I admit that the title is a little misleading. Here’s what I mean:
Say a 12 or 13 YO boy is just delving into his sexuality. Pornography, masturbation, etc. But he just doesn’t seem to be attracted to the youngest legal allowed (18 here). And so, he goes on the search for people his age, and stumbles across some sites offering images to his liking. Would this be morally wrong for him to pleasure himself to these images?
It’s not amoral for a pubescent boy to fantasize about girls. Or boys. Whatever.
It is wrong to create child porn. It may be possible to find the young boy or girl that makes an informed decision to pose for pornography and hold up the exception as the rule, but child pornography is still evil. Those children are exploited, coerced, scared, confused, abused and, yes, whether they convince themselves otherwise or not, raped.
Child pornography really is evil.
Also, puberty is when a child discovers what types of people he or she is attracted to. I think there would be a problem if a pubescent boy was fantasizing about a pubescent girl instead of a high school senior or older.
I don’t think this is right. A pubescent boy is undergoing a general discovery, in the process of which he may (almost certainly will) find himself attracted to girls of the same age. Why not? They are showing signs of all the characteristics that his body is programmed to find desireable, they are his peer group so he spends time around them, they are generally undergoing a similar discovery process and will likely be attracted to him. Also girls tend to mature earlier than boys and so in my experience it is not at all unusual for a 15-16 year old boy to be attracted to a girl a couple of years his junior.
So, my teenage (13y/o) son, who owns a digital camera, were to take a picture of his (14y/o) girlfriend, download it on to the family PC, print, etc…this could be a problem?
Or say she gives him a picture of herself? and vice-versa?
I used to fantasize about pubescent girls when I was 13. I never thought I was the only one.
I didn’t find girls my age attractive until I was 12, with good reason (you know, girls have cooties). But as soon as I started into puberty I was checking out every girl my age. Nothing wrong with that.
As for the OP’s question its still wrong because the children are begin exploited. Sure, the boy is just looking for girls his age. I don’t see anything wrong with that. However who do you think took the pictures? Not some studio of preteens with cameras. They were taken by some perverted people who are sexually attracted to kids. There is something wrong with that. The kids in those pictures most likely do not want to be. They’re just children. Most likely they are being forced to do that. Probably threatened. Also, this kid shouldn’t even be seriously considering sex. I doubt anyone at age 12-15 is really ready for sex. Curious maybe, but emotional ready? Not at all.
Wearia - “I doubt anyone at age 12-15 is really ready for sex. Curious maybe, but emotional ready? Not at all.”
I don’t know where you live but I met a girl the other day. She was bragging about being a grandmother, at age 27!:eek:
I know this doesn’t mean ready but damn, I just had to tell ya’.
They’ve been married 83 years- he’s 104, she’s 97. Do the math.
OKAY, OKAY! When they were married, he was 21, she was… 14.
It’s a tricky issue.
The thing is, our definition of adulthood is grossly misaligned with nature. Biology dictates that adults are those who can reproduce–in humans, this happens after puberty, when secondary sexual characteristics develop. And let’s remember that for thousands of years human society considered this to be adulthood. Even three hundred years ago people got married in their teens. You think Romeo and Juliet were 22 year-old college grads?
What has complicated things is the doubling of the human lifespan (in industrialized counties) and the massive complexity of what is needed intellectually and emotionally to qualify as a social adult. The fact is that a 14-year old is not ready to tak on the responsibilities of modern adulthood, so it makes sense to legally extend the adolesence period and legally protect that 14-year old from things like military servive, binding contracts, alcohol, and even jobs. To make things consistent we also protect them from sex. Post-pubescent teens are defined as non-sexual entities, untouchables.
Of course they’re also the horniest little SOBs on the planet, because their bodies are exploding into sexual adulthood. And yet for six years or so we tell them that it’s wrong, it’s dirty, that they’re not ready. Meanwhile the boys are jerking off twice a day to the Fashion Channel and the girls are feeling dangerously attracted to boy bands and their volleyball coaches. It’s no wonder shit happens.
But what’s the solution? We can’t turn back the clock and declare sexual open season on teenagers, who are now the active targets of horny perverts who have taken a natural attraction and tainted it fatally with the lust of clandestine dirtiness. We can’t undo what the average 15-year old girl has come to symbolize to many 45-year old men. It will never be clean again. And so we have to live with these laws that protect the majority even if it directly impedes their healthy development of sexual attitudes. But teenagers can and will continue to have sex with each other no matter how much some parents want to pretend otherwise. It may be clumsy but at least it’s clean in that no one’s being exploited because both partners are theoretically exploring. And that’s fine–just hope they use a condom.
But if they start videotaping it, then it becomes a possible instrument of sexual gratification for much older adults. And maybe that’s been stigmatized too much but if you legalize then you’re on a very slippery slope.
Incidentally, psychologists and other professionals make a very clear distinction between a pedophile–someone who lusts after pre-pubescent kids–and someone who simply lusts after post-pubescent teenagers under 18. The former is an abnormality, the latter is not (medically speaking), because secondary sexual characteristics are SUPPOSED to turn us on. The law, culture, and society of course group anyone leering at under-18s in the same category of “pedophile”, “child molester”, or “sexual predator.” It’s an understandable instinct, but it’s not accurate. A teacher who has sex with her 16-year old jockish math student is not a child molester. She’s just a really really unprofessional teacher with no impulse control.
But let’s face it–if we let 14-year old girls and boys make a website of sexual images for each other, 80% of the subscribers would be 55-year old men in their bathrobes. And maybe that’s not SO bad if it prevents them from molesting their teen neices, but can you guarantee that it will? You can’t. As a race of animals we have proven again and again that we cannot be trusted with purely reasonable laws. We have to err on the side of unnaturalness to keep our worst instincts at bay.
Yes, child porn is bad. We made it bad.
When I was 13-14, I was attracted to girls my age. A 18 or 20 yo. was just old. I was fantasizing about the girls I knew in my class. Same when I was 15. I know that some young boys fantasize about adult women, but I didn’t . I was talking with my friends about girls our age. I would fall in love with girls my age I would meet at the school or at the summer camp. My friends would fall in love with girls our age. Not with their older sisters. I had no interest in adult women. They were adults, you know. Not cool, attractive teens.
If fantasizing about teens when you’re a teen is a problem, I was a seriously fucked up teen, and so were most of my friends…
I think you’re generalizing about your particular situation, and that if you didn’t fantasize about your peers when you were a a teenager, you were the weird one…
Actually, I understand that believing people married in their teens some centuries ago is a misconception. That was true for people of the upper classes, but not for most of the population. There have been studies made about the age of marriage, based on church registers, and I remember for instance having read one of them stating that the average age of marriage for men was 25. I can’t remember to which century it refered. The late middle-ages or renaissance, I believe. The women were younger, but more like 20, not teens.
An interesting case would be a teen who took a pornographic picture of himself/herself , keep it and later (once he/she’s adult) post it on the internet. Could he/she be prosecuted for producing child porn, despite the picture being of him/herself, and no coercition or abuse was involved?
I guess I don’t see the trickiness of the issue.
While each one of us could have our own personal ideas of what child pornography is and isn’t, fortunately laws are not up to our own individual interpretation.
So no, it’s not okay for your 14 year old son to take nudie pictures of himself and post them on the internet when he’s 21. It’s child pornography regardless.
No, it’s not okay for your 12 year old child to look at naked pictures of other naked 12 year olds. They would be looking at child pornography and as far as the law is concerned, there are no benign photographers of sexual images of pre-legal kids.
Again – you may have worked things out in your own mind to where these moral issues aren’t as pressing.
For the rest of us, though… Ew.
Hmm. I notice that people haven’t adressed the OP. Icky, yes. Illegal, certainly. But are we sure that every single instance of child pornography is evil?
Are you sure that naked pictures of 12 y.o. would be considered as pornography? I don’t know about american laws, but I somewhat doubt it. It would mean that nudists couldn’t take pictures of their childrens, for instance. Or non nudists, for that matter. If you go to a beach, there are naked childrens all around, so if your 5 y.o. can walk naked on a beach, how could a naked picture of a 5 y.o. be considered pornography? How many parents don’t have any pictures of their children naked? Would a picture of a newborn be pornography? Also, there are photographers taking nude pictures of underage people (like a famous one the name of escapes me right now…his pictures were always blurry and his posters were everywhere in the 70’s…and they definitely depicted underage girls in their teens)
Indeed, I didn’t answer to the OP.
Well…if the 12 y.o. boy is pleasuring himself while looking at actual child-porn, it would certainly be morally wrong, since they the child depicted would be victims. Hence he would condone a crime in some way.
If the pictures were only pictures of naked girls his age, I doesn’t consider this as morally wrong. Not even icky. It seems perfectly natural to be aroused by pictures depicting nude teens when you’re a teen.
Yes, because the act of sexually exploiting children in order to produce kiddie porn is wrong no matter what happens to or is done with the porn later. It doesn’t matter if it’s a teen or an old man jerking off to the pictures, they were still produced by exploiting a child. Nothing that happens after the fact can make that better.
I must say, it causes me some concern that topics like “Well, would this be child pornography? What about this? Could I get away with this?” or “Is child pornography really really REALLY bad, or is it okay under this certain set of circumstances?” are so popular around here. I don’t know why so many people seem so interested in finding legal or moral loopholes relating to child pornography. Or rather, I think I do know why, but I hope I’m wrong.
Again, I think you’re missing the point of what pornography is.
If you take a picture of your 4 year old running around the house naked and you keep that picture in your house and you show it to family members and trusted friends and you don’t post it on the internet and you don’t sell it to the Germans then you’re right. That’s not child pornography.
I feel weird having to say this after already having said it once before, but it works like this: Laws are not built on shades of gray. They can’t be.
With that in mind, it’s pretty safe to say that any naked picture of a child under the age of 18 that you find on the internet is child pornography. We don’t trust kids to drive until they are at least 16. We don’t trust them to smoke or vote until they are at least 18. And we don’t let them drink legally until they are 21. Our country thinks that kids are stupid. And judging by their taste in music, it’s pretty hard to disagree. So the law would not say, “Well, this 14 year old seems pretty mature and will not be psychologically harmed by posing for sexually provocative pictures to be placed on the internet.”
Should kids masturbate? You betcha they should. And they should wash afterwards. But should they be given age appropriate porn to look at while whacking off? Notsomuch.
The problem is : what does the law says exactly? I’m pretty much certain that a naked picture of a child under 18 isn’t illegal here, nor considered “child pornography”. In fact, I’m certain they aren’t illegal. You can find pictures of naked childs illustrating articles in magazines which have nothing to do, even remotely, with pornography or sex. Or broadcasted on TV, for instance in a footage about people in vacation on some beach.
Actually, I strongly doubt it’s illegal is the US, either. I know the US are reputated to bent toward moral majority dictatorship, but I’m convinced it would be very unpractical to ban all pictures of naked childrens. So, I tend to believe that you’re assuming that pictures of naked kids are considered child pornography and illegal in the US.
So, now, can somebody tell us exactly what’s the legal definition of “child pornography” in the US?
OK…I easily found a legal definition of “child pornography” on This site (which is apparently about child protection, mind you).
Here it is :
*child pornography-An unprotected visual depiction of a minor child (federal age is under eighteen) engaged in actual or simulated sexual conduct, including a lewd or lascivious exhibition of the genitals. [ followed by a list of rulings]…In 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A was enacted and § 2256 was amended to include “child pornography” that consists of a visual depiction that “is or appears to be” of an actual minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. *
So, Jolene, a picture of a naked child is ** not ** child pornography is the child isn’t engaged in a sexual conduct, simulates it or lasciviously exhibit his/her genitals. I can post the naked pictures of all my family’s children if I want to, and it won’t be “child pornography”, nor here, nor in the US.
You wrote :
Yes. Indeed. And you need to meditate about this statement of yours, apparently.