In New Zealand, drawings deserve more justice than humans

Post Reply New Topic

I agree with you.

Would expect anything else from a country run by John Key & The National Party? (that and the national party f****d us over in the 70's with Robert Muldoon"). Mind you, the Labour party's just as bad.

Avaaz? What a waste of bandwidth.

A quick scan of their last 6 years of clicktivism will demonstrate not one successful campaign. Avaaz has never succeeded in changing public policy in any campaign that they have undertaken. Now, that's not to say that their petitions don't focus on important events taking place worldwide, but they duplicate the efforts of agencies like Amnesty International, which have far greater credibility with policy makers.

Internet petitions are useless. Nobody who is in a position to respond to them cares about their contents, and they carry vastly less weight in policy making circles than people who are prepared to put their money where their mouth (mouse?) is. The ability to raise money counts. The ability to mobilize people counts. But Avaaz has only sporadically been able to demonstrate either of these (and their money raising has been for charitable rather than activist purposes).

Anyone who believes that signing an Avaaz petition is meaningful is simply indulging themselves in self-delusion.

I have a problem with all three of those words.

"innocent":

Innocent of what? Innocent of molesting real-life fairies? Well, obviously. Innocent of possessing pornography depicting sex-acts with minors? Apparently not.

"anime":

A very specific subset of anime.

"fans":

It's porn. I mean, yeah, it probably has a storyline. But it's not a TV show or something.

The reason real child pornography is bad is because a real child had to be harmed to create it. With drawings no one real was harmed.

Where do you even draw the line? Some would probably say drawing of nude underage characters are bad. Then I guess they would have to arrest an awful lot of people since even manga like Inuyasha show underage girls naked. (Kagome is 15)

The book store that used to be at the mall near me sold 18+ rated manga with under 18 characters having sex.

Last I looked Ebay and other web sites were full of doujinshi depicting underage characters having sex, for example most Yugioh doujinshis feature underage characters.

That's definitely the primary reason that child pornography is a Bad Thing. But there are secondary reasons which also carry over to the case of cartoon child pornography. I don't really have a strong opinion about whether those reasons make sense, but it's pretty clear how the arguments would go. It's not a case of "fairies were harmed".

You think there are secondary reasons, which you will not bother to name and which you aren't even sure make sense? This has got to be the least convincing argument I've ever read.

It's not meant to be an argument for banning cartoon child pornography. It's just meant to explain that talking about "fairies weren't hurt" is a strawman. If you want to have a real argument about banning cartoon child pornography, go ahead, but I won't be on a particular side of that argument.

And you say I don't "bother" to name those reasons? Well, that's a odd thing to say since they are in the article that started this thread.

"Fairies weren't hurt" isn't a strawman, it's a rather strong argument. "Real children were hurt" is a reason to give people a jail sentence. Even if there are valid secondary reasons, they aren't anything like as strong a reason to put someone in jail for a long time.


You mean like this?

That's an insinuation, not an argument.

Of course they're not as strong a reason. Who said they were? Actually, I seem to recall specifically saying that they weren't.



It's pretty easy to see how to make it into an argument. And maybe there is even some evidence to back it up. But like I said, it's not my position. You'll have to take it up with the people who make the argument. I'm just saying, if you ever run into such a person, "fairies weren't hurt" is not going to help you.

It would, actually. At the very least, it would keep them from equating actual child porn with drawn images, or if they insisted on doing that, it would make them look foolish. It would force them to deal with the actual problem. I have not looked into the evidence enough to know, but I suspect that their argument is based on an emotional reaction, rather than facts, and that the facts are against them.

Whatever the case, "fairies weren't hurt" helps me. Maybe they are foolish and the argument makes them look like fools. Maybe they are reacting emotionally, and it forces them to deal with reality, instead of their own emotional reaction. Maybe they really are right, and have evidence and argument to support their position, in which case my argument will keep them from getting away with less factual methods of arguing.

To me making underage drawings illegal makes about as much sense as arresting someone for murder or assault for having a horror movie or drawings depicting violence. It's not real and arresting people for it is just thought police.

Also if any and all depictions of underage sex are bad I can think of multiple famous authors that would be in prison including Stephen King and Anne Rice. It may be only text but I've seen people that think underage fanfic should be illegal.

Your metaphor doesn't work. The parallel to that metaphor would be if the guy was arrested for sexual assault because he had cartoon child pornography. But that's not what happened.



Why is the term "thought police" scary? It's because it makes us think of a repressive state crushing unpopular opinions which might threaten their power. But that's not what is happening here. Like I said earlier, there is no opinion that can only be expressed through the medium of cartoon pornography.

What? How does his metaphor not work? In his metaphor, an event which would be bad if it actually happened (murder or sex with a child) does not actually happen, but rather is depicted (by special effects or by a drawing).


No, it's because someone telling you what you can and can't think is oppressive, obnoxious, unnecessary, wrong, and counter to basic human instinct. It also can be used by a repressive state to crush those they don't like, but that is not the only reason "thought police" is a repulsive idea.


That is irrelevant. Freedom of speech should not be limited to media which are uniquely suited for the expression of a particular opinion. Opinion is not the only kind of speech, nor does a limit on which media should be allowed for what based on being the unique medium that can express something make sense.

SITUATION A: (the original metaphor)
- Kevin possesses a cartoon depicting murder
- a court finds Kevin guilty of murder
- this is stupid

SITUATION B: (the correct parallel to the metaphor)
- Kevin possesses a cartoon depicting sexual assault on a minor
- a court finds Kevin guilty of sexual assault on a minor
- this is stupid

SITUATION C: (what actually happened)
- Kevin possesses a cartoon depicting sexual assault on a minor
- a court finds Kevin guilty of possessing a cartoon depicting sexual assault on a minor
- this makes sense

It only makes sense if you think the state imposing moral standards on drawings through force of law is legitimate. Many of us don't.