Can anyone here give examples of arguments that people use to claim that lolicon consumption is harmful and directly and logically leads to harm occurring? I think I’m getting closer to being able to tell myself I haven’t caused harm to minors with the compulsion to look up lolicon that I had until just recently, but a part of me still demands rationalization, so I thought it’d help if I examined some arguments to the contrary to see how they hold up to the arguments that I haven’t harmed.
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I’ll try to be as un-biased as possible when answering this question. The arguments you’re talking about are, in essence, identical to the ones used to justify censoring/banning violent media (video games, movies, music), as well as adult pornography. They all seem to depend on invoking some level of fear or anxiety around the subject matter, rather than presenting an actual, logical point.
The two most common arguments I usually see are:
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It “normalizes” CSA and pedophilia by presenting the concept of children as sex objects, consequently creating a culture that is tolerant or even accepting of real-world CSA.
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It will “add fuel to the fire” and incite pedophiles who are already psychologically pre-disposed and at-risk of committing an offense by feeding into their pedophilic desires and fantasies until it ‘isn’t enough anymore’ and they commit a contact offense.
At first glance, they may seem sound and logical, but when you begin to deconstruct the shaky and spurious logic by which they are predicated upon, cracks begin to show.
"Normalization"
There is no evidence that the existence and availability of lolicon/shotacon will ‘normalize’ CSA, and what evidence is available is either nonconslusive or not supported by the data available.
This pessimistic, unfounded conjecture that is the “normalization” argument overlooks the already-controversial and uncomfortable nature of the subject matter. It is borrowed from puritanical attitudes regarding sex and violence and assumes that simply allowing the content to exist and maintain a willing audience will, over time, “deprave and corrupt” the minds and actions of an otherwise pure and morally righteous people.
If these assumptions were sound, then we would have seen an up-tick in violent crime alongside the proliferation of graphically violent, grotesque, or immoral media, which we haven’t seen. Rather, we’ve seen the opposite, whereby violent crimes have actually gone down as media of this kind proliferated and ‘normalized’ what it depicted.
The exact same effect was observed with pornography and sex crimes, including material with a violent or abusive theme, as well as fictional virtual/simulated child pornography.
Granted, these correlations alone aren’t enough to conclusively affirm a causal relationship (porn prevents abuse), but it certainly, almost fatally, discredits the assertion that media will “normalize” whatever it’s depicted and indirectly cause more crime.
It should also be pointed out that human beings impart and process information relative to its context. We understand that if the material is designed solely to entertain, enthrall, or otherwise be indulged, it will be consumed as such, regardless of what it depicts or what attitudes are espoused. Humans can differentiate non-fiction from fiction and reality from fantasy, hypothetical from theoretical, and so on.
This, of course, isn’t to say that people aren’t positively inspired, moved, or affected by what they watch or consume. But to the extent that which certain media will be conducive to negative, immoral, violent, or criminal acts has yet to be seen or observed.
Oh, and the argument in question also disregards the contentious nature of the subject matter. Even knowing what we do about the sex practices of the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, and various other societies with how children were treated, it can still be inferred that the concept of adults fornicating with children was never popular throughout history. Fathers and mothers cared deeply about the welfare of their children and would do whatever they could to insure their safety and happiness.
Suffice to say, child-rearing was always a priority over gratification and societies did accommodate that, as does ours today.
It’s extremely unlikely that cartoons, drawings, or other fictional pornographic works, regardless of how depraved or immoral or how pervasive or even mainstream will popularize or normalize attitudes that will be more favorable to the actual sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
Incitement of Sex Abusers
This point is honestly more straightforward with its claim and is backed up by a light degree of evidence in some cases, though, like the other point, does not withstand scrutiny.
The simple retort to this is the fact that the science is largely not supportive of this claim.
The primary variables which dictate a person’s proclivity to commit CSA are complex. Of all known or convicted child rapists/molesters, only about 50% of them fit the diagnostic criteria for pedophilic disorder, and only about 20% of that group were ikely to have consumed, or had criminal histories regarding child pornography.
So a slight correlation exists, but the general consensus here is that consuming it won’t incite CSA. Whether or not that correlation is indicative of a causal relationship or constitutes a “risk factor” is hotly contested and debated by scholars, but again - the consensus hints at a coincidental correlation, rather than causal.
I’m only mentioning child pornography in this instance because that’s where the majority of the research is focused on.
Child pornography, by definition, is harmful. It is a form of abuse and exploitation which victimizes children and puts more children at risk by simply existing because it creates a market for illicit material that harms minors.
While there are a few studies out there that examine the effects of virtual/simulated pornography, they’re so few and far between and just about each one concludes the lack of a causal link between consumption and abuse.
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It’s a good idea for a thread, although one note:
I have an issue with this approach of yours. Don’t try to convince yourself something you don’t truly believe in. Just because someone says something, doesn’t have to mean it’s true. Mistakes do happen, after all, I’m only human, I can make mistakes too, and I don’t double-check every piece of information I remember. So better research the topic and your concerns on your own, to develop a more trustworthy base of knowledge about your dilemma, than to just blindly accept other peoples informations as truthful, be it people in here, or somewhere else.
Even assuming that creating a demand for artificial works somehow translates to the harm of some minor, it such an extremely farfetched concept of a crime that it simply bears no significance, especially considering, you haven’t done it purposefully, and you had no intention of harming anyone.
You are kind of worried that you have contributed to a stabbing of an innocent person by buying yourself a kitchen knife, and supporting the knife factory with your money, that allowed the production of that knife that was used as a weapon. No one would blame you for that and so you shouldn’t blame yourself.
If you are comfortable in pursuing your life without using lolicon arts and having fantasies of such theme, and using the help of counselling, then simply continue to do it, and don’t worry about what happened in the past. People make mistakes, but the goal is to learn from them. That is what ultimately matters and makes a person a good human being in the end.
As for the thread, considering your situation:
My argument about lolicon causing harm would be to state, that since lolicon arts are too extremely distinct from how real sexual intercourse with a real child looks like, a lot of people without an interest in minors could find it erotically appealing. And because of the constant association of lolicon with pedophilia, it might make some of such people feel intense emotional distress, cause an identity crisis and more, as a side effect, making them believe that they are potentially going to rape a child. Albeit it’s more of harm of how lolicon is portrayed by other people, rather than something integral to these arts.
Considering your worries sounds like the repetitive points of people opposing lolicon arts with passion, I get the feeling that you heard about them, rather than created them on your own. These unconfirmed hypotheses that were spread, had certainly caused you a lot of trouble, by making you convinced, that you have indirectly harmed a lot of minors. So once again, it’s more an argument of how the perception of lolicon causes harm, rather than lolicon itsel.
I will also share a link to my post from that thread of yours, with the arguments that:
- Lolicon can be used for child grooming.
- Lolicon can make a person exposed to it, perceive and treat children as sex objects in an admissable and desirable manner.
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Hello, bubobs!
The people who are against loli, are against all other kinds of fictiona nudity, as well, icluding hentai. Most of these ignorant primitives believe that lolicon leads to “normalization” of child “abuse”. However, these claims are completely baseless, as there s zero evidence to support these claims. They also believe that real porn leads to human trafficking and violence against women. The evidence to the contrary, is greater. If you check statistics, you will see that violence against women is decreasing, not only in certain places, but worldwide. The same this is happening with violence against children.
If the sex-negative ignorant primitives were right about their claims about real porn and fictional porn leading to violence against women and children, we would see increasing violence against women and children, because the consumption of such materials is INCREASING.
Increased consumption of porn dont lead to increased violence.
I recommend you to read some articles that debunk claims against porn. The concept is the same, between fictional materials and non-fictional materials.
Lolicon nor real porn or any other fictional kind of porn lead to violence. If fictional child porn doesnt lead to increased violence, then real porn wont lead to violence too. The concept of porn is the same, no matter if the porn is fictional or not.
I have read many articles by people who claim that real porn and fictional porn/sexualized images lead to violece against women and children. What i noticed, is that these primitives always use stereotypical claims and myths.
They talk only about “women” and “children”, because they know that “women” and “children” will trigger more emotions that “males” and “boys”.
They use words loaded with emotions, such as “rape”, “pedophilia”, “exploitation”, but they never provided any official source to prove their claims.
The bad thing is that the so-called human rights organizations use the same strategy on their posters and ads. They always use fake make-up to make womens to have wounds and tears, and sad faces, etc… But they never showed male, as if male victims do not actually exist. This is an example of stereotypical campaigns for show, but never real help.
The next argument is that lolicon images will influence pedophiles to act on their desires, which is completely false. If sexualized images can influence rapists to rape, then why dont we see rapists raping people because of watching real porn? If real porn cant influence rapists to rape people, then how will fictional, unrealistic images of children (such as lolicon) will influnce pedophiles to rape children? These claims that lolicon lead to rape, are contradicting all official data. All indications show that abuse against childrn is decreasing worldwide.
These claims are based on myths, obviously. Pedophiles are not rapists. Pedophilia and rape are two different thngs.
And, please, don’t believe in the moral panic about “normalization of pedophilia”. There is no such thing as “normalization of pedophilia”.
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Sadly, it is apparent that it is very difficult to draw the line between allowing people to have an interest directly in something (pedophilia), having an interest in things that fictionally relates to that something (lolicon/dolls), or conducting deplorable actions against someone (molestation) and the possessions of recorded media of such acts (advocacy).
To me, these four are different things that can be either inclusive or exclusive of the others, depending on the individual and their mental stability. To others, these are all the same interest and activity, because it is believed that the interests where no person is actually harmed will always inevitably degrade into the worst situation where a person is actually harmed. There is nothing which can refute the belief, other than research and statistics. Research, however, requires actual participants and testimonies from people who are interested in such sensitive hobbies, which means they will be ostracized if they cannot express anonymously. No one wants to jeopardize their own life in the worst way possible, and end up in prison with a record for the worst reason. So art, dolls, and written fiction are seemingly destined to slowly become crimes. This is what the people want.
I wish there was some greater way to prove that most people can be happy with just watching cartoons or collecting dolls and having no ill intention of becoming a sex criminal and ruining the lives of others and their own. But we can only speak for ourselves. I am a lover of dolls of all kinds, but I’m not a fan of lolicon (some of it is really obscene for me, its just not for me…) and I’ve never hurt anyone, and never will, unless I’ve fallen so low that I no longer value my life, let alone cannot value anyone else’s.
I wish we could do better to inform the world and protect children without subsequently destroying the freedom to indulge fantasy and objects.
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It may be the other way around. A society which is tolerant of doing things with kids may be similarly tolerant of doing things with lolicon. So, it’s the tolerance for the worse things which ends up normalizing lolicon. But, that doesn’t mean lolicon in itself can normalize the other things, it’s just very logical for a society which hates “the thing” to try to clamp down on it every way it can.
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Well, for me the “problem” is that lolicon is pornography, and any pornography causes some level of harm. Like, personally I agree with people who say that pornography:
- Causes dependency
- Harms social life in general
- Causes and/or at least aggravates depressive conditions.
- It makes the person less and less satisfied with “conventional sex” and thus encourages them to search for more specific content that are often considered bizarre.
Anyway, I agree with all that, because that is what pornography does to me ^^". BUT naturally it’s not just bad things that come with it. In the end I think that pornography is more or less like drinking or smoking . So, Yes it should be discouraged, but everyone (adults) should have the right to decide if he/she want it or not. And I personally choose yes :3
Now the elephant in the room, does lolicon endanger children? Well, by my personal experience I honestly only see reasons to say no, quite the contrary, lolicon makes potentially dangerous people stay away from them. So this is what I’m going to believe until someone proves me otherwise.
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I honestly cannot find any good logical arguments other than the “it just does”, which does not actually make any sense. As the user above me has said, any porn consumption could be harmful just as smoking cigarettes or consuming alcohol. But in the same light, it could be a positive for someone. It could be a way for them to express their sexuality and just be that alone. I also would argue that many that consume lolicon are not interested in harming any real children at all. Some people could see it as just pornographic artwork, especially the 2d stuff and not find that their attraction to lolicon means they have any attraction to real children. I believe that porn is porn, and it does not necessarily flow into reality as many suggest that it does in terms of people seeking to harm others just because they watched porn about it. All in all, I do think that it is a somewhat weak argument other than the “moral wrong” which is really how all obsenity laws stand up so to speak.
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Basically, stupid peasants haven’t evolved since the witch burning days. They’ve just labeled new people as “witches”. Dracula (Castlevania) did nothing wrong. He was just too haphazard about it.
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The claim that lolicon (all porn fictional porn, and all real porn) causes harm, is used by anti-porn organizations. Do you really expect any sense from these organizations?
There is no study to confirm their claims. There are a lot of studies to confirm the opposite.
Real porn doesnt cause harm - fictional porn doesnt cause harm.
Most anti-porn groups would say that lolicon leads to child abuse, and real porn leads to violence against women.
Here is my uestion to them: If the consumption of porn increases, and porn leads to violence, why is violence decreasing worldwide? This is the paradox.
Next time you hear someone saying that real/fictional porn leads to violence, ask them for evidence, not just claims.
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Yeah I agree man it is just sad that people will not listen to evidence and I cannot understand why people care. Also something that has perplexed me to no end is how does a cartoon character or a drawing even have an age? It is literally a drawing, literally someone’s created brush strokes. It has no soul, no conscious, no rights, nothing. To even have a law on the books, no matter how often or little it is used, is an utter waste of resources to even have on paper on in a legal database. And the laws regarding the content are so incredibly hard to follow. How can one assess if something has serious literary, artistic, or political value? It’s literally all art, created by an artists, drawn on a paper or created by them on a computer. All ART, who are they to say what is art and what is not? People make money off of all types of hentai pornography, who are they to say that it lacks no value?
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I don’t think it does any of that, really. There’s no overall consensus in the scientific community with regard to whether or not pornography consumption is a causal variable in any of that. Most studies I’ve seen either have risky methodology or are biased and don’t really reference other studies or take into account the claims of others. I also don’t think “does pornography affect marriages or relationships” is a valid scientific question, as there are various different types of interests and subcultures which do value pornography and sex culture greatly, especially the monogamous kind.
I don’t think pornography can cause or induce “dependency”. I’m not against the imposition of pattern behavior addiction being a thing, but it feels more or less like an impulse control issue and the ICD-11 agrees.
As for harming social life, it can if you surround yourself with the wrong people or conduct yourself in a manner that which does not meet the expectations of those around you. A pornography enthusiast obsessed with smut may come across as undesirable to a lot of people, but that’s not really a variable.
With regard to the “conventional sex” and satisfaction thing, I feel as though too much of anything can do this. Too much fast food can turn a person off from burgers, as does video games or sex. The science seems to reflect this, and findings within this area seem to be skewed to make it seem like consuming porn can harm your sex life with your partner, which isn’t the case for a lot of people, as many couples will gladly consume pornography together if their tastes align. Studies have also reflected this discrepancy.
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It’s not a dependency that makes you feel sick if you don’t consume for a long time, but it is one that the desire to see again gets higher and higher, until the moment you can only think about it. But I can spend a week without seeing it, without problems.
Both items 2 and 4 for me is kind of the same. Like, you become more and more “strict” with the “quality” of pornography you want to see. Sometimes a little detail that the scene contains, or doesn’t contain, is enough for you not to be aroused by it. And over time this will make you lose interest in real sex, because real sex will hardly contain the things that you had become accustomed to. Which in my view is to blame for the “impotence” that pornography brings. Like, people say it causes impotence as if its impossible for you to have an erection afterwards. But what happens is that your erection becomes more “picky”. And it’s not hard to imagine why this is bad for a real relationship. Also this in fact is one of the strongest points that make me believe that lolicon discourages people from going after real children. Like a person addicted to lolicon will end up thinking that real children are no longer good enough to cause them an erection.
Also, Item 3, I don’t know, maybe is only me, but it seems that if I spend a day watching too much pornography, the next day I get more discouraged and tired than usual. And my doctor says that it has a relationship, and he advises me to consume less pornography. Before, I would spend up to 8 hours a day watching it, now by his advice I spend around 2. And anyway, I felt better with that, but as I said, I don’t know, it maybe just be the effect of the anti-depressant drugs I take.
Oh! Another important fact that I forgot to mention, is that maybe pornography was not such a big problem for me because I started to become “addicted” to it as an adult. Because I’m kind of old and the internet was not available to me in my teens ^^". But in the end, this only confirms something that should be obvious: PORNOGRAFY IS NOT FOR MINORS!
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It doesn’t. Not at all. Here are a couple of videos saying why not:
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This is an amazing video. Thanks!
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I loved your arguments here, could you send links about the fact that porn doesn’t harm women? I just want to debunk some people who beelieve porn and sex work in general causes harm to women.
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Hello and welcome to the forum!
The user that you’re replying to hasn’t posted on the forum for the past two years. I don’t think that they’ll respond to you anytime soon.