cthulu2016: (I have noticed that it is increasingly commonplace to consider images of
nude human beings under the age of 18 as categorically being "child
pornography"—an assumption that even non-sexual youthful nudity is
illegal.
This is an unfortunate social trend. If take to its logical conclusion it would require the elimination of a wide swath of art history and it has the loathsome effect of defining children as intrinsically sexual objects.
The nude child is, traditionally, the quintessential symbol of innocence. Most people do not think of children in primarily sexual terms. And the fact that a small segment of the population has corrupt associations does not dictate that society must, or should, internalize the pedophilic gaze, and make it our own.
Consider these two images.
The joke in the Esquire cover is that what is clearly innocent in the classic Coppertone ad would be far from innocent of the girl were an adult.
Consider how we have inverted that sensibility. If the classic Coppertone ad came out today people it would be more controversial than the Esquire cover! Some would say that it is "child pornography" and sexualizes the little girl.
But it sexualizes the little girl only insofar as we consider the little girl sexualized in the first place!
The point is that everyone is being conditioned to think like a pedophile... to view the world as a place while a child's butt is primarily an object of desire, and thus must be concealed.
"That is a litle girl's butt. A little girl's butt is something involved in sick and criminal sex acts." That's a heck of a way to think.
And why should the little girl be raised to think of her butt as something involved in sick and criminal sex acts? (It's not like kids cannot read they own culture. They're not stupid.) That which must be covered is shameful. And ideally childhood should be a period of respite from sexual shame, and sexual anxiety, and sexual self-identification.
Of course you want to tell your little girl not to get in cars with strangers. But you don't want her to think of herself as a sex-object defined partially by how some pervert would view her. Awareness of pedophilia and taking child abuse seriously does not require that the whole society think of children in sexual terms.
Notice something else about the classic Coppertone ad... the girl is not wearing a top.
Little girls did not used to wear bikini tops. In the 1960s it was not abnormal for a little girl to go around topless because there was nothing to hide. There was no assumed sexual interest in a little girl's nipples versus a little boy's nipples.
The age when a girl could no longer be topless in public was a rite of passage... that the girl was developing into a sexual being, which she had, of course, not been before.
Why would anyone have cared about hiding non-breasts? The modern practice of tiny little girls wearing bikini tops, on the other hand, is the distinct sexualization of little girls. It imposes a presumption of sexual desirability on their chests from birth.
Cover up! Somebody wants to have sex with you.
Now, if our modern presumptive sexualization of children had eliminated pedophilia there would be an argument for it, despite its coarsening effect. But pedophilia does not seem to have been eradicated. Instead, we have plenty of child abuse and also have bikini clad toddlers shimmying to overtly sexual songs in beauty pageants, booty shorts for toddlers with "juicy" printed on them... and little girls know what clothes are "sexy".
Why do little girls think of themselves in terms of sexual presentation? Because the whole culture does. Little girls dress like adults because our notion of childhood as a period of life where sex is irelevant is decreasing.
Meanwhile, what is increasing dramatically is the sexual fetishization of youth. Twenty years ago it was rare for porn to draw strong disinctions between and 18 year old woman and a 23 year old woman. Today it is universal. "18" is now the sexiest age. "Barely Legal" must be the best because it is presumed that illegal must be better, but 18 is as close as you can get. It is a compromise with what you must really want.
There has always been an unwholesome youth fetish wihin the range of porn, but that fetish is almost universal today. Why? What is it in our culture that has made adolesence the presumptive peak of sexual attractiveness and made little girl's clothing provocative? Every overt social signal is in the opposite direction. Everyone is very aware today that this is wrong, yet the problem burgeons.
Perhaps because we have, culturally, incorporated pedophilia into who we are for the purpose of opposing it. Perhaps the continual broadening of what constitutes the sexualization of minors renders minors a category increasingly defined in sexual terms.
Nothing in what I am saying suggests that child abuse be taken less seriously. Like all rape, the laws and law enforcment have been lax in the past and correction of that is welcome. But saying that the FBI should take serial kilers seriously is not the same as saying that the Nancy Grace show makes society a better place, even though she does nothing but declaim serial killers... in her very excited, prurient way.
But we are where we are. Children are somehow about sex, culturally, in an unprecedented way, and any image of a nude minor should be read in sexual terms.
But there is nothing in the law that says that. Your picture of your baby running around naked is not pornography, and there is no reason for you to be conditioned to think of it as such.
Child pornography is two words. It is pornography involving a child. It is imagery that functions as pornography. Sexual contact, lascivious display of the genitals, or a lascivious focus on the genitals.
I is not whatever a pedophile might find arousing, but what is created for the purpose of arousing pedophiles... as overt sexual stimulus for pedophiles.
And though the standards for images of minors are much stricter than the standards for images of adults, they still allow for a normal range of artistic expression.
There was a little movement a while back to get books by the photographer Jock Sturges outlawed. Sturges is a remarkably gifted photographer who takes a lot of pictures of unclothed girls in nature, many of whom are not 18. But despite all efforts, no Sturges book was ever prosecuted and they are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Sotheby's auction original photos. Prints are available through all the usual poster and print sellers.
Why? Because his work is not pornography. It is erotic in the sense that all images of attractive post-pubescent nude people are erotic, but it is not about sex.
There is no doubt that it is quite arousing to some pedophiles, but that is not the standard. The Sears catalog is quite arousing to some pedophiles.
Now, we are all entitled to our own views of propriety and morality, of course, but not sensibly entitled to our own definitions of laws, since laws are external to ourselves.
And as a matter of law, a lot of stuff that is clearly legal is routinely described as "child porn" for dramatic effect. And that's a bad thing.
It is fine to say that some things are pornographic precisely because we do not generally criminalize pornography. It is no longer a primarily legal term. I refer to all sorts of things as pornographic, including images of luxury cars and deserts.
But "child porn" is a super serious crime and, when the term is leveled against things that are clearly not illegal, contributes to a very unwholesome presumptive sexualization of children as a category.
We are conditioned to see not as we see, but as we assume some sick person would see.
And that cannot be healthy.
Source
This is an unfortunate social trend. If take to its logical conclusion it would require the elimination of a wide swath of art history and it has the loathsome effect of defining children as intrinsically sexual objects.
The nude child is, traditionally, the quintessential symbol of innocence. Most people do not think of children in primarily sexual terms. And the fact that a small segment of the population has corrupt associations does not dictate that society must, or should, internalize the pedophilic gaze, and make it our own.
Consider these two images.
The joke in the Esquire cover is that what is clearly innocent in the classic Coppertone ad would be far from innocent of the girl were an adult.
Consider how we have inverted that sensibility. If the classic Coppertone ad came out today people it would be more controversial than the Esquire cover! Some would say that it is "child pornography" and sexualizes the little girl.
But it sexualizes the little girl only insofar as we consider the little girl sexualized in the first place!
The point is that everyone is being conditioned to think like a pedophile... to view the world as a place while a child's butt is primarily an object of desire, and thus must be concealed.
"That is a litle girl's butt. A little girl's butt is something involved in sick and criminal sex acts." That's a heck of a way to think.
And why should the little girl be raised to think of her butt as something involved in sick and criminal sex acts? (It's not like kids cannot read they own culture. They're not stupid.) That which must be covered is shameful. And ideally childhood should be a period of respite from sexual shame, and sexual anxiety, and sexual self-identification.
Of course you want to tell your little girl not to get in cars with strangers. But you don't want her to think of herself as a sex-object defined partially by how some pervert would view her. Awareness of pedophilia and taking child abuse seriously does not require that the whole society think of children in sexual terms.
Notice something else about the classic Coppertone ad... the girl is not wearing a top.
Little girls did not used to wear bikini tops. In the 1960s it was not abnormal for a little girl to go around topless because there was nothing to hide. There was no assumed sexual interest in a little girl's nipples versus a little boy's nipples.
The age when a girl could no longer be topless in public was a rite of passage... that the girl was developing into a sexual being, which she had, of course, not been before.
Why would anyone have cared about hiding non-breasts? The modern practice of tiny little girls wearing bikini tops, on the other hand, is the distinct sexualization of little girls. It imposes a presumption of sexual desirability on their chests from birth.
Cover up! Somebody wants to have sex with you.
Now, if our modern presumptive sexualization of children had eliminated pedophilia there would be an argument for it, despite its coarsening effect. But pedophilia does not seem to have been eradicated. Instead, we have plenty of child abuse and also have bikini clad toddlers shimmying to overtly sexual songs in beauty pageants, booty shorts for toddlers with "juicy" printed on them... and little girls know what clothes are "sexy".
Why do little girls think of themselves in terms of sexual presentation? Because the whole culture does. Little girls dress like adults because our notion of childhood as a period of life where sex is irelevant is decreasing.
Meanwhile, what is increasing dramatically is the sexual fetishization of youth. Twenty years ago it was rare for porn to draw strong disinctions between and 18 year old woman and a 23 year old woman. Today it is universal. "18" is now the sexiest age. "Barely Legal" must be the best because it is presumed that illegal must be better, but 18 is as close as you can get. It is a compromise with what you must really want.
There has always been an unwholesome youth fetish wihin the range of porn, but that fetish is almost universal today. Why? What is it in our culture that has made adolesence the presumptive peak of sexual attractiveness and made little girl's clothing provocative? Every overt social signal is in the opposite direction. Everyone is very aware today that this is wrong, yet the problem burgeons.
Perhaps because we have, culturally, incorporated pedophilia into who we are for the purpose of opposing it. Perhaps the continual broadening of what constitutes the sexualization of minors renders minors a category increasingly defined in sexual terms.
Nothing in what I am saying suggests that child abuse be taken less seriously. Like all rape, the laws and law enforcment have been lax in the past and correction of that is welcome. But saying that the FBI should take serial kilers seriously is not the same as saying that the Nancy Grace show makes society a better place, even though she does nothing but declaim serial killers... in her very excited, prurient way.
But we are where we are. Children are somehow about sex, culturally, in an unprecedented way, and any image of a nude minor should be read in sexual terms.
But there is nothing in the law that says that. Your picture of your baby running around naked is not pornography, and there is no reason for you to be conditioned to think of it as such.
Child pornography is two words. It is pornography involving a child. It is imagery that functions as pornography. Sexual contact, lascivious display of the genitals, or a lascivious focus on the genitals.
I is not whatever a pedophile might find arousing, but what is created for the purpose of arousing pedophiles... as overt sexual stimulus for pedophiles.
And though the standards for images of minors are much stricter than the standards for images of adults, they still allow for a normal range of artistic expression.
There was a little movement a while back to get books by the photographer Jock Sturges outlawed. Sturges is a remarkably gifted photographer who takes a lot of pictures of unclothed girls in nature, many of whom are not 18. But despite all efforts, no Sturges book was ever prosecuted and they are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Sotheby's auction original photos. Prints are available through all the usual poster and print sellers.
Why? Because his work is not pornography. It is erotic in the sense that all images of attractive post-pubescent nude people are erotic, but it is not about sex.
There is no doubt that it is quite arousing to some pedophiles, but that is not the standard. The Sears catalog is quite arousing to some pedophiles.
Now, we are all entitled to our own views of propriety and morality, of course, but not sensibly entitled to our own definitions of laws, since laws are external to ourselves.
And as a matter of law, a lot of stuff that is clearly legal is routinely described as "child porn" for dramatic effect. And that's a bad thing.
It is fine to say that some things are pornographic precisely because we do not generally criminalize pornography. It is no longer a primarily legal term. I refer to all sorts of things as pornographic, including images of luxury cars and deserts.
But "child porn" is a super serious crime and, when the term is leveled against things that are clearly not illegal, contributes to a very unwholesome presumptive sexualization of children as a category.
We are conditioned to see not as we see, but as we assume some sick person would see.
And that cannot be healthy.
Source
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