Is child pornography just "pixels on a screen?"

Great Debates
61

I’m sure there are. Rape as a behavior has survived human evolution because it has some degree of genetic success. But that’s really beside the point. It doesn’t tell us whether rape, or child rape, ought to be legal or illegal. But that should not prevent discussion of whether it should be legal or illegal in a college classroom.

A college classroom is not the fourth grade. Professors are not there merely to shovel a curriculum into students’ mouths. Every place in a college or university is and should be open to the intellectual exploration of the entirety of the human experience and thought.

In college classrooms, regardless of the subject of the course, instructors and students do and should feel free to explore any subject when it comes up. Students and instructors both have the propensity to bring up tangential topics, and in a college setting, at least, that should be encouraged.

Now, there is of course a possibility that a professor might indulge his or his students’ digressions off topic to the point that – say, calculus – is neglected. That of course would be a problem. However, the OP doesn’t say that. All the OP says is that the professor said X and asks whether this is a sound argument (it’s not a sound argument, but that’s not interesting enough to hold my attention).

Given that, we as an intellectual foregathering should be more sophisticated than to start questioning mundane details like what class was being taught and wondering whether the professor was himself a paedophile or a consumer of child pornography. It reflects the worst kind of “Won’t someone think of the children!” anti-intellectualist hysteria.

If the OP had said “My calculus professor didn’t teach us calculus because he spent every class session talking about how child pornography should be legal,” then “Did you report him?” and “What a creep” would be appropriate responses. But the OP wasn’t anything like that and did nothing to suggest that, so those responses are not appropriate.

62

There are cartoon depictions of Bart and Lisa Simpson ‘doing it’.
Is that child porn?
How about “That Family Guy” bending his daughter over a chair and violating her?

Is there a line?

63

That’s kid of what we are discussing isn’t it? Personally I feel that the only bright line we can draw is one of “no actual children were filmed in the making of this art” and leave it at that. Yes, hype-realistic cgi can be unsettling, and other media can be disgusting in its content, but it hasn’t harmed any person. To me that is the obvious line. Anything more than that is nothing short of censorship.

I’m a sculptor. Suppose I decide for some bizarre reason to sculpt a series of women’s buttocks and vulva mounted to the wall. Nothing else, just ass, vulva and enough thigh or hip to make the back flat to hang; no context or explanation. I shrink them 15 % for reasons of thrift in material. Should I have to put up a disclaimer lest someone mistake them for casts of children? Should the mere ambiguity of the piece mean it should be censored?

That is the problem with anything other than real photography and video. No matter how disgusting, prurient, or perverted, simulated images are just that: Make believe. That takes the law far too close to home for me as an artist. I shouldn’t have to consider the most delicate of sensibilities before making a piece. I shouldn’t have to worry legal repercussions for making stuff up. It is the role of an artist to challenge, express, and suggest freely. Now i want to be clear; I’m not equating fine art with drawn porn, but unfortunately we have to accept that gross little corner into the world of art if we don’t want the rest of it to be thrown out with the bathwater.

64

I wasn’t aware that the point was whether rape should be illegal or not. Where do you get that from? The discussion was about whether rape and paedophilia are sexualities just like homo- and heterosexuality.

Rape should probably be illegal in a college classroom…

So you wouldn’t report someone posting a defence of paedophilia randomly on a different topic on this board? You wouldn’t think there was something a bit wrong with someone who did that? I sure as hell would.

People should have a certain degree of choice about whether or not to participate in a discussion like that. Child abuse is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced; that doesn’t mean it should never be discussed, but that people should have a reasonable expectation of avoiding it if they want to.

You might expect it to come up in a politics or ethics class or in a discussion of Lolita, or a few other contexts, but you shouldn’t have to expect to have to be part of an emotional and possibly distressing topic just for going to calculus. (Well, apart from calculus itself).

I suspect that there actually was some context to the professor’s statements, though. It’d be nice if the OP came back and clarified.

If it is, then the London Olympic Committee logo designers are in trouble. :smiley:

65

Notoriety and kudos are a form of currency for those who are involved in trading this stuff. That sort of demand.

66

This question came up in the context of an OP whose underlying question is whether child porn should be legal. I’m saying whether it’s a “sexuality just like …” is irrelevant to the question.

This board is not a college classroom, does not have the same context as a college classroom, doesn’t have the same organizational setting as a college classroom. There’s no comparison at all. You’d report it in the SDMB to get the discussion moved to an appropriate forum. That’s not remotely comparable.

Murder is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced. Torture is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced. Genocide is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced. Poverty is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced. Bankruptcy is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced. Serious illness is not some abstract topic that nobody in the room will ever have experienced.

Nope, not if you’re in a college classroom. It’s time to grow up and be prepared to discuss social policy regarding any subject, especially ones that might touch on issues that have caused people pain. Being on a college campus is about being prepared to take on anything intellectually.

You’re not at home any more; you’re in the world. You’re there to be exposed to ideas of all kinds. You’re there to be confronted with people and conditions and experiences that you might be unfamiliar or shocking.

On the way from the cafeteria to the computer lab, you might encounter students holding demonstrations against abortion (pictures of aborted foetuses), demonstrations against human rights violations (pictures of people being tortured), or anything else that might signify something unpleasant going on in the world.

You emphatically do not have the right, in my view, to be protected from encountering discussions of such issues from the university administration, and you emphatically do not have the right to a prophylatic policy on discussions of subjects like child pornography. That is fundamentally antithetical to any notion of academia and education.

Actually, no, there’s no reason for you to want to go behind the OP and ask for this context. It’s not what the OP’s question was about at all; it’s entirely off topic. The OP’s question was about whether the professor’s argument was a good argument. You don’t need any context to address that situation.

67

Well, someone else raised that topic as a sidebar to the main conversation. You’ve carried on discussing photos and drawings even though they’re also irrelevant to the discussion - the professor was specifically talking about porn using real children.

Sure it is. Report it to college authorities as a suggestion that the discussion should take place elsewhere.

Education isn’t ‘discuss everything randomly now! Just turn up to any class and the topic could be anything!’ Though that would actually be quite cool and fun for a class, it wouldn’t be terribly useful if you had specific things you needed to learn.

You’re right that there are other topics that people might also want to avoid - they should have the choice to do so, within reason. If you’ve recently had something terrible like rape happen to you then you might want to avoid topics about rape, especially ones defending it. You’re probably not going to be able to be objective or focus on what people are saying if the experience is still raw. Maybe later, but not right now. It’s not anti-academic to say that a rape victim should have choice about when to talk about rape.

And you can choose to avoid such topics on a messageboard, in the cafeteria, in the hallway, etc, but not in a classroom when it’s the professor who brought it up.

I agree that it’s not necessary for us to know his aims in order to discuss what he said, but several people feel that even saying it was inappropriate. I feel that it depends on the context in which he said that. You disagree with that, obviously, but you’re not the only one on the thread - for other people it does matter.

68

Actually yes, there have been some prosecutions over “grannie’s photo album” and you should write your legislators TODAY.

Now when it comes to the argument of child porn–I do not think the child is harmed when granny takes those cute baby pictures.

I do not think it somehow harms the child when these pictures fall into the hands of a pedophile. If it didn’t harm the child for grandma’s purposes, I think I have to agree with the professor in the OP: it’s just pixels on the screen.

Its when the children are exploited for the purposes of the child pornographer that the child is harmed.

I think child porn should be visited so that mere nudity doesn’t fit the definition. It should be overtly sexual in some manner.

69

As I said before, unless the course is being derailed by off-topic discussions, there’s no justification for telling a professor “You may never bring X up in Y class.” That’s simply unacceptable.

But education is about being open to the discussion of any topic that might come up. It’s not about being perfectly able to predict that “X will never come up in Y context.” A college is not a vocational school. It’s about intellectual development.

No, you shouldn’t. All students should be prepared for any subject to be discussed on an intellectual level, or at least witness to such a discussion.

If you’re suffering to the point that anyone bringing up a particular topic or defending a particular argument in an intellectual, academic setting is going to derail you emotionally, then you’re not well enough to be on a college campus.

It is anti-academic to say that there should be rules in place to prevent a rape victim from unexpectedly encountering other people discussing rape and that students should “report” professors who dare to bring up potentially controversial arguments on topics.

Could be the professor, could be a fellow classmate, could be the result of class-required reading, could be something currently in the news. And you shouldn’t need to know, unless the actual question is “My professor doesn’t teach anything in the syllabus but harps on X tangential topics.”

Calculus classes are not always solely focused on calculus. There is often pre-class interaction between professors and students that touch on other subjects. So long as it doesn’t take over the class, that’s exactly what you want college classrooms to be like.

You don’t want a situation in which a professor is policed by the administration so that he may only utter words directly related to the syllabus in front of him. That’s the opposite of a pro-intellectual atmosphere.

70

Re: the bit I bolded. I think you know that there’s a big gap between free-for-all topics and professors only being allowed to read out prescribed words. That’s reduction ad absurdum.

Note that I’m not saying such topics should never come up in any class.

Someone who’s recently undergone a trauma - or not so recently, for some traumas - might well be able to go to everyday classes and cope with ordinary life quite well. That doesn’t mean they can cope with having the topic of their trauma discussed in a context they can’t easily get out of. You don’t have to be a delicate snowflake to want to not think about the horrible thing that’s happened to you, especially in a situation where you weren’t expecting it.

I’m not sure there’s anything else I can say to persuade you about allowing people to take steps to avoid topics that are distressing to them. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree - though of course you might not agree with that…

71

Classrooms should not be ordered for people who are suffering from trauma, especially trauma that might be triggered merely by talking about something, and especially since trauma is conceivably connected to absolutely anything.

Universities are for people who are prepared to confront intellectually anything in the human experience.

Subjects like regulation of pornography, what should be a crime, how do you balance individual intellectual freedom or free expression against emotional harm, these are all matters of the human experience, of academic study, of intellectual development.

Again, a university is not the fourth grade. When you show up on campus, you’re announcing your intent to confront any idea on an intellectual level. A university, more than any other place is the place that you should expect, while minding your own business, someone to say something that might shake you up intellectually. If mere discussion of a topic, any topic, is enough to send you over the edge, then you shouldn’t be there.

A university is a place that, walking across the quad, you are unable to avoid seeing images like aborted foetuses, tortured prisoners, victims of industrial accidents, challenges to your religious beliefs, your moral views, your political views.

What next, a fundamentalist Christian should have the right not to see the LGBT sign up table on campus or have the right not to have a lesbian professor teaching chemistry? That might very well be traumatic for a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of life experience, but it’s not one that a university administration should mitigate conditions for.

72

The professor (barring some hypothetical relevance not mentioned) has advocated the sexual exploitation of children. If he or she feels the need to to discuss this in class then I would feel the need to discuss it with his or her boss.

This is a far cry from a discussion of interracial homosexuals blazing a doobie. If you don’t get the not-so-subtle difference then we really don’t have anything to discuss.

73

“Advocated”? Interesting choice of word. If I say that X is a good argument for not prosecuting abused women who kill their abusers, am I an “advocate” for murder?

The difference, subtle or not, is that this particular professor’s argument is less likely to be accepted as a winning argument (and rightly so). And that’s not the kind of difference that should result in someone being “reported.”

74

advocate, as in, the subject is (barring some hypothetical reason to bring it up) beyond the pale of reasoned discussion.

75

The question of whether some act should be subject to legal penalties is never “beyond the pale of reasoned discussion.” That’s exactly how we create law.

76

So you’re not agreeing to disagree then.

I’m not saying nobody should ever discuss anything controversial in any class ever. I’m saying that people should have some warning. Like, you should expect to be able to go to calculus without having to talk about rape or child abuse. (That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to write). I don’t think that’s anti-intellectual or a huge constraint on college professors’ freedom.

OTOH, if it were a class on ethics or psychology, particularly criminal psychology, to give just two examples, then you should know that those topics might come up. At least then you’d be somewhat prepared.

People are not logical, objective automatons and are not all equally well-placed to discuss every subject ‘intellectually’ at every given moment. A person is not anti-intellectual for not wanting to be part of a discussion on rape.

Walking across the quad is different for reasons I already gave, but to elaborate: you can leave without it affecting your grade, attendance or standing with the professor and without your leaving being a signal that maybe it happened to you.

The kind of ‘trauma’ your latter paragraph is talking about is reduction ad absurdium again. Allowing people to avoid talking about rape during calculus does not lead to firing lesbian professors. Hey, there’s another of those unexpected sentences!

77

It’s just common sense to question such a discussion. The Ft Hood shooter left a trail of conversations that raised flags but nobody bothered to follow up because it was just a discussion.

78

When someone’s advocating a course of action in which an academic/educator might be disciplined for arguing an intellectual point, no, I can’t just agree to disagree. One or the other policy has to be implemented, so there’s no way to just live and let live.

In an atmosphere of academic freedom and intellectual pursuit, you can’t give warnings.

Either there is academic freedom or there isn’t. No one should be able to force a particular student to speak on a controversial or sensitive topic, but everyone on a college campus should be prepared to hear other people talk on unexpected topics at any time.

(That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to write). I don’t think that’s anti-intellectual or a huge constraint on college professors’ freedom.

OTOH, if it were a class on ethics or psychology, particularly criminal psychology, to give just two examples, then you should know that those topics might come up. At least then you’d be somewhat prepared.

They don’t have to be automatons. They just have to be open to intellectual discussion on any topic (or listening to other people do it) without falling apart. If they can’t do that much, they’re not suited for life at a university.

They are anti-intellectual if they think that authorities should do something to insulate them from a discussion on rape.

Professors aren’t automatons. Indeed, nearly every college professor I had had a policy of “come when you can; leave when you must.” Even those who had attendance policies were open to “I’m sorry, I didn’t feel well. I needed to leave the room.” If, at that point, the professor is unreasonable and threatens your grade, that’s the time to appeal to authority.

In addition, you cannot expect that you will go through college without ever coming into a conflict with a professor over something. Sometimes you have a bad experience with a professor. Some professors aren’t good professors. Some are good professors but they just don’t click with every single student.

That’s another life lesson that a university gives you. Sometimes you just have to weather through an unpleasant situation and , if you must, take a bad grade, or drop the class until the next semester. You live, you learn, you move on. You don’t threaten a professor unless he actually does something intentionally to harm you. Merely entertaining an unexpected subject of intellectual interest to professor or students that you personally would rather avoid is not an adequate trigger.

It’s not worth protecting the occasionally ultra-sensitive eggshell to set down yet another anti-intellectual/anti-educational/anti-academic rule.

Again, there’s a point at which discussing sex-related crimes in calculus class becomes a problem—at the point that the mission of learning calculus is undermined for the entire class. An OP that mentions nothing more than “once, a professor of mine (in an unspecified class) made this argument” should not immediately lead people to be concerned that this is happening.

79

To me it breaks down like this:

Is pedophilia a sickness?

If yes: We are duty bound to help said people. This therapy may or MAY NOT include some form of (CGI) child porn to help alleviate their symptoms.

If no: Then said individuals have every right to explore their sexuality, that is of course, not harmfull to children.

Another thing I find troubling in this thread is people seem to take the default position that a pedo will indeed act out his desires on a child.

Cite? Or data to back this up?

80

You have more compassion and good will than I could muster up for pedophiles. And It is from my gut-- that I do not trust them, or have faith in their self control.
Maybe it is hard for those poor souls, and I do not care enough to look into helping them, or have heart enough to see them as worthy human beings.
Perhaps, I would have to be a bigger person to care about a pedophile; it is easier to care about innocent children, but since the situation is inexorably linked, and in hopes that I can be part of the solution…I will consider more deeply my position on this subject.