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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26359 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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If all you know about a man is that he is attracted to children, it's difficult to quantify his risk of offending.

The response doesn't change even if people know you well. Once they find out you are attracted to kids, it doesn't matter if they've known you to act with integrity for decades. Everything you've ever done is suddenly viewed as an act to lull people into a false sense of security so you can "offend". If you acted "normally" (ie, the way other adults did) around kids, you must have been secretly getting off on it and therefore can't be trusted. If you avoided kids, you must not have been able to control yourself and therefore can't be trusted. People will literally trust known child abusers over you. Being attracted to a kid but never "offending" while trying to be a good if distant person in their life when it happens to intersect your own is apparently more trauma-inducing than repeated physical and emotional abuse. Ask me how I know...

However, we do know that attraction to children is the single strongest predictor of recidivism in known offenders. This is at least suggestive that it matters for first-time offenders as well.

It's the strongest predictor among people who have already offended. This introduces severe selection bias.

What "other predictors" do you mean, and are they as directly causally linked and unambiguous as CP? Or are they vague, all-purpose risk factors, like "lifestyle instability"?

I believe single parents hooking up with new partners is far more directly linked to child abuse than virtual CP consumption. I'll also challenge that there is a direct and unambiguous causal link between virtual CP and child abuse. I'd assert the motivation to consume it is more complicated than you are making it out to be. Consider Lolicon: The Reality of 'Virtual Child Pornography' in Japan (IMAGE & NARRATIVE (MAR 2011), Vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 83 – 119, full paper contains NSFW imagery). Toward the end is this section:

Likewise, engaging lolicon images, even when they are pornographic in function or effect, is no simple matter. According to Akagi Akira, in the 1980s, the meaning of lolicon among fans shifted away from older men having sex with younger girls (Akagi 1993: 230). The desire for two-dimensional images was not for girls per se, but rather "girl-ness" (shōjo sei), symbolized by "cuteness" (kawairashisa)(Akagi 1993: 230). The young age and small size of characters were intended to amplify cuteness. Akagi proposes that substitution and mimicry in lolicon function to transform straight sex into parodic forms (Akagi 1993: 230-231). It does not facilitate normal sex, but sexualizes that which is normally not sexual (Shigematsu 1999: 130). Shigematsu adds that the male penis is often absent from lolicon (in compliance with obscenity laws, though not always so in the 1980s), and the replacements for it are objects that do not feel pleasure (Shigematsu 1999: 130). Further, the face of the attacker is often not depicted (Akagi 1993: 232). Akagi sees this as a major distinction from the erotic manga that came before, where there was a sort of "hero attacker" with whom the reader identified. Rather, Akagi provactively suggests that lolicon fans project onto girls: "Lolicon readers do not need a penis for pleasure, but rather they need the ecstasy of the girl. At that time, they identify with the girl, and get caught up in a masochistic pleasure" (Akagi 1993: 232).^30 Itō Gō supports this analysis:

"Readers do not need to emphasize (sic) with the rapist, because they are projecting themselves on the girls who are in horrible situations. It is an abstract desire and does not necessarily connect to real desires. This is something I was told by a lolicon artist, but he said that he is the girl who is raped in his manga. In that he has been raped by society, or by the world. He is in a position of weakness."^31

Recall Kinsella's suggestion that lolicon be understood as men performing the shōjo to come to terms with an unstable gender identity (Kinsella 2006: 81-83). If being a man ceases to promise power, potency and pleasure, it is no longer the privileged subject position. Akagi explains that lolicon is a form of self-expression for those oppressed by the principles of masculine competitive society (Akagi 1993: 232).^32 Lolicon is a rejection of the need to establish oneself as masculine and an identification with the "kindness and love" of the shōjo (Akagi 1993: 233). This interpretation reverses the standard understanding of lolicon as an expression of masculinity to one of femininity. This is, of course, not the only way to approach the wide range of lolicon images, but it certainly highlights the complexity of "pornographic content" and its uses.

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