So the question I have it this: Does Reddit have some sort of powerful magnetic attraction to the pedophiles and pedophile defenders of the world, or is pedophilia and/or pedophile defense simply endemic amongst the young male tech geek demographic that’s so heavily overrepresented on Reddit?
This is a question that naturally sprung to my mind after reading a couple of recent posts in ShitRedditSays, documenting Reddit’s strange sympathy with the child porn enthusiasts of the world. A woman stands up on Reddit and declares herself a feminist? She’s a “bad person,” a “female supremacist,” an “utter piece of shit.” A man is jailed for possession of child porn? He’s being unjustly persecuted for a “victimless crime.”
Fxexular on ShitRedditSays has assembled a roundup of some the most disturbing comments in a thread devoted to the aforementioned man jailed for possession of CP. Amongst his finds:
Heavily upvoted comments comparing viewing of child porn to smoking weed and playing Grand Theft Auto.
A comment with 15 upvotes suggesting that the perp should only get “a stiff fine and a few weeks of community service … for a crime the judge himself probably committed half a dozen times on any given weekend.”
A comment with nearly two dozen upvotes lamenting that the child porn possessor is going to have his “life ruined over socially non-normative pictures. … this is a predictable outcome of a corrupt government which is obsessed with its own power.”
But these are just the tip of the pedo-defense iceberg. Take a look at the thread itself, where you will also find heavily upvoted comments from Redditors comparing the “persecution” of pedophiles to past persecution of gays and witches; an unintentionally ironic comment lamenting the cruel treatment of a perp who is “only 26” years old; and a comment making perhaps the strangest argument I think I may have ever seen anywhere about anything:
My core problem here, as a computer scientist, is that any photo he had is really a bunch of zeros and ones… which for anyone who is at all familiar with binary, is a number. Basically, by outlawing the storage of some form of data, we have said that it is illegal be in possession of certain numbers. Yes, these might be huge numbers that you don’t encounter in your daily life, but they are still simply numbers.
In a different thread on the same case, another Redditor gets 75 upvotes for comparing child-porn-possessing pedophiles with African-Americans in the era of the Civil Rights movement. Here’s the comment itself; here’s the ShitRedditSays thread discussing it. And here, for good measure, is the same commenter offering a Redditor who’s confessed to molesting his sister advice on how best to avoid prosecution.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated thread in Reddit’s Videos subreddit, pedophile (sorry, ephebophile) Redditors mount an all-out attack on a girl who had the temerity to complain about skeevy Redditors masturbating to pictures of herself she put in a private album on the internet when she was 14.
In ShitRedditSays, jamie11 collects together some of the creepiest comments, including these:
“Fuck yea she is developed AND judging by her smug smile, she is loving every second of this. Sure she says “OMG, so creepy herp derp” but in reality it is kind of a big EGO boost. EDIT: in b4 misogyny accusations!” [+7]
“She is an attention whore. She is really dumb. She will probably ultimately profit from this in the model/porn/coors girl industry.”[+10]
“Shes much hotter when shes quiet.” [+32]
The numbers in brackets indicate the numbers of upvotes.
Again, tip of the iceberg.
EDITED TO ADD: I hadn’t noticed before, but r/mensrights has its own discussion of the child porn case. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: Possessing child porn is just a “thought crime” that doesn’t hurt anyone.
The creepiest fellow of the lot is probably logrusmage, who offers this defense of the child porn possessors of the world:
consider that a majority of “kiddy porn” are pictures of sexually mature females taken by said females for boyfriends that got leaked on the internet or via text, where the female happens to be under the age of consent.
When someone points out that, um, the fact that these pictures are “leaked” means that the subjects of said pictures didn’t consent to them being put online (and, also, they are below the age of consent), logrusmage offers this rebuttal:
Consent is not needed for something that does not directly effect someone. Like looking at them. … Looking at a picture of someone does not require their consent.
Presumably he’d be fine if someone secretly filmed him picking his nose while taking a crap and put it up on r/creepydudespickingnosesonthecrapper.
Oh you must make Croque Monsieur! They are awesome, and although I have not had one in literal years,I recommend them.
Cute birds!
Political cats?
Shaenon, that cannot possibly be a real bird. It’s actually animated, right? It’s just too cute to be real. Especially the noises.
Speaking of birds it’s hard to believe are real:
@ Hershele – To be perfectly honest, ageplay squicks me out too. Not quite as much as lolicon just in the sense that it doesn’t usually seem to have quite as nasty a subtext as there is in a lot of lolicon (I’m still trying to scrub the image of one which my ex accidentally rented thinking it was standard sci-fi anime that ended up being full of images of a naked pre-pubescent girl covered in blood and crying shot in classic male gaze perspective from my brain), but still. Anything involving minors, even if it’s just pretend, is a hard line for me, especially if they’re pre-pubescent.
I may not be well-versed enough in law to avoid missing something crucial, but I have some thoughts. The first is that, as you acknowledged, ethics and prevailing legal standard are not the same thing (and the degree to which they can or should be brought into alignment is debatable). The second is that establishing certain parameters for normalcy, to one end or another, through prohibition and rehabilitation or punishment, is the purpose of having a legal standard, which often limits the amount of dependence on pre-existing community standards that it can have, to an extent. Though it could just as well be hoped that standards would be shaped via ethical consensus-seeking and laws would follow, consensus is often difficult to reach.
Because of laws currently in place, acting in the ways talked about here would not be considered a community standard, I don’t believe. So, is the desire being in a sense common sufficient to set a precedent for establishing the legality of the action, despite their not being the same thing (as would basically be the case in the obscenity example)?
I’m also not sure that obscenity laws make for a good comparison. The purpose of that portion of the Miller test is to gauge what the average community member is likely to find offensive to see/hear in public space rather than to make a ruling as to the legality of the action itself regardless of context. Of course, I’m largely apathetic about them myself, so it could just be that that’s what makes the rhetorical power seem lacking.
Cassandra:
I wasn’t saying it’s not squicksome, just that it’s a way of translating loli/shota to the real world without hurting anyone, just as other forms of BDSM can translate rape fantasies to the real world.
Puella:
Miller doesn’t apply to CP, of course, nor should it; I didn’t intend to say it did. But “public space” has nothing to do with it, one case involved evidence that people in hotels were ordering porn similar to that at issue in their rooms.
“I wasn’t saying it’s not squicksome, just that it’s a way of translating loli/shota to the real world without hurting anyone, just as other forms of BDSM can translate rape fantasies to the real world.”
I don’t see how that would work in the case of people who’re fixated on children’s bodies as well as on the power dynamics.
I don’t know, they could use their imaginations? I mean, like furries or people who’re attracted to dead bodies I guess. But I do think it’s probably the same as any other kind of roleplay with consenting adults. It’s not real.
Croque Madame is another good one – it’s an egg on top of the Croque Monsieur. My favorite French bistro served it. Too bad it burned down and then was revamped into a pub, of which there are tons in the area it’s in.
I also mourn the loss of a really good pizza place that burned down.
Now I’m hungry!
Plugging Dracula’s YouTube link above. Lyrebirds are amazing! Best bird imitators ever. (They can even master the calls of the rare chainsawmanbird, or the slightly less-destructive cameranutbird.)
“My core problem here, as a computer scientist, is that any photo he had is really a bunch of zeros and ones… which for anyone who is at all familiar with binary, is a number. Basically, by outlawing the storage of some form of data, we have said that it is illegal be in possession of certain numbers. Yes, these might be huge numbers that you don’t encounter in your daily life, but they are still simply numbers.”
This is simply the best example of why reductive arguments don’t work I have ever seen.
Furthering the derail: I heard a lyrebird making the dial-up internet noise one time.
I don’t think anyone who’s a regular here is under the impression that roleplaying is real. That doesn’t mean it’s not occasionally rather creepy and disturbing.
Shaenon, I see you your adorable parrot and I raise you Maru.
Look at his face and tell me he’s not the cutest thing ever.
Actually this one is better.
The cutest thing I’ve seen lately! Derail!
Er so what Cassandra? What does the fact that you find it creepy have to do with anything?
Oh, so we’re going to have the “no really, lolicon is awesome and not at all disturbing” conversation here too? No thanks, I’m out.
Well, I find it disturbing. Also, scat porn is something I find disturbing and don’t want to look at either. But I don’t think that me personally finding something gross is a reason that people shouldn’t watch it, because it’s not hurting anyone when it’s some cartoon. I do think there’s a big difference between cartoons and people, but I don’t think a responsible way of experiencing some kind of desire like ageplay or lolicon or necrophilia or whatever it is that would be totally reprehensible to actually do in real life is something I can really have any opinion about. When it’s real people being hurt like what they’re talking about in the op then it’s a different story.
*pretend necrophilia that should be
That does it, I’m replanning my career path, and going into politics. I’m going to introduce a two-strikes law for pedophiles. They get one normal tip through the penal system, and then if they go back to their abominable ways, they get banished to a desert prison-island in the middle of the Pacific ocean that has been set aside for the sole use of pedophile-banishment, where they will get a shipment every three month of enough water and dogfeed to survive till the next one. It’ll have electricity, radio, and buildings, and regular visits from medical professionals for checkups and illness, legal consultation, and (screened) mail drop/pickup — but no internet or television. If we can’t find a suitable island in the middle of nowhere, we’ll just go with a regular island, buy it, evacuate the inhabitants, surround it with offshore mines, and use that. It’ll save us tons of money, AND there’ll be far fewer child-fucking bastards to worry about!
In the meantime, I strongly suggest that we arrange for embarrassing photos of them to be found, publicly linked with their offline identities, and mocked online in a subreddit entitled “notsofunisit”.
@ Snowy – I don’t want to ban it either, remember? Nor do I want to stop people roleplaying it, as long as they’re not trying to roleplay it with me. I do want to avoid people who watch/participate it in a way that I wouldn’t with many other fetishes that are not for me like scat etc., and there are lots of reasons for that, first and foremost that during the age range that a lot of lolicon focuses on I was constantly propositioned by older men and hated every second of it.
In general I tend to get very uncomfortable with a lot of stuff that’s a bit too remniscent of real life social dynamics that are very unequal and that have historically been harmful. So if someone wants to play master/slave in a non-specific kind of way then eh, whatever, but if they want to play master and slave on a plantation then that hits a bit too close to home for me. Ageplay falls into the same mental category.
(Watch someone come in and be all “how dare you try to stop me from x,y, and z” even though I said right at the top of this comment that I didn’t want to ban it, or stop people from doing it.)
I found an even cuter cat video.
This poor cat seems to have been being mauled by this child since the day the kid was born. Witness the existential despair of the cat stripped of all dignity as the child rolls all over it and uses it as a pacifier. Observe as the noble hunter becomes nothing more than a pillow/binkie for an infant.
On the other hand, the cat did later get the opportunity to teach the child how to play the piano.
Because as we all know, treating prisoners of any variety as unworkable, unhelpable people who can not in any way improve has a great track record of actually helping reduce the incidence of social problems! And getting all vengeful is so great, and has done so much with other crime; why *don’t* we start doing it with child porn distributors? It’s not like these convicts are *PEOPLE*, right?
Christ. Pictures are up, but we seem to be about 50% of the way to a total derail so maybe irrelevant.