When I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in the 1970s, a classmate showed me some nude Polaroids -- the selfies of the day -- that she and other classmates had taken of themselves and invited me to join them.
My response was: You want to be a lawyer someday, right ,and So and So a judge and So and So a doctor and a biochemist, right?
Why yes, she said.
So why take photos that will only come back to haunt you? I asked. Thanks, I said in ending the conversation, but I have homework to do.
I just posted a version of this in response to Maureen Dowd’s column today about bisexual, millennial Representative Katie Hill (D-California), who was forced to resign amid publication in the right wing media of nude photos of herself with a bong and allegations of inappropriate relationships with staffers as well as the revelation of a consensual threesome with another woman and her now ex. Yes, yes, yes, there’s a double standard in which women are always slut-shamed. And revenge porn is a crime for which Hill is now paying dearly with the derailment of a once promising career and threats on social media. But you know what? In the #MeToo era, men are finally being held accountable as well. Abuse of power, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed out, is abuse of power.
The real question here, though, is not one of sex, sexuality or gender but one of age and, perhaps, experience. Throughout history, young people have lived in the moment, presuming the past to be dead and the future to take care of itself. They've never understood that time is not only a construct but a continuum in which the past flows into the present and the future, too.
But young people don't even live in the moment anymore. Thanks to the digital age, millennials and Gen Z are always busy recording the moment, instead of truly living in it. And they're so arrogant about it, looking down their unaware noses at us old fogeys who don't have enough "hits" on our social media accounts, perhaps because we actually have lives to live.
Arrogance feeds ignorance and vice versa. And yet, it’s hard not to feel compassion for the way they and a moment can screw up their lives. (Hey, we were young once and we have the wisdom of age. We can afford to be compassionate, right?)
What these young people don't realize is that there is no such thing as privacy, no such thing as secrecy as long as two people are party to an act. My advice to them is always the same: If you'd be embarrassed to see something in print later, if it could cost you a marriage or a career someday, then don't say or do it now.