Is it wrong to view child pornography?

What?

Read what you write, instead of nitpicking..

I'm having enough difficulty trying to read what you write.

What is it that you want me to reread? What are you trying to tell me? You've lost me completely.

You are a lost soul, anyway..

Francis, Don't write him off just yet; maybe he just needs to learn more about what is considered not acceptable behavior in universal terms.

We all grow up in different environments, and do not get the kind of exposure that makes us a bit more understanding of cultural and ethical behavior.

At least he keeps asking questions.

Francis, this is all getting a bit cryptic. Do you have something to say, or are you just going to keep writing ungrammatical sentences with no obvious meaning or relevance?

Agrote just goes on proving my original points over and over and over again.

One of the beauties of life, though in this case twisted beyond recognition, is that almost any point that is not factual can be argued to death. The viewing of child pornography is a perception thing (humans are perceptual beings), and also results in a human conditioning (and who can prove what the condition ends up being?).

We can have all the people in the world except the pedophiles say the pedo's are wrong, and still the pedo's will think its the rest of us that are wrong. They've managed to justify it in their heads, and has anyone ever noticed that no matter how many times you jail them, they are repeat offenders? Which means whatever arguments are thrown at them, they still find a way to justify it to themselves.

vikorr, That's a viewpoint that I've completely missed on this one; there are somethings in human behavior that seems to rationalize the worst inhumanities. Good point.

Well, some of my sentences may be ungrammatical but some of them are perfect, I know for sure, and you don't understand them either.

Yes, I have to say that people like you, under the guise of real debaters, are a danger to our children.

You present some of the characteristics of a predator, you can even mistake some well predisposed people.

But you are a danger to the society in general.

You should use your rethorics to amend yourself, get counseling, do something useful.

It can't be argued well, though. Can you think of any good arguments for the existence of unicorns or the benefits of heavy recreational drug use?



What do you mean?



Scientists and other researchers.



That's because you can't determine the facts just by a show of hands. Not so long ago, most people will have thought that it was wrong to have gay sex. But it isn't wrong, and it never has been. Even if all the people in the world think that gay sex is wrong, it won't change a thing. Majority is meaningless. Evidence and argument are the important things.



Can you show me the evidence for that please?



So how come I changed my mind quite significantly when Robert actually made the effort to provide some half-decent arguments against my position?

Count the number of sexual crimes agaisnt children. Then count the number of confessed paedophiles on the internet. They can be hard to find, but there are whole online communities of paedophiles, and I'm pretty sure that there are more members of these communities than there are child sex abusers. The numbers don't add up. Paedophiles do not necessarily pose a threat to children. A lot of them lead celibate lives, or they form adult relationships. They go on fidning children sexually attractive, because there's nothign they can do to alter that. But sexual desire is not inherently sadistic. Just because you fancy somebody, that does not mean you want to rape them and film it.

You are being obtuse on purpose, aren't you?

No. I'm honestly not sure what she(/he?) means by that. If I understood I'd respond properly, as I usually do. If you look at my posts, I normally respond point-by-point.

You managed to change a minor viewpoint on an argument you liked? Well good for you. Has your overall position changed?

What's my overall position?

Speak of the "devil."


Pimps arrested, kids rescued in prostitution busts

This has very little to do with the tread subject and actually works against the majority position. Thousands (tens of thousands?) of kids every year run away from home and when things get rough on the street would rather become sex workers than go back home. Almost always these kids are voluntarily sexual, and willingly in the business, capturing their sexual selves in photo's and video not only does not harm them it is a welcome source of revenue for them.

And you know this first hand?

In responding to comments by Wolf Woman and Wilso . . .



Any claim that real child abuse is worse than fantasy would be predicated upon an assumption that fantasizing about a crime cannot be linked to actually taking criminal action. People who routinely fantasize about murdering people, or raping people (i.e., not people who, in the heat of anger, shout out something to the effect of "I'd kill you if i could") cannot be prosecuted on an allegation that they have such fantasies. They can only be prosecuted for attempting to act upon those fantasies, and, of course, society hopes to apprehend them before they act upon such fantasies. So, it would boil down to whether or not it were reasonable to suggest that the provision of materials to fuel a fantasy of criminal action were a sufficiently probable cause of that effect. I'd have to leave that one aside, because i don't possess the expert knowledge to make a statement with any certainty. If this were posited, i'd ask how soon motion pictures, television images and novels which depict murders and rapes would be banned on the same basis.

I consider it nothing short of naive to attempt to suggest that downloading images, free or otherwise, will not create a demand for it. People use web sites to make money, and even if they give you the image for free, they are selling advertising to people who hope to attract your patronage of their web sites and products. Even if it is not obvious to Agrote, it is obvious to me that downloading such images, free or otherwise, will help to create demand.

Agrote's remarks about reporting child sexual abuse and the protection of children i consider disingenuous, and an attempt on his part to make him appear to be a reasonable person. He may be a reasonable person, except for insofar as he is attracted to images of child sexual abuse, and make no mistake that engaging in sexual acts with children constitutes child sexual abuse.

We have had at this site an allegation that since some cultures have practices which would constitute child sexual abuse in our society, but are accepted as normal in those cultures, we should accept that those practices are reasonable within the context of those cultures. Some cultures believe that female infanticide is acceptable, but we object to such behavior because of the nature of the behavior, and not because if were odious in our cultural context. We object to female genital mutilation once again not in reference to the cultural context, but would allege that this were criminal behavior in and of itself. I do not claim that Agrote can be impeached of any such arguments, but simply wanted to dispense with them before proceeding.

I am left, then, with Agrote's attempt to suggest that providing images of child sexual abuse which are not produced through actual child sexual abuse is a victimless crime. Defenders of the sale and distribution of images of merely naked men or women claim that their images are not an inducement to criminal action. Defenders of the sale and distribution of images of sexual acts between allegedly consenting adults (in some cases, criminal abuse if subsequently alleged, most famously in the case of the motion picture Deep Throat) claim that their images are not an inducement to criminal action.

The defense of the provision of images of naked men and women to adults on the basis that it is not an inducement to criminal acts is plausible on the basis that it is not criminal to look at a man or a woman who is naked. It might under certain circumstance be a minor crime for a man or woman to be naked where others might see them, but the act of looking at them is not criminal.

The defense of the provision of images of sexual acts between consenting adults on the basis that it is not an inducement to criminal acts could be said to be plausible in that, in most jurisdictions in the "industrial" world of which we are a part, sexual acts between consenting adults are not criminal.

The defense of the provision of images of child sexual abuse, however, differs in that even if not produced through the actual photography or filming of acts of child sexual abuse, it still is the provision of images of what is a criminal activity.

So it boils down to a question of whether or not people are stimulated to attempt acts of child sexual abuse by viewing images of child sexual abuse. As i've said, i don't possess an expertise to say that this is so. However, if those who are alleged to possess that expertise convince lawmakers that the provisions of such images can or will stimulate people with paedophilic tendencies to commit criminal acts, i see no problem with the state alleging a proximate and compelling interest in regulating or prohibiting such activity.

Quite frankly, Agrote disgusts me. So i have long avoided this thread. But, having decided to read it, and having gotten as far as Joe's first post, i decided to respond to the above quoted questions by Agrote before proceeding to read more of the thread.

À propos of the topic of this thread, here is a book review of the book The Lolita Effect, which alleges that society now "sexualizes" girls, specifically meaning females under the legal age of consent to sexual activity. I do find it a compelling question to know whether or not we are now immersed in a media culture which projects an image of girls as sexual objects.