RHD wrote:My concern here is not with paedophiles gaining financially from the production of those images, but with whether or not viewing those images has any effect on the likeliness of a paedophile harming a child.
That's a good question. I'm not aware of any reason to assume that it does. I suppose the availability of child porn might encourage paedophiles to fantasise more frequently, and to think about sex with children more frequently, and therefore to be more likely to consider acting out their fantasies. But on the other hand, the availability of child porn would give paedophiles an oppurtunity to satisfy their sexual urges (to some extent) without needing to harm children. Perhaps the
unavailability of child porn would encourage paedophiles to go out looking for the real thing.
I don't know. But either way, I don't think the effect is likely to be very significant.
Quote:Agrote, you've argued that being sexually attracted to children is no more controllable than being attracted to someone of the same sex or being schizophrenic, and I do agree with this (obviously hardly anybody would consciously choose to be a paedophile if such a choice was possible).
Good. And given the principle that "ought implies can", it makes no sense to say that it is wrong to be a paedophile. To say that it is wrong to be sexually attracted to children implies that one ought not to be sexually attracted to children. Since one has no control over whether or not one is sexually attracted to children, it cannot be the case that it is wrong to be so attracted (or wrong to be a paedophile).
It is wrong to abuse children, but it is not wrong to find them sexually attractive. It may be pathological and deluded, but not morally wrong.
Quote:But how do you think we should deal with other uncontrollable desires (such as the desire to murder or rape)?
Are those desires uncontrollable? Hetero- and homosexuality are deeply embedded, and no amount of therapy can truly alter them. I think the same is true of paedophilia. The desire to rape or murder, on the other hand, sounds like something that is learned, not something you are born with. If it is learned, it can be un-learned. If somebody associates sexual arousal with coersion, then that association can be extinguished through therapy. If somebody is inherently sexually oriented towards children, I don't think there are any learned associations to be broken. But I could be wrong.
Quote:Even people who watch a huge amount of pornography and masturbate to it several times a day probably still want to have sex with a real human. These things are not replacements for those desires any more than reading a recipe book is a replacement for eating your dinner.
Perhaps not, but do they encourage those desires? Reading a recipe book makes you more hungry, but the difference with looking at pornography is that you can actually satisfy your sexual 'hunger' in some way; you can have an orgasm. I'm not convinced that looking at porn makes you desire real sex any more than you did before. It might make you desire porn more than you did before, and you may become addicted to it. But I'm not sure that, say, a sexually frustrated man will be more likely to commit rape if he looks at a lot of pornography.
Quote:I've read news articles before about the computers of rapists being found to contain hundreds or thousands of pictures of pornography that simulates rape. I'm not saying that these images encourage rapists to rape (as some people might maintain), but it seems like actually having access to those pictures does not ultimately fulfill the desire to rape (please note that I'm not saying paedophiles are rapists, I'm just using rapists as an example of a desire for something illegal). Because of this, I don't think that being allowed to legally obtain child pornography would decrease the chances that paedophiles will have sex with children.
Maybe so, but as long as it doesn't
increase the chances, then it remains morally acceptable.
Quote:Being able to legally masturbate over child pornography might make you feel good for a short time - but that feeling probably doesn't last, and it won't satisfy your desires to be in a loving relationship with a child, which is a desire that some paedophiles say they have.
Yes, those paedophiles are probably bound to lead unsatisfying lives.
Quote:You say that making child pornography legally available to paedophiles would give them a harmless outlet for their sexual desires - but what do you suggest as a satisfying outlet for their emotional desires?
Relationships with adults?
Or non-sexual relationships with children, but that could be risky, and obviously parents wouldn't be very happy with it.
In my earlier thread about paedophilia I argued that it shouldn't be out of the question to allow older children to actually have sexual or romantic relationships with adults. But that's an issue for another thread.
Quote:People with low self-esteem or no social skills may have accepted that they will most likely never have sex with another adult or be in a relationship with one. They may have become reliant on pornography to satisfy their sexual needs, but this does not mean that if the situation arose, they would refuse the chance to have sex with another adult.
But the situations you're talking about are presumably cases of consensual sex, not of rape. Think of the analogy with paedophilia. How often does a situation arise where a child
knowingly offers or agrees to have sex with an adult? If that situation arose often, then certain kindso f sex with certain kinds of children might not be such a problem. But assuming that the situation tends not to occur, the paedophile will have to commit rape if he is going to obtain real sexual satisfaction.
Does looking at images of adults having sex make ordinary adults more likely to commit rape? I think not. Same goes for images of children having sex.
Quote:Some people lose their jobs, are disowned by their families, move to the other side the world, and so on, just so that they can be in a relationship with the person they love.
They
change their jobs, start
new families and live in new places. They gain as much as they lose.
Quote:People lose a lot for love. But all a paedophile would lose by trying to be in a relationship with a child or have sex with a child would be a life where their sexual desires are not ultimately fulfilled and they have no chance of being in a relationship with a child. This doesn't really seem like much to lose.
Paedophiles who go to prison (and anyone else who serves a long prison sentence) lose their freedom, their respect, their self-esteem, their hope, their safety, their future, etc. That is a lot to lose. Satisfying your sexual desires isn't the only thing that makes life worth living. A life worth living could be a life where you have a range of hobbies and interests which your are able to pursue; a life where you have a fulfilling career whci hmakes you feel useful and needed; a life where people love and respect you, and you lvoe and respect them. If we deny the right for a paedophile to live such a life, then we make his life outside prison as desolate as his life inside prison. Only then will a paedophile have nothing to lose by raping a child.
Quote:Also, if the possession of child pornography was legal, paedophiles would be able to masturbate to it in their prison cells.
Only if we made it legal inside prison cells. Anyway, a life of **** food, no women, no freedom, no respect, but lots of porn... is still worse than a life outside prison (with lots of porn). Porn isn't everything!
Quote:...there is one problematic consequence: people who are not paedophiles may view those images and find themselves becoming sexually attracted to children.
I doubt it. They'd have to actually try and masturbate over the stuff, so that they could learn to associate the images with sexual gratification. They'd have no reason to do that, and I'm not even sure it would work.
Quote:You might think is an absurd idea, but I think you will find that there are many cases of people who, when browsing (adult) pornography on the Internet, come across things they have not seen or considered before and find themselves enjoying them.
Finding yourself attracted to something is not the same as making yourself attracted to something. If somebody sees an image of child porn and
discovers that they are attracted to it (i.e. discovers that they are a paedophile), then better that they know sooner rather than later.
Quote:My point is, I'm sure that many of those people who enjoy watching black pregnant women in uniform having anal sex with a group of people, or Asian women having sex with horses, did not enjoy those things prior to coming across them on their Internet travels.
How do you know they wouldn't have found them attractive if they had seen them?
