Originally published at: Defending Lolita from censorship - Prostasia Foundation
Lolita was never officially banned in the United States, although it was banned in France where it was first published in 1955, and in several other countries. Yet today, although the novel remains unlikely to be formally censored, the idea of its private or “voluntary” censorship has gained fresh currency. In 2018, Professor Anne Dwyer,…
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The very concept of obscenity is irreconcilable and fundamentally incompatible with the First Amendment, as matters of ‘offensiveness’ and ‘serious value’ are not things that exist as matters of objective fact. They are viewpoints, opinions, ideals, and to try and present them as matters of fact for any court undermines the very reason why the First Amendment exists in the first place, which is to protect the freedom of speech and preserve an individual’s right to not only communicate ideas, but to have them, regardless of what they might be, unfettered and without intrusion by any the threat of state intervention.
Treating speech, including text-based pornographic stories which depict acts that would constitute heinous and inexcusable acts of child sex abuse, to drawings or 3DCG depictions of a similar nature, as though they were recorded acts of such abuse does nothing to prevent child sex abuse or protect children, nor does it actually have the supposedly desired effect of maintaining a culture intolerant of child sex abuse.
Rather, it conflates mere concepts with the actuality, and in doing so, creates a ‘danger zone’ type of approach that takes away freedom to think and engage with such subject matter in the comfort and safety of fiction or fantasy environment and demands a type of preferential-level, 1984 thought-crime conformism. Creators and consumers of such fiction unanimously agree that such contents do not belong in real life, that they belong in fiction, and are construed to not condone or support the realization of such acts outside such fictional confines. The fact that communities exist which routinely cooperate with Law Enforcement and turn over the identities of those who would try to misuse their platforms to share or solicit CSAM is proof of this.
Moreover, such fictional/fantasy materials have preventative/protective value by providing a healthy means for those who are struggling with stress or anxiety related to their sexual desires (which they did not choose to have) to be used as an outlet. An outlet that diverts attention and focus away from lawful material involving children, but also unlawful material. They allow them to reconcile their desires and impulses with the reality that they must not be acted on, and allows people to live the life that they deserve to have.
No evidence exists conclusively proving or supporting the contention that such materials are risk-factors for subsequent sexual offending.
This beneficial effect cannot and will not succumb to erasure by bad-faith legal or judicial precedent. Obscenity laws were never unanimously supported by the SCOTUS, with literally every single precedent only surviving on a 5-4 or 6-3 margin, save for one which affirmed the right to privately possess obscene material in the privacy of one’s home, and the rationales supporting them being contingent on what is objectively bad reasoning.
I have faith that, in the coming years, the entire legal doctrine of obscenity will be struck down and overturned, going all the way back to Roth. We don’t need obscenity laws. We also don’t need obscenity laws to ensure that pornography isn’t distributed to, or exposed to non-consenting parties or minors. We have ‘actionable indecency’ statutes to prevent that and maybe even the ‘harmful to minors’ doctrine, which may be distinct from obscenity.
We have Ferber and Osborne which recognize that child pornography is unprotected, and that’s all we need. So long as that objective factual piece is present, it’s enough to maintain and hopefully even eradicate the scourge that is child sex abuse material (CSAM).
The obscenity doctrine’s tortured and lurid history, with many stories or depictions having to literally be rescued by higher courts, repealed by anxious legislatures, or outright challenged repeatedly is indicative of a problem inherent in its conception, a lesson that ought to be taken to heart by jurists and acted upon accordingly. It is inherently flawed, as it is vague, and inapplicable at a national level. Reliance on ‘community standards’ is also wrong because the First Amendment cannot and is not written to accommodate them, and renders the very prospect of free speech subject to a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ approach, and even then, community standards cannot be objectively articulated in such a way that is applicable to a concept as a whole, and is largely inconsequential in itself. No jury or court may rule on behalf of what the community standards are because they are not something that can be feasibly proven as facts unless an entire community can be sampled for their views at that specific moment and within that jurisdiction.
It is the opposite of objective, it is not factual, and has no business being a matter for the courts to determine, for that is up to the people to decide, in accordance with their own preferences and views.
If obscenity laws were to be enforced as consistently as any other type of law, then LGBT rights would not exist, and gay men and women would be forced to live in ideological slavery at the hands of jurists who are as overzealous as they are ignorant, colored exclusively by prejudice and motivated by twisted cheers of their ideological contemporaries which drown out the silent screams and suffering of their victims.
The idea that matters appealing to the ‘prurient interest’ are not inherently artistic in their own right is as antithetical to the Freedom of Speech as ‘Separate but Equal’ was to civil rights, i.e. inherently unequal.
This fact will not be hampered down or ignored. Science proves that it’s artistic expression and even proves that they help prevent abuse. It will not go unnoticed or silenced, and no SCOTUS majority will be allowed to ignore it when the issue inevitably presents itself to them in the near-late future. In one fell swoop, more than half a century’s worth of precedent would be put on notice and rightfully invalidated for the mistake it was.
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Rape culture isn’t a thing. I’m sure that no one here believes that fiction directly affects reality, but for anyone who does think so and talks about all these real life rapes, the only thing that says to me is that it’s not that we need less instances of rape, but that we need more instances of cannibalism.
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Lolita is the Spanish version of Dolores. The use of Lolita to characterize an underage girl sexually, is based on the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The movies are based on the book.
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Remember. Anything can be used as masturbation material. I already mentioned the Death of Saint Eulalia painting by John William Waterhouse, but I have to say that I also fapped to A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, specifically the parts about hunting 12-year-olds and crucifying 15-year-olds.
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Back in the day it was the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. 
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If anything, I wish fiction affected reality. For example, the Silent Revolution ending in Devil Survivor is all about making Japan great again. I wish more real life Japanese people took this attitude, instead of being so apologetic to foreigners.
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Funny that as I can remember the author is a CSA victim and the whole point of the story was to show the abuse through the pedophile’s view. People forget about that fact and say that the book is about a romance between an adult and a child when the book is only about the pedophile’s view point. People see everything correlated to pedophilia and children and immediately run to judge it and hate on it without even trying to understand the point.
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Actually, there is no solid evidence of Nabokov being abused as a child and his memoir speaks of a privileged and happy childhood
Well, saw this somewhere. I would like to have some links if you could correct me
Wikipedia also has no mention of sexual abuse.
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Fiction can and does affect reality. What is reality if not your perceptions and representations, representations of another mental reality? If you imagine a loli in front of you, there IS a loli in front of you. It would now be up to you and your creativity to grant that loli whatever abilities you want (just make sure the loli has the mental capacity of an adult, if you take this seriously).
Fiction doesn’t affect reality in a way that could make it harmful to said reality. Like it’s not going to provoke acts of real-world violence or assault.
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Oh, sorry. Thanks for the information
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Indeed not. What I am saying is that even if it affects reality, it’s not in any way that is legally relevant.
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