Adults with anime school girl avatars give off pedo vibes and adults who post/gush about anime school girl yuri (and/or the boy or straight equivalent) are basically pedos.
You don't get a pass because your 13 year olds of choice are japanese and drawn characters. It's creepy as fuck and I am judging you for it.
216 replies
There is a lot of anime that creeps me out.
There’s some good stuff out there, but Jesus Christ is there a large pile of problematic anime.
Its like the large pile of racist old cartoons you never see because they don't run them anymore.
Sure, except we haven't reached the stage of culturally condemming and not running the creepy anime shows yet and they're still really popular.
It would be nice to not have to block all the people who post what look like drawings of children.
The majority of shows I actually enjoy either ignore that shit entirely or have the author's self-insert moment of having a character go, "Now that's fucked up" to any such things. The most recent one I saw was Spy x Family, the one character is madly in love with his sister. The child in the wildly dysfunctional family takes one look at the situation and in her hilariously understated and dry way just proclaims, "Yuck." Mind, this is after the object of his affection beats him to a bloody pulp because stop that shit.
Why have the trait? Because there are funny situations that can come from it, especially if you're willing to make the character almost entirely unlikeable. Which this show does.
I'm sorry, but imo it's still not funny. To me, this would be like your show having a rape attempt and another character going "omg eww lol". Like. Doing it isn't funny, pointing it out isn't funny, subverting it isn't funny, conspicuously mentioning how you're not doing it isn't funny. It's just disgusting.
I take your point, but the example I provided and the example you provided is a comparison between apples and battleships. As well, in my personal opinion the example I provided is merely (incredibly, wildly) distasteful while the example you provided is an actual violent crime. There's an order of magnitude of difference between the two, and I also wouldn't watch a show that attempts to minimize rape. Let's not conflate extremely questionable kinks with actual violence and crimes. Adults of consenting age working out their differences in a way that makes an observer either laugh or roll their eyes is a very different scenario from criminal sexual assault.
I literally run a Mastodon server specifically for non-toxic English-first anime/etc fans and I understand where you're coming from. I created the community for a lot of the same reasons
That said, you are projecting an extreme puritanical Western philosophy onto a culture that is dramatically different for deeply ingrained cultural reasons.
Teenage stories are prevalent because of the concept "seishun" (springtime of youth). Japanese culture is extremely rigid and conformist, and as a consequence highschool is viewed as the time in life where you have the most freedom to try new things, express yourself, and discover your passions. Watching teens experience their first love, for example, is a cathartic release for people who don't have the freedom to make drastic changes to their identity anymore. It is a depiction of someone discovering a new identity, and embracing change.
"Kawaii" (cute) culture has deep roots in Shinto spiritualism. For a large part of Japanese history, due to mortality rates among children below the age of 7, children were literally considered not fully human until they reached a certain age. They were "close to the spirits" because they might be reclaimed by the spirit world at any time. This, along with some other tidbits, led to the trope where a spiritual being regresses to look childlike when they lose their spiritual power. It is "closer to the spirit realm". And because there are many stories about being careful not to malign spirits, this became a reverence for childlike things.
Yes, especially among westerners, the are a lot of people with transgressive tendencies who gravitate towards the medium because it's an easy mask for their predilections. But you would do well to more about the history of the culture and medium you're attacking.
Because the way you present your position right now just makes you look like an ignorant westerner who didn't bother to ask "why" before painting an entire culture with a single brush.
I hear this and sympathize.
…But. Honestly? It’s not just western fans that are the problem. A few anime shows I researched seem to use underage sex appeal (or other problematic depictions, like toxic relationships) to draw attention, to make money.
At some point that’s not a cultural difference or misunderstanding; it’s pandering. The showrunners know what they’re doing. I’d argue that is exploitation of Japanese culture.
And even if they’re rejected by fans like you, these problematic shows seem to be immensely popular.
And american tv shows don't sexualize teenagers constantly?
every type of media panders to it's fans... that's the entire point.
and you are welcome to not watch if if that isn't what you enjoy.
I have no doubt media you consume can be criticized as problematic from various POV that aren't your own. And yet, you still consume it.
This is classic 'it's cringe when you do it/enjoy it, but based when I do it'
They didn't defend american TV shows sexualizing teens, why even bring that in to the conversation like they are? Both are wrong. No one said one is ok and the other not...pedo is pedo is pedo.
A couple of things:
Trashy western sex appeal (or tacticool fetish, drug glorification, or whatever) is a fair point. That’s a problem. Some of those trashy western shows are popular, too.
But I don’t buy whataboutism. It doesn’t make either thing okay.
Some popular anime really takes things to an… extreme.
And even outside the notorious anime, I kept finding problematic tropes when I tried to get into anime, like these women written in a way that got me to squirm in my seat and turn off my TV. When I sample critically acclaimed western TV/animation, this is not such an issue; I don’t mean to make a comparison, but just to convey that anime sampling made me uncharacteristically uncomfortable.
It's fine for you to not enjoy things. Why is it that other people shouldn't be able to enjoy them?
I like to mountain bike. You might think it's miserable and awful and dangerous. Should I not mountain bike because of your feelings about it?
A lot of people enjoy shit I find disgusting myself, but I am under no delusion that it my discomfort with it doesn't mean other people enjoy it and it brings meaning and joy to their lives. Clubbing, for instance.
My point is that you, a westerner, being comfortable with Western media but uncomfortable with Japanese media, is not as much indicative of the character of the content as it is indicative of the things that have been normalized for you vs the things that have been normalized for others.
That's the thing you're missing: every culture has problematic content, every culture gets desensitized to their own problematic stuff but not others', and every culture has complex reasons why those things developed there.
I promise you: people around the world squirm at your favorite media just as much as you squirm at theirs, because your cultural history, standards, Overton Window, and exposure to media are significantly different.
You have been describing your subjective experiences as if they provide objective facts about the content. It is hard to step back, recognize your own cultural biases, and remove them before assessing both other cultures' media and your own culture's.
Like, imagine an American saying "I've sampled a lot of American food and almost never find it disgusting. But when I sample food from other countries I frequently find things I don't like." Wouldn't you be like "yeah? And? Obviously that's because you grew up with American food"
Ah yes of course, your romantic depictions of children are ok because they're nuanced and cultural and any adults who call it weird just aren't cultured enough to appreciate all that n
uaonce.Did you even read what I wrote? Or did you find the first sentence you didn't like and skipped straight to the reply button?
Because I never said it was okay. I flat out stated that there are shows I refuse to watch due to their problems.
These issues are complex. Most cultures around the world have serious problems when you step back from your own subjective experiences. Getting btfo about one media subculture or another without understanding the "why" is unhelpful and ignorant. And many of the things you interpret one way are intended and interpreted extremely differently by the other culture. Everything I've said is about identifying the difference between actual degeneracy and cultural norms, and gracefully putting all of it in the proper cultural context.
If you just wanted to come here and stroke your own sense of moral superiority then piss off.
The cultural and histotical signifucance of your horny demon child anime does not justify it existing or stop it from being pedo shit.
Based cultural context here.
If what you said explained everything then there would be no need for the "looks like a 13yo, but actually a 1000yo dragon" trope.
Sure, some of it can be explained by cultural things that are totally acceptable. There's still a lot that can't be though.
I did actually already explain that one (spiritual beings regressing to younger forms as they lose power) but here's the full version from a while back when I got curious about this specific trope: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18xJbetvBNam51ZJaj7jdaMppRXls6ilrK-IoOQ3Czt0/
And to be clear, my goal has never been to justify the inappropriate sexualization of minors. Rather, my goal is to share the context for why these things developed as they have, and provide guidance on distinguishing between actual degeneracy and cultural misunderstandings. There is certainly plenty of anime with highly degenerate content, but there is also a lot of anime with content that appears to be a degenerate sexualization of a minor to a Western audience while a Japanese audience does not perceive it that way at all (rather than seeing it that way and allowing it)
Here's an excerpt, the summary conclusion:
I don't think you understand the criticism. It isn't the child entity existing that's at issue. Yes, that paper gives context to how it started in the culture. That's fine. It's the sexualization that's the issue. This does not provide any cultural context that makes that acceptable.
Western cultures also have similar cultural concepts, with all kinds of spirits and things inhabiting child bodies, but we don't have (much) sexualized children spirit things in media.
Then you would need to point me to a specific instance of sexualization for me to comment on it.
There is a prevalent problem of western viewers seeing "3000 year old dragon in a child's body" and immediately sexualizing it ("it's just an excuse for ...") when the Japanese audience doesn't view it that way. That's what I'm trying to address.
If you have a specific character in mind I'm happy to help distinguish whether it is truly degenerate (certainly possible) or just a cultural misunderstanding of the intent.
I haven't watched anime in quite a while (with the exception of CP Edgerunners, which does have a character that is sexualized and appears as a child, because of mods I guess). I can't name any specific ones off the top of my head, and I do not want to search for them. You know they exist though. Saying "you need to point out specific ones" is trying to put it all on me. It's not like this is some small thing that has only been done a few times.
I genuinely can think of only three off the top of my head that are overtly problematic. I'm not arguing that they don't exist. We all know they exist. But people tend to talk like it's the majority. That every time there's a mismatch between mental age and physical appearance it's a perverted excuse to creep on kids.
And it's just not. It's always easy to find examples of the worst things a medium has to offer. What I'm asking is for people to show me the things that make them think it's the rule, not the exception. Because I could sit here and diatribe for hours about every instance I know of with a "old being in young body" trope but I know that just come off as making excuses. So I want to address your specific concerns.
EDIT: And it's kinda funny when you bring up Edgerunners, since that's a property managed by a Polish company with some insanely grotesque hypersexualized content that is deeply fucked up before even getting to the anime.
I don't see anyone saying it's the rule. They're saying that it happens, and it's excused. You apparently agree with that, and that it shouldn't happen I assume too?
As for CP/Edgerunners, sure. I don't think hyper-sexualization is an issue, but fine. The show is anime though, made in Japan I believe. It uses tropes that are from anime, like the character that looks like a child, which aren't from any of the other Cyberpunk media. The whataboutism here is totally off topic. It doesn't excuse anything. It's purely just "but they do other things!" This topic is not about hyper-sexualization. It's about sexualizing child characters.
Well that's a bad faith response if I've ever seen one. Just pretending anime isn't like 30 percent pedo shit?
lol ok buddy, 30%? How many have you watched vs being shown shit by people like you pushing a specific narrative about it?
Do I need to run down the Top 50 anime of all time for you, so you can do some actual math instead of posting ignorance?
Not sure this is an unpopular opinion. At least not the people I know unless they are defending it behind closed doors.
I wish there was a block anime feature to Lemmy
It’s super easy…
I filter what I can, but it ain't 100%
I almost never see anime with my filters. Most anime posts are from anime comms or anime servers instead of random
it really isn't, or if it is it isn't intuitive and I would love to learn. (can I please stop seeing the idiots that think AI will just go away in a few years)
You are responsible for your feed. That means you need to actively block what you don't want to see. You can block on 3 levels. Block the Author, Community, or Instance. It's very effective. Start wide, then go narrow. After a few weeks of scrolling and blocking, now I don't see any politics and I engage with posts I care about. Sure, there'll be random comments still I encounter trying to bring that stuff into the discussion, but more and more time now passes between having to block individual people.
One thing I agree it is harder to do for are general communities like this one since there are no word filters. But again that's a risk you take allowing general communities in your feed.
Maybe it depends on what client you use, but on Mlem it’s very easy.
aw, someone yucking your AI slop yummy?
Aren't you the guy that defends pedophilia?
no, mostly just tired of the wishful thinking that it will vanish / be regulated out if existence, I won't deny I think LLMs can be helpful but are also extremely harmful to the internet.
well, good news: AI is going to go away. It's bubble is going to pop, it's going to take out a huge chunk of the economy, it's foolish, single purpose infrastructure will go down as one of the stupidest investments of human civilization, and it'll be a punchline for generations like tulip futures and the segway changing humanity.
edit: go back to reddit ffs, they love ai garbage
I don't give a shit about the companies, the models aren't going away.
sure bud.
that's like saying: z80 microprocessors might go away but the software will stick around.
no, there will be better, newer things created. your models are LLMs. hardly worthy of your adoration
Some of them, I'm sure. Some people I think just have a favorite character or look like them or relate to them somehow. I live in Japan and it's not uncommon for adults to have a character for an existing anime or even something drawn for them in that style based on their own appearance (men and women, old and young) in LINE (messaging app) or whatnot.
As for the rest (i.e. being actually attracted to or overly-obsessed with), yeah, that's getting in to creep/pedo territory.
Exactly, as someone called out in this post: I really just like Osage-chan. I find her super relatable and fun.
That said its not ok to be weird and have "waifus" that are not age appropriate for you.
If you watch anime as an adult you have to grow up and recognize you are watching media targeted for kids and teenagers. You can't engage with it like you would if you were still that age.
If I were to watch Lucky Star as a teenager, I might have a crush on some of the characters. But as an adult I can recognize the best girl is their teacher Nanako. 🤟
Based opinion
Idgaf if the character you're drooling over is canonically X, Y or Z; if they have been drawn like a child then the artist drawing them has done so intentionally (two points if you can guess why they draw characters like that)
I'm sure you're reading into it too much. Artists don't code their fetishes into things.
That might seem like a joke but it's kno- ahem
Money?
If your argument was true, then GTA or other violent games should cause mass shootings and lots of killings. They don't, because they in principle work the same as cultural works. But they don't. Now you're gonna go into an ad hoc argument filled up with fallacies, because what you're saying is just simply false.
Your argument is fundamentally flawed because you're discussing the media causing something, and the comment above is discussing media made for something. I don't think anyone is making the claim sexualizing (things that appear to be) children in anime is causing people to have sexual relations with children. People are saying that sexualizing children in anime is done specifically to appeal to a subset of people that we should not be making media for.
No, because the problem is again that only if something causes real and verifiable harm, it can be considered bad, but as I exposed, that content doesn't cause any harm at all and it can even avoid harm to be done because of the fact that they'll release these impulses into/towards something safer and harmless.
If your only argument is moral repulsion or mere distaste, then your position is invalid by nature.
I feel like the normalization is a net negative, but not something grotesque. Obviously younger characters are necessary for specific narratives. It also allows for specific people (several standard deviations outside of normal) to feel comfortable with ever-more misanthropic fantasies.
But hey, so does AI, so...
Douses the internet in gasoline and lights a cigar
Yeah, AI is when everything goes into shit, because it's trained with pictures and videos of real children. That's fucked up.
Also it enable abusers to harass people online with deepfakes.
Normalizing it does cause harm. It makes them think their behavior is more acceptable than it is.
He's not making a causal argument that the media causes something to happen. Just that someone who creates media has a specific intent when they do it. They're not the same thing.
Good job trying to get ahead of it, but unfortunately no, I'm simply going to ask what you think my argument is.
Adult curves are difficult. Same reason high fashion models all are shaped like boards.
On the contrary, the most common sexualization I found of young/child characters add/use most of the times mature sexual features, including curves: next time cover the face or immagine a face swap, if what remains is compatible with developed sexual attributes the sexyness is plain neuron activation... I only cold shiver when inmature body features or proportions are highlighted or detailed in a sexual context or attitude, those are the disgusting ones... at least for me
Ohhhh yeah. that shit. Yaah.. used to be on multiple fake sites before AI took the fun out of it and it was common to get guys that would hit the forums with fakes made using headshots of actresses that were from when they were UA. Usually the site mods would pull down the image then have a chat with the faker and if they kept at it then they got them banned. The one that was top of the UA offender list for years was the actress that portrayed Hermione Granger from Harry Potter films. IIRC, that was Emma Watson. It was exasperating at times.
Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of everything is shit, and this absolutely applies to anime. The worst of the worst can be disgusting as hell, and I hate how often minors are sexualized.
That said, the good stuff is good! I can name a handful of high school romance anime/manga I've really enjoyed (Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Horimiya, You and I are Polar Opposites), and what these series have in common is that they're about romance, not sex. The characters aren't presented as sex objects for the audience to lust over, they're characters in a coming-of-age story, and the stories I just named are all kept wholesome and PG-13. I would honestly recommend watching these just to see if they change your opinion at all.
High school settings are popular because that's often the most pivotal turning point in a person's life - ideal for a coming-of-age story. For many people that's often when they had their most active social lives, and for a writer it's a pretty easy shortcut to giving the cast a reason to interact with each other.
And honestly, I think a large part of it also has to do with nostalgia for the audience. I'm sure you've heard the term 'loneliness epidemic' used a lot these days, high school settings can be appealing to those who lack much of a social circle today and maybe feel like their lives have all been downhill since then.
I don't doubt for a minute that a good number of people with waifu avatars probably want to fuck the anime schoolgirl. But I think that there are a lot more people who just wish they could be the anime schoolgirl.
Anime about the dating lives of school kids is not something that interests me. Romance as a genre is not something I'm interested in, and as an adult, the lives of teenagers also aren't interesting to me. I'd rather watch sports than teenagers kissing, and I hate watching sports.
If you (general) peaked in high school and like anime school girl shit because it reminds you of your 'glory days', lmao, ngl that's just sad.
Adults wanting to be/be seen online as anime school girls are on par with the adults who have no qualms with sharing online that they want to fuck anime school girls. You're both creeps imo.
Hopefully none of you work with kids/teenagers.
Sorry for enjoying some entertaining comedies I guess. If you just don't enjoy romcoms at all then fair enough I guess, taste is subjective, but I think you're just projecting too much outrage that other people enjoy things. There's truly nothing wrong with any of the shows I mentioned, and even if they're not to your taste I think you could at least get a better idea of why someone else might like it.
I think much of your post and position are fairly reasonable and common positions, particularly here on the fediverse, but I do kinda think you lost the plot here. Just cause you dont see the appeal of romance doesnt no one else does, and that the only reason someone would watch a romantic coming of age story is because they wanna fuck kids 😅
I like romance. I like seeing the themes of romance across a lot of people. Though generally queer romance, as it makes me happy to see stories of queer love and it feels like I have more cultural connection to the way romance looks in queer stories, regardless of pairing.
Romance frequently gets written as young people, because its a time of discovery and that heightens the tension as the characters are learning to navigate things together.
I didnt peak in highschool, I was going through a mental health crisis, I barely even got to experience highschool honestly. I just like seeing romance in media. The highschool ones usually aren't quite as good though, especially in anime and manga- they tend to be fairly samey and rely on tropes, and as a result end up with underdeveloped characters. Not always though, sometimes they're really beautifully written :)
I can understand by being grossed out by depictions of young people experiencing intimate things. But like, there are stories about people in all stages of life 😅 a coming of age story is a familiar structure because its a big experience that really shapes you as a human. And romance is a fairly core human experience for most folks too (though certainly not all). I think you just dont get the point, and thats okay but not everyone who finds joy or sees meaning in that kinda story is a wannabe child fucker
Why is my saying I dislike the romance and teen genres something people are interpreting as me stating blanket rules on what others are supposed to like?
I was sharing my dislike for the genres because I was replying to a comment reccomending shows from them to me to watch.
You can like whatever media you like, people will have opinions about it and judge you for it, just like people do with everything, and that is normal. You can like things other people have negative opinions about, it is allowed.
You like sexy children in anime and I don't, good for you. I am judging you and think you're gross, but you are still fully capable of continuing to enjoy your media despite this. See how it works?
You misunderstand- I do not think that your judgement means I can't like something. I think your judgement is ill-founded and dependent on assumptions that you have as a product of not relating or enjoying the things you're judging, and I'm passing judgment on it exactly in the way you're passing judgment on what I'm saying. Only I think my judgement is actually well founded, and I think that's reflected by the fact that no one but you disagreed with or disliked my comment, where many people have otherwise agreed with you.
That's a transparently bad faith straw man, and you look like a moron for saying it as though its anything less than a transparently bad faith straw man
I'm ace. I don't generally find people sexually attractive lol. Not really a thing that happens for me.
Hopefully this clarifies the situation.
I don't know that I believe thats an honest reframing but frankly it doesn't matter. A 'general you' still implies it's true for me among others.
If its not true for me, maybe, just maybe, theres a way of relating to this you just don't understand, and not everyone who enjoys romantic coming of age stories is a horrible person who wants to fuck children. Just maybe.
The fact that you just told someone who likes coming of age romance stories that they "are allowed to like sexy children" is telling on yourself. It means you cannot look at teenagers who are in love without getting aroused.
Your comments all over these threads make it very obvious that you are a self-hating pedo trying desperately to convince everyone, including yourself, that you aren't one.
Most people don't look at teenagers holding hands or confessing that they're in love and think "wow look at those sexy teenagers".
You have a genuine problem.
Get help.
(I'm ace, which personally I think makes it way funnier that he feels that's a biting criticism lol)
Oh wow that really does make this even funnier holy shit 😂
Please see my comment here for information that directly responds to elements of this comment: https://piefed.social/comment/13300209
I was going to agree but then I remembered I just watched the new Carrie and enjoyed it. A show about teens in high school (though some of the actors look 30 lol)
Still, i generally agree with the sentiment. Seems like half the internet is creepy adult men with anime girl pfps. It's disconcerting for sure.
You're just posting wildly popular opinions now. Losers and rapists are there same kind of person? What is this, Thanksgiving in Chicago?
I'm not a huge anime fan, but I have seen some anime and western animation that takes place in highschool, or highschool age, so I guess I get to have a casual opinion.
And that opinion is that when I see animated characters in highschool I don't think of actual highschool kids, because highschool kids are gross children. Similar to how Hollywood will have a TV show about teens and cast a bunch of 28 year olds to play them, there's not really any connection or association in my mind between these characters and real youths I might see on my walk to work or on the bus.
The reason that highschool keeps coming up is because the setting has a lot of constraints and dynamism. True children have no agency in the world, and adults are set in their ways or part of the system, whereas teens are becoming people, and so there's a question about who they'll become. There are adults and structures that have some level of authority over them, which can make the stories have conflict, but those adults don't hold ultimate authority like they would with toddlers or something, so there's a chance of victory. This is why even shows that aren't about highschool, like Avatar the Last Airbender, still feature kids in an age where if there was highschool, they'd be in it. Or fantasy adventure + "highschool" like Owl House. They're stories of self-discovery that most adults don't experience because they already self-discovered and they're through that now.
So my answer is that I don't want to convince you of anything. If, when you see a character that's meant to be in highschool, you feel like that is a highschool person in real life, that's fine. And I could see that being creepy. But when I experience an animated character they don't feel like a real person to me, they're an abstract sketch of a person, lacking in detail, and one of the details they lack is "actual organic age and the implications of the body characteristics that come with it". Instead they're just "confident" or "awkward" or "shy" or "bold, but reckless" or whatever.
There's nothing about them that feels anything like any real person I've met or seen.
Are "reborn as villainess" pedo bait? It's still high school, even if it's victorian/fantasy era, and have a lot of the same tropes.
I wish Japan would slow down with all of it. You get really deep and cool animes sometimes only to have it covered in weird stuff. I can count on my hand the amount of shows I can recommend in general without coming off as a creep.
I just started Re:Zero season 4 and Shaula is too much.
Re:zero has a great plot but has full episodes dedicated to lolicon fan service. It's actually specifically the one I was thinking of. One of the witches in the rabbit arc was a child in a G-string. Very frustrating.
what's that one show, Made in Abyss? i enjoyed it but you take a pretty big dose of "Japanese Culture" with your adventure plot
The anime somewhat cleans up some scenes that are in the very much more paedophilic manga where each release also features sexual nude drawings of the minor characters on the last page of each issue, or at least a lot of them.
Edit: Also I remember an interview with the author where he has a doll of the bunny character and sniffs her crotch repeatedly. It's considered a "joke" in the community, he's done this repeatedly. Nanachi I think? The nude drawing of her in one issue says "Nanachi won't let you sniff it. Has a mild scent" in their backpage character profile.
Sorry, but this is a very common opinion. Perhaps phrased in an unpopular way, but it's still super common
So why is this not called out more?
If you all call Trump and Epstein pedos for fucking teenage girls, what makes your anime school girl yuri obsessions not pedo shit?
Peridot largely because there's a difference between seeming creepy and being so.
It isn't like your average anime waifu loving fanfreak started out obsessed in their thirties. While it's true that anime isn't just for kids, it is where most people first encounter it. Some folks just stay fans rather than developing other interests that replace it as a primary hobby.
It changes the landscape. There's a massive difference between someone that's obsessed with an anime teenager and someone that's actively trying to fuck real teenagers. Hell, there's a difference between that and pedophilia, but that's a semantic quibble, not substantial thing.
It's like the difference between fantasy and reality.
That being said it is called out to some degree or another. Not so much using an avatar, but the people that get obsessed with some thousand year old demon that just happens to look five catch hell a good bit. Even online, but most definitely in meatspace
One is real.
(I don't get the anime shit either, but there's quite a difference to real rape, international sex trafficing, etc and fucking cartoons)
Someone made a post below about one taking a liking to the stuff at an appropriate age... Never reassessing that one is 40 and still on about [insert trope]... Which is very valid.
Now apply that logic to fps games and school shootings
Yeah and do racism and misogyny next! Because everybody knows that a normal media diet full of race and gender based violence has absolutely no effect on the people who consume it, right?
And obviously any racist and/or misogynistic social behaviours from fans cannot be attributed as influenced or normalised by the media they consume, I mean clearly society just is racist and misogynistic anyway so that can't be it, that's just normal. Right?
We should totally defend all the racism and misogyny in our media and feel attacked if anyone points out that the media we like makes us look like racist misogynists!
I looked at your comment history and determined that it really not worth interacting with you. Goodbye
Because it's not true.
i guess this is the one place where people in power actually get more shit. although you are comparing actual harm to content consumption, i do support adding one more thing onto the average guy judgement pile
I don't think it unpopular, it's the most normie take ever. Anime and Hentai are just another medium for every fetish that exists and there's some really weird stuff out there. Personally I don't get those specific ones, but also don't see it as harming anyone, and also that it doesn't "activate" the same part of the brain.
I worry about your social circle that you think this is unpopular.
I'm talking about the people I see online.
Just went to a retro video game convention and they're was like 7 booths with with anime art. All the art is basically young girls with massive cleavage. It seems wrong.
Shit like this is why I stopped watching anime. The normalized pedophilia and xenophobia is too much.
(Unrelated but another reason I stopped watching was because I couldn't stand the squeaky falsetto female voices that Japanese culture forces women to have. I always watched a dub whenever possible.)
There are plenty of great animes without any of the aforementioned, don't think you need to quit it all together. Just avoid the obvious glorifying of sexual assault/harassment and child/teenager sexualization ones and call out people for supporting and normalizing those.
There's still a ton of anime that don't have the usual turnoffs. Shows like ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Dept. and Mushi-Shi and Orb: On the Movements of the Earth. I have a whole list of them if anyone's interested
Correct
Absolutely agree. There is a lot of hand waving and justification going on in the comments.
I don't think kids as characters or even adults regressed into children is the problem so much for me, as the sexualization of them. And there is a definite issue with that across anime. "Fan Service" is a very real and often utilized trope. You can have all the cultural things people mentioned in an anime without panty shots and adults wanting intimacy with children.
Unfortunately since the pedo apologists defend the bad parts of this as if it's just a "culture" difference, it's hard to see any use of child anime characters for something like an avatar as anything but gross predilection.
You are free to think weebs are wierd but it is cunterproductive to water down the term pedophile to include people who like anime with school aged characters.
I think media that is creepy, wierd or gross need to be allowed to exist. It is important to be able to explore topics that make people uncomfortabe and I think that freedom necessitates the tolerance of works whose artistic merit is unclear as long as they don't cause direct harm.
Anime doesn't depict the sexualisation of minors as a bad thing. It normalises, relishes, and straight up comodifies it.
Plenty of it does, plenty doesn't. And I can't bring myself to see the issue when it's about high school characters with other high school characters where the appeal is from a culture where high school is often seen as a nostalgic great time that people just want to reexperience through media. And average teenagers are objectively horny as fuck.
The sexual harrassment that is often part of that that is also normalized is the far bigger issue. But that happens regardless of the supposed age of the characters.
The normalization of sexualized children is harmful.
It would probably be for the best if pedophiles and child sexual abusers weren't considered the exact same by the general public considering one harms people and the other appears to be a mental disorder (or maybe just a sexuality), but that won't happen for a long time if ever.
Ooh, this is a spicy one, and definitely unpopular.
Is that thinking logically consistent? Yes. Is it pervasive? Yes. Is it sane?
Does putting a badger as my profile picture mean I want to fuck the badger? Oh god, is my manager a closet badger buggerer?!? Holy Jesus, does my elderly coworker wants to fuck her cat, and does the younger guy wants to fuck a Ferrari... What kind of twisted society do I inhabit?!?
Nope, definitely not sane.
Sorry but that kind of inference of "profile picture = thing I want to fuck" is definitely unpopular for a reason.
I disagree I think that's really poor framing.
Backgrounds are a great example. A classic dude with his hot biker chick background vs grandma with a background of her grandkids.
You're not gonna imply the same why to it because they both are backgrounds. But I know why they both have those backgrounds.
Same vibe if you decorate your place with this. Grandma has kids of his grandkids, classic dude has hot babes lining his walls. Different reasons, one is still cringe and uncomfortable
First of all - you have a point. Certain things are seen as creepy.
Secondly, it's not a good one. It rests on the presumption that you "know why they both have those backgrounds". No offense, but men who liked to sew were seen as creepy.
By your logic, a good citizen should report anyone with an anarchist symbol on their desktop because they are plotting active insurrection (we all know why they have them right).
The reality is they could just like the pattern and have no idea of the context, or their vision of the context could be different (Planescape Anarchs ftw), or (and let's be honest here) it could be Ankh-zone levels of misunderstanding, or let's really go for it - they could just be all mouth to fit in.
Grandmas should love their grandkids, but how many really do (ye gods I've met some awful grandparents)? Guys should all be sexually aggressive, except a lot of eggs need a vision (how many gender dismorphic men dream of the childhood they never had - fyi this is 100% of the people I know with anime schoolgirl avatars) and a lot of men try to hide who they really are behind d false machismo (the overcompensation of closeted gay men being legenday). Funny how that works.
I'll judge folks for who they are, not how I want to see them.
But... But you don't understand! That mostly naked 12 year old looking girl who behaves like a young, spoiled immature brat is really the oldest, most powerful...... Uh......... Demon or something from the... Uh... Whatever hell circles.
Or was it a 12,000 year old dragon who looks like a little girl and gets stalked by a middle aged man? No wait, that was Fire Emblem.
Oh by the way; this is also why I'm uncomfortable with Midna. Yes I know what her proper appearance is supposed to be. But until then she looks like a weird little girl in oddly revealing skin tight clothes.
I hate how normalized modern anime sexualizes kids and the people who cheer it on.
Apologies. Somehow my comments got made as a response to a comment instead of the post.
The gray area that exists is when you remember something you were attracted to when you were a teenager and start entertaining the fantasy before realizing you're now 40. But a normal person does NOT then make it their avatar.
I entirely dropped a friend the second they started talking about installing mods to make their gnome /little person character fully nude in an MMO we were playing.
The whole guild splintered away from her weird vibes.
Gnomes, halflings, and dwarves shouldn't look like human children. They should look like alien adults!
I like that guild wars 2 asura (short playable species) are like little weird aliens and not sexualized.
:C
That's fucked up
Join here if you want to fight your personal war:
https://ecpat.org/
Apologies for my initial assumption. Ecpat is a very worthy cause.
I'm not clicking that.
It's safe.
Appreciated. I should have just looked the ecpat up tbh but the amount of creeps in this commrnts section really had me assume the worst.
We are all comfortable with sexual liberation until a point we are not. The ideological framework underpinning this has gaps.
Yeah, i get it. Loli fetish is straight up pedo, and should be called that. Obsessing over high school aged children and talking about them as sexual objects, straight to creep. A thousand year old vampire goddess in the body of a hyper-sexualzed twelve year old is a tramsparent justification.
At the same time in general it depends on the motivation. I love the show Lucky Star. It depicts a group of girls in middle school just being girls, and living their life. Which is something i missed out on as a young person, and so fulfills a empty part of me. I'd hoped for something similar in yuruyuri, but that felt more sexualized.
You're causing harm to real kids with looking at lolis? Spoiler: No
Why ask the question if you're just going to stuff the wrong answer into your straw man?
When I turned it out into an straw man?
I'm just pointing out that you're conflating and equiparating fictional beings and mere drawings to real people when you say they're both pedo, and that's not how it works.
You also equiparate causing danger to real children to just being obsessed to a bunch of pixels or a bunch of lines on paper. The second may be cringe, but not more than that.
Okay, cool. You also gonna point out the difference between ephebaphilia and pedophilia? Im sure it'll help your argument.
Yeah, and I know the difference between pederasty and pedophilia, too. You don't seem to know.
Those girls in Lucky Star are no l16-17 and all become 18 over the course of the show. Still weird for anyone over 23. Love the show.
It's a comedy slice of life.
Is it weird for adults to like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Or any number of shows where the main cast are school aged kids?
Stuff happens though. I liked the show when i was 18 and I still recall liking it now at 38. You'll get old too and the things you enjoyed when you were young won't magically become acceptable later, looking at hazbin hotel after gen z's kids grow up to be our next big puritans, everyone will be retroactively unacceptable someday.
I would totally have a magical girl interface for like a pc ai interface. I mean I might do like sebastian or such but like the majority would be some female anime figures. Why do I care if you judge me for it. I lived my whole life realizing who I am and how I act is uncool. When I was a kid anyway. Oddly a lot of things so uncool about me became like. mainstream. man that is so wierd.
Holy shit you're only using this 'unpopular opinion' to repeat offensive normie opinions.
We can also discuss violence in games and things like horror movies again if you want
Contextually it is an unpopular opinion though.
Fedi popular opinion is this stuff is all wonderful and you're a bigot if you don't agree. Like, I if I mention I block loli and furry content and their pornographic versions, I get multiple replies/DMs telling me what a bigot I am and how I need enjoy furry porn or something.
What, for real? XD
yes, for real.
it's not everyday or anything, but lots of insecure weirdos on the internet feel personally attacked when you don't like what they like. and people in real life.
I've had people try to fight me in bars in the past for not wanting to talk about sports or being interested in their sports team.
That might be true, their behavior in the comments was still offensive af. Hell I'd even agree that most anime are bad and oversexualising loli characters and I don't like it either. Anyways I'd even say most anime fans would agree that lolis are rather bad but they still enjoy the medium. no reason to be a dick about it and accuse them of being on the same level as Epstein
it's strange how intense the furry folks are. I don't mind adults consuming whatever porn, but a lot of furry stuff seems almost targeted at kids. baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf.
I'm sure this will get downvoted by the fur folk.
Yeah and ler's do racism and misogyny next! Because everybody knows that a normal media diet full of race and gender based violence has absolutely no effect on the people who consume it, right?
And obviously any racist and/or misogynistic social behaviours from fans cannot be attributed as influenced or normalised by the media they consume, I mean clearly society just is racist and misogynistic anyway so that can’t be it, that’s just normal. Right?
We should totally defend all the racism and misogyny in our media and feel attacked if anyone points out that the media we like makes us look like racist misogynists!
Violence in games =/= pedo content.
Hell, the most weird, niche fetish porn game on itchio =/= pedo content.
I'd rather discuss what's broken in your mind to make you unable to see the distinction.
That's an attempt to change the meaning of a word though, it's the sexual attraction to minors, not the action of performing it. If they acted on it they are a rapist whom is also a pedophile.
Their distinguishing feature is that pedos are attracted to minors.
Stop dilluting what words mean.
If you are an adult of any gender or sexuality who finds children attractive, you fit the label pedo. Stop trying to paint calling this out this as sn attack on the queer community.
How's that distinct from being harmful to minors?
I always wondered if bronies were pedophiles, but I'm also too judgmental myself.
Definition debates aside they're at minimum creepy for sexualising a children's show.
bro they're horses, and adult horses at that
Well, the series was made for little girls. The average Brony at the height of MLP was 34. And they sexualised the characters a lot.
Not hard to make a connection there.
Some of the ponues are children. But technically the mane ones are suppose to be adults.
I usually read manga about junior/highschool romance like The Dangers in My Heart and others like it (thus I don't usually watch the anime). When I do, I'm not self inserting into it but more so vicariously re-experiencing my own highschool romances and sometimes 'looking on' like a proud sibling of sorts, or more like the ghosts watching everything happening in Ella Enchanted (after they were murdered [was that Ella Enchanted?]).
I often see people saying stuff like this in the comments, of an internationally popular manga with a similarly popular anime adaptation, and I have to wonder what their highschool/junior high life was like because for some reason they cannot relate to the character or plot and view it from an outside perspective and project this onto other people. When I'm reading or watching media like this I'm totally immersed, thinking of my first crush or first kiss or cheering the protagonist (à la Ella Enchanted(?)).
Also downvote because it is a somewhat popular opinion in my experience lol.
I also wonder what you might think of this manga (iirc it's getting animated in the future):
https://mangadex.org/title/157ab2cc-1fc7-4b29-8955-72d94a140982/kesa-mo-yuraretemasu
It's pretty much what the readers/watchers are feeling when they consume media about highschool romance.
*Also, iirc from the psych classes I took at uni, ~1% of the global population has paedophilia, and ~0.2% of those people are also co-morbid with psychopathy which means they can harm children with no remorse. So, calling EVERYONE that watches or reads globally popular animes and mangas that focus on high school/junior high romances is statistically wrong and stupid. <.< Looks at almost everyone in this thread >.>
I don't necessarily think they're pedos. I just think they need to grow the fuck up. It's everywhere these days. You see the stickers plastered on cars. Half of Reddit (and some of Lemmy) are posts of artwork of scantily clad anime girls. Like 80% of the posts on the TopCharacterTropes sub involve half naked underage anime girls. Like these people have never watched anything other than sexualized anime. At least fantasize about actual women.
And I actually like some anime. Just not this weird sexualized girl anime that brings out the weirdos.
Mine's a cool robot lady 😅👌
Thanks for posting this op, its been a great filter. My block list is longer now and that gives me great joy!
Aye, mine's been filling up too. Ngl, I really wasn't expecting so many people to be flat out defending tbis shit.
you went on UnpopularOpinions and didn't expect to see people calling your opinion unpopular?
I didn't expect there to be such an open defence of pedophillia from so many people.
My apologies for expecting better from people. I now see the error of my optimism and have lowered my expectations again.
I don't agree but, if I did I feel like I would also be criticizing your username
What does my username have to do with this?
You gonna share with us what you find so offensive about the book title I dropped the 'r' from so the bird species spelled 'cake' instead?
Its part of why i struggle with a lot of Persona or Japanese anime style games. And I love Shin Megami Tensei but please let me be an adult character. Strange Journey was soooo good because it didn't have any of that teen angst and everyone acted like adults in a dire situation.
Oh good Strange Journey was so good. I lost my copy sadly in a move or few. The reference in SMT4 got me excited. I thought that one did pretty well.
What? It's not about liking the girls it's about wanting to be one so bad imho
What's wrong with adult women?
Why is all the child imagery and school uniform so appealing to the point where you (general you) want to represent yourselves on the internet as anime school girls?
Btw I'm asking this as a gender queer enby who best fits in transfemme spaces.
Lots of things are wrong with being adults. I have not been for long but I'm already nostalgic about my college years
A few different effects that culminate into a large perception. This is all opinion, so prepend every sentence here with "I think" or "in my opinion".
Most popular anime are high school themed. There certainly are anime with adults, but the majority is high school or younger.
Kids are cute. Young men growing into adulthood are in that weird metamorphosis phase where they used to be cute and could be silly without repercussions and now have to start fitting into the societal gender role that tells then they have to start taking things seriously. Online, no one knows you're a dog [meme drop]. They can hide behind a cute girl avatar and be silly.
So why not adults? See point 1. But also, humans tend to be in their prime around 18. I'm in my 30s, but wish I had some of the features I had when I was a teenager.
Dysphoria from a time you know: most people posting online are teenage or older. Their dysphoria is going to come from times they had the most free time: usually as a teenager before they had work and responsibilities. They don't know what it's like to be an adult yet, so they relate more to the teenage characters. School is ubiquitous, salary work less so.
In short, the actual answer likely lies somewhere in these few points, and will be a different mix for everyone. Some guys might have it for creepy reasons, but in the vast majority of cases it's because they feel a connection to the character, who happens to be a high school girl.
Your opinion is partly wrong. The peak of adulthood is around 30-35. I know by example. You bet i could still do a backflip without training it for 15 years.
Bruh some of us like the characterization, and have arrived to liking that character because were fans of the anime.
I like Mikoto Misaka from A certain scientific railgun because she is a bad ass. If she was real I'd give her a fist bump and go about my day.
You might have missed the title of this post somehow?
The people with anime school girl avatars and/or the people who gush over how hot/sexy/fuckable the overly sexualised children are in whatever anime/manga, are who I'm calling out.
It literally costs nothing for the author to make them 18, or 21, or 35. You just say a different number and make the school a college. They're just pedos.
That being said i love anime despite my frustration with the pervert character, the loli, the 3000 year old vampire whos a 12 year old, the horny mom/grandma, and the useless male protagonist.
I worked for a company that was releasing a game. They tuned it for different cultures. A little art touch up here, some wording there. Our publisher said we would literally not be allowed to release our game in Japan unless we changed the in-game first-time NPC to a young, big-breasted giggly girl for that region.
No, I'm calling this out.
We have a disagreement in another community to which you name call me and mock me having depression in response to that disagreement, and then you come here and essentially vaguepost calling me pedo adjacent because of my profile picture?
I like Osaka because she's relatable and gives me comfort as a character that speaks to who I am, not because I think she's attractive. I genuinely have no words to how low this is.
Your profile pic is a red flag regardless of how you try to frame it
Me liking a character from a series because she represents my experience growing up with undiagnosed inattentive ADHD: "wow, she's literally me, it feels nice feeling seen"
Random internet strangers: "Well you see, that's a red flag because clearly you must have an attraction to children and there can be no other reason why you like this character. I didn't make this weird at all!"
Hey buddy, these you by chance?
Go pick another fight.
I don't know what to tell ya man, I literally highlighted why I like the character and why I use them as a profile pic, and you're actively choosing to ignore that fact in order to paint me as something I'm not.
End of the day, I explained my rationale, you're rejecting it attempting to paint me as something I'm actively showcasing I'm not, and thereby you're the person putting a sexual connotation here while trying to project that narrative onto me.
Not everything is about you. You are not the only one with an anime school girl avatar on the fediverse.
I get that you have terrible issues that it was wrong of me to dismiss as your time of 'big sad' from which you recovered, and that my choice of words really hurt your feelings. I am sorry.
This post though was not about you. I am not interested in any sort of interaction or connection with you and was not inspired or motivated by you to make this post.
That you happen to also have an anime school girl avatar is happenstance.
I am ace and often find out very late that certain things i like have a sexual connotation, but i hope that when non asexual people enjoy a romance, they are not thinking about the characters genitals
ive seen that, on yt i got curious when a person was ranting about woke comments, checked his profile, had all AI generated ani-mated fetishes of disney characthers, and all black or latina.
If I enjoyed Lady and the Tramp, am I a zoophile?
Did you beat off to it?
but what if I was a 13 year old girl when I saw them?
This is one thread you want to read sorted as controversial.
Wowzers…
Downvoted because I agree.
Shouldn't it be an upvote, when you agree?
I still don't understand the rules of this sub. I guess that's the same for the majority of users
AFAICT it works the opposite. Opinions here are expected to be unpopular, so if they are "popular" or you agree with them, (you think) they shouldn't belong to the sub, so you downvote.
Yeah. Mangaka making weird shit are certainly making weird shit and it is being consumed by people also into some facet of the weird shit.
I have to ask how this is an unpopular take? Like even in online spaces, I see people with anime PFPs getting a lot of shit and anti-lolicon sentiment is on the rise, thankfully.
In what space would this take be unpopular in any way?
Want an actually hot take? There's nothing wrong about being a pedophile.
No one can choose to be or not to be a pedophile, it works same as other attractions in this regard. Most pedophiles do not abuse children in any capacity, being fully aware it's bad and harmful. So the OP's argument is not really essential to debate - merely being a pedophile doesn't mean anything anyway.
There are some issues with posting sexually explicit drawings of underage characters in uncontrolled online environments (children should not face such forms of sexualization), but merely having an anime child avatar isn't it.
If you want to learn more about what pedophilia is & isn't, refer to Wikipedia and academic literature instead of panicking media landscape.
People will have urges, we're still animals. It's when people act inappropriately on those urges that we have a problem.
Fucking stupid. Swap pedophile with any other heinous crime, you wouldn't feel the same.
"There's nothing wrong about being a murderer/rapist".
At least manslaughter can have extenuating circumstances, the rest are abhorant and should be treated as such.
I'm quite certain you didn't read my comment first, and knee-jerked on the word "pedophile", which commonly only holds one association.
Pedophile is not the same as child molester, and people wrongfully equate these two words based on false media narrative that has nothing to do either with scientific consensus or basic reality.
Child abuse is a crime, and should be persecuted. Pedophilia is an inherent trait that may or may not result in child abuse. Pedophiles are people, and they are able to comprehend the horrors their actions may cause (look into anti-contact pedophiles) or, if not that, then the legal consequences of their actions. If a given pedophile crosses the line, they should land in jail. But we cannot preemptively persecute people who did nothing wrong and happened to be born with something they can control.
Nah dawg, I think you're 100% wrong on this one.
Psychopathy is characterized by impaired empathy and resistance to external influence, pedophilia is not. It is a common perception that pedophilia just turns a person into an animal preying on children, but it has nothing to do with scientific consensus on the matter.
Biologically, pedophilia is no different than any other sexuality. You wouldn't fuck a drunk woman in the club, no matter how hot she is, because you know in this condition she's incapable of giving valid conscious consent. Similarly, most pedophiles would not fuck kids because they know children in any condition cannot give it, either.
Association of pedophilia and preying on children is not only wrong, but also harmful. It contributes to stigmatization of pedophilia, and thereby makes it harder for people with pedophilic disorder (i.e. those particular pedophiles who are at risk of abusing a child, or experiencing mental health issues and distress due to pedophilia) to seek professional help, because they are afraid to be outed to their community. Left untreated, pedophilic disorder in particular can lead to child sexual abuse, suicide, substance abuse, and a plethora of other negative consequences. On a personal note, this is the primary reason I advocate for all of this - academic literature suggests that increased understanding of pedophilia in society may help reduce the incidence of child sexual abuse, not increase it. This is crucial to understand if we want to actually protect children instead of catering to political interests framed as such.
(Pedophilic disorder is a clinical term you'll find in ICD-11 globally, and in various national systems like DSM-V. It is a current consensus that pedophilia itself is not a disorder, but a variation of human sexuality, so current editions of medical classifications do not include pedophilia itself)
And yes, most psychopaths are, in fact, not serial killers, either. But the effect of stigmatization there is significantly lower, because psychopaths are typically less sensitive to it and less inclined to seek help by themselves in the first place. Still, if we want to develop as a society, we need to resort to evidence-based policies and perceptions around this matter as well.
Defending your projection? Someone needs to search this person's hard drive.
On it, you'll find an assortment of scientific papers, academic books and various educational materials on my major, biology, as well as adjacent fields like medicine and psychology.
These things could make you smarter, if you could read. Too bad. Still, you can play World of Warcraft, I guess, if you don't read the quests.
Drawings ≠ Reality
Stop conflating them, that was the exact argument that people who hated videogames used: "if you do X/watch X/play X, then you turn into X/Y/Z". That's monocausalism, and an oversimplification of really complex systems and processes.
If your arguments were true, most of GTA players were mass shooters, because the same exact mechanism happens there.
So the defining trait that makes it ok is that it's not "real life"? If you get an artwork commissioned of an amine girl that is based on/inspired by someone you know irl, is that fine?
I guess to take it to an extreme do you think cartoons of CSAM is acceptable since it's "not real"? I guess it technically doesn't hurt anyone irl, and gives pedos a way to... yeah.
For the record I do not agree but am interested in the reasoning behind why you consider it OK.
Because only can be considered bad what causes real, verifiable harm. But this not only doesn't cause harm, but it can even avoid it because it will redirect these impulses to something safer
The "verifiable harm" is the normalising and disseminating sexualised images of minors under the guise of "But it's just a drawing."
Thanks to ol' muskrat and his recent lobbying to make it legal for his pet clanker to turn real images of underage women into deepfakes, most people are VERY aware that something doesn't have to have a physical impact to cause harm.
Just like the creepy anime shit;
They are depictions of children intentionally drawn that way, for a target market.
The artist intentionally drew them like that.
Nobody is forcing the artist to draw pictures of children or characters that look like children, they do it by choice.
It is not far of a stretch to say that the people drawing that type of thing enjoy it, as do the people consuming it.
So why are you defending it so vehemently?
You've posted multiple times in this thread arguing with whoever you can find, so I'm curious; what do you think you're defending?
Yeah, but in that case there is still a real, verifiable harm: they're damaging the reputation of one or more people, and they're enabling abusers and stalkers to harass people like never before, causing these victims huge trauma, and the worst part: they're trained with real children pictures.
An anime drawing almost never represents a real child, and what's more, they're just fucking obviously fictional and unmistakably unreal; someone as Shadman that draws real people in a cartoon-ish way is gross? Yeah, but as long as they're harassing real people in the process.
Moreover, a drawing or a fictional being hasn't even an age, because they're just that, fictional beings, they don't have any real biologic story or an inner world or a mind or any kind of psychologic or mental state, they're just lines or pixels on a canvas, and their only age, if anything, is the time passed since they were first drawn. There's just a big of an ontological gap between them and the real world that the harm never is in themselves or their nature or contents, but on the intentions and actions of their creators.
Yeah, they do enjoy it. But they don't enjoy actual CSAM (or, that is, real childrens being abused, because no, lolicon IS not CSAM as there is not simply a real victim).
Because I'm a Free Speech Extremist, and an art-autonomist. That's it. Period. Recommended lecture if you're so genuinely curious about that.
Where are the kids you are allowed to murder in GTA?
Or is it another game? What is the game where you graphically murder children?
You murder people nevertheless.
That's the problem, and you're just making a straw man out of it with something irrelevant to the point.
And actually, there are games where you're allowed to kill children.
Anyway, the point is, in GTA you can be a mass murderer of women and men alike, even pregnant women, and you then don't see that reflected in reality.
No, you're just refusing to see the point. I'm sticking closer to the topic than you are.
I mean it's "the same" right? If 'enjoying stories about fucking kids is like killing an NPC in GTA'? Where are all the games about graphically murdering children? If it's the same, if your analogy holds, there should be plenty of games that let you murder kids in the street, just not fuck them.
When you pay a shop to print out a 6-ft vinyl of said anime drawings, and then voluntarily apply it to the side of your clapped out Honda Civic, such that the fuel nozzle goes into the underage anime girls butt, it becomes reality.
Lol no, they're still just drawings, not real children.
Lol duh. I'm not implying that drawings can become living flesh and Bone beings. I'm stating that when someone makes an extraordinary effort to include sexualized images of young girls in their life and display them for the public, it crosses a pretty obvious line of decency.
Yeah, it may be indecent for you, not for other people.
Also, "decency" is NOT (and should NEVER be) a valid moral or ethical parameter, as it's something completely subjective and arbitrary. The only objective thing we can measure is damage, and that kind of art doesn't damage anyone, so just because you don't like it or you find it gross doesn't mean is bad, it is even good because is a way for helping people who struggle with pedophilia (that, remember, is NOT the same as pederasty [pedophilia is just attraction, pederasty is actually abusing of children, and most pedophiles aren't pederasts]) to cope with and liberate their impulses and tension in a harmless, safe and controlled manner.
Sorry fam I guess we're just not going to agree. I don't hate you, but according to these children, sexualized images of kids does real harm. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckz65jg4gqzlo
These are just feelings, not fucking real harm
It's still fictional if they buy a 1:1 scale model of the character with an onahole shoved inside it.
Yep
What about AI deep fakes? Isn't real so it's fine?
I responded to that here already.
TL;DR: in deep fakes there's still a real, verifiable harm, as it can be used by abusers and stalkers to harass people in a massive scale, plus it's trained with real people media, including real children, including actual children being abused (real children).