Strongest argument against is that they’re used in literal actual grooming.

There are many many court cases where this content has been used by a pedophile to show it to the kids, to normalise it, to get the kids to see it as a fun act from the secret manga cartoons they share with uncle.

It IS used in literal actual acts of abuse to children. The people claiming it’s harmless because it does not actually abuse a child like video/photo pornography are simply wrong.

Hey guys, I made it to the latest struggle session on time. I brought a 6 pack, who wants a beer?

Go onto a website that posts the stuff that has comments and read the comments.

I haven’t honestly thought about it to hard but I think it generally contributes to a culture of casual sexualization of children.

https://research.library.fordham.edu/international_senior/96/

I ain’t reading all that but I jumped to the conclusion

While some may argue that this culture is not a point of concern since it does not involve real children, research has also proven this to be untrue. Rates of real child abuse, including child pornography and sex trafficking, in Japan are some of the highest in the developed world.

Short answer is there is no provable direct harm in it but at the very least it’s weird and off-putting for anyone who isn’t into it. Critics say creating or viewing it indicates existing pedophilic impulses and/or reinforces them and that this is reason enough to regulate it, supporters usually respond by saying that’s not necessarily true and/or that having an outlet for pedophilic impulses reduces the likelihood of pedophiles harming actual children. I haven’t seen particularly convincing evidence from either camp despite hearing this argument for decades, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to study. You’re right to compare it to the argument regarding violence in video games and movies, and even more so BDSM, similar specifically in the ways in which BDSM is used as a coping mechanism by people who have been abused. There are definitely people who use loli content in the same way for coping with their own sexual abuse, same with age play/“little” stuff, and do so harmlessly without ever actualizing these fantasies against real children, which seems like a halfway decent argument in favor of at least withholding judgement until we have more data, but for some reason it rarely gets mentioned.

If you consistently sexualize cartoon minors or cartoons that look like minors, when you see a human child you are going to sexualize them too. You are training your brain to sexualize a certain aesthetic which only children have in the real world. Normalizing this behavior is normalizing sexualization of minors

it just sounds like the same exact argument ppl used/use to say that “violent video games” or BDSM or whatever would do the same, or even like the old “weed is a gateway drug” stuff that also had a number of (extremely flawed) studies to “prove” it. what exactly makes this different from any of that other than just feeling more yucky and “wrong”? are there other arguments, are we missing something?

Videogames absolutely do cause violence. Anyone who has played Mario Kart or any other couch co-op can attest to this. I’ve heard stories of people having knives pulled on them in arcades because they won one too many matches.

This leads to two observations:

1. The mechanism in which games causes real-life violence is not related to the particular aesthetics or setting of the game but is still absolutely determined by the game’s design and mechanics.

2. Those studies are completely focusing on the wrong target which shows unfamiliarity with games and g*mers.

Overall, I think it’s naive to think that art doesn’t affect people consuming the art. Otherwise, you’re basically saying that art is pointless in influencing the real world which is obviously untrue even if some people overstate its ability to influence the world.

😠

I’m not particularly convinced by studies like “violent video games don’t increase violence” because underpinning such analyses is a mechanical, undialectical understanding of ideology, as though you can turn one dial and expect a deterministic change in an observable somewhere else. Let alone the difficulty of isolating variables, that’s just not how ideology works.

In the first place, what counts as violence is political. Does playing Call of Duty correlate with support for imperialist aggression? Studies that measure only personal, individual aggression will not detect violence done on the subject’s behalf, and on their consent, by a third party such as the state.

Secondly it conceives of violence abstractly, separated from the ideology that produces it and the reason it is carried out. Not all violence is equal in moral or political content, but this is how non-state violence has to be portrayed by bourgeois states which monopolize violence for class interests.

By the same token, I’m skeptical of vegan replicas of animal products, such as leather, which can actually serve to reinforce the ideological normalization of animals as commodities.

Instead of seeking a direct mechanical, causal link between one thing and another, instead you should ask what effect does one thing have on the totality of a superstructure (culture, ideology, etc) which maintains the patterns of society in a dialectical fashion.

Even if there’s no “moral” argument for why it’s bad, it still would only be done by people with pedophilic tendencies and tastes, and thus anybody who does it is immediately sus and I will not be interacting with them or friends with them in any way.

supposedly there are studies that point to that being the case, and other studies that point to that not being the case.

From what I have remembered reading (which doesnr exactly put me in super elevated place of expertise) the studies that conclude “yes this is a problem” are much more numerous and more well done IMO. Wish I could source those but I can’t remember for the life of me what I was looking at.

I think if your goal here is objectivity, you’ll reach a better conclusion on the topic by digging deeper into the literature. Change the “supposedly there are” to “I’ve read a lot of studies on this and here’s what they say and here’s some of the blind spots and issues”.

Could it be bunk like the weed panic? Depends on the studies, methods, reproducibility, expert opinions etc etc etc. But that’s the value of doing research: you can parse studies and the data yourself and work out areas of naunce vs areas of very definite answers.

it just sounds like the same exact argument ppl used/use to say that “violent video games” or BDSM or whatever would do the same

Leaving aside loli stuff etc, i think we really do need to revisit the “violent video games” thing thats become a bit of a thought terminating cliche, because at the time everyone reflexively hit back at it mainly because they liked violent video games and it was only being thrown out as an insincere distraction from the very serious issues with american gun control - but like, there are plenty of other countries with loads of guns floating around that don’t have the same issue. It feels like violent video games are just one part of a larger American culture that adores gratuitous violence, atomisation and nihilism, there are material causes for all these things being so prevalent but the cultural products extolling these things even further make them become cool.

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