Well, this one seems to have been the preferred term in many circles since 2016, which is nearly a decade. Of course, that means it’s a recent usage to most of this board’s posters.
On the one hand, I’m willing to learn a new word for a few things of importance every decade or so. This is hardly the only new-to-me word I’ve come across recently that replaces words i already had with a slightly different twist. (“Banger”, for a particularly good piece of media, is another that comes to mind. I never heard it before this year, and now I’m hearing it everywhere. And yes, it’s an awkward word to bring into this discussion, but it’s the one i was thinking about Monday evening.)
On the other hand, expressing shock and dismay that a bunch of old farts are still using a phrase that’s by far the most commonly used one in the US, and whose replacement needs to be defined and explained in official publications, seems counter-productive. I’m sure this is one of those cases where language changes faster in some circles than in others. I also suspect the US is lagging other countries.
The way I see it, it’s not so much a matter of “the New Correct Term” as of a preference for using the professional/legal term-of-art in any public for-the-record discourse or outside of casual conversation. Which is understandable so everyone’s on the same page but as has been mentioned runs the risk that popularization will lead to a “euphemism treadmill” among the lay public as they start using it when they should not.
Yes, some people are uncomfortable with hearing and using the phrase “child porn” for multiple reasons, though I do not see there being a concerted effort to render it “inappropriate” and I must confess never encountering a serious argument that calling it that somehow legitimizes or defuses it. But for some people it is, maybe it’s the word “porn” itself that has lost its sting?
I do understand also though how someone can point out that “CSAM” has a potential for definitional expansion/creep, that is a real risk. That can be dealt with in the legal side if the legislatures and courts avoid vagueness and make it absolutely unambiguous that it means that which they’ve called “childporn” for the last 50 years ( = sexually explicit content that would clearly be called porn if portrayed by adults, but produced with actual live children). But OTOH we KNOW that on the popular side we’ll have a problem with people/voters crying out that anything that creeps them out is CSAM and should be treated accordingly. (I am on record previously here that porn toons of Lisa Simpson or Rei Ayanami are not CSAM, they’re copyright infringement; similarly Cuties was not CSAM it was just a mediocre movie.)
By the way, I’ve just asked a few fairly liberal people in my social circles if they are familiar with the phrase, “child sexual abuse materials”, and the answer has been uniformly “no”.
I actually think it has less potential for that. Because anything it might expand into is already a form a child abuse. So it’s not terrible if the exact boundaries drift.
Whereas graphic sexual videos of cartoon Lisa Simpson are “child pornography”, as those words ordinarily string together. And whether that should be okay or not, i think it’s clearly less bad than abusing real children to produce that kind of image.
I understand and applaud the OP’s point. I also think that CSAM sounds like what it is: the bland & bloodless product of a committee, and an international one to boot. It’s fine professional jargon, stilted colloquial language, and downright lousy slang. Because it was designed to be fine professional jargon.
Now that I know the term I’ll understand it when I read it and try to use it on the very rare occasions I talk or write about such subjects.
Unrelated to the above …
This is a very good point. Speaking just to Americans since that’s the only group I can pretend to have any understanding of this topic about.
The freestanding word “pornography” used to provoke horrified gasps in ordinary Americans. Now it’s what’s on Channel 327. And another 50 channels. And a million websites. And in that password-protected folder on most people’s phones.
The short form “porn” has long since lost its sting. IMO to most Americans It’s an endearing nickname for an entertainment genre, nothing more. It’s got a definite “guilty pleasure” overlay, but so does eating a whole row of Oreos.
So I can see the logic behind concerned groups pushing away from using that word for what is, always, the result of doing a definitely victimful crime to somebody(s).
I don’t think that’s really to the point. Because most people on this board do know about the topic we are discussing. It’s just a question of the best words to use when describing it. Whereas most people on this board wouldn’t know the formula for any minerals if it was sitting on their dining room table.
But drunk driving very much is in the class of driving (just like “reckless driving” or “F1 driving” or “bus driving” are all in the class of “driving”.)
This is not that. It’s intended as quite the opposite - actually naming the horrible thing that’s underlying the euphemism.
Again - this is a strawman. I opened this thread already calling out that it was a strawman. No need to keep repeating it here as well.
It kind of does (especially when it’s the “kiddie porn” variant)
For women - 1 in 4 or 5 will be in a situation where such a setting would pertain to them (and that’s ignoring their guardians, family, loved ones in the count). 1 in 13 to 20 for boys.
Not “most of us”, but certainly enough to count.
I did not express any shock or dismay. Resignation and inevitability, though, got that in spades.
I just asked a few of my circle (leftists, not liberals), and they all knew what it was. It’s been a topic of discussion here, even in the news media.
Where “the industry” is “the legal framework of entire countries, and a whole lot of organizations that deal with a widespread problem that affects a huge proportion of people”, of course.
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America has a history of moral panics. And the current criminal regime would certainly foment one if they thought there was advantage in it. As always, it’s the most narrow minded thinkers who embrace these panics. Consider the so-call Pizzagate flail of a few years ago. Lotta true believers really truly believed and still do.
It would not surprise me in the slightest for there to be a fomented moral panic over child sexual abuse wherein completely normal parenting behavior was reclassified as abusive then selectively enforced.
Now I will agree with you that the term CSAM doesn’t add or subtract from the opportunity for moral panics and malicious law-writing and law enforcement.
But I for one would not be blasé here in 2025 & later years about the risk of anything and everything that offends the reactionary offenderati being selectively criminalized for totalitarian-leaning political purposes. Child sexual abuse as a topic is probably the biggest shiniest lowest-hanging fruit on that very poisonous tree.
FTR: None of what I’m talking about here is meant to minimize the problem of actual child sexual abuse, whether in-family, neighbors, etc., or for commercial purposes. I’m simply outlining its especial attraction to political bad actors.
They are the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child, and the one who doesn’t know to ask. We are instructed to answer them differently.
Thewise child asks details about the specific meaning of the laws of Passover observance… to which we respond with one of the very specific details.
The wicked child asks, “Whatever does this mean to you?” we are instructed to admonish this child.
The simple child asks, “What does this mean?” we are instructed to give a straightforward answer to this child.
In response to the child who does not know how to ask, we are instructed to “open it up” and explain.
So I appreciate it when those of us unfamiliar with the phrase “child sexual abuse material” , let alone the arguments in favor of preferring it, are not immediately assumed to be wicked. And i suggest that “a straightforward answer” is a good starting approach if you want to promote a new way of discussing a sensitive issue.
I’m reminded of the George Carlin bit about “Shell Shock” becoming “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” and how we just keep adding syllables to the names of problems but don’t really do anything to address the root of them.
I completely agree, and that’s why i asked people to stop discussing terminology in the thread where he was being discussed. That doesn’t mean this isn’t also a valid discussion to have.
Suggesting that RAINN and the other orgs who are at the forefront of the terminology change
aren’t doing anything to address the root of the issue is quite frankly just insulting.
But the term is not a euphemism. It is an accurate descriptive term that a special interest group has decided that they don’t like. If it had been called “special hugs videos”, that would be a euphemism.
This is like people suddenly deciding that you can’t say “puch”, you must say “forcibly strike with closed fist”, or fscf, and insist that “punch” is a minimizing euphemism when that is what “punch” has always meant to everybody in the first place.
The modern definition of pornography includes the idea of consent. Calling CSAM “child pornography” or image-based abuse “revenge porn” is assuming the mantle of consent-by-association. It very much is euphemistic.
You keep calling the people who actually deal with this on the daily “special interest groups” as though they were merely political lobbyists and not the people actually in the trenches working with abused children. Why is that?
[sic]
This is nothing like that. Unless the meaning of “punch” has also evolved to render the usage problematic…
