This is my theory on how pedophilia is going to be normalized by deepfakes.
Step 1: (which has already occurred) Indoctrinate generations of women into accepting, enabling, and even encouraging a porn culture in which it is considered abnormal for a man to not watch porn. Create a pattern of escalating behaviour, in which men begin by watching fairly “normal” sex scenes, and then gradually seek out more taboo and violent scenes as their sensitivity to images of sex drops, and they require more stimulation to feel anything.
Step 2: (also already happened) While actual child porn seems to be the current moral and legal cutoff point at which people will say, “No more,” simulated child porn, using young-looking actresses one day past 18, or illustrations/animations is considered a morally acceptable substitute. Have “teen porn,” “daddy/daughter” and “incest” become some of the most popular genres on earth.
Step 3: (in the process of happening right now) Take simulated child porn to the next level by creating pseudo-real porn. For example, create deepfake videos of real child celebrities’ faces digitally edited onto the bodies of technically legal porn. Give men the tools they need to create these porn videos themselves, so that they can use photos of children they know personally to make videos for themselves, without needing strong computer skills. Men will share these videos online, and inevitably, some will become popular and widely circulated.
Step 4: Somewhere in the world, a man will be arrested for watching real child porn, and his legal defense will be that he thought it was fake. He may or may not be found guilty, but the case will make the news, and talking heads will start asking: Is pseudo-real child porn using images of real children wrong? Is it a man’s fault if he actually watches real child porn when he was trying to find fake child porn? Are these men considered pedophiles? Men everywhere, who watch these videos in private, will panic when they realize that it easily could have been them on trial, because they don’t know whether any of the videos they watched are fake.
Step 5: The left-wing “progressives” will take up the cause of protecting the “civil liberties” of a temporarily increasing number of men accused of watching/collecting child porn who claim it was an accident. They will claim it has begun a matter of right-wing anti-sex Christians trying to crack down on all porn, and therefore on sexuality as a whole. Left vs. right debates continue in the way they usually do, on cable news and in the newspaper, with both sides misrepresenting the others’ arguments and accusing the other of bigotry and hatred. The right-wing argument will be that deepfakes are “too far,” and people should watch porn that depicts adult-looking women. The left will argue that their civil liberties are being attacked, that their sexuality is being judged, and that “right-wingers” want to kinkshame them. No one on either side will argue on behalf of the actual children, who are unknowingly having their likeness raped on film, and how it will change the ways the men who watch these deepfakes interact with them in real life.
Step 5 and a half: Absolutely no media coverage will be given to the small group of radical feminists who oppose porn for feminist reasons. Hollywood and academia will portray the only anti-pseudo child porn arguments as coming from the traditional, patriarchal religious right wing. Neither left nor right wing conventional political journalists or bloggers will address the matter of escalating behaviour in sexual deviants, or that men who watch something in porn want to act it out in real life. Absolutely no one except de-platformed radical feminists will address the recruitment and treatment of the 18 and 19-year-old actresses who are actually involved in the production of the original porn videos.
Step 5 and ¾: Some fake feminists who are enthusiastically pro-porn will say that actresses are especially happy to perform in scenes that are tailor-made by the burgeoning deepfake industry for the purpose of digitally creating pseudo-child porn. They will argue that this is the very easiest type of porn to act in, because the women don’t even become recognizable as their faces are edited to look like someone else. None of these liberal feel-good feminists will ask themselves why porn is the only industry in which workers do not want to be recognized for their work.
Step 6: Eventually, the neoliberal, anything-goes “left wing” will win the deepfakes debate decisively, as they always do. People will blame the porn hosting websites, or the internet service providers or the “dark web” for allowing real child porn to surface, but men will be thoroughly reassured that it is not their responsibility to check if the pseudo-child porn they are watching is actually real, because how could they? And when a man is horny, how dare you make him wait while he verifies that the porn he’s watching isn’t actual footage of child rape?
Step 7: Almost all men are now watching deepfake child porn, except for the men who prefer some other violent fetish. Because it is so normalized, people will start making jokes when they see a very attractive or compliant child that probably, there is porn of that child’s face on the internet. Preteen girls will be groomed online into providing photos of their faces that are especially clear and easy to edit into these videos, and then humiliated once they deliver. Boys will watch the deepfake videos of their female classmates online, and show them to each other. Children, but mostly girls, will start finding out about the deepfake videos of them that are getting popular, and they will be bullied at school. Parents of these kids will try to demand these videos be taken down, but they will be told there’s nothing anyone can do, because it was their fault for putting innocent pictures of their childrens’ faces on Facebook. Girls in these videos will commit suicide, and everyone will blame “bullying,” a gender-neutral phenomenon that obviously pre-dates the existence of deepfakes. Anyone who connects the normalization of pseudo-child porn to the despair felt by little girls who get pornified against their will will be accused of being a right-wing Christian bigot who hates gays.
Step 7 and a half: Preteen and teen girls will dress even sexier and wear make-up meant that makes them look older. This will be an attempt to avoid looking childish enough to be targeted for deepfakes, but instead this behaviour will only further reinforce adult mens’ perceptions of them as acceptable objects of sexual consumption. This self-perpetuating cycle of grooming, and backlash to sexual grooming via further grooming will set the stage for the next two steps. Some more extreme left wingers will try to push for legalization of actual adult-child sexual activity (i.e. child rape), but will be told “not yet” by more centrist members of their movement.
Step 8: The perception that “all men” are attracted to kids anyways, that pedophiles are just normal people, that pedophilia isn’t even a sexual orientation but an innocent kink, will set in. Women who fight back will be told that they just don’t understand men’s libidos, that they’re vanilla, or they just hate the sexualization of children because they’re old and jealous.
Step 9: The left wing decides that it’s now the right moment to make their big push for legalizing sexual relationships between adults and children. Maybe it will take a few years of cable news anchors yelling at each other and indignant internet blog posts, but they will win, as they always do, as sexual libertarians always do, as men always do. Child rapists might even become a protected group, like gay people or transgender people. Everyone celebrates. The little children celebrate because their liberal parents tell them to, but they don’t really understand what has just happened, because they’re children.
