LOTS of manga/anime now illegal in Sweden; soon to be in EU

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Which shows how nonsensical these laws are. There is no difference between a story character in a novel and a story character in a comic book. Both publications are literary works. Both characters are entirely fictional. No children where harmed in either case.



There is no such thing as "manga child porn". Like I said, that makes as little sense as "video game murder" or "movie homicide". Child porn harms and victimizes real children. Fictional stories don't harm anybody.



There is also no "teen child pornography" in magazines that depict 18+ year old models.

I've often seen you do this in discussions about pornography and other media. You use semantics to twist adult models into minors and drawings into children, and conflate porn in general with child porn. And you love to add snides like "if one was so inclined, one could always move to a country where the age of consent is 12" to smear your discussion opponents with the pedophile brush. You might want to stop that, because it makes people less inclined to value your opinion. One doesn't have to be a pedophile to stand up for freedom of speech and oppose irrational censorship. Or do you think that Neil Gaiman is a child molester?

That's exactly what the police told bookstore owners who sold sex education literature back in the 1950s and 60s, which was seen as "contrary to decency and morality". So much for enforcing cultural norms. That's where we're headed again if we don't speak up against unnecessary censorship that crosses the line between youth protection and book burnings.

Another side effect of censorship: Back in those days, sexual child abuse was a lot more common, simply because it was a huge taboo that couldn't be talked about. If we taboo a topic to the point that it can't be shown or mentioned in fictional publications, we risk creating a society where few people are aware of the issue and sexual abuse victims don't dare to come forward.

actually he isn't twisting anything. porn featuring adults who are made up to look like minors is illegal in some places as it simulates child porn. same with comic depictions.

it makes perfect sense to me that it is illegal because it normalises porn that features children (real or simulated) and it perpetuates the demand. making some kiddie porn illegal while deciding that simulated stuff is fine, is essentially saying that there is nothing WRONG with being sexually attracted to children, as long as no actual children are harmed in creating fap material for such desires. i disagree. i think that being attracted to children is wrong.

I personally don't think being attracted to children is wrong if you never act on those desires and watching or reading something "dirty" regardless of the subject matter doesn't mean you have any desire to do it in real life.

I'd say maybe things that involve prepubescent children are pretty iffy but a lot of this stuff involves teenagers.

What about nude drawings of underage characters? Should those be illegal too?

it depends. if we were in a culture where people are nude all of the time in public, then a nude drawing of a child would not be a problem. in our current society, it is more problematic. part of it depends on context. pornography is intended to be arousing, but in general art is not.

That is one problem. Who decides what is "pornographic" and what is "art"?

I would generally consider most manga, even the "dirty" ones to be artistic.

Some people are so extreme the other way that they would consider nude works of art to be "pornographic".

I don't see the harm if it doesn't involve real people.

Edit: I also wonder where things like fanfics fit in with this. Are people going to attack those and want those to be illegal too or are those considered "artistic"? There is probably more underaged sex in fanfic than in all the manga in Japan.

Why do written books deserve more protection than drawings? If someone is so offended by a manga where a 15 year old has sex why not take offense at Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series which is packed full of underage sex since Beauty is only 15? I'd also say those books were definitely meant to be arousing.

What if I draw and publish a stick figure that said "I'm a 18 year old and I want to have sex" under the picture and then I drew the same stick figure, but it said "I'm a 17 year old and I want to have sex" under the picture.

Would I go to jail for the second picture but be fine for the first one?

the law decides what is pornographic. i wouldn't really trust someone to decide if they did NOT think that it is wrong to be attracted to children, because that would run counter to what the law is attempting to curb.

i think underaged fanfics or fiction with underage sex should be illegal too, absolutely. i don't see why not.

If it's a child stick figure or just a phrase, I don't think it's anthropomorphized (if that's the right word) explicitly enough to be recognized as CP. That can definitely be disputed in court. Otherwise any abstract conception that could remotely resemble a child would not be safe from such laws.

"Barely 18" pornography is not "teen child pornography". That's just disingenuous semantics on aphogday's part. The term child porn is equally incorrect and inflammatory in this context. Even if a 20 year old model wears a school girl outfit and pretends to be 16, she doesn't pretend to be a child. Biologically, a child is a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Postpubertal minors are commonly referred to as adolescents, juveniles or teenagers.

Btw, seeing that aphogday is a simulated baby and should be treated as a real infant according to your line of reasoning, I wonder why he is allowed to post in the adult forum



There is certainly nothing wrong with people who masturbate (or fap, as you put it) to "barely 18" material. It is utterly insane to pathologize and even criminalize men who are attracted to sexually mature, 18+ year old models, even if they were to wear diapers. It also makes little sense to push adults who fantasize about having sex with 16-year-olds, which is actually legal in most Western countries, into the pedophile corner. It is perfectly normal for heterosexual males to feel attracted to all females with a sexually mature body shape.

As for pedophiles, I think there is definitely something wrong with them from a medical perspective. As a reminder, pedophiles are people who had the bad luck to develop a sexual attraction to prepubescent children (not adult models in Barely 18 magazines; there seem to be some misconceptions about that in this thread), often as the result of being sexual abuse victims themselves. But despite pedophiles suffering from a pathological paraphilia, I don't think they should be punished for who they are unless they actually endanger or harm a child. (That is another common misconception: Pedophiles are not automatically child molesters. Just like heterosexual men are not automatically rapists, although the extremist fringes of feminism might disagree with me there).

Nobody should be punished for a thought crime, for masturbating to a fantasy, or simply for their sexual orientation. You can't tell me that this is just. When I had to deal with difficult and derisive coworkers in the past, I've occasionally thought "I'd like to shoot or strangle this idiot". But that doesn't make me a murderer. Nor does watching horror movies, which could be said to normalize homicide and perpetuate the demand for simulated murder, make me a homicidal maniac.

But back to pedophiles. Seeing that we can't cure their paraphilia, and that they are likely reluctant to voluntarily undergo chemical castration, I think that children would be a lot safer if pedophiles had a legal and harmless sexual outlet. There is an undeniable correlation between the rise of pornography and the decline of rape in the Western World, no matter how much anti-porn feminists like to deny or downplay it -- a remarkable decline of 85% in the USA since the 1970s (source) -- which suggests that legally available, fictional porn that caters to pedophile interests would probably lead to a decline of child abuse. If that is the case, politicians like Censilia Malmström and Censursula von der Leyen, as well as anti-porn / pro-censorship activists in general, are complicit in the perpetuation of child rape.

If we criminalize pedophiles for seeking harmless, fictional sexual outlets, chances are that we only render them more likely to commit real, harmful crimes. How do you think someone feels after spending several years in jail and carrying the sex offender brand on his forehead for owning the wrong kind of comic book? Is he more or less inclined to lash out at the society that did this to him? I think such a person would probably figure that he might as well commit the crime which he already did the time for. Thought crime persecution is likely to end up putting children at risk instead of protecting them. Children are even at risk of being criminalized themselves, as the case of the 14 year old New Jersey "sex offender" who was prosecuted for posting her own photos has shown.

Do you think Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" should be illegal as well? What makes his novel superior to fanfic?

And why stop at underage sex? Fictional bestiality is just as abhorrent. So let's throw all paintings that depict Leda and the swan onto the pyre while we're at it.

Oh god, they really should do that though, every furry in existence would then be jailed.

I kid, sorry, had to.

Somehow, that sentence doesn't sit well with me. Are you sure that you meant "it is wrong to be attracted to children", and not "it is wrong to have sex with children"? I'm asking because I don't think that pedophiles get to choose their sexual orientation. Nobody gets to do that. By saying that pedophilia is wrong -- not sexual child abuse, but the sexual attraction to children -- you are suggesting that a group of people is wrong simply for existing, regardless of their conduct. That is a dangerously slippery slope, imho.

yes yes and yes. i have no problem censoring those things too. censorship is no big deal to me - our society is already heavily censored, but we are used to it so it doesn't chafe too much.

about your other points, "barely legal" or "barely 18" means just that - LEGAL as it would be people who are obviously 18. but it does not excuse someone being made up to look 14 and sexualised in that context. the two areas are completely distinct.

a child is whoever our society deems to be a child. if we decide people who are 20 years old are children and should be protected... then that is our decision. i don't have a problem with that. it is somewhat arbitrary, but so what? i think that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and if sex is not permitted with a certain age group, then neither should the porn be allowed.

if it is not acceptable to see actual children naked in a sexual context, then it does not really make sense to have pretend-porn being acceptable. it sends a message that pedophilia is ok... and frankly it isn't. there is no guarantee that a pedo won't act on it at any given moment. if the urge is there, it may just be a matter of opportunity. researchers are not certain what makes one person act on it while another does not.

i think people should be prevented from acting on their urges if they are pedophiles, and to me.... acting on it includes viewing porn. apparently the law agrees. go figure.

like i said above, the urges themselves are wrong. at no point did i say that the entire person is wrong for existing, but yes - i think the sexual urge directed at children is wrong and we should be trying to help people to stop desiring children in that way. we do not know when a person may cross over from thought into action.

Speaking of historical artwork, there are also countless ancient Greek vases and crockery that depict adults in sexually explicit situations with adolescents. Erastes and his juvenile lover Eromenos were a common motive. We can hardly outlaw the modern day equivalent of this culturally inappropriate erotica without smashing these antiquities, or at least banning them from galleries and museums. And I'm afraid that private collectors will have to face jail time and sex offender registration. Child porn is child porn.

This makes me wonder how many pieces of antique art are already lost to posterity because some Victorian archeologist thought "we can't possibly display this smut in a museum". Not to mention the many paintings and writings that were destroyed by Catholic clergymen and monks during the Middle Ages. Censorship is indeed the younger sister of a lady called Inquisition, to paraphrase Johann Nestroy. If only people would learn from history.