Re: Wishful thinking

You do not appear to see how this sort of material actually affects those depicted. Why not read some accounts from victims and try to understand how they feel.

Markie argued that you are asking for special pleading when it comes strictly to people who may be upset because there are others out there--even though they generally have no idea who or where--may be thinking thoughts they dislike while viewing material about them that involves sexual activity. And he's right, because you do not see comparable arguments made against those who have been filmed being subject to a crime that did not have sexual connotations, nor special consideration made for anyone who knows there are genuine crime scene photos of their loved ones who were murdered and mutilated by serial killers in circulation. Nor do we seem to have any concern for celebrities who we know are upset because images are circulating that depict them at their worst moments. If it doesn't involve specifically minors and sex, we hardly care if it involves incidents that either do not involve minors, or do not specifically involve sex. And this tells a lot about your concerns; they are based in moralism to control the dissemination of certain imagery that you personally dislike, not in genuine desires to help other people avoid trauma. And they are used as an emotional club to justify censorship and the arrest of people simply for looking at pictures and what their thoughts might be while doing so. Sorry, but many people do not want to live in a police state, and detest witch hunts more than they are concerned with those who are upset about certain types of imagery being viewed.

I'm afraid it is a special case and most adults would see it this way since children do require special protections in many areas. Only paedophiles might see it otherwise or those who insist on total freedom - which is not possible in most societies these days. Adult celebrities should be mature enough to know what the media can do for good or evil with their images. Plenty do not embrace the media precisely for this reason whilst many are whores to celebrity and will do anything that gets them attention. And Diss, don't inject my morality into this. It is not about what I personally think, which might coincide with the majority, it is about the issue of child protection, about which as any thinking person I would aim to maximise without restricting freedoms.

Of course they don't know if anyone who they might ever meet has seen such material - that is the problem and why they feel so insecure and that is why they often feel so afraid and vulnerable. It will last the rest of their lives since we can often be recognised from childhood photos. The damage will be far worse if the material was more easily available.

Again, the same arguments can be made about many other types of photos that do not involve sexuality. Do you see the very simplistic pattern emerging here? It's all about sexual activity, bro, and nothing else.

I see it all about protection, Diss, so we will have to part company here.

At least at the moment one knows that anyone accessing the material has broken a law and therefore is less likely to actually do anything if they came across a victim. You really think that a pre-pubescent child at school will have no different experiences if the images were known to their class-mates? Many children who have early sexual experiences either being what they would see as consensual or otherwise are picked on by others because of this alone - it is in the nature of many children to do this - 'she's an easy lay'.

Once again, you identify the corrupt sexual mores promulgated by our culture and instead of suggesting that we work to change them, you instead suggest limiting the civil rights of people to possess and view various types of material--which does nothing about resolving or even confronting the real problem, but in fact actually acts as a distraction from it. You work in harmony with Big Brother rather than fighting the real problems, which is our remaining Victorian-based anti-sex attitudes.

I do believe we have a long way to go to regain some sense in our sexuality but I do not think children below puberty show any great desire to change much that is existing apart from perhaps some appropriate decent sex education to enable just such scenarios as I mentioned to be avoided. Perhaps they will have more sex and perhaps not and perhaps nothing will change - in that many will predate on the less powerful/less knowledgable as they always have done. Knowledge should empower but only time will tell.

Silly. Child porn is much more relevant to a child than adult porn - "see, Amanda, it is quite normal really." I would restrict adult porn too, particularly when it seems so accessible to children these days, as you might know from some of my comments. It has many negative effects too but I hope we can leave that from the debate.

I think here you provide ample evidence that the reason you focus so obsessively and so nigh-exclusively on pics and vids of a sexual nature as being "damaging" to kids is because you loathe the idea of pornography or eroticism in general,

I'll have to ignore and cut any more of this stuff Diss if you continually target me as some puritanic censoring sex-hater. I couldn't care less if people want pornography in their lives and it enhances their relationships or just enhances their lives but overall we seem to be going the route where there will be nothing left to do with regards to sex - everything is possible - ah freedom at last! It seems few who actual see no problems have looked into the history or where we are heading.

and you realize it's far easier to limit its distribution by joggling people's emotional psychoses when it comes to youth sexuality by first attacking the distribution and access to images depicting underagers in sexual situations, and then using the panic about kids having access to adult pornography as an excuse to attack the easy distribution of pornography or eroticism involving adults. You are a classic example of the Meese Commission's eager ideological/political progeny. You don't care that there is no evidence to support that these things are universally harmful to kids; you simply do not like eroticism in general, and you want kids, at least, to be kept "pure" from it. When you talk about kids being so upset about images of them being available, or about them being "damaged" by gaining easy access to imagery of adults in sexual situations, what you are really doing is projecting your own phobias upon them and creating a "cause" out of it, knowing that the "protect the children from sex and sexual exploitation" mantra are easy emotional strings to juggle in people so that your actual motives are either not recognized or not acknowledged when they are--even though you make your anti-sex phobia very obvious in many cases.

I don't need to project anything. I just try to understand what effects this has on kids and what I see is obviously not the same as what others see. Not difficult to understand since I don't have any specific agenda to push whilst many here do have such an aim.

Like I said before, my newest friend, you may not be religious per se, but there are many fundie Christian and Islamic clergy who would enjoy a nation full of subjects like you. And people who actually support the concepts of freedom and liberty do not like individuals with personal issues against sexuality to use them to limit our civil liberties.

As I've said one often cannot choose the company one is in but being a member of a group should not control one's thinking. I believe that IS an essential freedom - being able to think freely without being coerced - so I'll be embarrassed when my views line up with certain groupings but it will not affect my views. I would regard myself as reasonably liberal but having no essential philosophy other than trying to see the most accurate picture and aiming for that which harms the least number.

As I said earlier and which you seem to agree with, it is the uncertainty that matters.

That depends on whether one favors an "err on the side of caution" approach--a classic draconian political and emotional trope used to limit just about any type of civil rights people can think of--or one takes a libertarian approach compatible with the principles of a free society, and considers what actually does happen as more important than what might happen, and is more concerned about the uncertainty of draconian laws based on overcomempensation hurting innocent people by denying them their freedom than the possibility of upsetting people because of certain images that are available. Note how you do not care in the least about the trauma suffered by kids who are arrested for taking provocative pics and vids of themselves, or from being pulled into the witch hunt themselves? It becomes quite clear your main motive is simply to keep certain images that you find personally offensive out of public distribution, which includes making images of adults in sexual situations more difficult for anyone to access.

Now, now, Diss - all my comments are related to pre-pubertals and I have great sympathy for our current crop of teenagers who might get themselves into trouble with their sexting and other stuff. I would not like to see any punished by law for such activities but few pre-pubescents apparently are doing any of these things unless they involve adults and there is much to believe that the kids are NOT the ones in control in such situations.

Reduce the taboo? This wouldn't lead to more adult-child sexual relationships? I think you are doing the advocating that seems endemic here on GC.

First of all, advocating choice is not the same thing as advocating a certain type of sexual activity.

Secondly, this taboo hurts kids in many ways, including all the iatrogenic and sociogenic harm that results from it, but of course, you don't care about this, because it's not preventing the trauma of children that concerns you the most, but simply keeping them away from sexual activity at all costs. If it was only "children with adults" you were concerned with, then you wouldn't support and advocate a taboo that gets kids into legal trouble for sexual interaction with peers, or simply taking solo provocative pics, far more often than it does with adults. Your real issues and motives are pretty easy to discern when a careful, objective eye is placed on your rhetoric.

If I thought the kids were actually aware of what they were doing and of the future consequences then I might be more inclined to see it as their freedoms but since I don't, and most professionals dealing with child development would probably agree, I see it as getting into troublesome areas for which they actually do need protection. We let our kids have the freedoms that will stretch them without also damaging them too much. The cost of these particular freedoms is too high a price to pay.

because it is not purely that 'sex is bad for kids' is what defines the issue but 'sex is bad for kids with adults'

Mmmhmmm.

and that stems from multiple factors but the main ones which have been endlessly debated here is the concept of 'power' and 'consensuality' which many here will adamantly dispute are problems.

We do agree they are problems. And very often. We simply often suggest democratic solutions to them, vis a vis empowering kids legally and properly educating them, and respecting them on the basis of their individual merits, rather than your draconian, sex-negative, and witch hunt-proliferating methods, which do not solve the main problem, but help you deal with your personal issues by seeing people who view material, or produce such material--be they kids or adults--that you find personally offensive to be censured, censored, and punished, as well as this material being forced into the underground so you are less likely to be faced with it personally.

Keep flying the banner of liberty but I propose few will buy this particular 'freedom' especially coming from the author of the article.

and those non-paedophiles will see them as substantial issues.

However, as the article that started this thread makes clear, a gradually growing number of Non-MAPs are increasingly beginning to identify the same problems that the pro-choice majority of MAPs have been pointing out for years now, and a growing number of Non-MAPs who take civil liberties seriously are becoming sick and tired of the witch-hunting, the attacks on the civil liberties of everyone, the special pleading from a legal standpoint given to victims (real and imagined) of just one specific type of crime, the proliferation of unscrupulous draconian moralists who profit from the victim-creating industry, the ever-increasing police powers over society in general, and the huge price our already-nominal democracy is paying for the psychotic Orwellian drive to censor any type of depiction of youth sexuality that is pervading the West and the North, largely courtesy of the USA and Britain. You see the writing on the wall here, and it scares the hell out of you. Good, because I think it will ultimately be a beneficial thing for our society to be forced to confront and deal with its silly and psychotic issues regarding something as normal and common as sexuality, and to dispense with the Victorian influence on them once and for all.

I'll agree there is more of this stuff about but not sufficient or coming from sufficiently respected voices to make much of a dent. I do agree finally that we need to change our attitudes substantially with regard to many issues involving children, nudity and sexuality but the illegality of CP is not and will not be one of the things abandoned to our new 'freedoms' - at least in my view.