Aeonx

1st thing I thought when I heard they were missing is, yep, it was an iceberg.

Parts of this comment squeezed me out. o.O It reminds me of an encounter I had with someone who confessed they were a closet pedo, who did not act on their fantasies but wanted to. At the time I was studying psychology with the goal of helping pedophiles not offend or reoffend, but after this particular encounter my entire career choice was shaken. This person ended up finding a community of pedophiles who told them they were not wrong for their desires, or acting upon their desires so long as children were consenting (which obviously required GROOMING). There was nothing I could say to convince this person that this was illogical and wrong. I was so sickened by it, and remain sickened by it. What particularly hurts is that law enforcement did nothing, even when I warned them and his family that there was a girl he had his sights on. I am very upset now thinking about it, as this would not be my first encounter with corrupt or inadequate law enforcement or judges.

I don't know anything about the loli community - but any community that labels their work pedo, and starts talking about the possibility of children consenting are not just sick, but dead to me. I'll play devil's advocate and argue that people can wank off to a fake drawing of a fake person and I don't give a damn. But my personal line is when people start talking about the possibility that a child can consent and start advocating for that.

@Falmarri, I agree with a lot of your points. I don't think it is that there can't be opinions separate from the norm, but that pedophilia is a very sensitive and painful topic - and anything that reminds people of something that is that painful will trigger namecalling, rage and illogical conversations that just go nowhere because there is that much emotion involved. I would be somewhat caught off guard if people as a whole weren't emotional about it. I know as a survivor of SA, who has been receiving treatment for PTSD since I was in single digits, that the conversation is a difficult one for a lot of people, myself included. I strongly feel based on my work trying to prevent SA and supporting survivors, that there are things for me to be angry about in this world...a person wanking off on a drawing, who NEVER offends, is not something I am going to get worked up over.

IMHO People are going to have fantasies. But there is a very big difference between having a fantasy and acting on those fantasies, and most of society cannot see that difference, or the hypocrisy when they make their arguments. To say that a rape fantasy or game violence is somehow not as abhorrent as fantasizing with someone underage. Really? That disconnect to me is disgusting and vile, that people would honestly argue that even looking at a drawing of someone underage is evil (which in their rightful opinion is), but a bullet to the brain, or assaulting a cop in a video game before hijacking a vehicle isn't equally sick. At that point their argument loses a lot of merit for me, and I have to work really hard to listen.

I would also rather you not glorify blowing anyone up/putting a bullet in someone's head who resembles a real human being in addition to people not jacking off to someone resembling a child.

I feel like people minimize video game violence as if it is any less bad then getting off on a drawing. People minimize the violence in games where we glorify killing people and don't talk about the repercussions of war and the violence - real war with refugees and results of total annihilation like Syria.

War is no joke, violence is no joke, and killing people is just as bad as pedophilia - REAL pedophilia. But just like shooting someone in the head in a video game or burning a village down in a video game doesn't translate to someone in real life wanting to hurt other people, looking at drawings does not mean someone is going to act out on the drawings they see. Fantasies do not equate to hurting others. There are plenty of people out there who have rape fantasies, they may write about it, they may roleplay with their partner, but that does not mean they WANT to be raped or assaulted in real life and it gives no one a license to do that to them against their will. Fantasies are fantasies, that is all they are, and the few sick fucks who act on their fantasies are 100% different from the people who never do.

In case no one got the memo the world is run by pedophiles and human traffickers. Top politicians, entertainment industry, corrupt judges, bankers, the elite. Our entire world is morally questionable. I'm just not going to get worked up over fake children in fake worlds, when there are real children being hurt who need my outrage more.

As a side note, do video games normalize violence? Because if we are going to use the argument that people looking at drawings normalizes and endorses harmful desires then we really need to have the discussion about video game violence.