Sigh: "seriously creepy", "Evil lurks in the heart of man", "deleting browser history".
These are typical responses, which lack any perspective on life and culture.
At face value, child pornography is not necessarily bad, child pornography is not necessarily damaging and child sex does not need to be a bad thing.
Damage comes from rape, violence and emotional abuse (which is the worst because it lasts).
But these things are not inherent to child pornography and
very common outside child pornography.
The argument is child pornography leads to damaging events. But it certainly isn't the source. People who do such things are usually emotionally disturbed themselves. And making child porn illegal is not going to change that (almost hard to believe it wasn't illegal not so long ago).
You might even have the same "make it illegal, it will become worse" effect as there is with drugs.
So, I guess there is no point to this post, but I do think it's wise to keep perspective on subjects. Even though everyone is inclined to err on the safe side, continuously making the safe side more extreme.
As usual, there is a continuum there. While some young teenage girls (and all boys ;) might be interested in sex, at how young do we put the limit? 13, like in Spain? 12? 11? When does it becomes really uncomfortable to talk about their "sexual drives"?
When it comes to teenage sex becoming criminalized, though, the author is right on the money: this is just crazy. When I was a teenager I knew some girls my age who were having sex with young men in their 20s. None of us thought this was creepy. They were boyfriend/girlfriend, and that was it. But it was in France in the 80s, and I'm not sure people would be so understanding today.
Ultimately, this should be a case of "has there been violence or coercion?", and "how did the minor perceive the experience?". Anti-rape laws should suffice for this, with the youth of the victim as an aggravating factor. As to when to decide that the child was unable to give consent, that, ultimately, should be in the hands of the judge, as advised by a psychologist. Not a perfect system, but far more humane than automatically putting a 18-years old behind bars for boinking his 17-years old girlfriend.
Agree with last paragraph. I had my first sex at 17 with a 15 yo girl who then became my girlfriend for seven years. Guess America would gladly brand me a pedophile.
I'm not sure people would be so understanding today
The focused brainwashing by the media that led to this recent change in people's opinions should really be the focus of discussion here.
These are typical responses, which lack any perspective on life and culture. At face value, child pornography is not necessarily bad, child pornography is not necessarily damaging and child sex does not need to be a bad thing.
Damage comes from rape, violence and emotional abuse (which is the worst because it lasts).
But these things are not inherent to child pornography and very common outside child pornography. The argument is child pornography leads to damaging events. But it certainly isn't the source. People who do such things are usually emotionally disturbed themselves. And making child porn illegal is not going to change that (almost hard to believe it wasn't illegal not so long ago).
You might even have the same "make it illegal, it will become worse" effect as there is with drugs.
So, I guess there is no point to this post, but I do think it's wise to keep perspective on subjects. Even though everyone is inclined to err on the safe side, continuously making the safe side more extreme.