fictional representations

[lotesse]

I want to link to a discussion on the recent Supreme Court ruling on child porn taking place over at Feministe. As should be obvious, I disagree with what many of the posters over there are saying.

I have major issues with our definition of childhood - I certainly think it's not done my generation any favors that we're still considered kids at twenty. We've elongated adolescence to a ridiculous level. At fifteen, I wanted to be treated like an adult. I wanted to be a real part of the world, not a subordinate part. That doesn't mean that grown men should have been having sex with me, but I was sexually active at sixteen and I waited longer than almost all my friends.

There's a difference between pornographic materials featuring four year olds and sixteen year olds. There just is.

Comments

[hyel.livejournal.com]

While it's true physiologically that people don't stop growing till after their teens, this should rather be reflected in alcohol laws and such than sex laws, as sexual maturity (in physical terms) is reached around the age of 13. I don't think 13-year-olds should have sex. I'm willing to accept that 14-year-olds often do, and 16-year-olds almost certainly will. I think this should not happen at the hands of some dirty old man looking to take advantage of their innocence - rather, with agemates and equals - even if they are sometimes looking to take advantage of their innocence. If my fifteen-year-old wanted to bring a partner home for sex, a partner I more or less approved of or at least didn't disapprove of, I'd be hard-pressed to say no without feeling like a hypocrite.

Should fifteen-year-olds be featured in pornographic photographs? No, but then neither should full-grown people. It's too often a vehicle for humiliation, abuse, the spreading of the kind of ideas I'm just not comfy with and you can quote me on that and call me an enemy of free speech. (I just look at porn starlets and think, you poor creatures.) But if you must have photographic/video porn, it should be made by people who should know better; people who have experience of the working world as well as the world of education, and in this I do think that over-20s have an advantage. It depends on the person, of course.

[lotesse]

I suppose my main trouble with the issue is with imaginary porn, as it were - drawn or written material, in which no actual children can be involved. I agree on video porn. I just can't look at the stuff, because I can't trust that no one got hurt in making it. But no one's getting hurt in underage fanart.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I can look at it - adult video/photographic porn, I mean - but I feel kind of bad about it.