lunncal said:
I guess it all depends on whether drawn child porn will lead people to actual child porn, or if it will divert people away from actual child porn. It's a difficult decision, and I seriously doubt there's been any kind of research into this type of thing. Hm...
I'm sure there has been, but really I'd have to say that nothing I understand about people supports the idea that this kind of surrogacy actually
reduces desire. See most particularly: Behaviorism.
We respond to things that make us feel good. We seek them out. If something produces a favorable result, we don't "fill up" and walk away. We continue to seek it out. But, as intelligent beings, we also habituate to stimuli--over time, the same stimulus doesn't have as big an impact.
Now, I
will not say that watching porn leads the watcher to rape, or that viewing child porn will lead to the viewer abusing children. I will, however, say that someone who is
using these sorts of porn to
cover the desire to rape/abuse/etc. is not going to be
put off from that desire. This isn't like snacking a bit here and there to keep from binging, it's more like feeding tiny branches into a fire to keep it from dying.
What's more, if someone is truly
only interested in the porn (and not using it as a surrogate for other desires), they are still subject to habituation. Loli-manga starts to get samey or boring... so then you go to the loli-porn, where adult film stars try to
look like children, but that starts to lose its impact... and then where do you end up? Child porn, eventually. It's not some cosmic guarantee this person is going to jump the line to abusing children, but that's not why child porn is bad.
I'll finish that thought in response to this poster:
Sightless Wisdom said:
This has the same angle as the "porn is bad" argument. Porn is good, when internet porn became more popular, sex related crime rates went down in a lot of areas. Only in the case of drawn porn, there is no downside... just none!
False. Porn is not "good." It does have clear downsides. One can argue that
highly suspect claim that sex crime has reduced
because of the availability of porn, but there is so much unsupported in just that one sentence that it's not worth standing on.
But regardless, let's say it has. There's little doubt that the porn industry does not take great care of its women. More often than not, they are taking advantage of those women, even if the women are doing it voluntarily. Many actresses are in self-destructive patterns. There is still
abuse there... it's just not "criminal" because it has funding. NOTE: Not
all porn is like this, but that doesn't negate the existence of the problem.
As for drawn porn, I've outlined above exactly how that "slippery slope" operates... and it's not all that sloped or slippery, either. It's a perfectly natural progression in human psychology. The fallacious "slippery slope" argument would be that porn leads to rape. But the idea that porn leads to porn? Perfectly reasonable.
The "age" of managa characters, even if acknowledged in the story is irrelevant as the character has never and will never exist. There is nobody being harmed, or effected in any physical way, so why is this a problem?
It's a problem because the age apparently matters to the
viewer. If this non-existent character and her age are both irrelevant,
why does she have to be underaged? Obviously, the artist/author has chosen to make this the case because there is some appeal to
that specific fact. The focus isn't on looking at naked women, or watching people have sex, or just looking at sexy images. The focus is on doing those things with
underage women.
Again, not saying "child porn leads to child abuse." Not directly, at least. But the idea that anime child porn paves the way for
real child porn is not wild or unfounded. And let's say someone
does make the switch, but never, ever lays a hand on a child. Okay, but
someone has to exploit those children.
In this case, the law is about trying
not to create demand for that awful supply.
