Art does not make you a child sex offender
Sometimes I hate that my "topic I know a lot about so when a YouTuber brings it up that's the moment I realize they don't know what the fuck they're talking about" is pornographic art and fiction.
Some facts to piss off your local commentary channel:
"Pedophile" means you are sexually attracted to children
You can be sexually attracted to children and still choose not to commit CSA (child sexual assault)
The majority of CSA survivors DON'T go on to commit CSA themselves
Assault is more often about POWER than sexual attraction
To wit, the majority of CSA cases are perpetrated by NON-PEDOPHILES
Perpetrators are most often family members, close friends, and authority figures, not random shady strangers
Organizations like The Internet Watch Foundation Hotline and The National Crime Authority have come forward to request the general public please stop clogging their CSA hotlines with cartoon characters. Because the time they waste on false reports could be. Y'know. Spent helping actual children!
This is a big part of why US federal law dictates that an artistic depiction must be "INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM AN ACTUAL MINOR" to qualify as CSAM. That line decides which reports out of thousands deserve/require a tip line's time and resources.
While I'm here: It's not "child porn." The word "porn" implies consent, so the accepted terminology is "child sexual abuse material" or "child sexual exploitation material."
If you didn't know that before now I'm sorry, because I've cursed you to face palm with me every time someone uses the term "child porn" to describe anime art. (First off, it's "CSAM," not "child porn." Secondly, anime cannot be CSAM. Anime is stylized. It's not photorealistic enough to qualify as "indistinguishable from an actual minor." The legal distinction is there for a reason—to protect kids by protecting tip lines, and to protect you by making sure your art, however "pure," can't be mangled into a federal offense by puritanical fuckwits with a penchant for semantics.)
Over 60% of women have had a rape fantasy. If someone tries to tell you your sexual fantasies must mirror your real life desires, by their logic the majority of women must want to be raped. Check out "My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies" by Nancy Friday.
"It’s worth repeating my conviction that fantasy need have nothing to do with reality, in terms of suppressed wish-fulfillment. Women like Julietta (coming up), whose fantasy life is focused on the rape theme, invariably insist that they have no real desire to be raped, and would, in, fact, run a mile from anyone who raised a finger against them, and I believe them. The message isn’t in the plot—the old hackneyed rape story—but in the emotions that story releases." —Nancy Friday, "My Secret Garden"
The human brain is a meat balloon full of electrical wires. We can't expect that shit to "make sense" all the time. It's typical for people to fantasize about scenarios that, if they were to play out in real life, would disgust or terrify them. When you "zap your friend with a laser gun" on the playground you don't (usually) want to kill them for real.
(People always laugh about how us aces and aros "make the best/craziest porn"...right up until we bring up dark fantasies, at which point any ability to separate porn from real life flees their body)
Even when people's sex fantasies DO mirror their real life desires, they can find safe outlets with consenting adults and—again—choose to never act on those desires outside of play-pretend
Loli/shota porn (prepubescent girl/prepubescent boy anime porn) lives under the kink umbrella of power play and age play. "Lolicon" is not a synonym for "pedophile," and "pedophile" is not a synonym for "child molester" or "child sex offender"
The equation of "pedophile" to "child molester" propagates the myth that assault is a side effect of sexual attraction. It helps shield offenders with no attraction to children, and it sends the message that pedophiles are destined to offend (pedophiles can't find help if they don't think help is possible).
There is no link between the type of porn a person consumes and their likelihood of committing sexual assault. This is why the Moms for Liberty: Junior Division types can never seem to cite their sources when they claim "dead dove" porn is a gateway drug.
So what does actual CSA prevention look like? Per the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse: "Community activism to shift harmful gender attitudes, roles and social norms in the general population through multi-year intensive community activities," and "school-based interventions to prevent dating violence or sexual violence, with more effective approaches being longer and focused on transforming gender relationships."
So, BETTER SEX AND RELATIONSHIP EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS, AND DISMANTLING GENDERED POWER STRUCTURES THAT EMPOWER ABUSERS
NOTICE HOW THE CSA CENTER NEVER MENTIONS CENSORSHIP OF FICTION OR ART AS A PREVENTATIVE MEASURE
The actual effects of the campaign to "protect the children" by censoring "bad" pornographic art and fiction:
Clogged tip lines that pull operators away from real abused children; callouts designed to ostracize marginalized people over thought crimes and play-pretend; a surge of Moral OCD and POCD from young people taught to fear their own "degenerate" fantasies; the proliferation of dangerous myths about the kinds of people who do and don't commit CSA; a culture so repulsed by the messiness of human sexuality that any attempt to share real data; real terminology; real preventative measures is treated as an admission of guilt. If you're new here, welcome to hell!
