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On Child Pornography

Jill

Child porn should be an easy issue, feminist and otherwise. We’re all against it, right? I mean, no one “supports” child porn, except sickos. And yet…

Ren has a post up about the recent Supreme Court child pornography ruling, and she raises a really interesting point:

My feelings? Honestly? I think porn featuring real children is awful and should be illegal (and it is), and those caught making it, buying it, owning it? They deserve punishment via the law. This other stuff? Stuff that is computer rendered or altered? Humm. I don’t like it, find it disturbing…but…if it isn’t made with real children involved? Then it isn’t really child porn.

She hits on a big issue in the child pornography debate: Is the harm in child porn only to the child making it, or is it also a larger social harm facilitated by the people who consume it?

Obviously if you think the crux of the harm is in the making of child pornography, then it makes sense to just enforce existing age laws and call it a day. But a lot of people — including members of the Supreme Court — believe that the harm is not only to the exploited child, but to society and to the real children that pedophiles prey on. From that perspective, it is incredibly problematic to “age down” actresses so that they look like little girls. Whether that’s “really” child porn isn’t a closed subject, I don’t think. No, it’s not using actually children, but it is digitally altering adults to look like actual children. It is banking on the idea that pedophiles or people which pedophilic sexual urges will believe the images feature actual children.

Now, I think the federal law that the Supreme Court upheld is extremely problematic. I don’t think the court issued a particularly good decision. And I don’t necessarily think that Ren’s take on this is wrong — her position is not only much more consistent than mine, but it’s one that’s held by a whole lot of anti-censorship folks who aren’t simply “pro-pornography,” as I know many tar Ren. I also worry about the total prohibitionist attitude that sees any imagery of naked children as pornographic. I took a Feminist Jurisprudence class in law school with Amy Adler, a fantastic professor who writes quite a bit about child pornography, and she discusses a lot of these issues in her work. One piece, which you can read here, she addresses some of these questions, summarizing her arguments as:

In the first reading, I explore the possibility that certain sexual prohibitions invite their own violation by increasing the sexual allure of what they forbid. I suggest that child pornography law and the eroticization of children exist in a dialectic of transgression and taboo: The dramatic expansion of child pornography law may have unwittingly heightened pedophilic desire.

I then turn to a second reading, which reveals the previous one to be an only partially satisfactory account. In the second reading, I view law and the culture it regulates not as dialectical opposites, but as intermingled. Child pornography law may represent only another symptom of and not a solution to the problem of child abuse or the cultural fascination with sexual children. The cross purposes of law and culture that I describe above (law as prohibition, which both halts and incites desire) may mask a deeper harmony between them: The legal discourse on prohibiting child pornography may represent yet another way in which our culture drenches itself in sexualized children.

Child pornography law explicitly requires us to take on the gaze of the pedophile in order to root out pictures of children that harbor secret pedophilic appeal.[14]

The growth of child pornography law has opened up a whole arena for the elaborate exploration of children as sexual creatures. Cases require courts to engage in long, detailed analyses of the “sexual coyness” or playfulness of children, and of their potential to arouse. [15] Courts have undertaken Talmudic discussions of the meaning of “pubic area” and “discernibility” of a child’s genitals in a picture at issue. [16] But even when a child is pictured as a sexual victim rather than a sexual siren, the child is still pictured as sexual. Child pornography law becomes in this view a vast realm of discourse in which the image of the child as sexual is preserved and multiplied.

The point of this Article is that laws regulating child pornography may produce perverse, unintended consequences and that the legal battle we are waging may have unrecognized costs. [17] I do not doubt, however, that child pornography law has substantial social benefits. In fact, I do not doubt that these benefits might outweigh the costs detailed. I nonetheless focus on these costs as a means to unsettle the confident assumption of most courts, legislators, and academics that the current approach to child pornography law is unequivocally sound. I question their conviction that the more regulation we impose the more harm we avert.[18] Ultimately, I raise questions about the nature of censorship itself.

It’s interesting stuff. Really do read it; and check out Adler’s other work, too, if you ever come across it.

I do think she makes very good points about defining child porn — is Sally Mann (warning: images of nude children) a pornographer? I don’t think so, but some do. And what, exactly, differentiates her work from some child pornography? The fact that it’s staged better? That she calls it “art”? That it’s critically acclaimed? That she sells out shows?

So the defining of what constitutes child porn is one problem — and as Adler points out, the requirement of adopting the pedophilic gaze in order to do so (because “I know it when I see it” isn’t quite good enough) creates even larger problems, especially from an enforcement angle.

And all of that rests on the premise that what makes child porn child porn is the appearance of it, not necessarily the actual age of the person in it. The actual-age argument is one that Ren and lots of others rely on, and it makes a lot of sense. But I remain troubled by it, especially in light of the fact that a whole lot of people who look at child porn go on to molest actual children. I don’t buy the argument that there’s a big fat line between what people enjoy in their pornography and what they enjoy in real life, especially when it comes to things like this. Porn may be crappy sex ed, but it is often instructive, in both responding to and shaping desire. Are there certainly lots of people who have fantasies or who look at porn that doesn’t match up with their real-life desires? Of course. There are plenty of people who get off watching imagery of, or imaging, sex acts that they themselves wouldn’t actually want to participate in. But there’s something about child porn that’s… different. This isn’t about a particular sexual act — it’s not like a dude jerking off to HotLesbians.com when, in reality, he’d probably feel a little weird if he were sitting in a room actually watching two lesbians get it on. Child pornography is different because it involves a physical, sexual attraction to a particular subset of the population; it’s not getting off on a particular act, it’s getting off because you’re attracted to kids, who by definition cannot consent. The guy who’s looking at HotLesbians is doing it because he thinks naked chicks are hot, and he likes to see them do it. He may not ever get to watch two lesbians hook up for his viewing pleasure, but he probably will seek out some sort of sexual interaction with a real woman. The guy who’s looking at naked children is doing it because he thinks naked children are hot. That’s a big problem in itself, and a bigger problem if he decides to seek out some sort of sexual interaction with the kind of people he’s attracted to.

So… I can understand the desire to regulate not only the making of porn with real children, but porn that claims to be child pornography, whether or not “actual” children were used. I think the harm in child porn is broader than just the harm to the particular child in the images.

But I don’t know what the best policy solution is, or how we balance protecting children with anti-censorship ideology. Thoughts?

67 thoughts on On Child Pornography

  1. While I can agree with the argument that there is some harm in child pornography beyond the harm to children who are sexually abused in order to create it, I don’t think it necessarily follows that it is an appropriate course of action to censor “virtual” child pornography (referring to anything pornographic which doesn’t depict real children, whether it be computer generated or created through ‘down-aging’ adults).

    If we were to put the idea that virtual child pornography should be censored into a logical syllogism, it might look something like this:
    (1) Virtual child pornography is harmful to society.
    (2) By 1, virtual child pornography ought to be censored.

    But there’s an is-ought gap there… we have no statement which supports that transition. Looking at the two statements, the obvious choice is:
    (1.5) Speech which is harmful to society ought to be censored.

    Herein lies the problem, because I don’t think (1.5) is something most people would accept. While I haven’t gotten around to taking a Free Speech Theory class yet (my Con Law II focused on the Religion clauses), I feel comfortable asserting that the Supreme Court, even in its current conservative incarnation, wouldn’t support (1.5); for instance, take a look at R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul. Justice Scalia, of all people, wrote that dangerous speech could still be constitutionally protected. Instead, to ban virtual child porn, it seems to me that a different principle has been used:
    (1.5prime) Pornography which is harmful to society ought to be censored.

    Perhaps I’ve been tainted by reading too many anti-pornography arguments, but it seems as though this is the operating principle for coming to the conclusion that virtual child pornography is justifiably censored, First Amendment notwithstanding. However, this is easily recognized as special pleading: what makes porn different, so that it should not be protected? Assuming that pornography does indeed cause some cognizable social harm (an assumption I’m not entirely comfortable with), why is it different from hate speech which is constitutionally protected? I think the answer lies in our societies’ continuing devaluation of human sexuality as a debased thing, unworthy of polite discussion. Thus, while self-expression is deemed to be the birthright of every person, sexual self-expression is only protected in rare cases where some other interest is at stake.

    I don’t think it needs to be said that child pornography is reprehensible, though I’ll say it anyway: child pornography is reprehensible. However, reprehensible speech is still speech, and we should not carve out exceptions to the general principle that even disturbing, unpleasant, or downright evil speech should not be subject to governmental censorship.

    As an example of the bad places this path leads, consider the example of self-produced “child pornography.” There was a talk on the subject at my law school recently: what should law enforcement do when a pair of seventeen-year-olds have sex (making them above the age of consent in many jurisdictions), film it, and distribute the film to their friends? In several cases, the law enforcement response was to prosecute the individuals for exploitation; the charge was not that one had exploited the other, but rather that both had sexually exploited themselves (for instance, [link]). I really don’t think this is the right approach, but if you’re dedicated to stomping out speech you don’t like, then it would be the rational one.

    I was going to mention Foucault in response to your professor’s quote, but I see that she discusses him a fair amount in the paper.

    (Sorry if this went on too long; I’m bored and this is an interesting topic).

  2. I totally reject the idea that there is any connection between pornography and other sexual fantasy and real world sex. No such connection has ever been proven with research. Any form of porn should be legal, as long as it’s consensual and doesn’t hurt anyone. (Children can’t give consent.)

    Suppressing your desires, no matter how disturbing those desires may be, only leads to more harm. There is no cure for pedophilia. If the only way a pedophile can safely relieve themselves is with cartoon child porn, so be it. The sexually repressed are more likely to commit crimes, not less.

  3. I’m generally in agreement with Anonymous Coward on this. I’d just add that there’s a further complication to his syllogism, call it 1.25:

    (1.25) Virtual child pornography is speech, or ought to be privileged in law as speech.

    I would tend to support the latter half of this notion because the distinction between pornography and art is so problematic (when that inquiry is divorced from the harm inflicted on actual people by the process of producing pornography).

    That said, I imagine that many, including some on the Supreme Court, would disagree with me about protecting virtual pornography as speech. And that might be where they would find the rationale for restricting it.

  4. Anonymous Coward’s right on about the theory, imho, but there’s also simple practicality — Catherine MacKinnon had greater success in Canada than in the United States with her anti-pornography laws (of course, Canada also recognizes hate speech as a crime – Canada does not recognize an American notion of free speech), and guess who ends up administering those anti-pornography laws? The primarily male, basically patriarchal existing government. You should be able to see where this is going: those anti-pornography laws are then used to target porn and erotica which the state – the heteronormative, sexist state – finds offensive. This means that lesbian BDSM porn is prosecuted as obscene, while normal, good old-fashioned heterosexual fucking – no matter how misogynist, obscene, or harmful – is basically left alone, because of course enforcement of the law is in the hands of flawed, human individuals.

  5. Because it involves children this is a complex issue. This case resembles NY State in which they are banning images of nooses due to the way it discriminates against black people. As an artist I find both these cases borderline infringement of the first amendment. Does this mean in a political or artistic statement particular images will be banned even if they are digitally rendered?

  6. Sally Mann isn’t porn because the children in the photos aren’t sexualized. They’re meant to be seen as wild animals; they gaze into the camera not to reflect desire but because it is a novel stimulus in their environment.

    The argument could be made that virtual child porn serves a *healthy* social purpose: it enables people who have desire for children find a way to express those desires without exploiting children. For most people, what they’re attracted to is usually set in stone before they have a chance to change it or even think about it. So if you’re attracted to kids, it’s almost always what you’ll be attracted to, no matter how much you’d like to change: consider how ineffective “gay camps” are and then extrapolate that. So you either need to deny your entire erotic life or hurt kids. But if you have virtual child porn, you can get your rocks off and go back out into pretending you’re just like everyone else and not have the secret tear you apart. It might even be therapeutic to a certain degree. In order for this to be true, of course, you’d have to prove that the increase in molestation committed by people who’ve been inspired by virtual porn is more than outweighed by the reduction in same because of the outlet.

  7. Sally Mann isn’t porn because the children in the photos aren’t sexualized. They’re meant to be seen as wild animals; they gaze into the camera not to reflect desire but because it is a novel stimulus in their environment.

    But who gets to decide that? That’s what Adler discussed in her article — the necessity of looking through a pedophile’s eyes when deciding whether or not a child is “sexualized.” Can you really say with a straight face that this image isn’t sexualized — especially if you’re familiar with what it’s based on? I’m not arguing that Mann’s photos are child porn; I don’t think they are. I’m just pointing that the line-drawing is hard, even when “real” children are the subject.

  8. The argument could be made that virtual child porn serves a *healthy* social purpose: it enables people who have desire for children find a way to express those desires without exploiting children.

    Maybe. But part of the problem, too, is that (at least as I understand it, but I could be wrong about this) a lot of child porn imagery comes to viewers by way of sharing in various online communities. It can’t be just stuck up on websites because it’s too easy for the authorities to track it down; so, unlike a lot of “regular” porn users, child porn users are in contact with each other. That, IMO, can contribute to normalizing attraction to children, and that’s not good.

    Again, I have no idea how this plays out in practice. But I just have a hard time imaging that looking at images of children will make someone with pedophilic tendencies less likely to try something with an actual child.

  9. It is banking on the idea that pedophiles or people which pedophilic sexual urges will believe the images feature actual children.

    Not, I think, any more than regular porn is banking on the idea that pizza delivery boys will believe that hot coeds and their inexplicably naked roommates will routinely offer sex in lieu of a tip. As is alluded to in the quoted material, there is a lot of computer generated and drawn child pornography out there that no one could possibly believe features real children, and yet it does not seem to lack for consumers. I don’t think that perceived authenticity is a make-or-break issue except for those who have serious issues, and they are mostly the sort that are going to be a problem regardless of what “reading material” they have access to

  10. It just occurred to me that this is similar to the BDSM controversy among feminists. Some people refuse to believe that fantasy crime doesn’t encourage real world crime.

  11. But I just have a hard time imaging that looking at images of children will make someone with pedophilic tendencies less likely to try something with an actual child.

    Right. I’m not sure I agree that the law should aim at a preventive objective like that. I mean, if we can criminalize certain materials that (though no one has been harmed by their production or distribution) might indirectly normalize breaking the law, then why can’t we criminalize violent video games? Or James Dean movies? Or pamphlets which might increase resistance to a draft? Or nerf guns? Why couldn’t we restrict the makers of, say, Photoshop–who produce a technology that allows people to simulate pornography, which, in turn, might encourage someone to actually do something harmful.

    If some creep tries something with an actual child, we can send that creep to jail. I’m not sure we should send other people to jail for indirectly enabling or destigmatizing that person’s thoughts.

  13. “The argument could be made that virtual child porn serves a *healthy* social purpose: it enables people who have desire for children find a way to express those desires without exploiting children. For most people, what they’re attracted to is usually set in stone before they have a chance to change it or even think about it. So if you’re attracted to kids, it’s almost always what you’ll be attracted to, no matter how much you’d like to change: consider how ineffective “gay camps” are and then extrapolate that. So you either need to deny your entire erotic life or hurt kids.”

    People can express their desires through fantasy; it does not require someone to make a film of it. I have a hard time believing that a desire to abuse children is set in stone. This is not like sexual orientation, which refers to the people with which we desire to have romantic/sexual relationships. Children are not in a position to have romantic relationships. How can someone have a sexual orientation toward people who do not have the cognitive skills to negotiate a sexual relationship?

    Some porn films make the actresses look like younger teens, but teens are very different from children.

  14. “I mean, if we can criminalize certain materials that (though no one has been harmed by their production or distribution) might indirectly normalize breaking the law, then why can’t we criminalize violent video games?”

    Or pornography featuring a woman using a vibrator in states where sex toy bans haven’t been overturned yet? Or the entirety of gay and lesbian-porn-for-lesbians, should Lawrence v. Texas be overturned? It’s a thorny issue, especially since there’s a large amount of difficulty in determining just how strong the link is between consuming child pornography and going on to molest children; since owning child pornography is illegal, there’s no way to determine the initial pool vs. the number of those people who go on to offend.

  15. Pingback: child pornography and pedophilia. « Let’s call it a night

  16. Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality–it is not an orientation. It’s about power, like all rape–sex with the chosen victim is simply the most effective way for a rapist to feel that they are powerful. Children have their own sexuality, but they are not capable of consent and are further entirely dependent on the adults around them for survival. The person who rapes a child is not seeking a “relationship” they are seeking power. Whatever their self-justifications might be, that is what they are doing.

    I don’t really think that can be emphasized enough.

    As per the original question, no, I think “fake” porn with fake victims cannot be censored without causing harm to the First Amendment.

  17. Who gets to decide is a big issue here. Look at advertising for goodness sake and the oversexualizing of children. Disney ads for girls underwear are the new controversy. Abercrombie and Fitch, calvin klein and the list goes on and on. The Miley Cyrus photos were all about whether or not she was pressured to pose – with parents present no less. I am not an expert on pedophilia, but it does not surprise me that people would be bold enough to start creating fictionalized images or animations being that society has increased in being tolerant of the sexualization of children in advertising. Are there any studies out there about this progression?

  18. “I am not an expert on pedophilia, but it does not surprise me that people would be bold enough to start creating fictionalized images or animations being that society has increased in being tolerant of the sexualization of children in advertising.”

    I doubt it’s to do with boldness or society so much as the recent advance of technology. It’s now feasible for someone without a huge level of investment and expertise to produce computer animation or digital images that are of reasonable quality in their own homes.

  19. How does this relate to bestiality, too? Animals are also unable to consent, but you have all sorts of fetish behavior centered around blurring the line between human an animal. At what point does an animation of a human having sex with a human/cat hybrid become too close to a human having sex with a cat to be legal? Or should both be illegal? Should furry fetisism become illegal?

  20. I totally reject the idea that there is any connection between pornography and other sexual fantasy and real world sex.

    Perhaps you were not aware that a great deal of live-action pornography features real world people having real world sex. Really.

    Of course I’m being disingenuous; I understand that the real world sex of pornography consumers is the only sex that matters.

  21. I believe Ren and others are missing the point of this ruling.

    From the NY Times:

    The case, United States v. Williams, No. 06-694, began in 2004 as the prosecution of a Florida man, Michael Williams, who was caught in a federal sting operation offering child pornography in an Internet chat room. He claimed to have “good pics” of his 4-year-old daughter. In fact, he did not have such pictures, but when federal agents executed a search warrant, they found 22 sexually explicit images of real children on his computer hard drives.

    The issue is the safety of real children and eliminating the excuse that offering to sell real child porn isn’t a criminal act simply because that promised image hasn’t been found or a defense attorney arguing that the promised real child porn images which were found are fakes.

    This ruling means that offering real child porn is a crime of it’s own and that the solicitation is all the evidence needed to prove this crime.

  22. mmmmmmm……

    alright, i’m going to throw this out here, and its TOTALLY anecdote. i do not claim that this has happened OFTEN, or even more than the once…
    i was molested when i was 5 and 6, and i was sent to group therapy afterwards. another girl in the group therapy was there for seducing her neighbor. she was a couple years older than i was – 8? 9? somewhere around there. i remember, quite vividly, her throwing huge fits everytime the counselor told her than she had been molested or raped. she was adamite, the entire time we were in counseling together, that SHE had initiated, that SHE forced the issue.

    and, yes, a nine year old cannot consent. although there are places in the world where nine year olds are married, we all agree that nine is TOO YOUNG, even if we can’t define at what age that ends. even at the time, when i was that age, i was confused and troubled by a nine year old seducing a grown man. it’s not that i think SHE was confused, or lying. i think she was telling the total and exact truth. i just wonder where she got the idea to do it?

  23. But I don’t know what the best policy solution is, or how we balance protecting children with anti-censorship ideology. Thoughts?

    Agree with banning on actual child pornography due to the lack of ability to consent and the great harm that results from the unequal power relationships.

    As for digital/artificial images….while I do fear this will normalize the pedophiles’ unhealthy sexual attraction to children…..greater harm will be done to the First Amendment if these images are banned.

    Moreover, this tendency among many of us to reflexively go for the ban is in some ways…a cheap cop-out that effectively sweeps the issues under the rug.

    Instead of attempting to suppress digital/artificial images, violent video games, etc….wouldn’t it be better to use the First Amendment rights available to us to scrutinize this issue publicly through debates, editorializing, encourage more research, protests, etc…especially when this was one of the reasons why it this right was implemented.

    It would be better to encourage more frank open discussions on controversial issues such as digitized/artificial child porn, violent video games*, etc rather than aim for immediate reflexive suppression.

    Moreover, as someone whose parents and relatives emigrated from countries where censorship and suppression of information was commonplace to minimize and discourage any dissent….I am wary of anything which smacks of censorship, even if it may bring possible benefits.

    Who is to determine what information is to be censored or not? Can this individual/group be trusted not to abuse such power due to personal biases, greed, and/or the the inability to resist a heady power trip(s)?

    * The inference made of violent criminal behavior being linked to playing violent video games due to events like the Columbine Massacre is complete utter nonsense. If that were the case, about 50-75% of my high school’s population would be in prison by now judging by the computer/video games that were popular at the time and how avidly we played them (Doom/Doom2, Streetfighter/Streetfighter 2, etc).

  24. while i’m not comfortable with the intent i assume is behind the creators of virtual child porn, i have to support their right to create it. becos if they are prosecuted and their work is made illegal, then that sort of ruling could be applied to a graphic novel or something else made by a survivor as an attempt to document their own truths. my own truth.
    i mean, i hate the KKK, but i appreciate that the ACLU is willing to defend their right to speak, cos the ACLU is also willing to defend my right to speak. the way you fix the ills of society isnt to censor them, but rather through education and outreach.

  25. Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality–it is not an orientation. It’s about power, like all rape–sex with the chosen victim is simply the most effective way for a rapist to feel that they are powerful.

    That’s a big call, which I’m not sure can be backed up with evidence. There is at least some paedophilia which is hard wired, and often these people simply don’t believe that they are hurting the children – at least not in an emotional sense. They understand it academically, which is why some seek chemical castration and other strategies to control their desires. I have no idea whether this represents a small or large percentage of paedophiles, but it is definitely not true to say that it is always about power. These are the people for whom the “therapeutic” argument can possibly be made.

    We need to be doing more psychological research with these people to sort this out scientifically instead of emotionally. If there is a subset (I’d guess at those who seek out strangers rather than those who abuse family members, but that is wild speculation) for whom this is essentially a mental illness, or at least hard wired, demonising them won’t help, nor will any legislation. And if it turns out that I am dead wrong, at least we will have a better idea about whether virtual child porn is harmful.

  26. I’m afraid i have to side on the idea of fantasy as release instead of a buildup that will end badly.

    A lot of porn or in fact fantasy is of that nature. we don’t actually think that playing grandtheft auto will actually lead to an increase of that sort of behavior.

    The study about how many go on to actually molest you sited seemed to be a bit skewed. The study asked those who were caught accessing it online. As far as i know it’s pretty easy to stay private on the internet about things so those who got caught were probably grabbing so much that it became easy to be caught. and that in it’self may be a sign of self control problems.

    Still i can’t really brush off that study. skewed or not it’s a startlingly high number. I’d like to see if it could be looked at with an analysis of whether or not the actual molesters had a higher percentage of their porn involving real children.

    My suspicion is that someone on the verge of molesting is not going to be satisfied with representational porn and will go after images that are more and more real, untill that person acts on them.

    The final problem i have with nabing someone for this sort of porn is that it seems like it’s against the very nature of justice that we arrest someone because we assume they will in the future do some crime. that seems against the innocent till proven guilty aspect of our justice system.

    All in all it’s such a hard question. I remember as a kid using videogame violence to get rid of real world anger. (my brother and I would play streetfighter whenever we got into an argument instead of actually fighting) and i have an inclination to assume the best of others. i just am not sure that is the right response here.

  27. I’m not sure by what logic people are determining that pedophilia is a rape fantasy instead of an actual sexuality. A pedophile that commits sexual assault against a child, or grooms a child, certainly is a rapist, but what of the people who have these urges and suppress them? The urges, the attraction, does not go away.

    I googled a bit and found quite a few articles concerning voluntary castration by convicted sex offenders who feel that is the only way they can stop. I’ve not found any articles that non-convicted pedophiles have turned up out of no where to ask for this sort of treatment, but there could be a clear reason for this.

    Since pedophilia is rightly recognised as an extremely harmful and immoral act, there is a stigma around it. If you were attracted to- and only to- young children, would you admit it even if only to seek help to suppress the urges you felt?

    My apologies if this is going too far, but I was sexually abused whilst underage. For all the damage that was done to me, and the fact that I will never be able to forgive him, I still can accept that while he could have controlled his actions, he couldn’t have controlled his desires.

  28. Some pedophiles themselves will enthusiastically blame a certain kind of image for giving them the impetus or even “forcing” them to rape a child, if they are cornered by criminal justice system, that is.

    “Sally Mann made me do it, your honour” – or whatever. What’s next? Lolita made you do it? How far would we be willing to go on this one?

    Pedophiles have as much agency as anyone else. They make a conscious choice. And pedophilia has always existed – with some societies normalizing it, or else having rites of passage with pedophiliac undertones. There was no Internet, no readily available imagery, in Humbert Humbert-era Paris (yes, he’s a fictional character, but his acute remorselessness in particular is dead-on, IMHO), but all the guy had to do was stalk playgrounds. And I think Nabokov, while having clearly protested the existence of any social commentary in his work, knew exactly how the predator operates.

    I am not sure how we can legislate something like this without opening a door not only for massive amounts of censorship, but for the idea that a pedophile’s responsibility in raping a child can be lessened.

  29. But I remain troubled by it, especially in light of the fact that a whole lot of people who look at child porn go on to molest actual children.

    This is not quite the issue at hand.

    The question is does banning digitally altered images encourage or discourage that act. The increase in violent video games correlates with a general decrease in violence. Would violence go up if we banned violent video games? Its possible.

    It can’t be just stuck up on websites because it’s too easy for the authorities to track it down; so, unlike a lot of “regular” porn users, child porn users are in contact with each other. That, IMO, can contribute to normalizing attraction to children, and that’s not good.

    At the same time it could make actual people who commit crimes that much easier to track. You just find all the ip addresses in the area and you know who looks at that stuff.

  30. I believe that pedophilia, like all fetishes, orientations, sexual preferences, and so on is pretty much set in stone and close to impossible to fix. You desire what you desire, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. I’m a feminist, and I will probably always get off on being tied up.

    Drawn/digital child porn offers a release without exploiting any children. Whether this is a good thing or not needs more study. If it does help pedophiles control their actions and saves some children from being molested then it should be legal, no matter how uncomfortable it makes people.

  31. One thing I’m surprised Jill didn’t mention is the role of images of child sex in grooming victims. Pedophiles will show their victims pictures in order to normalize the idea of adult-child sexual contact and thus facilitate their abuse.

    Not that I think that argument is a conversation-ender. It’s still a complex, nuanced subject that I don’t have answers too.

    Also, I’ve seen some Mann photos before, and found them generally non-sexual (to me). But that “Venus” that Jill linked? Definitely sexual to my eyes. I found it somewhat disturbing.

  32. One of my professors was attempting to write an article about a local man, “pillar of the community” type, who was caught with child porn. Because this man had never been accused of molesting a child, or of anything other than having the child porn on his computer, he thought he could write about it and be able to look at this man as more of a human with a problem and less of a monster, which is our normal reaction to those who molest children.

    I think the problem comes in this society when we do make monsters out of people who do certain things. Murderers are monsters, they need to be locked up, but they’re not like us. Rapists are monsters, child molesters are monsters.

    I’m obviously not condoning any of these acts, yet I think to really change their effect on society we have to look at them as things humans are capable of, not make the people who do them into Other and just lock them away. If we don’t look at the reasons people do things, we can never really figure out how to stop them, IMHO.

    But, as several people above noted, child pornography is illegal and terribly stigmatized. Even virtual child pornography is stigmatized. And this does preclude us from having the discussion about it, from studying it and actually trying to find out if there are ways to change the behavior.

    (And I think I heard somewhere that chemical castration doesn’t help–that though they cannot physically perform sex, the desires are still there, and they can still act on them.)

    Obviously child porn is repellent, rape is repellent, murder is repellent. It’s hard to think rationally about those things. I was reading an essay about community justice for someone who was molested, and my first thought is, “They can’t do that! Lock that guy up!” but I had to realize again that I had dehumanized the person doing the act.

    So virtual child porn could not only be a safer outlet for those with pedophilic desires, but a venue for further study and attempts to get at the why of pedophilia.

  33. The question is does banning digitally altered images encourage or discourage that act. The increase in violent video games correlates with a general decrease in violence. Would violence go up if we banned violent video games? Its possible.

    Arrrgh. This is a classic case of correlation does not imply causation, especially in a multi-factorial situation where such things as economics and increased incarceration may be more dominant factors. It would be so nice if the discussion on video games could move away from picking on causal factors and on to better literary critique like we have for television.

  34. It’s a difficult topic. I wanted to bring up a couple of points that I haven’t seen here yet:

    1. Just as pedophelia isn’t a sexual orientation, it isn’t a fetish, either. I think comparing it to BDSM is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. I think the closest comparison would be to rape fantasies/snuff films. Above someone mentioned that pedophiles don’t think they’re harming their victims. Well, a lot of rapists see it that way too. BDSM community members take pains to ensure affirmative consent; rapists and pedophiles do not. This is an important distinction.

    2. While some pedophiles may find child pornography to be a release, others may find it to be encouraging. We can’t paint all pedophiles with a broad brush; they are individuals with individual pathologies. Witness the article that Jill linked:

    At least some men convicted of sexual abuse say that child pornography from the Internet fueled their urges. In a recent interview, one convicted pedophile serving a 14-year sentence in a Canadian federal prison said that looking at images online certainly gave him no release from his desires — exactly the opposite.

    “Because there is no way I can look at a picture of a child on a video screen and not get turned on by that and want to do something about it,” he said. “I knew that in my mind. I knew that in my heart. I didn’t want it to happen, but it was going to happen.”

    3. Like the legalization of prostitution in Denmark and Australia, I wonder if an effect of allowing virtual child pornography will drive actual child pornography further underground. I wonder if those consuming child pornography would consider virtual child pornography a cheap knock-off….just not as good as the real thing. True pedophiles don’t WANT to have sex with adults who look like kids, they want to have sex with kids. I feel that those people who would willingly consume virtual child pornography are those people who wouldn’t become pedophiles in the first place….they know they have an attraction but don’t want to and want to control it, hence they legitimize it by looking at virtual child pornography where they know there is consent (in this case I think the BDSM analogy might be apt). But those who have pedophelic tendencies, who really want KIDS not just images of kids, will still continue to consume actual child pornography. I don’t think virtual child porn will replace actual child porn; it’ll just provide a new outlet for those adults who already rejected child porn but still have an attraction to immature bodies (but not immature minds).

  35. Pingback: season of the bitch » Sex and Free Speech

  36. For some empirical information on the current “state of the art” for virtual child porn, see a recent post on my blog. To get right to the facts skip the italicized introduction.

    http://debbienathan.com/2008/04/30/a-day-with-the-csi-folks-talking-about-virtual-child-porn/

    Related to this discussion is something else I will be writing about soon: the fact that a genre of Japanese-inspired porn exists — and is very popular worldwide including in the US — called “Yaoi.”
    It consists of cartoonish depictions of teenaged boys (some clearly meant to signify being underage) with older (but still young, handsome) men. These couples are in love and acting very “emo.” They have sex — often portrayed quite explicitly. It’s gay male sex, and (virtual) child porn. But it’s produced and consumed mainly by teenaged girls, including many younger than 18. Academics, including a public health professor at U. Pittsburgh, are writing about the dangers of government censoring this type of expression, because they feel it gives very young women a chance to explore sexuality. Repeat: this stuff is produced and enjoyed by women and girls, not men. You can google it: Yaoi. Many examples on Youtube as well.

  37. “while I do fear this will normalize the pedophiles’ unhealthy sexual attraction to children…..greater harm will be done to the First Amendment if these images are banned.”

    I just can’t keep my mouth shut.

    Who is more worthy of our protection? Children who are being targeted by porn-fueled child rapists, or adults who, for some perfectly healthy reason, want to sell non-sexual pictures of naked children?

    The evidence is out there that veiwing pornography has a significant tendency to create dangerous side effects in the viewer. I have a post all about statistics and studies to that effect (link – scroll down to “Pornography – Effects on Viewers”) And while I don’t know where sexual fantasies originally come from, normalizing those fantasies is the first step towards their enactment.

    So who needs state protection more? Children, from predators who are busy using masturbating and orgasm to reinforce and normalize their sexualization of children, or artists who are busy making money off of naked kids in renaissance poses?

    I think what gets lost in all of this is a simple question: Are men who want to see naked children performing sexual acts safe for society, at all, regardless of whether they’re looking at an actual child or a CG child, and if not, why should they be encouraged?

  38. I totally reject the idea that there is any connection between pornography and other sexual fantasy and real world sex. No such connection has ever been proven with research.

    Untrue, actually. Research shows that men—though not women so much—tend to only react to porn that shows the kind of sex that they prefer in real life. You couldn’t actually be more wrong. Straight men tend not to be as aroused by gay porn as gay men. If you show a guy into feet porn that features feet, he will find that more arousing than porn that doesn’t feature feet.

    I mean, seriously now. Common sense would tell you this, but luckily, so does research. Check out Mary Roach’s new book “Bonk”—it’s all in there.

  39. Which doesn’t mean—because I can smell the intellectually dishonest attempts to twist what I’m saying already forming—that men who look at porn rape more. There’s no research into that. Men who go to porn to see naked ladies want naked ladies, not necessarily rape. There’s been research into that and found that the porn-rape connection doesn’t exist. Rape is coddled and encouraged in our culture in a myriad of ways and it’s hard to single out just one.

    But when you overreach and say, “There’s NO connection between desire and porn choice,” you’re engaging in the rampant intellectual dishonesty that characterizes the whole feminist debate about porn.

  40. And at what age does child porn stop? I know it’s supposed to be 18 but is it wrong for a 20 year old guy to look at pictures of a 16 year old girl for his own purposes? Again is it mental (i.e. he gets off because she’s a young teen as opposed to because she has a body he desires) or strict act itself?

    Something I’ve never quite understood really.

  41. i agree with ren. from its onset, classic liberalism has always faulted toward indiscriminate freedom. in this framework, freedom can only be limited by the freedom of another, thus child pornography would not enjoy protection for the same reason a reporter cannot claim a free press right to break into someones house in order to research a story. but pornographic illustrations where no real children are involved clearly does not cross this line.

    unfortunately, even in america, we’re not even close to getting toward this framwork in regards to pornography. porn does not enjoy constitutional protection b/c its obscene, according to the miller test, a test clearly outside of the principles our regime was founded on. sally mann, btw, is protected by this b/c of “artistic merit.” one could argue that american community standards have changed so much that the miller test has become an easy one. but child porn, even those that do not include children, would still clearly fail it.

  42. But I remain troubled by it, especially in light of the fact that a whole lot of people who look at child porn go on to molest actual children.

    From the link:

    More than 85 percent admitted to abusing at least one child, they found, compared with 26 percent who were known to have committed any “hands on” offenses at sentencing. The researchers also counted many more total victims: 1,777, a more than 20-fold increase from the 75 identified when the men were sentenced.

    That certainly goes against the “safe outlet” argument that I had always bought into; it still doesn’t necessarily imply that child porn causes child molestation. It certainly complicates the issue though.

  43. I know anecdote does not a case make. But it moves me to say a little about this post.

    I was groomed, and abused at 7. However, I was raped at 3, and this had a major influence in the grooming there of, and what I mean is, I have always felt guilt over what happen. I was adamant that I initiated the grooming. I initiated the times of molestation. Though once I decided that I didn’t want to participate any more, he wouldn’t let me stop.

    That fact and that fact alone helped me to over come my guilt and carnal knowledge of the fact that no, I couldn’t have initiated it with someone who loved me. If he had cared, he wouldn’t have even thought my advances were in anyway acceptable.

    He knew what he was doing. He knew he had power over me. He threated me with my parents. Said if I told them they would never wake up. I was going through night terrors, (imagine your worst night mare and multiply it by 10). He started to answer my screams in the night, and made me depend on him. Before anything started. I had never connected this to the actual molestation so the guilt was just terrible for a long time. The fact that he put my parents to sleep every night with sleeping pills, just just pushes it more that he was/is a MONSTER.

    What causes them to do this? I doubt child porn had anything to do with it, beyond finding a victim. For these criminals, porn isn’t their cup of tea, they want action and nothing would be a substitute for the action.

    So banning it wouldn’t help. Not one iota. They would continue to find victims to hurt, what we need to do is find out why these people are so out of sync with the rest of humanity.

  44. Who is more worthy of our protection? Children who are being targeted by porn-fueled child rapists, or adults who, for some perfectly healthy reason, want to sell non-sexual pictures of naked children?

    But that’s a false dilemma. How about children who would like to feel comfortable and unashamed of their bodies? How about (as someone mentioned above) survivors of molestation who would like to use art to help them heal? When you reduce a nuanced situation to a simple question, you can get a simple answer but it won’t tell you much about the real world.

  45. Can some law person remind me again if slander and libel are considered protected speech? Also, the right to shout fire in a public theater? I was under the impression that there are indeed a small set of limits and exceptions to the First Amendment, but I am not 100% certain….?

  46. [That paedophilia is not an orientation]’s a big call, which I’m not sure can be backed up with evidence. There is at least some paedophilia which is hard wired, and often these people simply don’t believe that they are hurting the children – at least not in an emotional sense. – Ariane

    There are also those who are sexually attracted to children, but possess sufficient conscience – and lack of compulsion – that they do not try to have sex with them (or to put it another way, are aware that they cannot have sex with children, only rape them, and therefore do not). They don’t get a lot of publicity, but in their case, I would definitely describe it as an orientation. Really, paedophilia is an awkward term because we’re lumping several things under it that we would use different words for in adults.

    On the subject of faked child porn, I find the idea of it sufficiently repulsive that I’d want it banned – however, I am not certain that it would be right for me to get what I want. Though strong arguments have been made in that direction in this thread.

  47. Two comments in response to posts, above. First, about the study referenced in Post #42. This is about the Bureau of Prisons study reported on in the New York Times, purporting to have found that 85% of men in federal prison — for possessing child porn — admitted in a treatment program that they had actually molested children in the past (something never revealed until the program).

    The study is quite problematic. For one thing, generally speaking, prisoners are considered highly unreliable subjects for this type of research, because merely being incarcerated defines them as a coerced population who will say what they think the researchers want them to hear so they won’t suffer more, and may even have conditions improved as a reward. We may have extra reason to be worried about this particular group. I have heard from some men who have contacted me via internet (I am a journalist with a background in writing about child sex abuse and pornography issues) — claiming they were coerced while at the Butner federal prison (where the study was done) into taking the treatment program and into admitting prior acts of abuse whether true or not. One guy, for instance, said the child porn offenders at Butner are almost all middle-class, middle-aged whites, whereas the drug offenders are young minorities…so the child porn people are terrified of “general population”, especially because of the strong stigma against “child predators.” So, my informant claimed, authorities offer to remove them from the danger of general population ONLY if they agree to go into the “therapy” program where the research is being done.

    I do not consider these men’s statement’s reliable on their face because I have only had contact with two, and none have sent me their records or allowed me to inquire to the BOP about them. They say it’s because they are on probation and are afraid of repurcussions.

    However, two other bits of information: One, the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) itself has not allowed the study to be published. In fact, the feds pulled it from an academic journal after it had been placed. Apparently even the government feels there’s something problematic about the study. Second, when the Times first reported on the study, I contacted Richard Kreuger and Meg Kaplan. Both are sex researchers and sex therapists at Columbia University Medical School and associated clinics in New York. They are long time experts in the field and specialize in treating sex offenders, including individuals caught with child pornography. I asked both about the BOP study. Both said that the entire forensic sex (and sex therapy) research field is extremely leery of the study. At this point, they said, it must be considered junk science until shown otherwise.

    Re someone’s questions about First Amendment: libel and slander are not protected speech, though they are civil, not criminal matters. Yelling “fire” in a theater is deemed illegal (criminal penalties) because it is not considered the expression of an idea but rather an utterance with immediate, proximate (I guess you could say “skinnerian”) consequences: it will make people panic without thinking of any ideas, and they’ll get hurt.

  48. Ren’s post touches on one of the problems with restricting/policing non-photographic media — in a number of genres the age of the subjects is fuzzy. Where real people are involved, it’s easy to draw a line — that person is 20 even if she looks 16, that one is 16 even if she looks 20. If the subject only exists as paint or pixels, then how do you define the image as ‘child porn’? The de-aged photoshops marketed as such are easy. But then you have a whole slew of images that fall into a fuzzy area where viewers might offer a range of ages for the subjects. If the artist intended to depict two young-20s but you see two late-teens, who gets to decide? Do we make the definition of ‘child’ stricter/younger? And then what about images meant to explore the issue of pedophilia? To use the classic example, if someone illustrates ‘Lolita’, is it child porn?

  49. “…I didn’t want it to happen, but it was going to happen.”

    No else sees this as a blatant denial of responsibility for the perpetrator’s own actions? No film or image is going to make you do something you don’t want to do. Now, if you’ve already had the desire in your head, you’ll respond strongly to an image that corresponds to your desire.

    Could this be a stimulus? Sure. The entire world is a minefield of stimuli, in fact. You’ll see a naked two-year-old frolicking happily on the beach with his mother, and if that’s what you’re into, that’s what you’re going to respond to. The choice to act on your desire, however, is yours.

    Should society then make a law against naked two-year-olds frolicking happily on the beach, because pedophiles can get off to that and then turn around and say, “I didn’t want it to happen, but it was going to happen”? It’s an absurd proposition, but if we are going to let the pedophiles set the standard, that’s what it comes down to logically.

    You know what, I have desires too. Thankfully, they don’t involve molesting children, but I rather like me sugary foods, despite the fact that diabetes runs in my family and despite my genetic predisposition for cavities. Do get huffy with the grocery store management for making a beautiful display of their cakes? Or do I look away?

  50. Can some law person remind me again if slander and libel are considered protected speech? Also, the right to shout fire in a public theater? I was under the impression that there are indeed a small set of limits and exceptions to the First Amendment, but I am not 100% certain….?

    As with most questions in the law, there’s not a good answer to this that fits into a blog comment. That said, there certainly are restrictions on the types of speech protected by the First Amendment. Defamatory statements (slander and libel) and “shouting fire in a crowded theater” are among those types (along with obscenity, threats, fighting words, hate speech, noise pollution, etc.). But . . . it gets a lot more complicated than that.

  51. thanks southpaw…the reason I ask is this: If even the most absolutist anti-censorship types can agree that SOME forms of speech must be restricted to protect the rights and safety of individuals, I would suggest that child pornography should fit in that category. Even if only a tiny percentage of those who consume it go on to abuse kids, that is already too many.

    (I do realize that a problem comes up with defining child porn.)

  52. LooselyTwisted,

    You were SEVEN. There is nothing a seven-year-old can do to “initiate” sex. Look at any seven-year-old in your life and ask if anything she could do would be an acceptable invitation for sex. (An appropriate response to a seven-year-old behaving at all sexually towards an adult is to get her help). And then remember that you were 7. And were being manipulated, and caused to have night terrors, and your parents were drugged. And do your best to get over guilt that still remains.

  53. Here’s what I don’t get — even if you could make all erotic images of children vanish mysteriously tomorrow, would that really solve anything? Unless my understanding of human sexuality is gravely flawed, people who get off on the idea of having sex with minors will still find a way to gratify their urges — they’d just take it to the next level of virtuality and read smutty pedophiliac stories instead. No pictures, sure, but human beings are very good at imagining pictures and getting off from written words too. Regardless of what you believe about causal links between fantasy and reality, I have yet to see anyone advance the idea that a picture is more likely to make someone carry out a sexual fantasy in real life than a thousand words. At that point you’d be trying to outlaw the written word, which is even more clearly a free speech problem and even more impossible to track down and arbitrate.

    As for the Supreme Court decision — it’s much less disturbing than the decision they didn’t make in 2002, which focused on possession rather than pandering. I guess pandering is a grey area — from what I gather it can be easier for prosecutors to make scurrilous accusations of intent, which is scary in an area of crime that has been known to turn into an insane witch-hunt. But it’s probably better to focus on pandering than possession, yeesh.

  54. Or pornography featuring a woman using a vibrator in states where sex toy bans haven’t been overturned yet?

    It isn’t illegal anywhere to OWN sex toys, just to sell them, FYI.

  55. Debbie Nathan has some good points– we cannot know how closely tied correlation is with causation, and honestly, we may never know. Even if the prison study was 100% accurate– and we have no way of knowing if it is, as the prospect of coercion is so high in prison– that still only counts the men who ‘got caught.’ Are there ‘dabblers’ in child porn? I know that Japanese shota is, as Debbie says, quite popular among teenage girls, who are not the prime molesters of small boys in that country, IIRC. (A note, Debbie: yaoi is all ‘gay porn’ written primarily for women; shota is the specific genre of little boys/older men I think you’re referring to. There are actually subsets of yaoi that prefer beefy musclemen and the like.)

  56. Not sure how to respond to this one, and I’ve taken a few days to think on it.

    I’ve never really thought too hard about child porn on the internet. I used to work in a photo lab, and in the year I worked there, we called the police twice due to explicitly sexual images of children. It is a common enough practice for the company I work for to have a section dedicated to dealing with the images in our employee workbook. So what’s on the internet, to me, was much less scary than what was out there in real life.

    As uncomfortable as I am with those kinds of images, I do not believe that censoring images that do not involve actual children is the answer. I think that would cause more problems – for example, how does one handle erotic stories and writing? The Nifty archive features everything, including stories featuring cross generational sexual relationships and incest. Do we shut that down too? Ditto with hentai – a lot of the depictions that are between adults may still look like it involves children, due to the drawing style of the animator.

    What concerns me more than the availability of images is the response within a community to an accusation of sexual abuse concerning children. I felt very dissatisfied with how the police handled one of our situations – one in which there were pictures of an adult and child, then the pictures of the child became undeniably sexual in nature. We handed off the photo evidence to a very reluctant police man who seemed disinterested in taking any further action, willing to label the photos as just kids joking around. (I’ve seen those types and made those judgment calls, but I could not for the life of me understand that shots of an eight or nine year old stroking himself and spreading his cheeks would not be cause for alarm.) I am concerned in how we investigate these allegations, and if the children are believed when they discuss these things at school or at home.

    The images of that little boy (who was brown) and the person who dropped off the photos (an older white man) still concern me to this day. For some reason, I am reminded of Konerak Sinthasomphone. He was a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer, one who had escaped and alterted police, only to be returned to Dahmer (by the police) over his own protests.

    In these situations, how do we investigate? Who receives the benefit of the doubt? And how do we inform and educate a community to know when something is horribly wrong?

    To me, dealing with the ugly realities of the sexual abuse of children is more pressing than trying to control images where no children were harmed.

  57. Oh Christ… Konerak Sinthasomphone…

    John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, the two police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were fired from the Milwaukee Police Department after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited the “lovers”. The two officers appealed their termination and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union. Balcerzak would go on to be elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005.[2][3] [source: Wikipedia entry Latoya just linked]

    Slightly irrelevant, of course (or is it…?). That poor child. This makes me hate the world all over again.

  58. To me, dealing with the ugly realities of the sexual abuse of children is more pressing than trying to control images where no children were harmed.

    While I agree in theory, there’s one thing that bothers me about the whole “trying to control images where no children were harmed” notion.

    If this were about a drawing of a POC with a rope around their neck, we would not be pretending there is a question as to whether harm exists with such a thing even though no actual POC was harmed in its production.

    But once porn enters the picture, people suddenly disconnect from the obvious.

    Yeah, no child is harmed in the production of animated “child” porn. But it cannot be honestly denied that these things cause real world harm just the same.

    Outright banning doesn’t work for a damn thing, we all know this. Obviously, the main goal is to prevent the abuse and exploitation of all humans.

    But I’m not comfortable with divorcing this from real child porn. Both are symptoms of the same sickness, imo, and neither are harmless.

  59. One of the consequences of living in a free society is that people do stuff all the time that I disagree with or find yucky, like looking at simulated child pr0n, attending church, and eating lima beans. But if an actual human being isn’t harmed, I’m not sure why the law should be involved.

  60. It consists of cartoonish depictions of teenaged boys (some clearly meant to signify being underage) with older (but still young, handsome) men.

    No, sorry.

    “Yaoi” simply means “hardcore gay sex.” Because the Japanese are utterly obsessed with youth and with fixed social roles, the concept of the “seme” (top, dom) and “uke” (bottom, sub) are very, very popular in yaoi, but describing yaoi as about teenagers with older males misses the point. Some yaoi may indeed feature teens and older men. Most of it features two teens or two men, although very often the guy with darker hair or who is taller is drawn as if he is much older than the smaller or lighter-colored man, even though they are supposed to be about the same age.

    “Shonen-ai”, meaning boy love, is explicitly about love between teenagers, and again, because the Japanese are weird have an obsession with youth, they are often drawn to look even younger than they are. (Characters in anime and manga are often implausibly young for their social roles — the most egregious example I recall were a pair of 18-year-old astronauts, a 16-year-old schoolteacher, and a 22-year-old headmistress of a private academy who was also a brilliant scientist — and often look or act younger than they are, such as L in Death Note, who is assumed to be the same age as the college-entrant main character but is actually about 25. And that itself is kind of ridiculous because he’s supposed to be the World’s Greatest Detective, a rep it would be hard for such a young man to have established.) But shonen-ai is usually romantic, flowery, and does not graphically depict sexual acts. Yaoi, which does, is not limited to young characters.

    I cannot stress enough that the Japanese are totally obsessed with youth. Whether it is a male-male relationship, a male-female relationship or a female-female relationship, it is *very* common for one member of the pairing (always the female if it’s male-female) to be drawn as if they are 12, but to have the social role of a teenager, or to be stated to be 18 when their accomplishments in life make it impossible for them to be less than 28, and so on. *All* characters are aged down (men drawn to look like, and who behave like, grizzled middle-aged veterans being described to be 35), and the art style itself makes most characters look younger than they are to people who aren’t used to it. “Yaoi” makes use of these tropes just like the rest of anime and manga do, but describing yaoi as a relationship between an older man and a teen is like describing science fiction as a story about a white man with a spaceship. There are plenty of white men with spaceships in science fiction but that is not the definition of the genre. So too with yaoi.

  61. After rereading the NYT article, I think I feel a lot better about the original SC decision (at least without reading actual legal decidings), because the original act that they were reviewing makes it illegal to offer or solicit child porn, even if the relevant material is nonexistent, virtual, or featuring aged-down adults.

    To me, this seems to be in the same domain as making it illegal to solicit someone for the sale of drugs, even if the relevant ‘drugs’ actually are oregano or flour or whatever. I don’t think that the SC decision really allows for a banning of most of the things being talked about above:

    The law at issue was a response to a Supreme Court ruling in 2002, a decision that found unconstitutional an earlier law that prohibited simple possession of purported child pornography even if the material turned out not to depict real children. The First Amendment was violated by a law that “prohibits the visual depiction of an idea,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said in the 2002 decision.

    Justice Scalia said on Monday that by limiting the crime to the “pandering” of child pornography, the new law represented “a carefully crafted attempt to eliminate the First Amendment problems we identified” in the earlier decision.

    The crime in this case is not the possession of virtual child pornography, but rather the marketing of said material as actual child pornography.

  63. If this were about a drawing of a POC with a rope around their neck, we would not be pretending there is a question as to whether harm exists with such a thing even though no actual POC was harmed in its production.

    That’s true, but it may depend on the picture as well. Consider this: some decades ago, there was this Danish cartoonist, very popular in the USSR. His subjects were mostly humourous, but one of the things he was also concerned with was the Civil Rights Movement.

    He drew the following cartoon: a black musician is doing his thing, and a crowd of white people are enjoying themselves to the music. Then, the knackered musician needs to sit down for a minute. Unfortunately, he sits on a bench next to a white lady. The white people who were enjoying his music immediately pounce on him, dragging him off to be lynched.

    While he wasn’t referencing a specific situation (that I know of – the bench may or may not be a veiled reference to a relationship with a white woman…), the drawings obviously had a lot of impact. They continued to have impact decades later (as a child, I was shocked by them).

    Another Civil Rights cartoon also utilized a noose – in that particular sequence, a young girl is preparing for her first day of school. She and her mother are very excited: she wears a new dress, her hair is done up in celebration, she is smiling, it’s a series of pictures anyone with a child can relate to. Then, of course, she attempts to enter the school, and there are people screaming at her, and a KKK member is waving a noose over her head. Obviously, the girl is black.

    It’s an outsider view of what was happening in the States, and it’s powerful. Even after I moved to the U.S., I’ve always kept those cartoons in my mind.

    Now, a racist could look at those cartoons and say, “that’s what they deserve for trying to be equal with ME!”‘ Obviously. But I don’t think this automatically means that such drawings should be regulated, no?

  64. Yeah, no child is harmed in the production of animated “child” porn. But it cannot be honestly denied that these things cause real world harm just the same.
    …
    But I’m not comfortable with divorcing this from real child porn. Both are symptoms of the same sickness, imo, and neither are harmless. – Betty Boondoggle

    No, they’re not.

  66. I was very concerned about the effects of porn at one time, but after years of studying research on both porn, images of child abuse and violent entertainment (games, films etc.) I realised that there is no credible evidence that viewing leads to doing. Some may say that a lack of evidence does not prove a connection, but really, let’s be grown up about this; if after sixty plus years of looking for such a connection, by qualified and dedicated academics, many of whom are feminists, it still cannot be found, the likelyhood is that it does not exist.

    That is not to say some criminals and abusers do not use porn or that they do not claim when caught ‘the porn made me do it’, but we know abusers use the Bible, Holocaust images and a wide range of materials, some quite innocuous, in order to ‘justify’ what they do or excite themselves. Porn is just an easy target.

    As for the ‘cathartic’ effect of viewing this material, several studies have shown evidence that this may actually be the case, especially with pornography, of all kinds. Though, again this is not proof, merely a strong correlation between access to pornography and sexual assaults (more access = fewer assaults, less access = more assaults), it is much stronger than the ‘viewing leads to doing’ theory.

    The much vaunted ‘escalation effect’ of moving from fantasy to actual hands on crime is given credibility because we are looking for an easy answer to complex problems. The repression of fantasies is a very strong and extreme move to make, we cannot regulate what people think by banning some ideas that they may look at.

    Certainly the ideas conveyed in some pornography and other kinds of ‘entertainment’ are distasteful and even abhorrent, but this line of attack may actually be counter-productive and, the evidence suggests, may cause more harm and suffering of innocents.

    Behaviour is not so easy to control, if it were, politicians would have been using ‘entertainment’ to keep us ‘tame’, rather than merely distracted, long ago.

    The fight against porn is not only a battle that cannot be won, porn is more ‘socially acceptable’ than hard drugs and cartoons are a very grey area, but it seems, from the available evidence, to be a pointless waste of time and energy. There are more important battles to be won.

  67. I agree with the earlier posts that emphasise behaviour and personal responsibility. How can we, on the one hand say that sexualised images of women, or children, contribute to sexual assaults and on the other, say that the way a woman dresses cannot be a factor in a sexual assault?

    Of course the way a women dresses cannot be allowed to be used as an excuse for a sexual assault, this would be outrageous, but then how can we say that sexualised images of women or children must be considered to cause sexual assaults? Both are visual a stimulus which may feed an abusers fantasies, is it the stimulus that causes the assault? The banning or attempted controlling of ideas is a very dangerous route to take and can give a false sense of doing something useful. when such measure do not work, the call goes up for stronger more extensive bans, soon we loose sight of what we were trying to do in the first place and simply ban ‘things we don’t like the idea of’. Such a nasty drawings.

    You control behaviour by very simply setting clear boundaries and consistently punishing those who cross those boundaries. This works, it is not easy, but we know it does work. Neither fantasies nor entertainment, of all sorts, will affect behaviour any where near so much as a clear set of consistantly enforced boundaries.

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