Let's calm down about paedophilia

Remove all ads!

... Please?

The Great Paedo Hunt is getting ridiculous. As in brain burningly retarded. Scroll down to the 'real life' section there.

People jump up and down screaming 'Thought crime! Thought crime!' too often, but if this isn't an example I don't know what is. They've not just banned child porn, they've banned the perception of child porn. If someone might think that the person is a child - well, you'll just have to go and take a seat over there.

Compare and contrast the ban on lolicon. Or if it's not illegal where you live, the attempts to ban lolicon.

I'm all for banning child porn and stopping the abuse of children, but I don't see why this is an issue. Photographs of young-looking consenting adults and pornographic drawings of fictional children don't harm anyone. If it turns someone on - good on them? If they're not abusing children, then where is the problem?

I was going to post a thread on this when I saw an article on this a while ago. Ho noes! A child! Clearly all photographs of children are porn!!!!111one

So ... yes, I would like the witch hunt to stop. Mass hysteria never helped anything.

 

And by requesting such, you have committed the even greater crime of advocating for child pornography.

I guess this idiocy stems from the perceived impossibility to pass laws that punish the intent of a crime instead of the actions of one. Where's the 100% foolproof lie detector when you need it the most?

As it stands right now, an actual pedophile that hasn't yet managed to produce/acquire the material suitable for his sexual preferences is less of a criminal in the face of the law than the soon-to-become victim that has taken a picture of themselves. WTF is the point in that?

 

"Sorry, ma'am, but your breasts are tiny, I'm going to have to ask you to step this way..."

And the second example of the soldier says more about the people accusing him than the man himself.

I think a lot needs to be done to weed out perverts like this, but that is hardly the right tone to take. Comparing small breasted women to children for one is complete and utter nonsense and rather offensive children can't be seen in swimsuits? Better not let them on the beach then, ever, someone might be watching after all and those kids who run around in the altogether or in underwear, may as well arrest their parents - they obviously got these rude and inappropriate ideas from somewhere

 

Maybe the Aussie government just bought shares in a silicone company?

 

Came to think of how to THWART this nonsense censorship.

1.) Find a well-developed 17 year old girl and produce something slightly naughty with her. (Say, a lingerie commercial.)
2.) Get a pass from the censorship crowd.
3.) Sue their pants off for letting an underaged pass.
4.) ???
5.) Profit!

 

Being the father of an almost 14 year old son, I don't know how on earth they can visually tell the difference between many early teen girls and 21 year old women. The only way I can tell is when they open their mouths to speak.

I have had to train myself not to stare whenever we go to a middle school event. I used to think it helped having Mrs. Snook with me, but it turns out it is the opposite. It turns out she is the one who stares as she is convinced that she never looked like that

 

This is insanity. As long as the filmmaker can prove that all of the actresses in the film are over the age of 18 and willingly performing whatever the hell they are performing, the government should just shut up.

And this is from someone who on general grounds opposes porn!

 

Next up - banning pictures of children eating bananas

 

There are only a handful of cases where it is an obvious witch hunt. I would always rather the police move early on any case where paedophilia is suspected.

As far as the Australian case is concerned -- I believe there have been many studies linking pornography to sexual crimes (there is certainly evidence that pornography is a catalyst for individuals with significant problems). I think it is prudent to ban any pornography which focus on paedophilia tendancies. But then I also believe violent porn should be banned as well.

 

No, it's popcicles first, then bananas.

T2, when they're talking about reasonable stuff, I agree with you. This stuff, however, isn't reasonable. This stuff should be dropped by the first sane person to look at it.

First off, as Snook said, the visible difference between a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old can often be quite slim. I knew a girl in middle school (11-14 years old) who looked more mature than many girls I saw in college (18+). Add in dietary issues, like those strict diets that female teen gymnists are on, with the specific intention of delaying puberty, and things get even messier.

Secondly, appearance should only come into play where you cannot verify the age of the individual (i.e. drawings). When you actually know how old the person is, appearance should be moot. If it's legal for her to have sex if she wants, it should be legal for people to see her naked if she wants (and in appropriate setting for both).

Lastly, yes, some people just get paranoid over this. The military case is an example of this. Without actually seeing the pictures, this sounds like a perfectly innocent set of photos of a little girl having a good time at her birthday party. If the parents of the child helped take the pictures, I doubt there's anything wrong with it.

 

It is possible the pictures are considered pornography in Afganistan. We were warned about such things in Bahrain -- and that possessing pictures considered pornography by the host country would be prosecuted. He would have received similar warnings.

 

I would agree that taking a short, slender, flat chested 20 year old and dressing her up as a schoolgirl for a photo shoot is creepy as hell and should be regulated as to who sees it, but in a legal / ethical sense it is not pedophilia, as the girl is 20 years old. Pedophilia involves underage girls. Prove that she's not underage, and it's not pedophilia. End of story.

 

This is about pornography and its influence on pedophilia. They are actually two different subjects. What is legal to engage in as a citizen and what is legal to sell can be two different things.

 

With so much Kiddie porn out there, it changes our lives. The wife and I have to look through the pics of our little ones before we send them to Walgreens. It only takes one stupid, uneducated Walgreen's employee to say "Hey, this is wrong!" to have the cops come knocking on your door. We have a great pic of my 1stborn in the bathtub for the 1st time when she was one. We're afraid to try and get it developed. That really sucks... the picture is a keeper, her smile is enormous.

 

T2, that's a fair point -- I can see how that difference could be raised in legal circles -- something along the line of

"we understand that the performers in this video / magazine are of legal age, and thus the directors are guilty of no crime for the making of it. However, the content is so akin to pedophilic content that we have decided that the film / magazine cannot be sold."

I can see the argument being made, and depending on the content the argument could have merit, but I can still see the legal folks wrangling it back to "it's a legal porn shot, so it's legal to sell to consenting, understanding adults. The argument could be made that such filth contributes to the unholy addictions of real pedophiles, but that would be a very tough thing to prove in a legal sense.

 

LKD, there are precidents out there with weapons. A gun shop cannot sell you a fully automatic weapon -- however, they can sell you a kit for some weapons to make them fully automatic. You can make the modification yourself and it not illegal (in many places).

[Edit: I'll leave the post here, but I received an PM from martaug saying I was out to lunch on this analogy (he was nicer about it) -- so I really don't know of a precident in response to LDK and simply state he makes a good point that such a law might not be legal, although I do think it is morally the right direction to go in.]

 

The argument is presumably that possession of fictional images will eventually incite someone to do it for real, so in that sense, there is a problem. I don't know whether that is actually the case, but it's not a big stretch of imagination for someone to turn from lolicon to actual underage pornography,

Hysteria stems from ignorance. If parents actually bothered to understand the evil technology that their kids are using, they might be able to better control it instead of assuming everyone person they talk to on the interwebs is out to rape them or something.

Slightly off topic: Lolita is a very, very, very good book. Phenomenally so. It's like a perfectly constructed puzzle (as are all Nabokov books, really). It's such a shame that it's near impossible to read in public thanks to both its general notoriety and very poor cover choices.

 

I passionately hate this argument It's the same logic that gives us people trying to ban video games because you kill fictional people in them and that of course might make people killers in real life. For some reason, this argument is acceptable when it comes to porn but not acceptable when it comes to games.

And even if these links were shown - that still doesn't justify a ban IMO. In and of itself, lolicon is incapable of doing harm just as with any other fictional media.

All the same, I decided to have a look around just now for some studies on the matter. Googling turned up a lot of feminist sites, which I'm suspicious of. Wikipedia gives this, which gives me the impression that there's no consensus on whether there's a correlation or not between porn and sexual violence. If this is the case, then all this sort of arguing is based on fear and not reality ... which doesn't surprise me and is kinda the point of this thread anyway.

 

Of course most reasonalbe people don't like that argument -- it is not meant for a reasonable person. There are those few mentally unstable people for who such things are a catalyst -- the number is not large, but when it comes to protecting children from these people I have no problems with using a ban on certain types of pornography.