A few weeks (months?) ago, I talked about a thing I'd heard on companies trying to manufacture lifelike sex robots. Today, I heard a short interview with a woman who was from some group that are trying to outlaw sex-dolls/robots that look like children. Apparently, there are already companies that manufacture them in Japan. The woman said that they (the group she represented) had already got a man gaolled in the United States for importing one (under child pornography laws) and they were in the process of trying to get a man gaolled in Canada.
I remember about ten years ago, there was a case in Australia (NSW, I believe) where a man on parole was put back into gaol for having pornographic Simpsons cartoons on his computer. Last year, while I was driving between towns out in the middle of nowhere, I heard a report on the news about an Australian man who was facing charges for selling an ultrasound of his unborn child to an undercover detective (the child wasn't being molested, but it was technically "naked"). I intended to look the story up when I got back to civilisation, but I forgot about it until now.
Y'know, I hate being put in a position where I have to defend people like this, but at the end of the day, so long as they're not trading images of actual real children actually really being harmed, I don't particularly like the law going after these people. Essentially, what they're doing is taking a law that's supposed to protect people from abuse and turning it into a glorified obscenity charge. Is it as bad as cops who go after 15-year-olds who take photos of themselves in the buff? No, but it's not a million miles away either.
And speaking of abuse that's not a million miles away; do you think that trading images of adult abuse should also be illegal? Like, it's illegal to have pictures of a 17-year-old being sexually molested, because that's child pornography; but as far as I know, it's not illegal to have pictures of an 18-year-old being sexually molested. Also, it's not illegal to have pictures of either of them being molested in a non-sexual manner. Should it be?
2 comments :
You raise an interesting point.
On the one hand I agree with you - if they are not hurting actual children, where's the harm? But on the other hand, isn't the belief that most...people with aberrant behaviours... tend to escalate over time? So how can we be sure that these things are not just fuelling the fire for later abuse anyway?
It seems there's two opposing schools of thought on this: The first is as you said, that letting people indulge in this stuff will lead to them becoming bolder and eventually acting out with real kids. The other, is that things like sex dolls might provide an outlet that satisfies their urges to a point where they don't act out with real kids. I don't think either camp has any sort of definitive research backing them up.
People with dodgy urges have always been with us: paedophiles, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, gore-fetishists, torture-fetishists (dunno the proper names), and other assorted psychos. However, despite the potential risk that these cunts pose, I don't much like the idea of going after them unless they at least try to act on those urges in a way that negatively affects other people. I'm not thrilled at the notion of a society that locks people up "just to be sure".
Having said that, if there was compelling evidence to the contrary, I don't think it's a principle I'd die to defend.
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