As much as the recent Amber Cole controversy broke my heart, I can honestly say I wasn’t too shocked at the idea of teenagers being involved in sexual activity at young ages at of all places school, a place where most parents think their children will be supervised and occupied with gaining an education and not sexual experience.  The truth is, I was in high school only 10 short years ago and students even then were engaging in sexual activity at school.  The only difference is back then the only way you could prove it was through someone’s second-hand gossip about what was witnessed.  No one was around to play back footage of the actual incident.

Social media plays a more of an important role in the lives of today’s teens than it did even a decade ago.  Through personal profiles, uploaded videos and shared images, teens are not only communicating their thoughts but defining their identities.  In a recent interview with The Source’s Kim Osorio, rapper Drake shared some interesting concerns he had about social media.  The artist who just released his sophomore effort, Take Care, currently has almost four million Twitter followers, but only tweets an average of once per day.  He had this to say about how he “hates social media”:

“I’m really scared for my generation, you know. The thing that scares me the most is Tumblr. I hate what Tumblr has become. Because it like, it reminds me of those cliquey girls in high school that used to make fun of everyone else and define what was cool, but in five years, when you all graduate, that Shyte doesn’t matter. No one gives a f**k about that Shyte. Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.”

So what’s a parent to do when a click of a button allows your child to share some of their most private moments and innermost thoughts with the world?  All the parental controls in the world can’t replace good parenting that will prepare your teen with the values and skills necessary to navigate through the land of social media while still keeping their dignity intact.

Last month social media was a-twitter about Amber Cole, 14, who was seen on camera performing oral sex on a boy said to be her ex-boyfriend. According to lore, she did it in an effort to win back his affection. And by all signs, it looks like she was desperate for it.

YouTube went ablaze with with people opining on the incident, one of which was done by a wanna-be comedian. Baldy said, “If you 14, and you know how to do that, you ain’t a girl, you’s a woman!”

Wait. The ability to put a penis in your mouth and move it automatically makes you a woman? Not true. How about if the girl is 12? Or 11? How about nine? What if the perpetrator is an adult, and not some mean-spirited, hormone-fueled, pimply little boy?

Lisa Ling recently reported on sex trafficking in the United States for the OWN Network and found that young American girls were being recruited as young as 11 years old by pimps aiming to “turn them out” for profit, some of the girls servicing 20 men a night, with all–not some–of the profits going to the pimps. “If that’s not slavery, I don’t know what is,” said Ling in an interview on the Dr. Oz show, which aired Nov. 15.

Most of the young girls were black. Most of the young girls were fatherless. Sadly, many of the pimps were black. According to Ling, part of the pimp’s seduction was telling these children how beautiful and special they were, and the men insisted they call them “daddy.” This is a guess, but I’ll bet those girls were willing to call the pimps “daddy” because they didn’t have one worth a damn at home. “How important is it to a young girl to hear someone say I love you and you’re beautiful?” Ling asked. (Quick! Somebody do a study on the correlation between the 73 percent out-of-wedlock epidemic in the African American community and the sex trade. Oh, wait…)

But how is it that often in the black community, the pimp–the perpetrator of these horrific crimes against children (yes; they are children)–are glorified, and the girls are hoes? Don’t think that true? Then BET must not be in your cable network.

Here’s a newsflash: You don’t get to call an 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 year-old-girl a Slore while men out here make pimping a viable lifestyle choice. A girl’s ability to give a man oral sex, or lay down with a man does not make her a woman. Oftentimes, it makes her a victim of RAPE. “Guess the average age a girl starts prostitution in the U.S.A. Give up? The average age a GIRL enters prostitution is 12 YEARS OLD. Most of the girls sexually enslaved are poor, prior victims of sexual abuse and black or Latino,” wrote Jenee Darden on her blog, Cocoafly.com in a post titled, Saving Our Girls From Oakland’s Streets.

What is more, a young child does not have the brain capacity to fully grasp consequences of their actions and impulse control–that part of the brain doesn’t mature until a person reaches their early twenties. Would you hold a crippled person responsible for not getting out of the way before being hit by a runaway bus? Would you belittle a blind man for improperly reading a “Keep Out” sign? Yet, many are starting to hold children responsible for actions that they can not fully process or are powerless to prevent.

Girls are made to have sex with these guys even during their menstrual cycles…the pimps are stuffing cotton, baby wipes whatever to stop the flow, which leads to infection that causes infertility. But…she’s a hoe…right? Pimping ain’t easy…right? “Many of these kids are made to advertise themselves on Craigslist and other places. Traffickers don’t see them as kids, they see them as disposable commodities,” said my friend, Stag Brumfield, a youth advocate.

Next time I hear someone call a young girl a hoe, I might just have to pimp slap them.

Christelyn D. Karazin is the co-author of Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race Culture and Creed (to be released April 2012), and runs a blog, www.beyondblackwhite.com, dedicated to women of color who are interested and or involved in interracial and intercultural relationships. She is also the founder and organizer of “No Wedding, No Womb,” an initiative to find solutions to the 72 percent out-of-wedlock rate in the black community.

Popular women’s blog Jezebel has republished a blog post in its entirety with the title, “I Am Amber Cole’s Father,” which is already causing a controversy. Amber Cole, in case you missed this sad event, is a 14-year-old African-American girl who was tricked into performing oral sex on her ex-boyfriend while his friends recorded it. This video was then distributed millions of times in what is being called the largest act of child pornography distribution in history. But instead of the distributors being the “pervs” one would normally associate with such despicable acts, the perpetrators were our own friends, lovers, boyfriends, and co-workers who shared the video over their own personal social networks. And while this explicit image of a young black woman was rapaciously consumed by online audiences, our community leaders ignored what would have likely been a national controversy had the victim been white.

Madame Noire was one of the first major media outlets to stick up for this girl. Our scathing essay calling out the lack of support for Amber was then republished on Jezebel.com as well, bringing her story to a wider audience of women who needed to be aware of Amber’s abuse. Now that Amber’s perpetrators have been arrested, her story has become a widespread Internet meme with its own life. The tale of aggression against her in the form of media rape raises questions about who is truly responsible for her, and web denizens are eager to answer.

Some see her as being in the wrong for her actions. Others blame the boys. Some the parents. But in the essay “I Am Amber Cole’s Father” the author explores explicitly the role Amber’s father could and should have played in protecting her, because he is a man. On Jezebel.com, this is causing quite a stir.

It’s safe to assume that we’re in for a string of teenage sex scandals to start coming out of nowhere following the media attention surrounding Amber Cole. Already, another Baltimore high school is investigating a video that has surfaced.

According to the Daily Mail, the video involves three students in an auditorium at Milford Mill Academy. Police say the students created it while a substitute teacher was holding class in the exact same room. Seriously?

The tape has yet to be acquired by authorities but the students — who range in age from 15 to 17 — have been charged with indecent exposure along with performing a perverted sex act. Theses stories take me back to Catholic high school and rumors of students getting it on in the chapel. Only difference? No one was walking around with smart phones to record the act.

I don’t even know if the issue is so much teen sex anymore (as this is nothing new) but irresponsible and reckless behavior. Not only do these kids need to think about pregnancy and STDs — they need to think about tweets, Facebook posts, and YouTube videos that don’t go away either. Maybe they need to build the social media risks into Sex Ed.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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It appears justice has been served, as much as it possibly can be, in the unfortunate Amber Cole scandal that broke earlier this week. The teen boys who are allegedly responsible for posting the video of her engaging in a sexual act have been arrested.

Amber tweeted on Tuesday, “I will be pressing charges on the 3 boys who were there,” regarding the video showing her Performing \’Brain Surgery\’ on a boy who is reportedly her ex-boyfriend. The clip quickly spread throughout YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, with additional rumors of Amber committing suicide—something she said she would never put her family through.

Still addressing the drama that sparked a great deal of discussion on cyberbullying, the 14-year-old who now has more than 36,000 followers, said later that day:

“I thank everyone for the support. I’ll try my best to ignore the negative people.”

From her Twitter feed, it appears she’s changed schools as a result of the incident. Hopefully the arrests will give her some peace of mind.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

Last Sunday, potentially millions of people committed a felony when they so cavalierly passed links all over the internet of 14-year-old Amber Cole allegedly Performing \’Brain Surgery\’ on her boyfriend while two other boys recorded the event that took place outside of their high school. All of the typical lowest-common-denominator websites gleefully distributed what could be the worst mistake this child has made in her short life. Kids and adults both clucked their tongues, called the girl a Slore, said that she was stupid, and that she deserved what she gets.

Well, I’m here to tell all the people who clucked, I hope you, in turn, get your comeuppance too, since several guardian angels have reported distributed links of this CHILD PORNOGRAPHY to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because guess what? Distributing child pornography is a crime punishable with jail.  Blogger, “Anna Belle” has organized an online militia dubbed #AmbersArmy to shut down the sites that hosted the videos and rained down a hail of emails to Twitter and Facebook to halt the distribution of this incident.

Hats off to “Anna Belle,” a woman who took up for this child. But I’m wondering when any black-identified or feminist organization will take up the charge to defend Amber and see to the policing and  prosecuting of the perpetrators.

Black Men, Where Are You? This is Your Daughter, Your Sister!

I am honestly so hurt and outraged that today on my Facebook wall, not one African-American man expressed any outrage over this. As men, you are to be our protectors. How things have changed. I was born in the 1970′s and I remember when we would police our own, and if any boy did something like this to a girl he would have gotten a well-deserved tongue lashing, or worse. It wouldn’t have even had to be the father or the brother. Someone would have stepped in. Now, there’s silence. Stop telling girls they should keep their legs closed while simultaneously patting boys on the back for their sexual exploits.

We are watching you, men. We are watching you as you do nothing.

While many are bashing Amber and her actions. Dr. Phoyenx Austin, a physician, writer and media personality had this to say about Amber’s self esteem:

“[Amber's] actions clearly display that she is so desperate for ANY form of male validation and love that she would degrade herself to this degree. As for the boy, or boys, who are no more than parasites, I sincerely hope that they are dealt with by karma’s hand — and maybe even a male relative that decides to step up to the plate. This is not boys being boys. Their actions were cruel and sick. And you can tell everything about an individual’s soul based on how they treat someone they don’t have to treat well.”

So this morning, I was reading one of the gossip sites and happened upon a blurb about Amber Rose appearing on the cover of some magazine. And that got me thinking: why is she famous again?

I mean I get that she was once the woman, who Kanye West trophied around on his arm to award shows and red carpet events but really, hasn’t she expired past her 15 minutes of fame yet?  Others have wondered about that too and in a recent interviews, when confronted about her sudden and unexplained rise to stardom, Rose took exception to the notion that she’s only famous because of who she’s dated. “Kanye was engaged to a girl, he was with a girl for six years…She went to fashion week with him, was photographed everywhere with him, pretty much the same kind of relationship we had, but she didn’t become famous. No one cared about her.” Well, she does have a point.

Amber is a stunning, high-yellow beauty with an hourglass shape that most women – and some men – would kill for. And because of her physical attributes, Rose and her platinum-blonde dome are everywhere. Even after we discovered that she could actually speak and wasn’t just a human-like robot created out of one of West’s dark twisted fantasies, we had been inundated with her image on television and film, on the radio and even in Africa. Overexposed is an understatement. There is nothing left of her, which remains a mystery. Not even her vagina, which we have visited from more angles than should be allowed without first buying a copy of Hustler.

Despite it all, I really don’t have a huge problem with Rose – per se – and in fact, I kind of like her.  Not only is she a fellow Philly girl but she has also managed to go from former exotic dancer, aka stripper, to an international well-paid sex symbol, much in the same vein of Kim Kardashians, Coco (Ice-T’s wife), and all the way back to Marilyn Monroe. All these women began their careers on dubious circumstances.

While the mention of Rose, as well as any of these similarly sex-positive ladies, seems to bring forth a lot of very hostile, even derogatory reactions from folks, consider that in some ways, she is the real life manifestation of the unabashedly feminine, extroverted, sexual being to which we all secretly want to be.

But I would be remised if I didn’t mention what troubles me most about Rose.  No better instance highlights my concerns than the case of the 14-year old girl, who ironically is also named Amber.  You see, after I perused through the gossip site, I went over to my Twitter page, where I began reading tweets about Young Amber, who was video taped at school, in front of a audience of young boys, giving…ahem…blow jobs outside and on the steps of her Atlanta-based middle school.

Not much is known about this young girl, other than speculation that her sexual act had been outed by the recipient of the oral copulation, an ex-boyfriend, who she was desperately trying to “win” back. But now the video of this transgression, as well as young girl’s full name and face have become fodder for the internet.  Songs have been made, celebrities have chimed in and her name became not one, but three trending topics on Twitter. Ironically none of the “young men” in the video have been outed or even named, just Ms. Amber.