# Photoshop and child porn **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 27, 2007, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364 "2007-12-27T07:53:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/61 "2015-03-24T05:54:59Z")
I don’t have strong feelings about whether porn contributes to rape, in general, but I do think that the ‘let guys get their jollies out with porn so they don’t indulge their fantasies in reality’ is kind of unrealistic. Do any of the straight men here find that looking at the Victoria’s Secret catalog makes you less interested in actual sex with women? ---
**Author:** ![boytyperanma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/62 "2015-03-24T10:47:28Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > It’s at least in part illegal because it encourages people to fantasize about children, which makes it more likely for them to abuse one. The pictures of the Gerber baby face pasted on to a nude adult would presumably encourage the same kind of desires, so it seems to me they should qualify as illegal child p\*rn. OK then going back to your original argument. Why does virtual child porn need to have an elevated status that greater crimes do not? I find murder to be pretty unsavory to but we don’t ban depictions of murder. Wouldn’t depictions of murder ‘encourage people to fantasize about killing’ If the goal is to stop pedophiles from thinking about sex with children should we similarly prosecute people for reading text that describes sex with children, because it would presumably encourage the same kind of desires? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/63 "2015-03-24T14:32:35Z")
> [@boytyperanma](#): > > OK then going back to your original argument. Why does virtual child porn need to have an elevated status that greater crimes do not? I find murder to be pretty unsavory to but we don’t ban depictions of murder. Wouldn’t depictions of murder ‘encourage people to fantasize about killing’ > > If the goal is to stop pedophiles from thinking about sex with children should we similarly prosecute people for reading text that describes sex with children, because it would presumably encourage the same kind of desires? I mean, at least some written erotica outfits (Literotica, for example) do have an explicit policy that none of the stories can depict sexual situations with persons under 18. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/64 "2015-03-24T14:35:43Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Regarding underage p\*rn in general, I think there would be some fairly clear ethical issues running that kind of study, so I’m not anxious to see one done anytime soon. > > Regarding whether _porn_ in general (involving adults), it’s inconclusive. The common argument is that rape rates in western countries declined contemporaneously with the increase in availability of porn. The counterargument is that lots of other things were going on at the same time- more focus on women’s rights, taking lead out of paint and gasoline, throwing more people in prison, etc.- that may have masked the effect of porn on rape. My friend who’s a professional statistician (and generally on the sex positive, pro-porn liberal end of the spectrum) recently looked at a study from Norway which purports to show the opposite, that porn contributes to rape. They found that areas of Norway which got internet access earlier (and thus greater access to porn) also had higher effects of rape. I would be interested in seeing the study. There are some issues that I wonder if they addressed, such as the fact that the first areas to get access to the internet in Norway was the heavily urbanized ones. And that internet availability may well have coincided with other societal changes. Also, to my limited knowledge, Norway does not have a legal definition of rape, only various degrees of sexual assault. You can prove almost anything by picking where you draw the line. Also, the incidence of assault rape is quite minute, and you can get huge swings from the activities of a single criminal. ---
**Author:** ![boytyperanma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/65 "2015-03-24T14:59:38Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I mean, at least some written erotica outfits (Literotica, for example) do have an explicit policy that none of the stories can depict sexual situations with persons under 18. What does that have to do with my questions? The my little pony fan site doesn’t accept erotic stories at all. That doesn’t mean we should make them illegal. Private outfits can set there own policies. ---
**Author:** ![Syne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Syne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syne)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/66 "2015-03-24T17:04:34Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > As I said, “more porn, less rape” is not necessarily an argument against the “porn causes rape” thesis. If porn causes prevalence of rape to increase by 5%, and lead exposure causes it to increase by 10%, then by simultaneously removing lead from paint and gasoline, and deluging society in porn, you can expect an overall decrease of about 5% in the rate of rape. But that doesn’t really mean that the claim “porn causes rape” is untrue, it just means the effct was masked by other factors. Society has changed in many other ways since 1967 or whenever, that might cause the rate of rape to decrese. I think even in the best case scenario, where we find some corollary evidence that supports that porn increases incidences of rape, it still doesn’t become hard/fast justification for banning porn of any sort; likewise gun availability contributing to shooting deaths doesn’t seem to phase most US states. I think most people would agree that murder is more egregious than rape. To be honest, as icky and uncomfortable as the subject matter is, I think the whole ‘porn predisposes rape’ thing in itself is grasping, at best for some justification to criminalize an act with no victim. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/67 "2015-03-24T20:01:22Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I don’t have strong feelings about whether porn contributes to rape, in general, but I do think that the ‘let guys get their jollies out with porn so they don’t indulge their fantasies in reality’ is kind of unrealistic. Do any of the straight men here find that looking at the Victoria’s Secret catalog makes you less interested in actual sex with women? Aren’t you excluding a hell of a lot of middle here? Porn may not significantly decrease a man’s interest in actual sex with women…but it might very well ease a man’s desire to go out and rape one. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2015, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/68 "2015-03-24T20:36:11Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I don’t have strong feelings about whether porn contributes to rape, in general, but I do think that the ‘let guys get their jollies out with porn so they don’t indulge their fantasies in reality’ is kind of unrealistic. Do any of the straight men here find that looking at the Victoria’s Secret catalog makes you less interested in actual sex with women? I’d imagine so, for at least thirty or forty five minutes. Longer, as you get older. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/69 "2015-03-25T19:14:35Z")
> [@boytyperanma](#): > > OK then going back to your original argument. Why does virtual child porn need to have an elevated status that greater crimes do not? I find murder to be pretty unsavory to but we don’t ban depictions of murder. Wouldn’t depictions of murder ‘encourage people to fantasize about killing’ Yes. And I’ve seen it hypothesized that seeing violence specially bloodless violence, in media makes violence a more attractive option. I’m not calling for censoring violence, though I wouldn’t mind making it bloodier, but it’s not an irrelevant data point. > [@](#): > > If the goal is to stop pedophiles from thinking about sex with children should we similarly prosecute people for reading text that describes sex with children, because it would presumably encourage the same kind of desires? … maybe. I definitely do think text can encourage those desires via the availability heuristic, like I said. At a minimum, Id say it’s something to be weighed against other factors (e.g., a bias towards free speech, a bias towards privacy that would make such a restriction difficult to enforce, the possibility it provides an outlet, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/70 "2015-03-25T21:35:48Z")
> [@D\_White](#): > > Are there any dopers out there that want tax dollars being used to prosecute someone for cutting out pictures of the Gerber baby and pasting them onto a picture of a naked, adult body? Yes. Yes there are. ---
**Author:** ![Syne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Syne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syne)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364/71 "2015-03-26T01:18:00Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > At a minimum, Id say it’s something to be weighed against other factors (e.g., a bias towards free speech, a bias towards privacy that would make such a restriction difficult to enforce, the possibility it provides an outlet, etc.) If you’re waiting for a mature, nuanced public discussion that weighs these complicated factors against the specter of pedophilia, I wouldn’t hold your breath. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photoshop-and-child-porn/431364.md?page=3)