"If you judge someone on their fetishes, you're going to get traumatized. Paedophilia is one of the rather tame fetishes out there compared to some out there." (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
133 ups - 67 downs = 66 votes
145 comments submitted at 12:29:25 on Jan 16, 2014 by david-me
It looks like he deleted that part of his post while trying to make his argument clearer.
And you know, I agree with him. He made a couple of bad word choices while trying to form his argument, but those appear to be largely fixed. All he's saying is that we should offer help to those who are pedophiles as long as they don't participate in the abuse of a child (which includes watching child pornography). People can't help what they're sexually attracted to, by and large. This includes children, however uncomfortable that thought might make you. But people can, and sometimes should, actively seek to change their sexual attraction for the safety and betterment of their community and society. All /u/RabidCrab is advocating for is less judgement/punishment (again, only to those who don't participate in child abuse directly or indirectly through the consumption of child porn, go ahead and lock those fuckers up) and more help/therapy for those suffering from the mental illness of pedophilia.
But we don't punish non-offending pedophiles. They can seek treatment and they will never have to worry about their secret getting out, unless they tell others.
Assuming they don't offend.
Funny story.
We totally do.
Look at Doe et al v. Boland, 630 F.3d 491 (6th Cir. 2011)
Look at Christopher Handley. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/obscene-us-manga-collector-jailed-6-months/
Look at U.S. v. Whorley, 550 F.3d 326 (4th Cir. 2008).
Most worryingly, let's look at the PROTECT Act which makes it illegal to produce, possess, or distribute:
"a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that (1)(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) is obscene; or (2)(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and (B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
The maximum sentence? Ten years in jail. And you have to register as a sex offender.
If you're curious, I'd be happy to e-mail you a paper I wrote on this in law school.
A pedophile downloading cartoon porn is most definitely not seeking treatment.
That's like a heroin addict thinking they're getting treatment because they got a hold of some low dose codeine pills.
So, just to be clear, someone who has never hurt a child or viewed pornography which depicted the hurting of any real child in existence should be punished because he should be in treatment for his fantasy?
Lord help us if you get the reins of public policy. Jack Thomson's got nothing on you.
And, by the way, there is ample evidence that access to virtual child pornography would reduce the rate of child molestation and usage of real child pornography.
Play pedophile for a moment. If you know the penalty for virtual child pornography is the same as real child pornography, would you not be more tempted to go find "the real thing", knowing that either way you're going to be in jail for a long time and labeled a sex offender?
It perpetuates and normalises the consumption of child pornography. Yes, they should be punished.
Do you have evidence for that link? That there is a causal relationship between virtual child pornography and the consumption of real child pornography?
I'm guessing "no", since I've researched in this area extensively for legal research and not found it.
So, instead, you have the same bullshit logic that says "violent movies normalizes the idea of violence being good and solving problems, and correlates with violence (most current violent criminals watched violent movies at some point), so we should ban it."
Which means your argument is (basically) "I find this icky, and I find the people who like this icky, therefore punish them."
When your argument is equivalent to Jack Johnson, you might want to take a good hard look at it.
> Jack Johnson
Jack Thompson?
Him too!
Are you trying to say that the step from watching nothing, to watching child porn is the same as the step from watching animated child porn to real child porn?
I tell you what, if we ever find ourselves in a situation where animated child porn is readily available and accepted in society, then we might be in a position to evaluate it's impact on actual child porn consumption.
As we aren't, we cant, so you know that the evidence you're asking for isn't available. Do we really want to give it a try, and see how it goes? What do we lose by demonising animated child porn? What do we gain by allowed animated child porn?
>Are you trying to say that the step from watching nothing, to watching child porn is the same as the step from watching animated child porn to real child porn?
I'm saying that watching a simulation of a crime is not the same thing as watching a real depiction of the crime.
Kind of like how playing Call of Duty isn't the same thing as watching a murder, which isn't the same thing as committing a murder. And that in order to justify banning playing Call of Duty, you need something more than "well, it seems to me that going from playing Call of Duty to murder is less than going from nothing to murder."
>As we aren't, we cant, so you know that the evidence you're asking for isn't available. Do we really want to give it a try, and see how it goes?
So, your argument for banning something is that you have no evidence it causes harm, but it could conceivably cause harm, so because it has traditionally been banned, it should be banned in perpetuity?
Do you want me to reach into the history file for why that's an awful argument?
>What do we lose by demonising animated child porn? What do we gain by allowed animated child porn?
We lose some amount of expression, and in a free society the standard should be "do we have sufficient evidence to support banning this" rather than "you need to prove we should make it legal."
I'll let Neil Gaiman explain:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
But, you're also ignoring the ample evidence that access to pornography (including icky pornography) reduces the instances of sex crimes. Japan has a lower incidence of child molestation or rape than America.
They have lolicon. So, at the very least, you don't have any cause to claim legalizing it would increase child molestation.
Comparing reported rates of crimes like sexual assault (against both adults and minors) across cultures is a pretty dangerous game. Both the definitions of the crimes and the treatment of the accusers varies pretty wildly and that can have a huge impact on the reported rates.
>Kind of like how playing Call of Duty isn't the same thing as watching a murder, which isn't the same thing as committing a murder.
So what you're saying is, watching child porn and murder are pretty similar?
Wow.
>But, you're also ignoring the ample evidence that access to pornography (including icky pornography) reduces the instances of sex crimes.
So now pedophilia is just a normal form of sexual attraction, analogous to regular porn consumption and with the same motivations and causes as 'normal' sex crimes?
Double wow.
>We lose some amount of expression, and in a free society the standard should be "do we have sufficient evidence to support banning this" rather than "you need to prove we should make it legal."
To find the evidence needed to support banning it, we need to risk a rise in consumption of child pornography. Do you consider that an acceptable risk?
More Comments - Click Here
> I tell you what, if we ever find ourselves in a situation where animated child porn is readily available and accepted in society, then we might be in a position to evaluate it's impact on actual child porn consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
>Laws have been enacted in various countries, including in Japan, which regulate explicit content featuring children or childlike characters. Parent and citizens groups in Japan have organized to work toward stronger controls and stricter laws governing lolicon manga and other similar media. Critics say that the lolicon genre contributes to actual sexual abuse of children, while others say that there is no evidence for this claim. Studies of lolicon fans state that lolicon fans are attracted to an aesthetic of cuteness rather than the age of the characters,[6] and that collecting lolicon represents a disconnect from society.[7][8][9]
Not socially accepted or even legal in most places, and collecting it apparently represents a disconnect from society. If such media were commonly accepted in society, then we would have a large consumer pool which could be studied to see if a causal link existed between consumption of animated child porn and actual child porn. It seems obvious to me that such a link would exist as it normalises and validates the thought processes of the pedophiles and provides a way for them to test the waters without risk, but that situation doesn't currently exist and cannot be tested. Do we really want to create that situation just to find out? It seems much safer to me that we NOT.
More Comments - Click Here