Well… Sure, why not? XD
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This is brilliant in every sense of the word. Imaginary crime meets imaginary punishment…
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If definitions were adhered to at even the most basic level, then most would understand that the definitions for human exploitation and also human crime REQUIRES that there is at least another human involved. Right?
1a. Is there a physical interaction between two people?
1b. Is one person, or their property, negatively impacted mentally and/or physically by the physical actions of the other person?
That’s it. I do not know any other way this simple logic can possibly be misconstrued without also introducing a blatant disregard for logic entirely. There is nothing more to be considered in the preliminary steps before continuing to further evaluate the remainder of this subject. We cannot go into a wormhole of infinite details if the wormhole is closed at the entrance because the subject in question does not qualify for further evaluation.
Firstly, there is no such thing as “wrong” in art. In the world of art, there is only good things for the beholder who enjoys them, no matter what subject they portray. If the viewer does not enjoy the art, they can go elsewhere to find art that they do enjoy.
Good:
Cartoons: 1a=No (drawing/viewing cartoons do not require another person)
Dolls: 1a=No (playing with dolls do not require another person)
Music: 1a=No (composing/listening to music does not require another person)
Fiction: 1a=No (writing/reading fiction does not require another person)
Secondly, legislation is confused. Some things that are criminalized could very well be made legal and regulated for the same reason some other things are legal and regulated, and vise-versa.
Questionable & Legal:
Sex/Porn: 1a=Yes (consensual sex requires two people), 1b=No (no negative impact to persons, but danger is possible, so its regulated and consumer/participant discretion is advised)
Guns: 1a=No (owning guns does not require another person, but danger is possible, so its regulated and consumer discretion advised)
Questionable & Illegal:
Prostitution: 1a=Yes (consensual sex requires two people), 1b=No (no negative impact to person, but danger is possible, yet this is illegal because its also heavily conflated with trafficking, even when not the case)
Drugs: 1a=No (consuming alcohol/drugs/tobacco does not require another person, but danger is possible, yet this is illegal because drugs can be addictive and destructive, just as everything else in the section of questionables)
Thirdly, how exactly does artwork become so quickly fallen, demoted all the way down here into the following cesspool of garbage interactions that nobody actually wants done to them outside of roleplay and acting?
Bad:
Assault, non-consensual sex, revoked consent rape, child abuse, animal abuse, theft, property destruction, trafficking, murder, photographed material, etc: 1a=Yes (violation of person), 1b=Yes (the victim is negatively impacted and harm is obvious)
The more I read about the hatred of such art, the more it seems to just be mostly a selfish and emotional war on people of a minority group of interests. The law wants to arbitrarily convert such innocent people into criminals specifically just because they like certain styles of artwork. The laws that brick-wall people from being able to be themselves and for themselves at no harm to or control over other people are just as horrendous as the real heinous actions the laws try to prevent and protect people from, such as domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking, and drug overdose. I wish we would put more attention and money into the education of these problems, so that we can develop ways to actually reduce and fix them.
The entire usefulness of art is for creative content to express subjects that are either impossible or contain actions that come with extreme consequence in reality. Through art, we can access the impossible (super powers), do things that are illegal (murder in video games), or enjoy viewing things that are immoral and obscene in the free unrestricted space of raw imagination. Art is in itself a super power and to ban any part of it would poisoning the wells of future generations, where all of fantasy and art themselves could just be entirely reduced to an ideal of disgust, as if any idea from reality being transcribed into fiction would be deplored no differently than plagiarism is deplored today. Ridiculously dramatic? Yes. But so is the situation we are having now about actual artwork being on the verge of becoming a criminal offense.
Art is not the problem. We have enough real problems as it is. We do not need imaginary ones. We have problems that kill people. Problems that torture people. Problems that control people. Problems that kill entire ecosystems and planets. Along with the main problem of failing as a human race to address these problems correctly without shooting ourselves in the amassed human foot. There is no good outcome in trying to clean a dirty window by smashing it with a hammer. How tiresome it is to see that we are so wonderfully intelligent, yet so painfully unintelligent at the same time.
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Something that I wanna touch up on from this point:
A common talking point that a lot of antis like to make with regard to misapplying the “child sexual exploitation material” definition to materials that do not involve, nor depict the use of actual children in any way is the normative definition of child exploitation and abuse.
The notion that, as a simple concept, that children cannot consent to sex and that anything depicting or involving them engaged in sexual conduct, especially with adults, meets that broad definition.
While I agree with this point of view within the application of material or activity involving real children, to apply that normative, conceptual definition in such a way that it affects fiction is both absurd and simply wrong. It isn’t even a matter of disagreement how wrong this is, and it represents nothing more than a blatant and deliberate attempt to create a normative definition that encompasses material which does not actually involve any real persons.
It’s a dumb and pointless game of semantics that cannot withstand scrutiny because of how it expects you to just disregard that there is no real child, to forget about the real child element or requirement.
We all know that murder is the act of taking someone’s life with deliberate intent. That much is clear. But would you apply that definition to acts of killing someone in fiction? What if the character who is ‘murdered’ really isn’t ‘dead’? We can agree that they were killed, but ‘murder’? What about the fiction of the author? The male-believe, fantastical worldview confined to the norms of that specific story or work?
If the act of having sex with a child is not considered ‘abuse’ or ‘exploitation’ in that fictional universe, then it’s not. Just as the mere concept of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, whether it’s rape, etc. in a fictional universe doesn’t make it exploitive because, as I’ve stated before, it lacks a real ‘child’ element to satisfy that definitive requirement.
This is why ‘virtual child pornography’ is still the term used to describe material that, in actuality, merely appears to depict children engaged in graphic, sexually explicit conduct that does not actually involve the use of real minors (either by using youthful adult actors, 3D models, or cartoon characters) and not ‘virtual child exploitation/abuse material’, which is a laughably oxymoronic term.
In sum, you have to base the concept of ‘child sexual exploitation material’ on the requirement of a real-life child. This isn’t to say that children can’t still be sexually abused or exploited within the fiction of specific works, but if that isn’t the author/artists intent to play into that paradigm, then it simply is not. To argue otherwise is to rob the artist or author of their right to create and express.
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Well, Sorry to pick up on a detail, but this is a relevant thing I always see people saying and is the only thing I didn’t agree on your comment,
the “especially adults” part. Like, I don’t understand this thing that people have about two children having sex being something “less bad”. The most common argument I know to justify this is that adults are in an advantageous power position so they can make the child obey them no matter what. But if you think about it, that itself isn’t the problem, that is what LEADS to the problem. In my opinion, two children having sex is twice as bad because there is twice the number of children involved. This makes me believe that the real reason behind this kind of thinking is the same as always, for people in general adult + child is disgusting, that is the MAIN reason everyone is against it (if not the only one for most), the children safety itself is always in the second place. Nowadays I have zero doubts that this is the real reason people have such aversion to many things related to this. Like, I’m tired of talking to people about lolicon and getting as response something like “It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, the problem is it’s an adult with a child and that’s disgusting.”
Edit: That’s also why I think is soo hard to convince people to be rational and stop harassing other who just want to consume fantasy stuff like dolls and lolicon. Like, even if we prove that those things don’t harm real children, that fact alone won’t convince most people to “accept it”, because that’s not the problem for them. Again, the problem for most of them is they feel disgusted by it, so they don’t want anyone to even imagine it.
Anyway my point is, for people like me who want to descriminalize lolicon and dolls, just insisting on the fact that it doesn’t harm anyone won’t solve the problem. Because that’s not the real problem for most of them, and the worst part is that they are not aware of it.
Actually, it may not be as bad. One of the children could be coercing the other, which is the same problem with adults, but 2 children exploring sexuality on their own, without force or chicanery, is quite normal. I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours. Of course, as a 13 year old, I was seduced by a 12 year old and convinced to engage in much more than “showing.” A lot more. But there was no coercion and it remains a treasured memory today. I don’t have any trauma and the only regrets I have, are the times I passed up a potential experience due to an overabundance of caution.
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I am talking specifically of children here, so if it’s 13-12… then we are talking about teenagers. Very young teenagers indeed, but still teenagers. Teenagers can and should explore their sexuality, children can’t because they don’t have any, or at least shouldn’t have any.
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The oversimplified point I was trying to make was that by denying people the right to create or invent fictional worlds where children can and do consent to sex with adults, you’re essentially robbing them of creative freedom and there’s no real adult-child sex taking place anyway, so lumping that in with a normative definition which includes real-life adult-child sexual activity is unnecessary and creates confusion, rather than reason or clarity. It’s the same logic as calling a horror movie where a character is shown being gruesomely murdered a “snuff film”.
In any case, I understand yet still disagree with your skepticism about the exploitive nature of real-life adult-child sexual conduct, as you yourself pointed out the difference between a child and an adult preemptively justifies such a normative observation. It isn’t simply limited to that, however. You yourself and @Larry even pointed out that minors are just as capable as adults of sexually exploiting one another and are not excepted from having imbalanced power dynamics, not to mention acts of sexual aggression between minors.
But where I feel your skepticism falls apart here is that it almost feels like you’re assuming that people consider adult-child sex to be “more wrong” than the other, which simply isn’t true. The fact that adult-child sex is simplistic in its distinction from minor-on-minor sexual abuse does not detract from the fact that they’re still forms of sexual abuse and are equally “wrong”.
If two teenage lovers are exploring each other’s bodies and one says that they’re not ready to go “all the way” yet, but their partner is unreceptive to their reluctance, or simply unaware of the fact that they are withholding consent and “goes in” anyway, it’s understood that this is rape because one party made it clear that they did not consent to that act and the other party was not willing to hear or accept “no”.
If two children below the age of pubescence decide to “play doctor” and inspect one another’s naked bodies and one child becomes uncomfortable and wants it to stop and resists, yet the other child persists, ignoring the worries of their friend, then that would still be regarded as a form of assault because the ultimate question of consent was ignored to sate the curiosity of one party at the deliberate expense of the other.
Whether or not that assault would be regarded as sexual is contingent on whether or was committed out of a sexual interest or sexual curiosity, rather than an anatomical or platonic one.
If you have two adults at a bar and one has their drink spiked by a mind-altering substance or is left in an inebriated state that has plainly and apparently impacted their reasoning or critical thinking skills, it’s very likely that they wouldn’t be able to consent to sexual activity either. This is why “date rapes” are so problematic and hard for people to confront or address, because adhering to the normative stance that they were taken advantage of can be a tough truth to swallow.
If you have a grown adult sitting with some younger child relatives, and the man asks them to “sit on his lap” or requests unnecessary, prolonged acts of familial affection while using these opportunities to touch, smell, or behave in in a manner or act to sate or gratify a sexual interest they may have, that’s considered sexual exploitation because it’s unlikely that these children were aware of these facts and knew how to spot them these acts, and their place as an older relative may deter them from refusing or saying no, all of this made even worse if such acts would be refused if given the opportunity to do so without the fear of negative consequence or coercion.
If you have a grown adult and a child, sitting down with each other, engaged in sexual activity, and the child was brought up or raised to believe that such activities were appropriate and acceptable, that still represents a form of sexual exploitation made worse if genital-on-genital penitration is involved, becoming full-on child rape. The logic by which these normative definitions would be justified is contingent on the same precautionary factors that you’ve known about before, coupled with their lack of innate sexual functioning as they’ve yet to reach the level of physical or mental maturity to have, let alone understand, express, or control those feelings as they would their adult abuser, who very clearly has these feelings and is employing the fondling of a real child to satisfy themselves.
What defines rape and sexual assault is the absence or rejection of consent regardless of whether it was deliberate, as action should be taken to ensure that all parties involved are willing and aware of the activities they are engaged in.
The level of difference between two teenagers happily and eagerly “fooling around” and an adult receiving oral sex from a pre-pubescent child is made apparent and exemplified by the physical and mental qualities and attributes of the parties specified, along with social and cultural power dynamics. Whether or not people have fond childhood memories of sexual encounters with adults are their own to bear and even cherish, but please understand that these people are the exception and not the rule. It’s very easy to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses colored by your perceptions, tastes, and ideals of the here-and-now, so it’s very likely that a person may not have actually consented despite remembering that they did.
The overwhelming majority of children out there who have experienced similar or identical scenarios with adults do not remember them fondly as they age, and as such experience great hardship with matters pertaining to sex later in life, be it the development of Sexual Aversion Disorder or PTSD.
The fact that the instinctive desire to conform to normative ideals about sex in order to comfortably “fit in” coupled with the prospective guilt they’d feel if they didn’t share and express exaggerated views or invent memories which are drastically worse than the abuse they suffered also doesn’t help, and it’s very difficult to recognize that fact and objectively understand why it’s still a form of abuse, but this observation is not mitigated or controlled by the fact that so many children are negatively affected without that social reinforcement and influence.
It is this majority rule backed up by statistical observation which justifies the normative presumption that real-life, non-fictional adult-child sexual activity is a form of sexual exploitation and abuse.
As I said, in fiction, I deliberately try to be as offensive as possible. Fucking a loli? Sure, but also make said loli a WWII German officer.
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I must disagree with you again in that particular part. Also, remember that I am only talking about children, something like 9-10 years old. But anyway, I understand that when it comes to the known idea that children can’t consent, we aren’t saying that they never want to consent, we are saying that it doesn’t matter if they seem to consent or not, the child simply does not know what sex means and why it is harmful to her. So discussing if they consented or not doesn’t even make sense. And going back to the part I disagree with, as I said, I see the fact that adults can influence children as something that leads to the problem, and not the problem itself. The problem is a child inserted in a sexual context. And finally, we are here discussing a case where the problem already happened, then what led to it is no longer relevant. And so, the scenario with two kids is worse because again, there are twice as many children involved. Well, but don’t understand that I’m saying that we have to pay more attention to the problem of two children having sex. Of course, if adults can influence children to do this, then they are more likely to cause this problem. So it’s natural to pay more attention to the case of adults abusing children. Again, not because this is a worse case, but because it’s easier to happen.
Bumping this thread because it’s relevant.
For years, I’ve been saying something similar to what’s above. Punishment should be as fictional as the crime.
A stick figure can represent. At what point does a drawing or figure go from permissible representation to prohibited?
Comparing fiction with reality is akin to comparing the truth with a lie.
It’s not evil to think that shape isn’t what makes the precious precious and hence cannot make dolls or cartoons precious either. It’s not evil to think that what happens to a doll or a lifeless object doesn’t matter.
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Even though some fictional loli content is disgusting to me, I think it decreases time from going after criminals that actually harm people. Instead of going after real criminals, resources are instead focused on victimless crimes. The video above would have been considered obscene in the 60s probably. This is why obscenity makes no sense.
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