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A thread about child pornography, also called child sexual abuse/exploitation imagery (CSAM/CSEM), or as we prefer to say, unlawful sexual images of minors. 1/9
In 2012, a massive infringement of human rights was committed in South Korea when thousands of people were investigated, and many were charged, with child pornography offenses over the possession of cartoons. Many of them were women. opennetkorea.org/en/wp/289?ckat… 2/9
This cannot be justified at all. But the flimsy shred of justification that lawmakers (in Korea and elsewhere) hold up to justify the criminalization of people for possessing art, fiction, or dolls, is that these indirectly lead to the sexual abuse of real children. 3/9
However here is no evidence to support claims of such a link. Other groups are opposing our efforts to raise money for research to find out the truth, because they worry it will expose the false pretext of their criminalization efforts. prostasia.org/newsletter/?em… 4/9
The reason why sexual images of real minors are illegal isn't because they are inherently obscene, because often they are not. Most images that hotlines report encountering are selfies taken by teens, not images of rape. To call these obscene is sex-negative body-shaming. 5/9
Rather, they are illegal because sharing them is a consent violation. In cases where they are not a consent violation (consensual sharing with close-in-age partners), a growing number of states recognize that they ought not to be illegal either. 6/9 prostasia.org/blog/is-there-…
In the case of cartoons in which no real human being is depicted at all, consent is even less of an issue. Does this mean that sexually explicit cartoons should be freely available? No, of course not. They can be triggering, and need to be tagged and age-gated appropriately. 7/9
But should it be a criminal act simply to possess artistic works depicting imaginary characters? No, because when we base criminal laws on stigma rather than harm, innocent people get hurt, with no resulting benefit to children. This is a violation of human rights. 8/9
The Supreme Court got it right when it decided that child pornography is criminalized because it directly harms minors in the process of its creation and/or distribution. We can protect children from these harms, while also upholding artistic freedom. prostasia.org/blog/defending… 9/9
