five years later and let them turn on a slow spit. It will show their true selves and save some poor guy from a bad marriage."
  
•  "I can't say I feel too bad for the girl because she took them & sent them to begin with."
• "This is why parents should watch their slutty kids!"
  
• "If the persons didn't want to be seen nude, they shouldn't have allowed the pictures to start with. They're not victims, they started it. We live in a fast moving Internet connected world. What did they expect?"
  
• "If teenagers are making a 'mistake' by posing nude then the teenagers who posted the pictures are likewise making a mistake and shouldn't be criminally charged."
  

The issue is not whether the teenagers should have taken the photos. Yes, girls and boys should be better educated about possible consequences for their actions, including the action of texting a nude photo to a trusted recipient. Parents have a duty to talk to their children about the risks involved in all sexual behavior. But putting the blame on the teenagers for taking the photos in the first place - for daring to be sexual - distracts from the larger issue.

That issue is consent. These teenagers consented to a photo being taken and shared with one, perhaps a few, specific recipients. What they did not consent to was that photo being shared with anyone else, let alone on the Internet. Revenge porn raises the same issue, though it usually involves adults. Rather than making the conversation about how to repress sexuality in young women and men - restricting their access to the Internet, phones, cameras, etc. - let's make it about the importance of sexual consent, whether in person or online, for people of all genders.