juniper

DON’T: -hit them -yell at them -wave in their face in excess

Antis will claim that they are “protecting children” but then call people who harm fictional children pedophiles. But as a victim of CSA myself, I find it super offensive and harmful when these antis throw around the word pedo to anyone and anything that mildly makes their fragile little brain uncomfortable.

No. People who fantasize fictional children are NOT pedophiles because for someone to be that, they have to have harmed real children. A real child that I used to be when I was assaulted.

So by calling everyone who harms fictional children a pedophile, you’re dismissing my trauma and experience by reducing it to ***fictional kids being harmed*** and you’re actually helping real pedophiles who harm real children like me get away with it easier because now people have associated the word with “dark fiction” instead of real life harm, thanks to you.

So it’s antis who ARE harming real children because they want to protect fictional ones. Fuck off.

I was a CSA victim, and I say “let dark ship enjoyers write whatever they want”. They’re not harming real kids like you do.

Not to mention, a lot of victims like me use dark fiction to help us cope with our trauma. So not only are antis helping actual pedophiles get away with harming real children easier, they’re also calling CSA victims pedophiles because we write about fictional things that make them uncomfortable (even though we never force anybody to read our shit).

Also there's really not a lot of evidence that most people that harm children are primarily motivated by a sexual attraction to children. Some of them are, yes, certainly. But there are lots of different profiles of child sex abuser and only one of them is "pedophile."

This whole argument you made, "You’re actually helping real pedophiles who harm real children like me get away with it easier because now people have associated the word with 'dark fiction' instead of real life harm..." Yeah, that's a pretty big claim. I'd want to see some sort of evidence to back this up, because that doesn't sound right to me at all.

Also, this seems to position an argument that links real CSA to lolicon discourse online. As if the mechanisms through which children disclose are even casually related to lolicon discourse on social media. Children almost always disclose to parents and teachers, and most parents and teachers are not embroiled in lolicon discourse on social media. Also, the mechanisms through which child sex abusers are prosecuted has, again, nothing to do with lolicon discourse on social media. Are you somehow proposing that law enforcement, teachers, therapists and judges are being swayed by lolicon discourse? Or that lolicon discourse is meaningfully changing the landscape of what we understand about CSA? The reality is that probably some child sex abusers ARE pedophiles, and it seems unlikely to me that none of them fantasized about or participated in communities centering around the fantasy of sex with fictional children.

But beyond that, I think it's a bit disingenuous to act like antis want to protect "fictional children". That's a strawmanned version of what I think I understand their concern to be. The steelmanned version, I think, would be regarding the sexualization of children as a class. And normalizing the sexualization of children. If you spend more than 10 minutes in any kind of "pro-paraphilia" space, you'll encounter "anti-contact" users, and if you spend a few days there, you'll inevitably encounter "pro-contact" users. It's not much of a stretch to understand why this would be concerning.

The problem with these "fictional child" fetish spaces is they create communities. And communities are made up of individuals that all have different idea, brought together by one common trait: having some sort of attraction to children. The vast majority of these users will never even have the opportunity to harm a child. The vast majority of them would not want to. But some of them, frankly, would. And getting them together in a space that says, "this attraction is normal, fantasy is inherently non-harmful and has no capacity for harm, you don't owe anyone any explanation, discussing and fantasizing about abusing children is fine" seems potentially dangerous.

Let's say you have 1,000 people. And 995 of them would never, in a thousand years harm a child. But 5 of them might--but right now, the thing that stops them is that they feel social pressure and condemnation about their attraction. If 1 of those 5 people has an opportunity to harm a REAL child... which community do you want them to have just spent the last year or two in? A community where some of the members of it are "pro-contact"? A community where they can have some sort of reassurance that some members of it will not condemn them for their real-life harm? Or do you want them in a community that says, "Any attraction to children is worthy of condemnation"?

Now, I'm not saying that communities that say "kill all pedophiles" or doxx people or harass people are good, either. I'm not saying that that's not harmful. It is. And I'm not honestly sure which is more harmful. It's a very horrible calculus to have to make.

But acting as though this is a pure laboratory dichotomy of "allowed to innocently make lolicon art, minding one's own business" or "fascistically banned from participating in thought-crime" is disingenuous. I think the dichotomy is much closer to "uncritical free for all that brushes up against communities of potentially dangerous people" vs "uneducated puritan finger waggers."

And I know lots of CSA victims enjoy writing and making art that depicts some version of what they experienced. I'm a CSA victim and I do that, too. But that art stays on my hard drive. I don't share it online, for the reasons I expanded upon here in this post. I guess I kind of fail to see why CSA victims would want to add to the soup of, "Let's all normalize wanting to fuck kids," and not keep that on their hard drives, as well. Like, is having a community of strangers comment on one's horny lolicon art providing some sort of healing? Does anyone... have any evidence this is the case, clinically?

Also... you're not a child anymore, OP. You are an adult. WE owe children a society that can take care of them. Do I think the way to do that is to harass lolicon artists online? No. Do I think that lolicon artists are the primary vehicle through which harm to children is delivered? No. I think the implication that it is is ridiculous, and unserious.