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But surely without at least a reason to think virtual child porn causes child abuse we should not make the act illegal?

DanBC 13y ago
There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children. Obviously it's very hard to test that, but it's at least credible. The other point about pseudo-photographs is that it's a historical remainder from times before we had photo-realistic rendering. People would take real images of children, and manipulate those into images of child sexual abuse. Sometimes combining real world children's heads onto real world images of child sexual abuse, or images of adults having sex. In that case two images are created from one instance of abuse. Two children are shown, but only one has suffered abuse. Or children are shown, but adults were used for the sexual parts of the photograph. Since people thought strongly that possession of images of child sexual abuse was a signal that the person would go on to commit actual abuse they made sure to make these images illegal. I find this very hard to talk about. I strongly want to protect children from harm. Images of child sexual abuse cover a wide range of harm, from sexually suggestive clothed posing of 15 year olds at one end to brutal rape of small infants at the other. My instinct is to keep these images illegal, but I realise that the demonisation of paedophiles does not help them seek help to stop their offending behaviour, and drives them to "support groups" that attempt to normalise their behaviour. And if we did proper research and found that virtual images reduced real world offending it'd be hard to keep those images illegal.
- Anderkent 13y ago
  >There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children. Or you could just as well argue that people use the imagery to fulfill their needs, and if they didn't have that they'd turn to actual child abuse. 'credible' should not be good enough. (Of course in the current political systems, it doesn't even have to be credible if you can spin it scarily enough: see war on terror, war on drugs, sex offender registrations for urinating in public etc.) You need evidence that actually supports your theory.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Show some research, do the work. So far we have people who collect images of child sexual abuse, and some of those people go on to abuse children more directly. We don't have groups of people telling us that their collections of images of child sexual abuse help prevent their offending behaviour. (For some obvious reasons, of course.)

DanBC 13y ago

There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children. Obviously it's very hard to test that, but it's at least credible. The other point about pseudo-photographs is that it's a historical remainder from times before we had photo-realistic rendering. People would take real images of children, and manipulate those into images of child sexual abuse. Sometimes combining real world children's heads onto real world images of child sexual abuse, or images of adults having sex. In that case two images are created from one instance of abuse. Two children are shown, but only one has suffered abuse. Or children are shown, but adults were used for the sexual parts of the photograph. Since people thought strongly that possession of images of child sexual abuse was a signal that the person would go on to commit actual abuse they made sure to make these images illegal. I find this very hard to talk about. I strongly want to protect children from harm. Images of child sexual abuse cover a wide range of harm, from sexually suggestive clothed posing of 15 year olds at one end to brutal rape of small infants at the other. My instinct is to keep these images illegal, but I realise that the demonisation of paedophiles does not help them seek help to stop their offending behaviour, and drives them to "support groups" that attempt to normalise their behaviour. And if we did proper research and found that virtual images reduced real world offending it'd be hard to keep those images illegal.

Anderkent 13y ago
>There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children. Or you could just as well argue that people use the imagery to fulfill their needs, and if they didn't have that they'd turn to actual child abuse. 'credible' should not be good enough. (Of course in the current political systems, it doesn't even have to be credible if you can spin it scarily enough: see war on terror, war on drugs, sex offender registrations for urinating in public etc.) You need evidence that actually supports your theory.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Show some research, do the work. So far we have people who collect images of child sexual abuse, and some of those people go on to abuse children more directly. We don't have groups of people telling us that their collections of images of child sexual abuse help prevent their offending behaviour. (For some obvious reasons, of course.)