# Should cartoon porn depicting minors be illegal? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 14, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663 "2012-10-14T01:35:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nazarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nazarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nazarene)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/21 "2012-10-14T15:28:34Z")
The irony is that nobody has ever proposed that drawings of murder or torture or dismemberment should be illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Nazarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nazarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nazarene)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/22 "2012-10-14T15:29:38Z")
Has the prevalence of internet tentacle porn resulted in an increase of octopus rape? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/23 "2012-10-14T18:16:10Z")
> [@Jesus of Nazareth](#): > > Has the prevalence of internet tentacle porn resulted in an increase of octopus rape? Aren’t you the savior? Don’t you know? ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/24 "2012-10-14T19:51:05Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Aren’t you the savior? Don’t you know? Jesus doesn’t save Japanese people. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/25 "2012-10-14T19:59:26Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > It’s been decades since I read Lolita, but I’m pretty certain that there is no description of any underage sex in it. The narrator says that sex has occurred between himself and Lolita, but it is not described. Ah-HA! So he admits statutory rape! That narrator should be arrested and prosecuted! ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/26 "2012-10-14T20:19:59Z")
> [@Jesus of Nazareth](#): > > The irony is that nobody has ever proposed that drawings of murder or torture or dismemberment should be illegal. Or real life videos of those things. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/27 "2012-10-14T21:32:38Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Or real life videos of those things. That’s such a disturbing thought. There’s nothing illegal (at least in the US) about movies like Faces of Death where they show actual people dying and being injured, yet we have some provision in the 2003 PROTECT act that makes at least “obscene” types of cartoons illegal. ETA: Can we get some people who voted for Yes or for “Some other option” to speak up? ---
**Author:** ![kurtisokc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kurtisokc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kurtisokc)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/28 "2012-10-14T21:39:08Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Another problem is who decides what the legal age of cartoon characters are? If I take a legal pornographic cartoon DVD where all characters are identified as 18 on the back and slap my own homemade label over saying they are actually 17, does the disk become illegal? If you think it would, what about taking a DVD of cartoon porn where the label says the cartoon characters are supposed to be 15-17 and you slap your own label over that that says they are 18? Does it become legal for as long as the label stays on? What if the creative author, primary animator, director, and CEO of the company that owns the copyright disagree on the age of a cartoon character that, based on appearances, could be anywhere from 15 to 21 because real girls develop in real life in different ways? E.g. the director insists that the heroine is 17, the script writer says he intended her to be 16 all along and wrote that in the script, and the primary animator who drew her says he intended to draw an 18 year old and used an 18 year old as a model, and the copyright owner orders that the summary blurb say the video is about a 16 year old girl? Which is the “legal age” of the heroine? > > If you go by a jury’s judgment call of the characters and their body size and proportions - well that’s real dangerous. You could think they look perfectly adult while Joe down the street somehow believes that 13 year olds can have large chests. I think this really strikes at the heart of the issue. For most girls, if they are any older than about 15, it is virtually impossible to definitly say that they aren’t 18 just by looking at a photo. How much harder is it when you are talking about a drawing? 13-year olds CAN have large chests, while 30-year olds can be flat chested. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/29 "2012-10-14T21:44:21Z")
> [@kurtisokc](#): > > I think this really strikes at the heart of the issue. For most girls, if they are any older than about 15, it is virtually impossible to definitly say that they aren’t 18 just by looking at a photo. How much harder is it when you are talking about a drawing? It’s impossible. “She’s a thousand year old elf.” Hmm; a thought just popped in my head. If you have a _Freaky Friday_ style body switch between an adult and a kid, and the kid-in-an-adult-body character is shown having sex, is that illegal? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/30 "2012-10-14T21:53:37Z")
It gets even more problematic when you bring in fantasy or science fiction settings (which is trivially easy, given that it’s all drawings anyway). Suppose, for instance, you had porn drawings of Kes from _Star Trek: Voyager_ (I’m sure this already exists somewhere on the Internet). Per the canon, she’s two years old… But her species matures much more quickly than humans, dying of old age at 9, and so she’s fully adult. Or on the other side of the coin, you could have a long-lived race that are still children at age 50. Is it chronological age that matters, or level of maturity? And heck, what if you have a hypothetical species where psychological maturity comes at a different age than physical maturity? Or where _all_ sex biologically must involve one of the participants being psychologically immature, as with Heinlein’s Martians, which are female when young and who become male with age? ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/31 "2012-10-14T23:02:49Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s impossible. “She’s a thousand year old elf.” > > Hmm; a thought just popped in my head. If you have a _Freaky Friday_ style body switch between an adult and a kid, and the kid-in-an-adult-body character is shown having sex, is that illegal? The written erotica site Stories Online has interpreted the Canadian law that way and has forbidden new uploads that contain sex scenes depicting characters younger than 14. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/32 "2012-10-14T23:22:21Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > . . . Hmm; a thought just popped in my head. If you have a _Freaky Friday_ style body switch between an adult and a kid, and the kid-in-an-adult-body character is shown having sex, is that illegal? Frank Thorne’s “Rann” has a situation like that: an adult man has an accident with a rejuvenation machine, and is reverted to the physical age of twelve or so. But it’s still the same guy. The art clearly depicts a 12-year-old boy having sex with adult women. Does the justification in the story make it legal (in jurisdictions where such depiction would be illegal?) I have a sense that the censors don’t bother studying the script or paying any attention to the plot. They’d simply see the boy having sex and they’d start wielding their red pencils. (“Promiscuously.”) ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/33 "2012-10-15T00:03:39Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Over in General Questions there was mention of the fact that at least in Australia, you can get convicted of possession of child pornography, even if that happens to be porn of Lisa Simpson. … Well, despite her looks, we KNOW Lisa Simpson has reached the age of consent. Hell, Maggie is old enough to fuck! The show’s been on for like 25 years. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/34 "2012-10-15T00:27:55Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > The written erotica site Stories Online has interpreted the Canadian law that way and has forbidden new uploads that contain sex scenes depicting characters younger than 14. So as long as the story comes up with some pretense for the person to be chronologically older than 14, but has all the physical characteristics of a very young person, that would pass muster? And likewise, if a story claimed that the person was only 13 real earth years old, but through some technological mishap got put into an old body, that would be considered illegal? These laws are so ridiculous it’s hard to parse out anything meaningful from them. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/35 "2012-10-15T00:32:30Z")
Would the 2500 year old Arwen be robbing the cradle with the 81 year old Aragorn? Is the extreme age disparity be a problem? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/36 "2012-10-15T00:38:31Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > So as long as the story comes up with some pretense for the person to be chronologically older than 14, but has all the physical characteristics of a very young person, that would pass muster? > > And likewise, if a story claimed that the person was only 13 real earth years old, but through some technological mishap got put into an old body, that would be considered illegal? > > These laws are so ridiculous it’s hard to parse out anything meaningful from them. Which seems to me to mean adjudicating the “legal age” of a cartoon or literary character is absurd. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/37 "2012-10-15T06:41:09Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Another problem is who decides what the legal age of cartoon characters are? If I take a legal pornographic cartoon DVD where all characters are identified as 18 on the back and slap my own homemade label over saying they are actually 17, does the disk become illegal? I recall reading that some hentai DVDs actually did/do something like the former—the label specifically noted with a big sticker that the (animated) characters were all 18+. Now, I forget if the pretense was that the (teenage) characters just happened to all be 18…or if they were literally supposed to be _older fictional characters_ playing _underage characters_ in a show-within-a-show. That would be the most metahilarious way I can imagine of circumventing censorship regs…just stick in a “prologue” scene of the “actors” arriving on set, establishing that they’re actually all in their 30s, getting through makeup/wardrobe/etc., taking their places, the director calls out “Action!”…and the rest of the cartoon procedes “normally,” like the rest had never happened. [.](http://cinema-review.com/images/dvd/LooneyTunes.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/38 "2012-10-15T13:28:54Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > I recall reading that some hentai DVDs actually did/do something like the former—the label specifically noted with a big sticker that the (animated) characters were all 18+. Now, I forget if the pretense was that the (teenage) characters just happened to all be 18… The norm was to say everyone portrayed was supposed to be 18+. Included convoluted prologues making claims to the effect that some Japanese Junior Colleges still use schoolgirl uniforms, as well as suitable editing of the subtitles and dubs. One thing about this is that (a) as may be known to followers of Manga/Animé, often the artist DOES portray a canonically-adult female with the neotenic features of a tween, or just has every female 14-to-40 looks virtually alike except for hair color and eye size, so how the heck would anyone tell and (b) in any case the mainstream-Hentai-artist(\*) would usually cast the “teenage” characters to be _above_ the _Japanese_ Age of Consent, which happens to be _lower than the US norm_ but still culturally not pedophillic, so (c) the dire warnings often had the ironic effect of having your Western perv imagining that the “teenage” porn characters were even younger than they were canonically. (\*as opposed to properly Lolicon artists) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/39 "2012-10-15T13:45:00Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > yet we have some provision in the 2003 PROTECT act that makes at least “obscene” types of cartoons illegal. Well, thing is, under the Miller decision, whatever you got IF it is obscene it may be prosecuted. So as it stands you could have all along gone after it as plain obscenity, this is just TPTB deciding they need to make a special case for it just to prove how much they Think Of The Children. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663/40 "2012-10-15T21:02:20Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Well, thing is, under the Miller decision, whatever you got IF it is obscene it may be prosecuted. So as it stands you could have all along gone after it as plain obscenity, this is just TPTB deciding they need to make a special case for it just to prove how much they Think Of The Children. Even the fictitious children, bless their animated souls. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-cartoon-porn-depicting-minors-be-illegal/637663.md?page=3)