The Pedophiles Are Responsible

Lost in all the shrill self-justifying illiberal nonsense being brayed about the SL child porn scandal, there is a still, small voice of a woman whose SL name is Adri. You can find it at Clickable Culture, in an article titled "Child Porn Panic Hits SL" which unfortunately reveals the author's snorting bias on the subject. Unimpressed with the way LL has been handling this festering problem, Tony Walsh writes about how difficult it is to police the vastness of SL, especially given that island and continent-owning customers are now going to be responsible for handling their own abuse reporting., "Who, then, is truly responsible for such acts as depictions or possession of child pornography in Second Life?," asks Tony.

The poster Adri of Metaversatility writes, in response to this liberal poo-poohing of the topic, "You know, it's a crazy, crazy thought, but maybe the people depicting and/or distributing and consuming child porn are the ones truly responsible?"

Indeed.

Blame Europe, says Carl Metropolitan on the Herald, because the scandal takes place in Germany, where laws are more strict than in the US governing even virtual or simulated child porn. Blame LL, everybody has been saying on every blog, as if they are over-reacting -- even "panicking". But it's appropriate to blame those who need to have child porn of either the real or the virtual kind: the pedophiles.

Oh, I know, in the licentious and anarchic but politically-correct atmosphere of Second Life, we're supposed to call them with the sanitized term "ageplayers" -- not that icky thing called "pedophiles". Just like the Kentucky Fried Chicken people dropped the fat connotations by renaming themselves KFC; just like the BDSM folks took the sting out of the whips and chains by only using the acronym for sadomasochism, so "ageplayers" make child predators sound like creative, fun, folk at the theater having a neat time in SL, at best, or at worst, psycho-drama participants acting out something "therapeutic" in a kind of variation of a legitimate and standard form of child psychiatry called "play therapy" -- which has nothing to do with sex.

So let's call this phenomenon, and the people who practice it, by the proper term: it's pedophilia, which means an unnatural sexual attraction for children. Let's call it by its right term, so we don't get confused about it.

AIR-BRUSHING THE IMAGE IN SL

Many people in this debate around SL like to picture the pedophiles of Second Life as something different than they in fact are. They imagine them either to be horny 35-year-old IT personnel alone at home cavorting with avatars of the same age only dressed as 17-year-old high-school girls in short plaid uniforms. Or they imagine that an adult who suffered child abuse as a child in RL will dress up in her perfect pink birthday party dress with bows, and go and sit on Uncle Bob's lap and relive that awful time he touched her inappropriately and she felt icky. Most people simply aren't that offended when they glancingly reflect on such images -- they aren't for everybody, but they seem perfectly harmless. Victimless crime, eh? And scenes that aren't really so bad -- right?

DEMONSTRATION IN YONGCHONG

Wrong. Last summer, when there was an "ageplay" (and I'm going to go on putting it in scare-quotes because I believe it to be a euphemism) scandal in Yongchong, I went out to investigate it for the Herald because people holding a furious demonstration about child porn summoned me. I got there and found a house full of pedophiles hastily clearing out the *real-life very graphic child pornography" off their walls -- they were photographs imported from real life porn and as they whisked them away, leaving holes in the spaces of the walls, Guy Linden flew up. He remained, hovering over the scene silently.

On the one side was a strange amalgam of Native Americans with that funny poster about "Homeland Security" showing the chiefs who tried in vain to resist the white man's invasion; BDSM practitioners dressed in bondage outfits, and all kinds of gawkers. They were marching with signs, and of course, seeing them essentially out with the pitchforks, and seeing that there was more than a little "pot kettle" sort of thing going on. a stranger arriving on the scene and not zooming in might be forgiven for thinking that a clear-cut hate campaign was going on, possibly with parcel encroachment, and possibly all a TOS violation. In a way, you could feel sorry for those people inside the house, hurrying to take things down and dodging harassment IMs and particle bombs and hate shouts.

CHILLING SCREENSHOTS

Until you zoomed in. Then you were chilled. These adults (we can only hope they were) had made child avatars that were creepy enough -- child avatars are *always* creepy in Second Life -- and had enacted all kinds of really graphic BDSM scenes. These weren't 17-year-old teenagers. These were children of 8, in their pajamas, horribly brutalized in BDSM muzzles and shackles, whipped with chains. I tried to piece together in my mind that pedophilia was also combining BDSM -- somehow the two just didn't seem to "go together," but it shows you how little I know of the extremities of human depravity. I took a few shots that I thought might be acceptable to go on the Herald's blog and not have the blog shut down by the provider, thought about how to write up this story, shuddered, and gave up. I sent them to the Herald mailbox -- I didn't want the pictures on my hard-drive. Nobody followed up -- nobody felt like following up, the people sold their land and disappeared and the story was over. Possibly if the Lindens had decided to change their policy, and Lindens like Guy were empowered to act, the outcome might have been different. But they weren't, and here we all are.

I forgot about the subject then with the crush of other stories, RL and SL -- who wants to dwell on that subject? Until now, when we all really had to think about it. And I remembered as I saw the argumentation on various blogs that it's all harmless stuff. I beg to disagree. But only when I began to research articles in the RL press this last week did I understand more what's up.

ORGANIZED PEDOPHILES WORK AT JUSTIFICATION

Just like organized Leninist griefing groups, just like the most die-hard BDSM practitioners and the most heavily-indoctrinated and evangelizing Gors, the pedophiles are organized ideologists and trained propagandists. They've rehearsed and rehearsed every argument in the book, and when they are under attack, they fan out in blogs and forums and ring all the chimes. Like a lot of people who never really contemplate this seemy side of life, I figured pedophiles were lonely postal workers hiding in their mom's basements at the computer until the Feds burst in with a sting and put them in cuffs. I didn't think of them as having groups, chat rooms, company, *support structures*. But of course they do, like all the extreme lifestyles that have so aggressively infested the Internet and are particular entrenched in Second Life.

The New York Times had an excellent article about the phenomenon, about the chat groups, the profiles, the sheer determination of these people to get what they want and do what they want. Far from cringing and hiding in shame, they are a rights movement -- and I don't just mean NAMBLA, which is discredited even in civil rights circles. They're particularly successful at making their case because they can appeal to guilty liberals' sense of the need for tolerance, and because so often their members are caught in sting operations that manufacture the entire scene of child porn in the first place to make it "stick," they can appeal to liberal concerns about "The Man" and "Big Brother" and excessive government. That shouldn't be allowed to distract from the sinister nature of the perverse arguments they make. And it shouldn't be allowed to distract from the ways in which they segue from online to offline activity. As a police officer quoted in the Times explained, the chat groups help bolster and legitimize the pedophile's sense that he is justified:

Indeed, law enforcement officials say that the refrain of justification from online conversations is frequently voiced by adults arrested for molestation, raising concern that such conversations may lower pedophiles’ willingness to resist their temptation.

“It is rationalization that allows them to avoid admitting that their desires are harmful and illegal,” said Bill Walsh, a former commander of the Crimes Against Children Unit for the Dallas Police Department, who founded the most prominent annual national conference on the issue. “That can allow them to take that final step and cross over from fantasy into real-world offenses.”

Chief among the arguments of the pedophiles and their apologists and other extreme anarchal types is the idea of the disconnectedness of virtuality from reality. They behave as if there is a firewall between the two -- but of course we all know there is not. Normal heteosexuals meet on SL -- and meet in real life and get married in both. Goreans meet in real life. BDSM meet in real life, and intertwine real life scenes with their SL scenes. And...we're supposed to believe that the pedophiles, the "ageplayers" of SL never, ever 'take it into real'? What basis do we have for that?

'BUT THESE GUYS LIE'

Law-enforcement accounts in the media and on their own sites explain how devious the pedophiles are, and to what great lengths they go to draw in family and community support for their claim they don't "take it to real life".

Studies show that viewers of child pornography take out their destructive attractions to real life, and a certain percentage make contact with children and molest them. Of course pedophiles and extremists imaging that they have to protect pedophilia to protect civil rights discredit these studies, and try to debunk them. For every German TV expert who explain that in his practice he sees the connection; for every psychiatrist who explains there really is a connection; for every citizens' group or foundation that puts a watch on the phenomenon and finds a link, there is a chorus of debunkers and with SL they have found their metier: how can a place where people fly or appear to have millions of dollars to buy mansions be "real"? Surely no harm can be done.

"IT'S ONLY PIXELS"

Many people do practice cybersex in SL. So how does that work? They enter this world, and suddenly, where they never had it before, they develop a strange attraction to oversized pixelated busts and skimpy latex skirts, which are nothing like anything they are ever attracted to in RL? Of course not. The furry play is perhaps the better case to make as "firewalled" -- it's a safe bet that a furry fox in SL is not going to go through the woods at night looking for a real-life fox and try to have sex with it -- he'll be clawed to death.

Furry culture aside, most people cybering are *making something they find attractive in real life and engage with in real life*. And they don't tell themselves a hundred times a day that mutually masturbating online with other people is fictional; it gives them real pleasure and they don't preface each description of this as "only pixels" or "not real" or "a dream". They are involved, committed, engaged. Indeed, precisely because cybering in SL *is* real and *does work* that the legions of people using SL for sex don't stop after one time, and say, "Gosh, that was retarded. I won't be doing THAT silly pixel-rubbing again!"

And so it is with "ageplayers" -- and why would it be different? "Ageplayers" aren't making just making little baby animal avatars, they are making humans. And they make those humans for the same reason that normal adult heterosexuals and homosexuals make their adult avatars in SL -- they are attracted to them in *real life*. They don't make child avatars because they are fantasizing and the child is like a fox in real life that the adult would never touch or be clawed to death in the wild; the child avatar is made *because the adult in SL is attracted unnaturally to children, and wishes to carry out with them acts that are illegal in most countries*. I don't know why that obvious fact is never contemplated.

People don't suddenly "become" attracted to children in SL and leave that attraction at the door. They make the "ageplay" scene because they arrive with that attraction and wish to act it out. And there's no proof that acting it out in SL is some kind of hydraulic activity, that completely discharges that desire in pixel form so that it never, ever crops up in RL. Huh? That seems unlikely -- what, the legions of SL wankers only do their wanking-- or for that matter, their actual sex -- inside SL and never in real life and never with real people? Why, if we couldn't possibly believe that about all the *non* ageplayers, we're suddenly supposed to put on our blinders and believe that we should never believe it about "ageplayers"?!.

Most people who have this feeling were themselves abused as children and so they perpetuate the abuse on others. SL is therefore objectively used to enable abusers to justify, act out on, and become inured to the illegality of, something that in RL is morally and legally wrong. Allowing even the depiction of the simulation, when adult typists make child avatars and manipulate them, creates a climate of justification and impunity, and is therefore an enabling climate for a crime that should not be tolerated.

IF VIDEO GAME SHOOTING AND MURDER ISN'T A CRIME, WHY IS PEDOPHILIA?

Here's where 'ageplay' apologists like Aimee Weber, looking for trouble and a venue for being a libertarian and a contrarian, come in with an analogy to murder in video games. If nobody who just PK'd their rivals in World of Warcraft is arrested by RL police, how much "ageplayers" can be investigated in SL?

Aliasi Stonebender answers this liberal canard pretty well:

I think the difference is, we don't generally shoot each other in SL as a way to subliminate an urge to shoot someone in the flesh; it's a game from the get-go, with as much bearing on the real world as a kid playing with toy soldiers.

Sexual ageplay seems to be a way to indulge pedophiliac urges without breaking the law. I can at least see a little twisted nobility in that, but the point remains that some part of that person's psyche thinks having sex with kids is really, really cool. And that's kinda sick.

Be sure to read the rest of the comments in that thread as people stand up to Aimee's silly apologia -- and with good reason.

But...isn't this American culture? Say, now, everybody plays shoot 'em up video games, right? They massacres thousands of people in a lifetime in those games. They maim, kill, and incinerate human figures by the boatload. Nobody calls them murderers! Nobody arrests them for homicide! So what's the big deal with "ageplay"?

Big difference. Let me explain how.

When I'm in a video game shooting, I'm in an inscribed circle -- the magic circle is what it is called in the ludologists' works. I'm in a suspended place where the rules of real life don't obtain. "It's a game from the get-go," as Aliasi phrased it. I shoot and kill things ilke NPCs or other players in a realm where I know ahead of time that no real harm can come to them. If they are 10 or 100, I know they will not be harmed by stabbing or bombs. We're *playing a game*. We shut it off, and then we go outdoors.

Out on our front lawns, we can be sure that there will never be beings from outer space suddenly invading and shooting at us. We can also be fairly sure the guy next door will not be lobbing a grenade at us. The Feds are really unlikely to come storming in the door, kicking it down and telling us to go up against the wall. We're not in a game. There isn't going to be shooting. We played murderers, but we don't lie in our lawnchair, most of us, and actively pursue the concept that we will shoot that neighbour, or that we'll beat those Feds who come in the door. If we want to play FPS, we go back to the video. We don't go over the hedge and stab our neighbour, for the most part.

A video-game murderer has no trouble keeping his murderous desires inside World of Warcraft where the wild bores and orcs are that he must kill to get ahead. The magic circle exists. He is tethered inside it mainly because it's fun there -- and it isn't fun outside in the real world, where there are no boars, no men in tights, no magic spells or -- no weapons in most cases. No way to enact the crime; no scene of the crime; no motivation for the crime.

Not so the pedophile. When he leaves "his game," he comes out on his lawn, and there is a child on a swingset. Or he walks to a park or the supermarket where there are kids. He doesn't put away his fantasies or desires; they remain. In fact, you could say "it's not a game" because there's no circle inscribing anything. Just as he is attracted to children made in Second Life out of other adults' avatars, so he can easily continue the "game" outside -- and there is nothing to stop him from pursuing it because unlike the video-game murderer who needs weapons and a setting of orcs, the pedophile needs nothing but his own criminal lust.

And that's why it's different, and that's why the facile parallels made between video game murdering and child molesting online are so false, so misleading, and only serve to legitimize the abominable.

THE 'THERAPY' FALLACY

What about the idea that "ageplay" is therapeutic? This is a cloyingly sweet story told from the victims' perspective, and therefore more persuasive. Sobbing, they cry on forums about how they were finally able to "get it out" in a game "in a safe space". I've argued at length against the "therapy fallacy" of this form of pedophilia -- it's not therapy that any licensed psychiatrist ever uses, and it is not to be confused with play therapy. Tateru Nino was particularly disingenuous and misleading by mixing in commentary about ageplaying and play therapy as if the former never involves sex.

And as Ace Albion very pointedly asked: "What's in it for Daddy?" OK, so you had to enact a trauma in the belief that it will help purge it from your system (one does wonder why the purge then has to keep being made). But a predator -- why would enacting violence and coercion be therapeutic? It only justifies it, giving it rein.

No, all these arguments are the arguments of determined pedophiles who wish to continue practicing pedophilia, and they often appear on forums masquerading merely as Joe Public or Jane Concerned about Art Freedom.

CORRAL THEM IN SL WHERE THEY'LL STAY OUT OF TROUBLE?

Yet another theory has it that it's better to send the pedophiles of the world into SL, where they "won't hurt anybody" and "keep it safe". There's an obvious problem with that idea, because it legitimizes their activity in virtual form and then creates not only a climate of impunity, but ups the chances, percentage-wise, that the connection to real child porn and real children will be established.

Because in fact it is. Some determined forums contrarians have trouble admitting what LL has said now officially on their blog, and in follow-up question and answer sessions in their office hours. The German TV made the allegation that the couple they found in SL had real child porn in addition to the SL variety made of avatars. The Lindens expressed shock and said they couldn't find it -- but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, just because the TV was tabloid. They took the allegation seriously, and banned the couple involved because the prosecutors of German have been contacted and are looking into the case. The Lindens could not act in any other way; they are a service that has to think of the children, literally, and has to obey the law of California, and their own TOS, and limit their liability for litigation.

Do extreme lifestyles stay "contained"? Of course they don't. I've witnessed myself in SL in the last 2 years how BDSM, which was relatively marginalized when I first came, has spread like wildfire. There is a kind of BDSM lite that many began to practice, far from any norms, guidance, or "safe word" culture that gets more and cruel the further it spread, culiminating in the absolute cruelty of things like the snuff picnics celebrated on Second Citizen. People increasingly put more and more cruel bondage and torture equipment in their homes; if once you could talk about "a little light restraint" with some cuffs or ropes, today, the bedrooms of probably a good 60 percent of those cybering in SL look like science labs from the Nazi and Soviet eras where experiments were done on human beings. It's hugely sick and troubling.

So extremism does spread, and it spreads by people becoming more and more inured, indifferent, *desensitized*. And all we have to do is ask ourselves whether we want that to happen with pedophilia. Do we *want* people to take it for granted that scenes of the most brutal torture and humiliation of children for the sake of sexual pleasure is acceptable? What is to be gained for society and for civilization by growing used to such scenes, by making them even the subject of bemusement and cynical humour? To make it seem as if those who turn away in nausea and revulsion are prudish church ladies?

AGE VERIFICATION: YOU CAN'T CATCH ALL THE KIDS

The solution the Lindens have conceived and that the rest of the Internet has long ago enacted is age verification. To this effort to restrain and control pedophilia, the pedophiles and their apologists from the Art and Fiction Departments say, oh, but you can't catch children! Those wily bastards! Their parents should watch them, not people online. And oh, they are asking for it, anyway (a common strategy of pedophiles is to portray themselves as victims, and the innocent children as victimizers themselves, preying on adults).

There's no way to track them, they can use their moms' credit cards or fax their dad's license to Integrity or any verifying firm. It's ridiculous to try to stop them -- don't even try.

Of course, this concept of "it's breachable, don't bother" is the reasoning we always get from the tekkie-wikinista set so prevalent in SL, who think that if you can't stop Copybot 100 percent, and can only mitigate it 60 percent, it's a bust. There's always at least one rocket scientist who comes on the forums in these debates and brays about how somebody is no different on day 364 before their birthday than they are on day 365, so what's the big deal? So why not have no speed-limit then, either, because 59 is no different substantively than 60, etc.

But just as a mile or two can make the difference between road fatality statistics, surely it's so with this topic! Every single kid NOT allowed to slip through is a plus. You do your best. But verifying *kids* isn't the point here, people.

VERIFY ADULTS, NOT KIDS

The point is to verify *adults*. Yes, Cristiano in his flowing white robes, leading the 3,900 Open Letterers to the Promise Lag-Free Servers, wants *those laggy despicable unwashed poor people with no credit cards to be the ones checked. Not him. Not his friends.

But of course, it's adults who need to be verified. When you can get people's real-life information, as best as you can, and tell them that their adult clubs have to be on parcels checked off as adult, then you have created a pretty good deterrent against "ageplay". Hosts of such parcels can be sure they don't have the liability because they are verified themselves. Their guests, if they have verified themselves, will then be available to be investigated by police -- should that need, hopefully remote, ever arise. A known formerly jailed sex offender; a sex offender not yet jailed; those aren't the people likely to verify their IDs. Of course anything is possible given rampant identity theft but again, you go for as much of a protective percentage as you can muster.

WHY APOLOGIZE FOR PEDOPHILIA?

Why are all these things so hard to understand? Why are they so difficult to get heard on forums? Why is there such an uproar? For one, those who are making the arguments are a) themselve pedophiles and determined; b) those in the adult sex trade in SL who want to make sure nothing enroaches the adult lifestyles next; c) tekkie totalitarians who want code as law, not law as law, and who equate freedom of world-making and writing scripts with licentiousness of lifestyle, thinking the one requires the other. They are all a perfect match for each other.

Will SL suddenly suffer a huge oppressive stifling of creativity, and a stampede of artists out the door? No, unles their idea of art is pictures of little kids being chained and raped, or if their idea of oppression is restricting criminal activity. The laws of the democratic states where most SL residents reside have spent a good deal of time making the distinctions between liberties and crimes. All the Lindens have done is said that those distinctions must go on being made, and those who can't make them will answer to their own RL authorities.

The thuggish anger I'm seeing on the Herald and other papers and blogs about the Lindens' determination to crackdown on both the public advertising of "ageplay" and to cooperate with RL authorities who need to prosecute even simulated child pornogrpahy is hugely troubling. Why aren't people immediately able to make that "firewall distinction" that they claim exists between fantasy and crime? Whom are they protecting, if not real children? and real adults from prosecution from crimes?

The anger stems from the feeling that people's hedonistic playground has been invaded. They thought they could create that Temporary Autonomous Zone that they are always linking to on Wikipedia, a free culture where anything goes. Doesn't anyone think about why the creativity and freedom and autonomy that pertained up to that point in SL lead to attention from museums and art galleries and agents? That it led not to tax inspectors marvelling at the value of all the sales (they looked, then put aside their concerns)? That it led not to awe and excitement about beautiful builds on CBS, but to the German police and German tabloid TV about "ageplay"?

Why aren't people more defensive of SL's creativity capacity for everything else besides *this*? Why would they be willing to jeopardize it *for this*? Why can't *the pedophiles be responsible themselves* and why must *we* become responsible for keeping open their options under the guise of protecting our own freedom of speech, or why must the Lindens be responsible for endlessly providing cover for possible pedophiles and "ageplayers' creating a living, 3-D, streaming *justification for* and *desensitizing scene* of child molestation?

Why do they believe that the freedom of our world can only hinge on the destruction of a child's innocence" Why must we validate what amounts to desensitizing ourselves evermore to that harsh reality we know to be wrong, through that continuous re-enactment in virtuality?

Comments

[Aleister Kronos]

Thanks Proky. A clear, lucid and well-argued piece. It has certainly helped me clarify my thinking.

[dandellion kimban]

Age-play and child pornography ( http://metaverse.acidzen.org/2007/age-play-vs-child-porn ) are not the same. First involves no minors. That is important distinction. Question if there is leaking from imagined age-play in real life child abuse is the big one. But, though there are psychologysts that will claim both extremes, mayority is to say that it is not necessery. It is the same question as if cartoon violence promote RL violence. And "magic circles" you mention can (but not necesserily do) exist in all cases, from shooting to child abuse.

Another thing that is of importance is whether and how the code is law. ( http://metaverse.acidzen.org/2007/code-is-law ) The story of tekkie-totallitarians is just a buzz. Code is law to one extent. In virtual worlds code is natural law, not social one. And, you will agree, there is a difference between laws of nature and laws of society.

Why these two things are important? Because blurring the lines lead to one really nasty thing no one wants to see: totallitarian metaverse. Once we allow peeking inside our heads to search there for the crime we are in society that admits there is a thought-crime, we are in nazi society. And that is the reason why not a single democratic society is not punishing for something that is thought of or even spoken of but not actually commited. It is a huge pity so many people red Orwel's 1984 as a critique of communism just in the light of actual politics of western vs. Soviet society. We all neglect that today such distopya is to be achieved by mass media who are scaring us by age-players, terrorism, lunatics who shoot people without conciveable reason... in one word by making an atmosphere of fear.

It sounds like irony, but I would recomend a bit of role-playing on one of sims with dystopian theme, Suffugium or any other, just to feel what happens when security is put over the freedom.

[Chris Peterson]

Prokofy, you know I enjoy poking fun as your bombastic conspiratorial prose.

But this was by far the best coverage I've seen this issue given yet. I tried to give Mitch Wagner a good description of Jailbait! but you did a better one with Yongchong.

So good work, and I hope this gets picked up.

[Nina Andrews]

The idea of ageplay is so revolting it leads us to make bizarre conclusions about the whole thing.

There is as much opportunity for a person to emulate violent behaviour from a game in real life as there is from sexual behaviour. How can we differentiate between the behaviours?

We're all hypocrites that allow depraved violence and rape in our games yet get all morally upset at child abuse.

[BLueRibbon]

Could you please explain how virtual "child porn" harms children?

[dandellion kimban]

"There is as much opportunity for a person to emulate violent behaviour from a game in real life as there is from sexual behaviour. How can we differentiate between the behaviours?"

Easily. Some things are happening in REAL and some in VIRTUAL. Can you differentiate real from virtual?

[anonymoose]

That's a good and important point that more decision-makers need to heed. It's wrong to blame children for the choices adults make to act on pedophiliac impulses. Pedophiles are the only ones making adult choices. You can dress up Joan-Binet any way you like, it's still not a consenting adult. But the problem is more in how we define a child and an adult.

Much of our popular culture has started to slide toward the argument that children are in some subconscious way purposefully acting as sexualized beings, and therefore inadvertently shoulder the responsibility of interacting on a "natural" social level of enticement towards adults. In cases where children are promiscuous they are blamed for their inappropriate attempts at intimacy with an adult. The problem is that it is the adult's responsibility to teach the child what is appropriate. It's called parenting, and it does take effort and sometimes causes conflict with the child. That doesn't make the child wrong for emulating behaviors they see on television and responding to the cues that are shown to get the attention of adults.

The line is blurred around the teenage years when sexuality finally does become a visible part of physiology. Men seeking underage young adults from age sixteen on are just expected to tread lightly because of the lack of experience of the young adult. But their attraction is seen as somewhat normal based upon the forgivable fact that teenagers physically begin to look like adults. The problem there is that looking like and adult and thinking like an adult are two different criteria.

In their early experiments of social boundaries, which do occur, young children do and will ask inappropriate things from adults. Every parent has eventually had to tell a child who reaches a certain age that parts of the parent's body are now off limits for blind grabbing ahold, or that walking in on the bathroom before knocking is inappropriate. That's just called being a child who lacks experience, and it's not something children are ever going to suddenly spring from the womb able to follow on their own. The idea is that if you have parented your child all along, they aren't going to remain confused about what's inappropriate for long.

I would argue that those same adults claiming children "entice" them as a form of seeking out intimate attention often preemptively introduce children to sexuality "accidentally" and then wait for the child to become naturally curious or eventually just worn down from all the adult exposure and passive-aggressive encouragement to seek out and join the adult in these behaviors. Leaving the bathroom door open, or the bedroom door, or placing explicit magazines on the counter. A certain amount of behavior modification towards curiosity often are attempted, so that the manipulation of the child occurs without much outward notice. Often abusers use subtext in conversation almost exclusively, with meanings only the child will get based on prior interaction. Children are perfectly capable of understanding encouragements given to them in subtexts, it's just that in most cases they don't understand what the subtext is in adult conversation. Abusers make their subtexts clear to their targets.

For that reason, age checking IS a good attempt to try and spare children from the effects of exposure to explicit content and emotionally abusive targeting, and you're right, every child spared is a quiet victory. The hope is that age verification (and separation from any non-verified caretaker adults) will then keep children from being awakened to curiosities they are not emotionally or developmentally ready to interact with or more importantly, defend themselves against. You can't have sympathy for this type of psychopath if you care about what the victims are going though, sometimes silently and continuously through the rest of their lives. As I volunteer, I have seen and heard much about the relationship between abuser and child.

The pedophiles either don't care or are not able to understand the gift of a normal, less-confusing and less anxiety-induced childhood where parents are parents, and banana fish stay far out at sea. If they do understand, but don't care about the impact they are having on another life, then it's truly a hate crime because they are relishing the taking of innocence and security from another being out of spite for having it once taken from them.

If the pedophile does not understand what they are doing to the child, then perhaps they aren't consciously confronting why they find excitement in children. But I would argue that doesn't change the nature of the act as an ultimately abusive one.

The only difference between a child and an adult is that the child is helpless. In the best case scenario then, pedophiles are people who do not understand why they like to attack and feel empowered by taking from someone who cannot properly defend against them. Perhaps as survivors of childhood abuse they have no point of reference for what is being taken from the children they wish to abuse. Under no uncertain terms, sexual harassment and abuse is lasting and painful.

That lack of value placed on the experience of a safe childhood for the victim on the part of the pedophile doesn't change the fact that children deserve to grow up in a safe, non-sexual environment. They have the right to be either left alone to be raised by more stable adults, or else responsibly taught what sex is in a non-sexual relationship in a boundary-established environment -- and in such a way that the child can know something of what sex is about without being drowned in the deeper aspects of adult intimacy and eroticism.

With the statistics from the early nineties as high as one in three girls before the age of seven experiencing sexual abuse, often by an adult the child is expected to trust, I don't think the SL community is being too sensationalist to point out that we don't need any more encouragement to accept or celebrate the urges of pedophiles and victims experiencing Stockholm Syndrome, or any number of other disorders requiring trained psychiatric help. The world does not need any glorification or the waste of the huge time investment to evangelize and justify this sort of behavior to others.

What we want is not happy present-day adults. What we want is happy kids who will grow up to be happy, functional future adults. We need adults that will protect each other, not perpetuate the predatory nature of abuse. There is unfortunately only so much you can do for older merchandise that already has the warranty seal removed. Going back and repeating the act in the hope of making it seem easier to accept is only avoiding the finality of the injustice that occurred. Tough luck. The enjoyment of watching it occur at the moment it is inflicted on a child is a sign of exactly the type of damaged adult we want to avoid repeating in the current generation we have a hand in raising. If anything, the smarter and more precocious the child, the more potential for great things in adulthood and the more danger they will find and explore in childhood. This is not a sign of "asking for it." It's a sign of a need for good parenting. With the online generation now grown to adulthood and proving these effects have consequences, the need is greater than ever.

I can't think of any goal or cause online or off that is more important than protecting the functional future life of a young child. Anyone who says differently should really take a moment to reflect on what rape is, and what childhood is, and how exponentially awful the two become when combined. There really is no excuse at all. Role play is not the solution. Therapy is the only possible answer.

[JSM]

Hello there I'm a pedophile. Just chiming in to say that I'm glad you're all distracted by these meatheads acting out their fantasies in a f*cking game, while I can go do as I please in real life. Continue to be so obsessed with this "evil crime", please, so I don't have to worry about your hateful eyes faling on me in real life.

Ciao~

[BLueRibbon]

"It's wrong to blame children for the choices adults make to act on pedophiliac impulses"

Most of the people who sexually abuse children are not acting on 'paedophiliic impulses.' (see http://anu.nfshost.com/?p=79 ) Paedophilia and child sexual abuse are absolutely not synonyms.

"You can dress up Joan-Binet any way you like, it's still not a consenting adult."

Agreed. Where is anyone arguing otherwise?

"Much of our popular culture has started to slide toward the argument that children are in some subconscious way purposefully acting as sexualized beings, and therefore inadvertently shoulder the responsibility of interacting on a "natural" social level of enticement towards adults."

That is a blatantly untrue statement. People have a very different opinion to that which you state. Whilst I feel that children are sexual in some ways - and have a right to be sexual with same-age partners - I do not approve of adult-child sex.... and I'm an 18 year old (so technically an adult) who is attracted to children.

"For that reason, age checking IS a good attempt to try and spare children from the effects of exposure to explicit content"

Do you feel that under-18s should never look at pornography? Most teens look at adult pornography and I very much doubt that it causes it harm, indeed nobody has ever provided any evidence of harm caused by childrens' access to explicit material.

"separation from any non-verified caretaker adults

Are you suggesting that any adults who have not been 'verified' should not be able to spend time with children? I will never engage in sexual activity with a child, despite my attraction. I would pass general verification processes because I am not a sex offender, but you would probably feel uncomfortable if a minor-attracted person were spending time with children. What do you mean when you refer to 'verification?'

"The pedophiles either don't care or are not able to understand the gift of a normal, less-confusing and less anxiety-induced childhood where parents are parents, and banana fish stay far out at sea. If they do understand, but don't care about the impact they are having on another life, then it's truly a hate crime because they are relishing the taking of innocence and security from another being out of spite for having it once taken from them."

You are using the term 'paedophilia' incorrectly. I am technically a paedophile but I don't have sex with children and I'm not a sex offender. Paedophilia refers to an attraction, not an action. I'm also unsure of why you assume that paedophiles are people who were once abused. Many sex offenders were once abused, but that is not true of people who are merely attracted to children.

Are you suggesting therapy for child abusers, or simply for people who are attracted to children but don't abuse? If you are suggesting therapy for the latter, I would like to ask you why you feel it is possible to 'cure' a sexual attraction to anyone, because nobody has ever been able to cure sexual attractions, no matter how unpopular, 'deviant', or 'ill' those attractions have been.

BLueRibbon,
ANU

[dandellion kimban]

Nice said. But, you are mixing the terms. Of course that child abuse is unexceptable, for whatever reason is given for it. Child abuse includes child pornography.

On the other hand, sexual age-play is role-play. It differentiates from child abuse because no participant is child.

If two adults are roleplaying, the only way to commit anything is by their words and, maybe, animations they play. Words and thoughts, except in the case of hate speech, cannot be the crime. Nor can animations, because making and playing animations involves no RL children.

Which part of what I said above you don't understand?

[dandellion kimban]

sorry.... the previous one was ment to be posted under anonymoose.

[Nina Andrews]

dandellion kimban says "Easily. Some things are happening in REAL and some in VIRTUAL. Can you differentiate real from virtual?"

The point obviously went over your head. How can Prokofy decide that virtual murder and rape will not be copied in real life, however he decides that virtual paedophilia will?

It is hypocritical. As much as it disgusts us, if you allow rape, torture and murder in the game then we should not complain about virtual paedophilia.

[Prokofy Neva]

>How can Prokofy decide that virtual murder and rape will not be copied in real life, however he decides that virtual paedophilia will?

Everybody is working so hard to try to distinguish virtual from real child pornography and child molestation that they forget that both involve exactly the same sinister thing: unnatural attraction to children.

There is no good reason to be sponsoring *that*. None.

I've laid out all the reasons for why I think virtual murder and rape are different than virtual child abuse.

For one, looking at child pornography -- real child pornography is a crime. Looking at pictures of real murders isn't a crime. You may not like that, but that's the norm in most societies, and while you can get philosophical about it, you can't get legal about it.

And I've laid out very good arguments for why a virtual murderer can easily keep it in a magic circle, step outside to RL, and not face the need or opportunity again because he will not have weapons, invaders, monsters, etc. Whereas a pedophile will face real children and his real desires which will not magically stay inside the magic circle.

The idea that we can't fight child pornography or child abuse inworld, online, in virtuality, because that will distract us from fighting real child abuse is illogical.

Every time a real child abuser is caught, he is caught with reams of videos and pictures. Pornography goes with the crime, more often than not. No need to facilitate it.

And there are plenty of law-enforcement and watch groups watching real child abuse, no need to create artificial shortages, throw up our hands, and say, OMG, we can't do anything about it in Second Life and we shouldn't even try.

Finally, I've demonstrated how the two are linked, and read all the links. It's pretty demonstrable. Just because there isn't a 100 percent lock-step relationship doesn't mean there is *no* relationship -- and you must work to eliminate even some small percent if that's all you believe there is.

To all the people promoting pedophilia here:

I wish you people worked as hard as you do apologizing for pedophilia as you do being creative and making art and enjoying the socializing and communing with others in an aesthetic way -- doing all those free and creative things that you claim are now in jeopardy because of a concerted effort by LL to remove the opportunity for pedophiles to abuse Second Life.

[Prokofy Neva]

>Could you please explain how virtual "child porn" harms children?

Read my article here?

[Prokofy Neva]

Nice said. But, you are mixing the terms. Of course that child abuse is unexceptable, for whatever reason is given for it. Child abuse includes child pornography.

No, I'm explaining how people are eliding the terms and blurring the definitions deliberately. Simulated child pornography is still created to satiate the desires of *real pedophiles*.

You don't leave your pedophilia at the door, come in SL, play around, and then have no consequences.

You don't come and play pedophilia in Second Life and enact scenes of raping children unless....that's what your human desires.

*Your human*. Take responsibility and don't blame the avatar, he has no will, he is you.

>On the other hand, sexual age-play is role-play. It differentiates from child abuse because no participant is child.

I realize these arguments may go over your head if you are looking for a quick fix to justify your pedophilia or another's.

It doesn't matter if there is no real child at that instant.

What "ageplay" does is create a climate of justification, just like chat groups for pedophiles to support one another, just like real child porn enables real-life contacting of children. This is all demonstrated by law-enforcers and psychiatrists, read the links I put in my article.

Creating a climate in which barriers are lowered, justifications are made, rationales are made, and the refrain is constantly "I can do what I want and whatever I feel like it" sets people up to always feel like that. The idea that it shuts off at the door of SL is silly -- of course it doesn't.

>If two adults are roleplaying, the only way to commit anything is by their words and, maybe, animations they play. Words and thoughts, except in the case of hate speech, cannot be the crime.

I realize you'd like that to be the case, but your zeal in trying to seal off the virtual from the real isn't matched by demonstrable relationships.

Normal people who aren't pedophiles who have sexual relations inside SL don't "keep it in SL". They often leave it to meet! They even marry in RL. So why are we to be led around by the nose here, believing that playactors in the pedophilia range
never act out, when we can see all the normal people do? Huh? That's just insane, it comes from the dulling of the logic that occurs by constantly being pounded on forums by pedophiles and their apologists.

Furthermore, child pornography of the simulated kind *is* the crime in some countries, as we've seen with Germany. And we can't be sure that this form of immersive, streaming 3-D pornography in the U.S. will go on being "protected speech," too.

And as I've demonstrated, the link between child pornography and assaults on children is established, so I don't see why it's such a stretch to be concerned about the link between SL and efforts to contact children. It's creepy, to be sure.

>Nor can animations, because making and playing animations involves no RL children.

>Which part of what I said above you don't understand?

I could ask you the same thing. You feel as if you have this absolutely sold, persuasive logic and reasoning, but you don't. If you claim the virtual and the real have a firewall between them, we all know that's simply untrue. They do not. They bleed over constantly; they interact; the affect one another.

Ask yourself whether you can believe it when a person says that they cyber in SL, but they never wish to take their cybering out to real life. Huh? That would be a goddamn retarded argument. Never take cybering out to real life? Happens all the time, as people wish to meet each other.

So...you say it doesn't matter if that "ageplayer" takes his ageplay out to real life only to find another ageplaying adult? But...that's not what thrills him, what he's looking for *is a child*. That's the difference!

[Prokofy Neva]

>Prokofy, you know I enjoy poking fun as your bombastic conspiratorial prose.

I can think of few things more bombastic, conspiratorial, and retarded, than your Safari bullshit, in fact.

[dandellion kimban]

Prok, all your arguments spins around couple of points:

1. There is "normal" behaviour. All that is not "normal" is deviant and will develop in criminal. Which is, thank heavens, not true. Even unnatural attraction to children is not a crime. Ask lawers. Desires, wishes and other things that happens inside the head are not the crime. You can wish to kill me, but I cannot sue you for that.

2. Pornography is conected to child abuse. Somewhat same as above. There can be some statistical evidence about that but that will stand on a court for a second. That connection says that (almost) all child abusers have collections of child porn. But that doesn't say that all who have porn are child abusers. (There is another reason why CP is illegal, not because it may be the sign of future abuse, but because if children are used to make porn the one who posses images is colaborating in crime of making it.)

3. People who do cybersex will meet in RL and marry. I am touched by the romantic view of SL, but that simply is not true. A few people who met on internet did meet in real and even married. I personally know two pairs. But.... A lot of ppl who do cybersex do it as one night stands, as experiments, as a quick date. Take a look at all sex clubs all over the SL where it takes less then couple of minutes to get involved with somebody. Do you really think that all of those people have a lightest idea of meeting IRL? No, of course not. For most of the population, cybersex is just a fun without any commitment and/or expectations. And that goes especialy for experimental things. There is a huge amount of people who uses anonymity of internet to try something that they will never do IRL. How many residents are transgendered in SL? Do you really believe that all of them are RL transgendered, transsexual or homosexual? No, they are not. Just a tiny fraction is, but very tiny fraction.

4. People who play shooting games will shoot IRL but they don't have opportunities. Which amandment of U.S. constitution grants every citizen the right to have weapons?

No I don't believe that there is firewall between real life and the virtual one. At least not the one that completely closes all the ports. But, for the mayority of us, when things goes through it, from RL to SL and back, they change. They gets the shape that is ok in the given environment. Living in the SL is a form of art. And our desires are being manifested in that medium. Nothing bad about that.

If one's instincts goes towards some form let them manifest in SL better than in RL. Or in any other artistic medium. Just as you said: "I wish you people worked as hard as you do apologizing for pedophilia as you do being creative and making art and enjoying the socializing and communing with others in an aesthetic way". That leads us to the idea of psycho-drama. For most of us, usualy considered as healthy and reasonable, it is a safe thing to do. The minority whick is problematic is not to be encouraged in such an activity by themselves but rather with professional help. But, before you object that, it is not a good idea to cut all the people from playing with certain ideas just because there is some percent of people who can react in a bad way. (In that case, penicilin would be illegal.) That way you will not solve the problem of deviant minority but propably recruit new deviants from those which could deal with themselves with harmless experiment. Instead of that, they are left to seek other means, hopefully not in RL.

[BLueRibbon]

Prokofy Neva,

You claim that a link between child pornography and child abuse is established. I assume this is based on the reports claiming that 'x% of people who possess child pornography also abuse children.'

Those numbers are worthless as they fail to take into account the obvious fact that people who view child pornography *and* molest children are more likely to be noticed by LE than those who view child pornography but don't abuse children.

In other words, there will be a lot of people who view child pornography but don't abuse children (since one is illegal, the other is illegal *and* harmful) who are not noticed by LE and therefore do not become part of the statistics; if those people are taken into account, the number of CP viewers who also molest children will be significantly lower.

Those figures actually describe the number of child molesters who also possess CP, which does not suggest that CP causes people to molest children, any more than it suggests that molesting children causes people to possess CP.

I've already made it clear that I don't agree with adults having sex with children, but I'm also happy to state that the only reason I don't look at CP is because CP is illegal. It's good that I have strong self-control of my sexual urges, because non-abusive outlets for paedophiles are forever being criminalised.

I'm sure there are many people who engage in paedophilic age-play in SL, who have no intention of acting out in real life. This is, quite simply, because they are intelligent enough to be aware that while they are not abusing a child or violating the law in SL, they sure would be if they had sex with a child IRL. You may have sex with someone based purely on your fantasies in SL, but you don't have to consider the fact that you would be harming someone by doing so, nor do you have to consider legal consequences. For paedophiles, life isn't just about basic urges, it's about social, moral and legal issues which heterosexuals do not have to consider.

----

"both involve exactly the same sinister thing: unnatural attraction to children."

That is absolutely irrelevant. Surely the only relevant issue is protecting children, not protecting adults' feelings of what is 'natural?'

If you created the world you desired, you would have paedophiles isolated from everyone like them, with absolutely no emotional or legitimate sexual outlet, treated like monsters, unable to differentiate between virtual reality and reality. Would that help children, or just make you feel better?

I very much doubt that your goal is to protect children from abuse; if that is indeed your goal, you need to start thinking about what constitues abuse, rather than what offends your morals.

BLueRibbon,
ANU

[dandellion kimban]

(mental note: gotta meet blueribbon inworld)

The more this thing about age-play goes on (not only here), the more I feel that the point is not to protect children, not even to forbid people to play their fantasies in virtual environment but to help "moral ppl" not to face what is in their heads. C'mon, from the comments all over the blogosphere one can see that there is a group of ppl so clean and straight that snowflake is like dirty bitsh from hell compared to them.

[Baba]

Bonus points for making a reference to Copybot in an article on pedophiles. Prokofy, I applaud you.

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm glad the pedophiles of Second Life are here to call themselves *pedophiles* and not sugar-coat what they are with this euphemism called "ageplay" which sounds like "adults merely experimenting with other adults" when what it really means is "adults who are attracted to children".

I'm not required on my land -- nor is Linden Lab required in their world -- to extend absolute and extreme protections of the First Amendment. That's the *other* piece of the First Amendment and other protections that people forget -- freedom of assembly means you get to chose what set of community standards you wish to enforce. The Lindens -- and most of us -- believe that this concept of ageplay is "broadly offensive". They've fudged on whether they find it offensive when "out of sight and out of mind" but other owners of sims have said they draw the line -- no sexual ageplay, period.

Therefore to have lengthy arguments about whether or not the First Amendment can extend to virtualized 3-d pornography or not is a bit of abstraction. I don't think the courts, the media, and the experts have had a chance to study and think about it, and I personally don't want SL or RL determined by small coteries of cadres by their own lights.

>You claim that a link between child pornography and child abuse is established.

It's not "my claim," but one that the media citing law-enforcement and experts, readily report. It's not the exoticism you try to make it out as. For all the cynical snorting that pedophiles make about "no connection" you have to wonder why each time a pedophile is caught, it's with loads of porn.

>I assume this is based on the reports claiming that 'x% of people who possess child pornography also abuse children.'

They do, that's established. But it's not only that: read the links. Making justification for child abuse in chat rooms, on the Internet -- and they would add if they knew about Second Life -- in simulated gameplay -- sets a norm and slides the bar downward. It creates an enabling environment.

Practically speaking, for a landlord like me, it creates a constant strain of having to interfere, intrude, and adjudicate MORE. If I have 10 ageplayers in 10 apartments, I have to go examine each one. I have to look at each one's wall art, profiles, and maybe even zoom in on them and see if any of them have chat indicating they are real children. Who could possibly justify or have the time for that? So that is why you have to say: given this legal vulnerability, given the inadmissibility of this crime, I will remove the climate for it and not allow it, period. If somebody else wants to play Ageplayers' Commission, they can play, if the Lindens will tolerate it. I won't be doing that.

>In other words, there will be a lot of people who view child pornography but don't abuse children (since one is illegal, the other is illegal *and* harmful) who are not noticed by LE and therefore do not become part of the statistics; if those people are taken into account, the number of CP viewers who also molest children will be significantly lower.

So? One percent is too many. Lower statistical returns don't rescue the awful intellectual proposition here -- that just because 'not everybody' or 'not many' connect between child porn and simulation and actual child molestation doesn't mean it's sustainable as a proposition. It isn't. It's still wrong.

It would be like saying, "Only 30 percent of the people who go over the speed limit of 65 die in car crashes, so therefore, we don't really need the speed limit, because 70 percent of the people don't die." Nobody would accept that sort of monkey math and self-serving reasoning of a pedophile when it comes to car crashes; they'd say, my God, let's get it down further -- 30 percent you say? Why 5 percent is too many, and if we can show that raising or eliminating it makes that number shoot up, by all means, keep the speed limit, or even lower it, we might shave it down to 25 percent.

There is nothing wrong with limits and laws. They are good things. Laws against molesting children are good things; limits to protect children are good things. Prosecution of people with these attractions who act on them is a good thing; it discourages them. That bears repeating, as we listen to the barrage of concerns from selfish adults here.

>Those figures actually describe the number of child molesters who also possess CP, which does not suggest that CP causes people to molest children, any more than it suggests that molesting children causes people to possess CP.

Gosh, calling the police "LE" and calling *child pornography" "CP" must really dumb it down and render it meaningless in your little pedophiles' chat groups, eh? That's pretty retarded. It's like saying "all these people who died going over 65 didn't really die because they were speeding, so we don't need a speed limit".

People use pornography when they can't get the real thing, or when they can, but it's not fully as satisfying as the perfection of pornography. They move from pornography to the real thing when they get the chance.

People with normal sexual appetites that do not involve children move from pornography when they can, and there's no reason to expect that pedophiles, who are already concealing something and justifying their criminal inclinations, are going to restrain themselves more than anyone else. Indeed, they are constantly setting the stage for justifying what they do, constantly barraging everyone with argumentation of why they are right. They are inherent propagandists, constantly trying to erode people's sense of wrong. We have no reason to trust them whatsoever.

>I've already made it clear that I don't agree with adults having sex with children, but I'm also happy to state that the only reason I don't look at CP is because CP is illegal. It's good that I have strong self-control of my sexual urges, because non-abusive outlets for paedophiles are forever being criminalised.

I don't buy the hydraulic belief system that says human beings have sets of desires that require regular draining out like overflowing ponds, or that we are *required* to provide them with outlets and drains. There's no science that says one must drain the pond or suffer consequences.

Human beings can control themselves -- or not. It is up to their free will and upbringing. Civilization is made up of people controlling their animal inclinations.

We have no studies to demonstrate that creating these purported "non-abusive outlets for pedophiles" are somehow legitimate. None. And when the stories crop up in law-enforcement, or in SL as we've seen, the connection between RL child pornography and "ageplay" in SL was said to be established. Was it indeed? This is the allegation. We're bound to see more of this rather than less.

The concept that there are absolutely no children in Second Life not being victimized by ageplayers is another canard. We have two things in Second Life. We have children who are not on the teen grid. They escape detection. They are indeed on the adult grid. Every knows this. Everyone has encountered them and some of us have tried abuse reporting them sometimes in vain. The other thing we have is ageplayers. The thought that these two populations -- both without sufficient oversight -- aren't coming together in Second Life is naive and wilfully blind to the extreme.

>I'm sure there are many people who engage in paedophilic age-play in SL, who have no intention of acting out in real life. This is, quite simply, because they are intelligent enough to be aware that while they are not abusing a child or violating the law in SL, they sure would be if they had sex with a child IRL.

I have no reason to believe that pedophiles are "intelligent" enough whatsoever, given their propensity for loud, obnoxious, aggressive, propagandizing of their awful cause. There are many reasons to believe they may have profound psychological disturbances. There is every reason to believe that they will lie, manipulate, and distract in their argumentation as we can see them doing now all over the forums. They are heavily motivated to distract, minimize, and deceive about this shameful practice. I don't get why I'm supposed to trust a pedophile; a pedophile thinks it's ok to have sex with children, but the only thing stopping them is the fear of criminal prosecution. THAT is something trustworthy?!

>You may have sex with someone based purely on your fantasies in SL, but you don't have to consider the fact that you would be harming someone by doing so, nor do you have to consider legal consequences. For paedophiles, life isn't just about basic urges, it's about social, moral and legal issues which heterosexuals do not have to consider.

I don't believe in pedophiles' rights. I don't believe in the right to crime. I don't think that I need to form a support group for pedophiles in SL. I think that pedophilia is rightfully criminalized in real life, and should remain so.
Simulating it erodes the barriers created in society for penalizing it morally and legally; I see no reason to remove their barriers.

>both involve exactly the same sinister thing: unnatural attraction to children."
>That is absolutely irrelevant. Surely the only relevant issue is protecting children, not protecting adults' feelings of what is 'natural?'

Um, nice try with that old propagandists' trick, trying to trip up someone on their values. But...the whole reason adults have concepts like "natural" and "natural" is because....they wish to protect children. Adults don't develop moral systems merely to parade around and feel themselves right and judge others to have power over them; while some may do that, such phenomenon need not discredit moral systems in general. Moral systems criminalizing pedophilia exist for a reason: to protect children. And to erode that by trying to claim immorality in the presence of those affirming the value of morality, trying to "shame" them and turn the tables on *them* to make *them* for feeling guilty of they are "self-righteous" is merely a manipulative trick -- moral systems are moral, and should be upheld.

I don't see any reason whatsoever to encourage the erosion of the barriers against pedophilia in real life, which exist in morality and the law, by constant breaking down of the barrier in virtual life. I do believe the virtual and real are very much connected.

Nobody keeps their sexual relationships and even just very intense personal or business relationships within SL only. It is a very emotional medium. People become terribly traumatized and worked up. It's not at all uncommon for people to travel to foreign countries to meet some love they have found in SL, only to be disappointed, or conversely, to live happily ever after.

It's not at all far-fetched to imagine that the pedophiles who found a happy hunting ground in Myspace.com will find an even more lucrative grazing area in SL, where they can disguise themselves more easily, where their victims can also be disguised, and where they can make an immersive and emotional appeal far more compelling than on a flat text space like myspace.com

It only takes one tragedy to discredit the world.

>If you created the world you desired, you would have paedophiles isolated from everyone like them, with absolutely no emotional or legitimate sexual outlet, treated like monsters, unable to differentiate between virtual reality and reality.

Yes, that's what I would do. I'd have to do that, given that pedophilia is indefensible -- intellectually, morally, spiritually, legally.

>Would that help children, or just make you feel better?

It would help children -- and again, nice try in using THAT particular discredited propaganda trick *again*. This isn't a conversation that takes place because I need to feel better. I don't objectively need to argue against pedophiles. I chose to argue against them on this issue in SL because I think it's wrong for them to be there, and the Lindens are right to discourage them.

I don't see how anyone could object that punishing, isolating, ostracizing, discouraging, and fighting the sinister justification of pedophilia is the right thing to do to protect children. I haven't heard of a better idea.

I don't see how the concept of justifying pedophilia *helps* children either. There isn't a single argumentation coming from these wolves in sheep's clothing here who are pedophiles that their argumentation "to help children" is anything anyone should trust.

I don't imagine any association of psychiatrists, board of health, children's foundation, or any other serious entity is going to be studying Second Life, and pronouncing it a wholesome and safe place for pedophiles to go where they will be completely happy and be 100 percent sure to never molest a child again. Not going to happen.

>I very much doubt that your goal is to protect children from abuse; if that is indeed your goal, you need to start thinking about what constitues abuse, rather than what offends your morals.

I realize that it's the hallmark of trained propagandists to try to turn someone willing to take a stand against their odious cause against their *own* argumentation and their own cause of defending liberal values, by trying to appeal to their sense of altruism, to their sense of wishing to resist "hyprokisy" -- and to try to trip them up on liberalism to insert illiberalism. However, I'm schooled in resisting that and I can see that train coming down the tracks from miles away.

I'm confident that a policy of zero tolerance for public advocacy, promotion, advertising, display, etc. of "ageplay" in Second Life is absolutely the right thing to do. I'm absolutely confident that if all landowners and rentals agents and club owners who now must check off adult on their land if adult activity takes place there indicates that they have 0 tolerance for child pornography and "ageplay" that creates a conducive environment for what is illegal -- that's a good thing. I think it will avert a tragedy in Second Life, hopefully.

I'm confident that if people morally reject "ageplay" and don't fall for the blandishments of its arguments, they can create a safer place for children and teens.

I don't see why rejecting ageplay *doesn't* create a safeer place for kids and teens. That's the part no pedophile can ever get anyone to agree with -- except by this silly concept that if we don't let them cavort in Second Life, they will go out and attack more children in real life. And...what was your excuse before there *was* a Second Life?!

People are so busy trying to save the First Amendment that they forget that even while doing that, and having some abstraction about what people do in the privacy of their own homes, you can also morally condemn what you know to be wrong.

I personally think it's a good thing to keep pedophilia out of Second Life, just as it is discouraged from the Internet. I don't see why any of us are charged to help protect and promote it.

The question then becomes: how much should everthing be monitored to prevent it? How much should people be checked in their own homes? I'd have to think and study about this quite a bit more before I could contemplate it, but in Second Life, it's a voluntary matter. I personally can discourage and ban "ageplay" from my properties, and not contribute to the possible violation of the law, and not create a climate of impunity and justification. That's important.

>The more this thing about age-play goes on (not only here), the more I feel that the point is not to protect children, not even to forbid people to play their fantasies in virtual environment but to help "moral ppl" not to face what is in their heads.

This is another common propaganda technique commonly used in totalitarian movements all over the world, by people with sinister intent trying to break down the judgement of others -- and again, I see through it. It's a forced contradiction of the interlocutor's ideals, trying to invert his values.

It tries to take people's natural desire to do what's right and moral, and the acceptable moral code that 10 minutes ago above, this poster himself was claiming to also abide by (!), and suddenly turn it on its ear.

So...10 minutes ago this pedophile was claiming that he had strong control of his urges and never looked at porn because it was illegal. And he would certainly never do anything to harm a child. Because that was wrong.

Now...10 minutes later, he's trying to break that priority and that valuation down in a very sinister argumentation method. Now he's saying, oh, I don't think you really care about harming children, about the law, or about what's wrong, you care only about your own moral rectitude.
So...the entire campaign against pedophilia now isn't about the law and the morality we *thought* we agreed on, it's only about banging on smug SUV drivers from the Moral Majority. Riiiight!

So...Um, noooooo I care about harm to children and the law. Remember? That thing you claimed YOU were for up above when you were trying to let us know what a great law-abiding citizien you were?

And now, this self-professed pedophile, is going to play another trick out of the propagandists' book, honed in chat groups and support networks, which works like this: "You think I'm a beast? Well, you're just like me. You are running from the same urges".

Except...we aren't. We're not the pedophiles. You are. So let's not mix it up here, please. We don't want to have sex with children. You do. Keep a focus here.

>'mon, from the comments all over the blogosphere one can see that there is a group of ppl so clean and straight that snowflake is like dirty bitsh from hell compared to them.

A person like me or anyone criticizing pedophilia need not be perfect. They need not be snowflakes. They need not be free of sin. They need merely to affirm that pedophilia is morally and legally wrong. Which is what this poster claimed to affirm up top, 10 minutes ago, remember?

[BLueRibbon]

"(mental note: gotta meet blueribbon inworld)"

LOL, I actually don't play Second Life, but I often get involved in debates related to paedophilia.

[Prokofy Neva]

If you do not have a Second Life name and do not supply a RL name than you cannot post on this blog, those are the rules here, BlueRibbon.

[dandellion kimban]

About that poster that changes every two minutes: those are two of them! Read carefully.
Second, I'd like to ask you for a favour: can you allow blockquote tag. This is becoming a bit hard to read.

Ok, now back to the children.

>So? One percent is too many. Lower statistical returns don't rescue the intellectual proposition here -- that just because 'not everybody' or 'not many' connect between child porn and simulation and actual child molestation doesn't mean it's sustainable as a proposition. It isn't. It's still wrong.

Sure, one case of child abuse is too many. But that does not make a right to do counter-abuse. Seems like you have been reading propaganda handbooks too.

>The question then becomes: how much should everthing be monitored to prevent it? How much should people be checked in their own homes? I'd have to think and study about this quite a bit more before I could contemplate it, but in Second Life, it's a voluntary matter. I personally can discourage and ban "ageplay" from my properties, and not contribute to the possible violation of the law, and not create a climate of impunity and justification.

I am very interested in how you or anybody else is going to find out what are two people are playing. You will hack into their IM's? You will listen and watch what is going on their land. Don't forget that private land is private. I hope I don't need to remind you that you were the one to assert so when shepherd was introduced. Using potential crime to spy on residents/citizens is forbidden in U.S. , Europe and in all other democratic countries. Once again, that is one of the basics of democratic law systems. Private property is sacred and no one is guilty until proved otherwise. Legalisation of spying just because there is statistical possibility of crime is what totalitarsm is.

And once again, just for you, I am not doing sexual age-play propaganda. I just stand on the side of freedom of thoughts.

[Lem Skall]

Prok, you are crossing the line between judging people for what they do and judging them for what they think. You are doing that based on the assumption that if they think it, then they will do it. Others have already commented on that and I totally agree with them that it is unacceptable to discriminate against people based on what they think.

Maybe a point that you are rightly making (weakly though) is made against promoting these thoughts or promoting pedohilia. I can see a point in that by using of a parallel with promotion of hatred. In other words, although "thinking" racist thoughts is not illegal, promoting racism is illegal even if no minorities are immediately and directly hurt.

But are the practice and promotion of age-playing a promotion of pedophilia? I can understand a gut reaction saying that they are, but we need more evidence towards that before discriminating against anyone in SL. And it is indeed discrimination if age-players are not allowed to organize themselves in SL.

As for what is natural or unnatural attraction, there is very little in human sexuality that really qualifies as "natural". Otherwise, we should ban all fetishes and sex should consist only in males having 15-second copulations with every female that is ovulating. So let's not use the "unnatural attraction" argument in deciding what is right or what is wrong.

A message to age-players though: it might help if you would condemn sex between adults and children in RL, besides just pointing out that age-playing is not that.