Women's Issues

At the risk of ban, I shall try to explain.

1) People don't choose to be pedophiles. (Cracked article)

2) Porn correlates with lower sexual assault rates, for obvious reasons. Lolicon is no exception. When a pedophile is sitting at home fapping to Cream the Rabbit or something, they aren't molesting children.

3) Criminalization of actual child porn has already gone overboard - minors get charged for photographing themselves. This would lead to just as excessive enforcement. A kid drawns porn with characrters of their own age(and believe me, kids draw porn) - incoming ruined life.

That too, plus age of consent shenanigans. Real people can appear too young but be of legal age, say nothing of fictional characters who can look any age and be any other age, forcing any definitions to boil into "looks young", and that Australian law shows how such a definition doesn't work.

edited 6th Apr '16 3:09:15 PM by Luminosity

There's the genuine risk of the slippery slope where you can get in trouble for being with legal-age but "young looking" individuals (by the standard of said nation), as seen in Australia where porn of women who are clearly adult but have breasts too small frequently gets classified by the censors as a depiction of child abuse under their laws.

edited 6th Apr '16 3:09:49 PM by AlleyOop

It's a good way to catch pedophiles too without having to resort to utilizing illegal imagery in their honeypots. Some LE Os I know who work child porn cases have said that almost every one they catch has a copious amount of it on the hardrives; they've gotten the local IS Ps to set up flags for when someone frequents sites disseminating it and have seen some great results from it.

I suspect that it falls under the same heading as other simulations of illegal things in porn, you get porn that fakes things that are illegal in real life (rape and incest probably being the big two), should that be criminalised or allowed?

I guess it come down to what the purpose of porn is, education or desire satisfaction. If porn educates people and leads them to carry out such acts in real life then you'd want all depictions of illegal activity banned in porn, but if it provides a non-harmful outlet for their desires and keep them from acting on them then you probably want it to be legal.

There's also the slippery slope argument that if we're banning drawing illegal sexual acts in porn are we also going to ban writing written porn depicting illegal sexual acts?

edited 6th Apr '16 7:23:57 PM by Silasw

I am on the side of Neil Gaiman here, banning such drawings is a slippery slope.

It is a slippery slope most of the times, it creates victimless crimes based on the morality of those imposing the laws. There are even people pushing for banning S&M porn because it "allegedly" stimulates violence against women.

For lolicons there is the distinction of those who enjoy the porn with underage fictional characters but not with actual children and those who enjoy it because it is a legal and harmless escape for their paedophilia. Ignoring the characters look like underage girls and men who fantasize having sex with them, as well Shotacon porn that does the same with underage boys where there are women who enjoy fantasies of having sex with underage boys or men who wish they were underage boys having sex. Where there is no harm being done to any real person thus having no real good reason to make it illegal.

Never mind the laws made against such kinds of porn are usually made vague enough to target legit porn, which happened is Australia with the ban porn featuring of small breasted women.

Yeah, strangely enough a lot of adult fans of lolicon and shotacon self-insert as the child themselves in such scenarios, and have no interest in children otherwise. Likewise I've seen some depressing anecdotes from actual victims of child abuse who got really fucked up by those experiences and the only outlet for them is through this kind of material, which they say is better than them abusing other real children.

The counterargument to this is that pedophiles might and have actually managed to groom their victims by showing them lolicon manga to normalize the idea of child sexuality, but then again that's the same Moral Guardians argument people have used to argue for the banning of works like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray because it could be used to promote abuse against women (again, I think there actually was one instance of rape committed by people trying to imitate scenes from the book, but there probably were other social factors at work as well).

Personally while I consider such material one of my ultimate Squicks, as long as the people enjoying it are self-aware of the potential harmfulness of the content, and aren't looking at it through a lens of romanticization (unfortunately I've found that is the case in some places on Tumblr and AO3 but I digress) the cost of banning fictional works with such content is potentially higher than the benefit to children it would bring, which could have been achieved through other means than censorship.

edited 6th Apr '16 8:39:45 PM by AlleyOop

There are politicians in my country who have proposed a ban on all porn, no exceptions. It's apparently an insult to women by it's very existence. (Gay porn obviously doesn't exist, and porn featuring dominant or empowered female characters is just a complete impossibility.)

Of course, no one even bats an eye at depictions of violence, or non-sexual crimes in general, as long as everyone involved is fully dressed. I guess they finally got bored of that and decided to go after something else instead.

What country? Sweden?

edited 7th Apr '16 4:47:53 AM by hellomoto

Sweden, of all places. Which is both hilarious and depressing given our history and the stereotypes that exist.

As for Shades of Gray; I was more surprised how insidious it was. I didn't even realize a scene depicted rape when I read it. I personally find that more dangerous (to me at least) than a scene were a schoolgirl is raped by a tentacle monster. The latter Crosses the Line Twice and is clearly depicting rape, being horrible is kind of the point. The former is Romanticized Abuse.

So I personally don't have a problem with rape porn per se. But I have a problem when the work tries to justify it, trivialize it or hide it.

Yeah, there's a difference between the attitudes of "yes this work portrays sexual abuse in a titillating way because that's what I get off to, but don't worry out of universe I know it's wrong, now stop harassing me and calling me a rape apologist because of it" and "no I didn't want to tag this clear depiction of drug induced sex or violent rape where the recipient is crying and screaming 'no' as even dubcon, the 'rapist' is clearly just being a little rough in how he shows his love, but I'll do it anyway to be safe so I don't trigger anyone".

Both attitudes being very commonplace in fandom. The former may have tastes which veer into extreme Squick, but the fact that they show explicit self-awareness means they're less likely to harm anyone because of it. The latter, even if their interests might be tame on the whole, is clearly misinformed or delusional and their denial poses a real danger to impressionable young teens who don't fully understand what constitutes abuse.

This, so very much.

, basically in agreement with these posts

I had the same opinion when I read Fifty Shades. The portrayal of BDSM was also horrible and extremely problematic but I'm sure we all know about that at this point.

edited 7th Apr '16 10:38:13 AM by wehrmacht

The concern is that such a standard could be interpreted to absolve the work entirely of responsibility for its portrayal of sex, placing all the responsibility on the viewer. Then, someone could make the worst, most offensive product and try to claim that "I'm just producing content; it's not my responsibility how someone takes it."

Unfortunately, making absolute standards runs into the opposite problem: that people really will interpret things differently. 'Tis why we have a review board for the Content Policy.

edited 7th Apr '16 11:37:56 AM by Fighteer

When it comes to 50 shades, the portrayal of sex is not the main problem. The main problem that is often overlooked is the relationship. Even if 50 shades had no sex whatsoever, it'd still be horribly abusive. Christian Grey micromanages her time, is extremely jealous and possessive, to the point of branding her breasts because she dared to wear a bikini(or something like that, I'm not re-reading that shit for fact-checking, sorry).

BDSM is not just sex, it's also a relationship practice. That can lead to far more abuse if fatally misinformed people try it without explicit understanding of consent.

Relationships, sex, abuse, the whole thing. I was writing inclusively, but I'm at a location where typing out exactly what I mean could get me in a bit of hot water if someone looks over my shoulder.

The point is that you have to strike a balance between, "There's something illegal being portrayed here; BAN IT," and "Everyone should be responsible for their own interpretation, so we should permit everything."

edited 7th Apr '16 12:05:41 PM by Fighteer

Fighteer confirmed for being lazy and troping at work.

"This is a work of fiction. The author of this work does not in any way condone or encourage any illegal activities described within."

edited 7th Apr '16 12:19:59 PM by Corvidae

And that balance should be information, let people know that what's being shown is illegal but still show it. I wouldn't want 50 Shades banned, but I'd be down for it having to carry a warning that states that it contains rape and abuse.

I'd want less of an "any" and more of an informative label, otherwise you get shit like people not realising that 50 shades contains rape and abuse.

edited 7th Apr '16 12:18:36 PM by Silasw

What about works that are explicitly exploitative pornography, such as child porn? Surely you would not allow them for general consumption as long as they carry a warning label.

"Possession or viewing of this work is a Class A felony. Do you still want to watch it? [Yes/No]"

edited 7th Apr '16 12:24:51 PM by Fighteer

edit: nvm

edited 7th Apr '16 12:31:28 PM by wehrmacht

Well you'd ban that, but not because something illegal is being shown, because something illegal is being done. The illegal act involved in the production is the problem, not the fact that it portrays an illegal act, that's why we (I assume) ban illegally produced stuff that shows fictional legal acts (so porn that has a child acting as an adult within the context of the porn).

edited 7th Apr '16 12:38:45 PM by Silasw

Define "exploitative" here. For works involving actual children (Or any other victims. This would also include anything from snuff movies to that sex tape you promised not to share) the answer would be a resounding "Fuck no!"

Basically what said.

To put it more clearly.

We (I assume) ban porn where a 15 year old plays a 19 year old character, we do not ban porn where a 19 year old actor plays a 15 year old character. Because the aim of the law is to prevent the 15 year old being abused, not to prevent people consuming fictional material where a 15 year old is abused.