Tag: lolicon

On Lolicon: An Addendum

My series of essays, Why I Hate Cardcaptor Sakura, is probably still my magnum opus in the world of blogging. Recently, I noticed a comment, though now almost a year old, that I think deserves some discussion.

For obvious reasons, I’m not linking the comment or stating the author’s name, and let me say clearly that this is not an invitation to dox, harass, or otherwise act like an ass.

Here is the comment:

That’s the issue with people like you today. You focus on too much on what is bad instead of why it’s bad. Why do you find th3 “pedophilia” relationship bad? It’s immoral, it’s disgusting it’s whatever. But please realize why it is bad to begin with. Pedophilia is bad not because a person likes a child, but because a child isn’t mentally prepared enough for any sexual relationships. They are also prone being exploited. Imagine a world where these negatives doesn’t exist, where every person is just borned matured and so on. Naturally in that world, pedophilia is not considered bad. That’s why in my opinion, we should never immediately see fictional pedophilia as some disgusting, evil, ugly, horrible things alone, but also by their context. I’m not saying the context in this is anywhere justified since I didn’t look too deep into it. But I really hope people learn not think so simply.

Curiously, this reinforces the point I was making with that over-long series of essays. “Imagine a world where pedophilia is good, akshually,” is, I agree, the entire premise of Cardcaptor Sakura—which is why I loathe it.

However, having said that, I will admit that the commenter makes a statement that, like the argument of a Sophist, takes some time to think over before we can understand exactly what’s wrong with it. Our instinct is to recoil in disgust, certainly, but instinct isn’t enough.

So here is my best attempt at a rebuttal:

First, I seriously doubt pedophiles’ good will; that is, I am not convinced they will be willing to keep it in the fictional world. “They’re just drawings” is the constant refrain of lolicons, something I have addressed previously. The problem with that is that, although they are indeed drawings, they are nonetheless drawings that represent something, in this case children. If those drawings of children are treated as sexually desirable for adults, that will naturally lead their viewers toward the opinion that children are sexually desirable for adults. This will hold true regardless of whether those child-drawings have a fantasy setting or a realistic one.

Second, the technical term for the detrimental effect to children when they are sexually exploited is “scandal.” Unfortunately, within the last two centuries or so, that word has lost both its original meaning and its original severity. To “scandalize” someone is to drag him into evil and thus into hell. Exploitation of children is particularly heinous because of scandal. That is why it is needful to tread with extreme care in this area, and I speak as one who has sweated and fretted over this subject, since I am myself a writer of coming-of-age magical-girl stories.

Third, although this is not well understood today, a thorough understanding of sexual ethics (indeed, of all ethics) requires an understanding of final cause, that is, that toward which things tend or that for which they exist. The primary final cause of sex is reproduction; there is much effort to deny this nowadays, but it is obvious to everyone and requires no defense. The sex act can of course have secondary ends such as pleasure or health or mutual good, but reproduction is still primary. As such, any sex act that necessarily precludes reproduction falls outside the category of the morally permissible, and this includes sex with sexually immature children even if the reality of scandal is denied or ignored as it is in Cardcaptor Sakura.

It is mainly for these second and third reasons that consent has become primary in today’s discussions of sexual ethics. It was around the eighth century that Christian theologians recognized that, because Christian marriage is a sacrament and not merely a natural institution, it requires the full consent of both spouses. From there, theologians refined their position, determining that, as a natural institution ordered toward child-rearing, marriage requires its participants to be of reproductive age and, as a sacrament, also requires that they be mature enough to consent to it.

Like it or not, these theological conclusions underpin all current discussions of this touchy subject.

The United Nations Gets Something Right

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if a million perverts cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

The online anime community has been in an uproar since Valentine’s Day because the United Nations has proposed an expanded definition of child pornography. The “Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” currently in draft, defines child pornography as including “photographs, movies, drawings and cartoons” depicting “a child engaged in real or simulated sexually explicit conduct.” As usual, Know Your Meme has an impressively even-tempered write-up.

This has a lot of otaku and weeaboos in a tizzy because … well, because they want their sexually explicit depictions of children, and they’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Some have taken to referring to this as a “loli ban,” or in some cases, as in MaiOtaku, they’ve claimed the “United Nations is trying to ban anime,” which would be true only if anime and child pornography were synonymous.

Even calling it a loli ban is arguably disingenuous: Although the term loli is unquestionably of disreputable etymology (it ultimately derives from the novel Lolita), it is used by weebs as a generic term for any young girl characters, particularly ones who wear pseudo-Victorian dress, at least as often as it is used for child pornography. They’re trying to imply here that animators will no longer be allowed to depict children at all, which is simply not the case.

Taken in its literal meaning, this “loli ban” would actually ban only unambiguous child pornography, which means the creepers could still keep their panty shots and their suggestive transformation sequences and all the other things that manga and anime don’t need and would be better off without. In fact, it would probably have little effect at all anyway, since creators of this stuff long ago discovered that they could get around such rules by claiming that a clearly prepubescent character is actually eighteen or a robot or something.

And besides that, the U.N. is a joke and would have no actual power to enforce this anyway. I mean, what are they gonna do, invade Japan?

What is perhaps most dismaying to me personally about the whole affair is just how bad the arguments are against the U.N.’s proposed policy. Child pornography isn’t really defensible anyway, but jeez, it shows what a philosophical dark age we live in that these are the best defenses anyone can come up with.

The arguments against the policy, at least that I have seen, are two, and they go like this:

  1. Muh freedom. This argument is  that “free expression” is a good in itself and should not be impinged in any fashion. I live in the United States, which was at least formerly the world’s leading defender of free speech. Our First Amendment, in its phrasing and original context, was clearly meant to protect political and religious speech. In spite of some erroneous and disastrous Supreme Court interpretations, it was never meant to protect pornography, which once upon a time was as illegal here as in the rest of the civilized world.

    The error here is in treating free speech as a good in itself rather than as a means to a good end. Pornography, the disastrous effects of which are obvious to anyone honest with himself, has no possible good end and does not need to be protected as free speech. It is akin to the example of adultery that Aristotle uses in the Nichomachean Ethics: it is wrong in itself and cannot be done moderately or temperately, which places it in an entirely separate category from expressing one’s honest opinion on matters philosophical, political, or religious.

  2. No real children are involved so it doesn’t hurt anybody. This argument has popped up in various forms all over the place. It is an argument that derives from a degraded version of Utilitarian ethics.

    The Utilitarians have held to the view that ethical actions should seek to maximize the most good, or pleasure, for the largest number of people. Utilitarianism typically flounders in trying to determine how such a calculus could actually be done. Over time, it has degenerated into doing the least amount of harm, or “not hurting anybody,” rather than doing the most good. This enables people to get away with most anything simply by defining harm in such a narrow way as to excuse most any vice they want to indulge in. Animated or drawn child pornography may not harm a specific child directly, but it nonetheless harms children generally in that it normalizes the sexualization and sexual exploitation of children. It also harms, morally or spiritually, the artist who produces the work and the people who consume it.