Yeah it’s a legal grey area where I live too… but in my opinion we shouldn’t normalise it, and I definitely don’t like it in my anime. That’s what I’m trying to point at. This is a very sensitive issue, and there’s also a lot of things getting mixed up in this thread. Legality, morality, child protections, anime, real life, normalisation… are all getting lumped together into a tangled mess. So let’s untangle it.
Cartoons vs reality
It’s important to separate people who look at explicit cartoons online that don’t affect anyone in real life, as long as they’re keenly aware that it’s not socially tolerated, with… other types of people. The golden rule is, if your actions and habits affect anyone in real life, it’s not ok. Any art based on real humans is not ok here. Real photography is definitely not ok here.
In this thread I think we all agree we’re talking about the first kind, not the second kind. The second kind is not tolerated anywhere I want to live.
Morality
Personally, to my own morals, I don’t give a fuck what people look at on their own PC; again, with the caveat that it is completely separate from reality. If I found out, or they told me, I would look at them suspiciously and differently from that point onwards for sus behaviour. Actually imagine if you discovered an entire hard drive full of this kind of content… this is not normally, check him PC.
Each person will have their own opinion here, but it doesn’t personally keep me up at night that people are drawing fan-art of their favourite childhood cartoon characters. They know where the line is, stay on the safe side.
Legality
Legally, this is a grey area. As a society we haven’t definitively decided what to do about this yet; at least where I live. I wouldn’t be surprised if more places take a harsher stance to this content, especially with A.I. generated image proliferation, and the global trend towards laws with child protection as the stated justification. This is just speculation though.
Normalisation
Finally, this is what we’re actually talking about. We’ve separated out all the other stuff.
A huge amount of anime has depictions of perverts like: “haha what a rascal! Typical lolicon shenanigans. How silly!” It makes it seem ok and accepted in society.
I don’t believe normalising this outlook and behaviour is ok. If there’s even 1 person that feels like it’s acceptable to act on their urges because they saw it on a funny cartoon, that’s infinite too many, and I’m sure this has happened. If nothing else, any children watching will be more likely to think this behaviour is normal, and less likely to report it.
We shouldn’t be treating this kind of content as a joke or acceptable. It’s not funny. It’s like making rape jokes. People are uncomfortable showing their family these anime scenes because they know it’s weird and wrong.
I don’t know what’s going on in Japan, I didn’t live there long enough to have a good opinion, but we shouldn’t be importing their culture in this area.
well here it’s not a grey area since 2012. it’s explicitly a different thing according to our supreme court.
to your last point, i think there’s research that shows that people tend to act less on their urges when given an outlet. same as with violence. in fact i think that there’s even some that says that people who commit the acts do it because what they get off on is the sense of control rather than the characteristics of the victim.
that said, yeah we obviously shouldn’t be encouraging creeps to act on their urges. i also don’t know what the situation is in japan but it’s possible that in their “shame-based society” as someone put it in the thread, calling someone out on it is enough to discourage it in a way that doesn’t translate. in that case the translation is also wrong, but in the other direction; it should be harsher.
Considering the groping and upskirting epidemic in public trains in Japan, to the point that they have women-only train carriages, I’m not sure the shaming method is very effective in practice
Yeah it’s a legal grey area where I live too… but in my opinion we shouldn’t normalise it, and I definitely don’t like it in my anime. That’s what I’m trying to point at. This is a very sensitive issue, and there’s also a lot of things getting mixed up in this thread. Legality, morality, child protections, anime, real life, normalisation… are all getting lumped together into a tangled mess. So let’s untangle it.
Cartoons vs reality
It’s important to separate people who look at explicit cartoons online that don’t affect anyone in real life, as long as they’re keenly aware that it’s not socially tolerated, with… other types of people. The golden rule is, if your actions and habits affect anyone in real life, it’s not ok. Any art based on real humans is not ok here. Real photography is definitely not ok here.
In this thread I think we all agree we’re talking about the first kind, not the second kind. The second kind is not tolerated anywhere I want to live.
Morality
Personally, to my own morals, I don’t give a fuck what people look at on their own PC; again, with the caveat that it is completely separate from reality. If I found out, or they told me, I would look at them suspiciously and differently from that point onwards for sus behaviour. Actually imagine if you discovered an entire hard drive full of this kind of content… this is not normally, check him PC.
Each person will have their own opinion here, but it doesn’t personally keep me up at night that people are drawing fan-art of their favourite childhood cartoon characters. They know where the line is, stay on the safe side.
Legality
Legally, this is a grey area. As a society we haven’t definitively decided what to do about this yet; at least where I live. I wouldn’t be surprised if more places take a harsher stance to this content, especially with A.I. generated image proliferation, and the global trend towards laws with child protection as the stated justification. This is just speculation though.
Normalisation
Finally, this is what we’re actually talking about. We’ve separated out all the other stuff.
A huge amount of anime has depictions of perverts like: “haha what a rascal! Typical lolicon shenanigans. How silly!” It makes it seem ok and accepted in society.
I don’t believe normalising this outlook and behaviour is ok. If there’s even 1 person that feels like it’s acceptable to act on their urges because they saw it on a funny cartoon, that’s infinite too many, and I’m sure this has happened. If nothing else, any children watching will be more likely to think this behaviour is normal, and less likely to report it.
We shouldn’t be treating this kind of content as a joke or acceptable. It’s not funny. It’s like making rape jokes. People are uncomfortable showing their family these anime scenes because they know it’s weird and wrong.
I don’t know what’s going on in Japan, I didn’t live there long enough to have a good opinion, but we shouldn’t be importing their culture in this area.
well here it’s not a grey area since 2012. it’s explicitly a different thing according to our supreme court.
to your last point, i think there’s research that shows that people tend to act less on their urges when given an outlet. same as with violence. in fact i think that there’s even some that says that people who commit the acts do it because what they get off on is the sense of control rather than the characteristics of the victim.
that said, yeah we obviously shouldn’t be encouraging creeps to act on their urges. i also don’t know what the situation is in japan but it’s possible that in their “shame-based society” as someone put it in the thread, calling someone out on it is enough to discourage it in a way that doesn’t translate. in that case the translation is also wrong, but in the other direction; it should be harsher.
Considering the groping and upskirting epidemic in public trains in Japan, to the point that they have women-only train carriages, I’m not sure the shaming method is very effective in practice
https://maxonthemove.com/chikan-train-groping-japan/
ew yeah