Whoever said that they need encouragement? Does an ad for MacDonals encourage you to eat? Yes or no? That people are able to get hungry on their own is hardly an argument against this!
Are you trying to say that you feel "kiddie porn" is an advertisement to entice people to have sex with children?
Another repeated misconception. This is like an NRA argument: Since people kill people, and sometimes without using guns, guns add nothing significant to the murder statistics.
You've completely mistaken the argument. A better equivalent would be "Since people kill people, and sometimes without using guns, and many people who own gun don't kill people, and guns have uses beyond just killing other people, the fact that sometimes guns are used to kill people does not make guns in and of themselves a bad thing."
Is that clearer?
Kiddie porn, even the kind that some of you find innocent because "No children were harmed during the production of this particular piece of filth!", sexualizes the way you look at children.
As we've agreed, so does a lot of other media, which you seem not to be concerned about. Why the double standard? If "sexualising children" is a bad thing, why do you tolerate some of it but condemn others?
My guess is that it would have to consist of stories of children who seduce adults into having sex with them!
You don't know? how can you possibly have an opinion if you aren't familiar with that to which you object?
And no, not all of it does. Not even a majority.
That's all fiction.
Is there something wrong with that?
which encourage the illusions that paedophiles already have.
So does a lot of other media to which you don't seem to object.
Do you have similar objections to commercial explicit works that "encorage" beastiality, or coprophillia, or foot-fetishism, or furries?
People who don't would probably feel nothing but disgust.
Given the number of people who I've heard admit to having inappropriate feelings for Natalie Portman after watching "Leon", I think you might be surprised.
Yes, I am saying that. And I have given you my criteria already.
I must have missed it, I apologise. If you mean "works intended to stimulate sexual arousal", I again bring up the difficulty of determining intent of the artist, and wonder why that should make any difference at all if your concern is the stimulation of inappropriate reactions in pedophiles.
At least you admit that it is a question of a line. However, you use this to try to confuse the issue.
The "issue" is crystal clear to me. I may be confusing you, but in my opinion it is because your objections aren't that well considered.
You have a similar problem in all kinds of literature. We all know what a novel is, and we also know what a short story is, but what about a short novel (or even a very short one) and a long (or very long) short story? What constitutes "science fiction"? Well, it is not all that difficult to define, but still you have problems with mainstream literature using only some of the elements of science fiction. This, however, does not really confuse the issue (but it may confuse the librarian or the bookseller who won't know where to place it).
If and when people start trying to prohibit short stories or science fiction and not other novels, then those distinctions will become signifigant too.
Note I'm not accusing you of wanting to prohibit anything- you so stated a few times. However, I do interpret the position of "Kiddie porn is bad, and it shouldn't be encouraged, but I'm not talking about banning it" in much the same light as I would "I don't like [insert minority immigrant group here], I'm not saying we should round them up and deport them all and keep them from coming back, but they have no business in this country".
The novel Lolita is not really about Lolita, it does not really sexualize a child. It is about Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who does! Because you read about how he sexualizes Lolita you get a glimpse of the mind of a paedophile, and there is probably no doubt that a paedophile will be able to use some of the pages as pornography, but again - see "hammer" example - that does not make the book porn!
Great, that's an easy one. How about "Justine", which besides a fair amount of philosophy and criticisms of the morals and attitudes of the author's culture contains page after page, scene after scene of graphic description of barely consensual oral, anal, and vaginal sex with both genders, along with rape, sexual slavery and torture, coprophilia, group sex, and abuse by authority figures- all with a twelve-year old protagonist?
Is the explicit material used to shock the audience, highlight the absurdity of the attitudes being mocked, and perhaps to tittilate just a bit to generate publicity, or is the "philosophy" just a thinly disguised veneer to legitimise the brutal pornography?
Both possibilities have been argued. Just in case your standard is "who sells it", it was distributed "under the counter" and on pain of arrest by otherwise "mainstream" booksellers of the day, and today may be bought on Amazon (where I got mine), but not often on your average brick and mortar bookstore (at least I did not find a copy at one). I understand that it is often to be found available in BDSM stores, although I get that information word-of-mouth.
And again: A couple of books or other material that are hard to place because they seem to contain elements of both literature and porn, does not make the distinction moot.
No, but it does make the distinction
fuzzy, which makes blanket statements such as "kiddie porn is bad" problematic.
Again we are dealing with a problem that only exists because people start to think like judges
A handy ability to have when one wants to make a
judgement about something, which you have done.
who have to decide in which category a particular publication belongs.
When you create categories, such as "kiddie porn" and "literature", then yes, you have to make those kinds of decisions.
It does not usually confuse paedophiles or readers of literature.
On the contrary, plenty of people are confused. that's why the issue isn't cut and dry.
Same principle. See? You want me to determine the exact point where something stops being art and starts being porn. Why? Somehow I never had the problem, I never had to distinguish between the two.
Because your exposure has ben thusfar limited, as you earlier intimated. I don't expect someone who has never eaten sushi will have had the problem of distinguishing between a good place to get sashimi and a bad one.
You've never had to distinguish between "kiddie porn" and literature, you only guess at that which you call "porn" even contains- yet you have an opinion about it. How? Because it might "encourage" someone to think in a way in which you do not approve?
The only people who do, like I said, are judges or people who think like judges - and maybe paedophiles who need to know what is 'safe' to have on their shelves if the police raid their home.
Book lovers too, seems like.
Well, I don't. I have neither art nor porn with children as the theme.
(And if you would like to own Hot Salsa, you can have it for free!)
Is it in German?
I have "Justine", "Lolita", and a few other books of that nature, as well as some art books.
Why do you have the problem of finding a very strict point where it stops being porn and starts being art - or the other way round?
Because there are people out there who want to controll how I- how all of us- think by restricting what we can see, read or hear. I refuse to give up any ground to those people, and I refuse to grant them a toehold into our hard-won freedoms. Sometimes that means challenging some well meant but misguided opinons.
You either sexualise children or get the problem because you start thinking about the theme in terms of law! (And I think that the latter is the case.)
As I said, I am a citizen of a nation and a larger culture governed by rule of law. Anyone who does not give at least passing consideration to those laws is a fool or a child.
You tell me. You are the one with the issue.
You are the one that made the distinction. Usually such distinctions are followed, sooner or later, by some kind of action.
A number of cartoonists were invited by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten to make cartoons portraying Mohammed.
I thought there were more than one, but the point still holds in the plural.
That's as may be.
and the whole point of this was: Apparently the Moslems don't want us to, since in their religion, for some reason or other, you are not allowed to portray the prophet.
Tough beans on them. The paper and their cartoonists aren't in the religion. I'm not a Christian, so prohibitions against blasphemy don't apply to me, f[rule 8] Jesus.
Jyllands-Posten pretended that the point of the campaign was to advocate free speech, but for some reason they stopped short at poking fun at Jesus X the same way.
Is Jesus X the angry black revolutionary version?
A very prudent distinction to make, since most of the subscribers to Jyllands-Posten are Christians.
"Freedom of speech" also includes the choice to not speak as one so chooses. They are under no obligation to be an equal-opportunity offender every time they make fun of some god or another.
A couple of the cartoonists were well aware of this being a campaign against Moslems, so instead they used their own cartoons to criticize the campaign, i.e. the daily!
As was their right.
The Moslems were not attacking free speech, they were attacking people who they felt desecrated their religion.
Attacking people for what they said is attacking free speech.
Jyllands-Posten did not defend free speech. They attacked a religious (and ethnic) minority in Denmark under the pretext of advocating free speech.
Free speech is what allows one to express an opinion about someone or something- even a negative one, or an "attack" if you will. Even including religious and ethnic minorities. Excersising that right, especially in the face of pressure to the contrary, i.e demanding those outside a religion to adhere to the precepts of that religion regarding artistic expression,
is precisely defending it.
