Yes. And thanks to this thread, i will be. But I’m not going to be the first adopter who has to derail a conversation to explain what I’m talking about.
I sincerely hope nobody who is not from Mars needs “sexual abuse material/images” explained to them. I think it is pretty clear what that means.
That’s precisely what is happening. Going back to my earier analogy, just because someone is punched doesn’t mean that they now have the right to assert to everyone that the real and proper thing to say is “forcibly struck with closed fist” and that anyone who doesn’t adopt their new term immediately Just Doesn’t Get It, is clueless, is obstinate, and is possibly morally deficient.
Ironically, that very argument is for language proscriptiveness, while the argument is being made that everyone else is being proscriptive.
They are. That’s the legal concept. If you disagree, then you need to be advocating to get child porn laws overturned.
It’s not illegal because people find them liking child porn to be gross. It’s illegal because they are actively causing harm.
I sincerely hope nobody who is not from Mars needs “child pornography is bad” explained to them. I think it is pretty clear what that means. That’s part of this whole conversation: that the term makes child porn sound like it is maybe a good thing, and that there are people out there who, when told “no, it is acktalllly csam” will have a sudden epiphany, “wait, child porn is bad? Well this changes everything!”.
That’s just silly. I’m not disagreeing that they do harm, I’m disagreeing that they are abusing the children. If the “legal concept” was that they were the same thing, we wouldn’t need laws against child pornography since you’d just book everyone on sexual assault. Again, eating eggs doesn’t make me a farmer even if we find the idea of eating eggs to be morally vile and harmful. Or, for a more legal version, being arrested for possession of meth doesn’t mean I’m tried for production of meth despite the fact that my meth use incentivizes production.
It really doesn’t. (I hope goes without saying). Saying “sexual abuse” simply spells it out explicitly, rather than allowing some hypothetical wrong 'un to use their imagination. “Cemetery” is also a euphemism, in the same vein, but to misunderstand it one would have to be more than a little obtuse.
Sure it does. It makes sense that official organizations want to use more official terminology, and it makes sense that other people want to use more colloquial terms. In Real Life, the term PDF file is used to mean child sexual molester. Because that’s how language works.
My main objection to CSAM currently in general use because not enough people know what it means, and thus it’s just letters that obscure the main value of it: that it mention child sexual abuse. Over time, maybe that changes, and I can count on people to know what the fuck I mean.
And that, @MrDibble, is why I’m not getting on the train now. I have no reason to think anyone would know what see-sam means. Hell, I’m pretty sure most wouldnt’ connect “child sexual abuse material” with “child porn” unless I use both terms.
It’s just that unknown among anyone I interact with. I see it as a thing globally, in certain newspapers, which people don’t read anymore.
It’s not silly. It’s the concept. If they aren’t abuse, they aren’t causing harm. The abuse is the harm.
You can keep on bringing up stuff that isn’t illegal and isn’t treated the same way, but it is irrelevant. Child sexual abuse is not farming.
?? No it isn’t.
No the incentivizing of the abuse is the harm.
As I mentioned, being arrested for a drug isn’t treated as producing the drug despite my purchase of the drug incentivizing production. Owning an endangered species pelt is a crime but the crime isn’t poaching of an endangered species. Etc and so on.
Who abandoned it? Certainly not me.
Other than actual CSAM victims…
S’fine, I’m certainly not going to be hijacking threads about it either.
This thread wasn’t about berating anyone for using the term in the other thread.
It was about countering the “just language prescriptivists doing euphemism creep” arguments raised in that thread, though.
Also to counter the “they think ‘child porn’ is unclear language” absolute strawman that I see is still being trotted out here.
What part of “Child Sexual Abuse Material” is unclear? Or do you mean the literal acronym? In which case, I’m not so sure “not enough” is accurate. Trends are certainly clear on this.
Tell that to e.g. CNN, who use it freely (after using the full term on first use, as is proper).
I can see people here not using it themselves. Like I said, this was expected, predictable Doper behaviour. But trying to argue for counterfactuals like nobody using it are easily exposed.
Yes, it is (in origin). Unless all those buried people really are just sleeping.
I don’t think asserting that victims of sexual abuse would like people to switch terms is an appeal to emotion. They are the people with the most direct interest in the question, and we should defer to them (I guess “I don’t want to be a jerk to crime victims” is kind of an emotional response, but I’m OK with that).
I’m not seeing clear evidence that a majority of victims actually do hold that opinion, or feel strongly about the matter, but if such evidence were presented, I would certainly feel compelled to switch terms based on that.
I don’t think any survey on the matter has been done. I do know that specific victims have come out very strongly in favour of the new terminology, and I know of no victims who are strongly opposed to it or in favour of the old verbiage.
Of course, if the side in favour of continuing to call it child porn can line up a few survivors who are adamantly on their side, they should definitely do that.
I assume most people don’t care what you personally call it and therefore aren’t interested in making “adamant” statements either way. For example, I’m sure someone exists who is a victim and has said that “child pornography” is their preferred term (it’s a big world and if you can find transgender Trump supporters…) but I honestly don’t care enough to look because I’m not trying to change your mind.
Even in plain English, one might say someone was “laid to rest”.
If you add “child pornography” to that serach, it gets nearly 10 times as many hits as CSAM. But yes, CSAM is defintely gaining in popularity.
Sure. That’s a basic “don’t be a jerk to crime victims” move. And I won’t be surprised if that happens in a few years.
And I understand the point of trying to use more constructive words. I’ve been doing some volunteer tutoring in a prison, and the group I’m working with asks that we speak about “incarcerated people” rather than “felons”. I mostly just refer to them as my students, though, as that’s generally the most immediately relevant noun.
People of Incarceration please.
If I was talking to or around Ms. Kozak then I’d use her preferred term out of respect to her. That’s unlikely to ever happen. If I’m expected to change during other conversation, I’d expect an actual good argument for why it matters. Sort of like I might not swear around my mom but that doesn’t mean I’ve removed swearing from my vocabulary entirely. But me using profanity while talking to my friends doesn’t mean I’m disrespecting or don’t care about my mother; it just literally makes no impact to her if I’m doing it.
There’s language changes I make because I agree with the argument: I no longer use the word “retard” because I agree with the argument that it denigrates and belittles a class of people. On the other hand, I agree with people who think that “unhoused” is a pointless change of phrase from “homeless”. “CSAM” falls more on that end of the spectrum.