There are not actual fucking laws claiming this, and what laws this asshat is talking about are called “Obscenity Laws” aka the government gets to decide what it okay and not okay for a society to consume when it comes to FICTIONAL CONTENT.
Before touching other countries laws regarding fictional pornography and laws, let’s talk about Obscenity Laws, and why it’s important to recognize not only how pro-censorship these laws are, but also what Antis inherently support when they bring up any laws that are considered Obscenity Laws.
“Obscenity law is the law that regulates what images, speech and other expressions individuals can lawfully communicate. Obscenity law concerns itself with banning or suppressing speech that violates standards of good taste and decency. The area of law balances legitimate communication in a free society with the purposes of public censorship.” [x]
Why do obscenity laws exist?
“Obscenity laws protect a sense of morality in society. Where obscenity laws exist, it’s because lawmakers believe that some types of speech and expression are so offensive that they ought to be prohibited. Obscenity laws attempt to maintain and promote standards of integrity and decency in society.” [x]
Now you’d think these laws would be a great thing, right? Wanting to protect the morals and decency of our modernizing and progressing societies is a rather good idea to do… but, we humans are not perfect, an these laws are created and enforced by humans who have different ideas and feelings to what is obscene and what isn’t– which can be easily corrupted and misused.
Obscenity laws remain controversial
“As one judge said, what one man believes is vulgar, another man sees as just a song lyric. Obscenity laws are controversial because standards of decency and morality vary greatly from person to person and community to community. In addition, standards of morality can change. Prohibitions that seem justifiable to some at the time, such as a ban on sending contraceptives through the mail, might seem offensive only a few years later.” [x]
While the federal government is not interested in obscenity laws, states are typically the one’s to create them and enforce them in any way they’d like; of course, majority of cases have been struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional when it came to these obscenity laws [PROTECT Act is an Obscenity Law]
“Child pornography is considered to be any depiction of a minor or an individual who appears to be a minor who is engaged in sexual or sexually related conduct. This includes pictures, videos, and computer-generated content. Even altering an image or video so that it appears to be a minor can be considered child pornography. One important exception to the category of illegal child pornography is artistic renderings or depictions that have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” [x]
Simulated child pornography is child pornography depicting what appear to be minors but which is produced without the direct involvement of children in the production process itself.
Types of simulated child pornography include: modified photographs of real children, non-minor teenagers made to look younger (age regression), and fully computer-generated imagery[1] or adults made to look like children.[2](Drawings or animations that depict sexual acts involving children but are not intended to look like photographs may also be considered by some to be simulated child pornography.)
Now, Antis like to use this basic definition to claim that any depiction of a minor, especially in fiction, can be considered pedophilia/child porn. This is entirely false.
What Legally Makes It Child Pornography?
So, you know what, even though fiction falls under grey legality, the law is even more caring of real children since they don’t equate ships to CHILD PORN AND CHILD MOLESTATION.
Allow me to give you the real definition–from 18 U.S. Code § 2256–when we’re talking about artwork:
“The term “indistinguishable” used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults.” [x]
Child porn is only considered that if the individual looks so realistic that they could be assumed as a real human being. Anime and cartoon characters don’t typically look like real depictions of real children.
And don’t bother citing the PROTECT Act, because that was deemed unconstitutional on a federal level as of United States vs Handley, which is the ONLY CASE THAT WE KNOW OF that was based completely on drawn material of fictional characters, without any discovery of other types of material in the possession of the accused:
“Last year, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law that criminalized the possession of “virtual” child pornography, i.e., materials whose production may not have involved the use of real children.”
People have been sexualizing cartoons in general for nearly a century, and few people have had any issue with this, due to cartoons typically having proportions that don’t resemble those of actual human beings. Especially when we’re talking about anime or anime-influenced artwork, even art books on drawing manga talk about the interchangeability of faces between age, and even gender.
What you are referring to as “drawn child porn” is people making fan art of fictional characters that are usually at least in their teens. The overwhelming majority of the people creating this fan art are young women and teenage girlsthat are using fan works as a means to explore their sexuality in a way that they don’t feel physically pressured, threatened, or intimidated.
There is no fucking legality when it even comes to ships– because it doesn’t fall under anything illegal, UNLESS the artwork is so fucking realistic that you couldn’t make out if it’s a photo or not, or it’s realistic artwork of a child that does exist, then does it become illegal.
Sim CP in the United States
The legal treatment of simulated child pornography in the United States requires an understanding of the components of that phrase: pornography, child, and simulated. United States law treats these as separate concepts, each worthy of analysis.
In the United States, pornography is considered a form of personal expression, and thus governed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Pornography is generally protected speech, unless it is obscene, as the Supreme Court of the United States held in 1973 in Miller v. California.
In 2002 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA) was facially invalid in prohibiting virtual or cartoon child pornography. The basis for the ruling was that the CPPA made unlawful some forms of protected First Amendment speech, banning depictions of sex between children even if not obscene and not involving real child victims. Under New York v. Ferber, if the depiction is of real child abuse or a real child victim, as a result of photographing a live performance, for instance, then it is not protected speech. Under Miller v. California, obscene speech is likewise excluded from First Amendment protection. The CPPA made all virtual child sex depictions illegal without regard to whether the speech was protected or not, so that part of the statute was struck down as facially invalid.
It serves no purpose to spread false information about the legality of the subjects. It serves no purpose to trivialize the subject or change the definition of terms specified by law according to personal opinion or bias.
Critique of banning and heavily censoring genres like anime, manga, sexual violence, lolicon/shotacon, and the issue with supporting governmental and large corporation censorship
Normalization and Desensitization regarding Fiction
The dangers and harm misusing serious terms like pedophilia/pedophile cause
Antis use of Slippery Slope and radical zealot/far-right conservative rhetoric
Why there is no real Moral Responsibility in fiction / Why Antis show an unhealthy amount of Moral Purity and Disgust Sensitivity, or Imaginative Resistance to fiction
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