Schools and lawmakers are grappling with how to address a new form of peer-on-peer image-based sexual abuse that disproportionately targets girls.
Schools and lawmakers are grappling with how to address a new form of peer-on-peer image-based sexual abuse that disproportionately targets girls.
If a boy fantasises sexually about a girl, is that harmful to her? If he tells his friends about it? No, this is not harmful - these actions do not affect her in any way. What affects the girl is how the boys might then treat her differently than they would do someone they don’t find sexually attractive.
The solution, in both cases, has to be to address the harmful behaviour. The only arguments for criminalising deepfakes themselves are also arguments for criminalising sexual fantasies. that is why people are talking about thought crime, because once you criminalise things that are harmless on their own, but which might down the line lead to directly harmful behaviour, there is no other distinction.
Both of these, for example, apply just as readily to discussing a shared sexual fantasy about someone who didn’t agree to it.
No distinction, that is, other than this is new and icky. I don’t want government policy to be dictated by fear of the new and by what people find icky, though. I do lots of stuff people find icky.
No an image that is shared and distributed is not the same as a fantasy in someone’s head. That is deranged. Should CSAM also be legal because making it illegal is like criminalizing the fantasies of pedophiles? Absolutely insane logical framework you have there.
This isnt fantasy. It is content. It is media. It is material. It is produced without the consent of the girls and women being sexualized and it commodifies their existence, literally transforming the idea of them into sexual media consumed for the gratification of boys and men.
It is genuinely incredible to me that you could be so unempathetic, so impassive, so detached from the real world and the consequences of this, that you could even make this comparison. You have seemingly no idea what youre talking about if you believe that pornography is the same thing as mental fantasies.
And even in the case of mental fantasies, are those all good? Is it really a good thing that boys see the mere existence of the girls around them as inherently some kind of sexual availability?
When someone makes child porn they put a child in a sexual situation - which is something that we have amassed a pile of evidence is extremely harmful to the child.
For all you have said - “without the consent” - “being sexualised” - “commodifies their existence” - you haven’t told us what the harm is. If you think those things are in and of themselves harmful then I need to know more about what you mean because:
I am not unempathetic, but I attribute the blame for what makes me feel bad about the situation is that girls are being made to feel bad and ashamed not that a particular technology is now being used in one step of that.
I am just genuinely speechless than you seemingly do not understand how sickening and invasive it is for your peers to create and share sexual content of you without your consent. Yes its extremely harmful. Its not a matter of feeling ashamed, its a matter of literally feeling like your value to the world is dictated by your role in the sexualities of heterosexual boys and men. It is feeling like your own body doesnt belong to you but can be freely claimed by others. It is losing trust in all your male friends and peers, because it feels like without you knowing they’ve already decided that you’re a sexual experience for them.
We do know the harm of this kind of sexualization. Women and girls have been talking about it for generations. This isnt new, just a new streamlined way to spread it. It should be illegal. It should be against the law to turn someone’s images into AI generated pornography. It should also be illegal to share those images with others.
Why is it these things? Why does someone doing something with something which is not your body make it feel like your body doesn’t belong to you? Why does it not instead make it feel like images of your body don’t belong to you? Several of these things could equally be used to describe the situation when someone is fantasised about without their knowledge - why is that different? In Germany there’s a legal concept called “right to one’s own image” but there isn’t in many other countries, and besides, what you’re describing goes beyond this.
My thinking behind these questions is that I cannot see anything inherent, anything necessary about the creation of fake sexual images of someone which leads to these harms, and that instead there is an aspect of our society which very explicitly punishes and shames people - woman far more so than men - for being in this situation, and that without that, we would be having a very different conversation.
Starting from the position that the harm is in the creation of the images is like starting from the position that the harm of rape is in “defiling” the person raped. Rape isn’t wrong because it makes you worthless to society - society is wrong for devaluing rape victims. Society is wrong for devaluing and shaming those who have fake images made of them.
Can you be more explicit about what it’s the same as?
The sexualization of women and girls is pervasive across literally every level of western culture. What do you think the purpose is of the victims head and face being in the image? Do you believe that it plays an incidental and unrelated role? Do you believe that finding out that, there is an entire group of people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality taking pictures of your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using alorthimically derived likenesses of your naked body, has no psychological consequences for you whatsoever? I’m just talking about it and it makes me want to throw up. It is a fucking nightmare. This is not normal. This is not creating a healthy relationship with sexuality and it is enforcing a view of women and their bodies existing for the gratification of men.
You continuously attempt to extrapolate some very bizarre metaphors about this that are not at all applicable. This scenario is horrifying. Teenage girls should not be subject to scenarios like this. It is sexual exploitation. It is dehumanization. It promotes misogynistic views of women. This is NOT a matter of sexual liberation. Youre essentially saying that men and boys can’t be expected to treat girls and women as actual people and instead must be allowed to turn their friends and peers into fetishized media content they can share amongst each other. Thats fucking disgusting. The longer you talk the more you start to sound like an incel. I’m not saying you are one, but this is the kind of behavior that they defend.
Do you think the consequences of finding out are significantly different than finding out they’re doing it in their imagination? If so, why?
And, just to be clear, by this you mean the stuff with pictures, not talking or thinking about them? Because, again, the words “media content” just don’t seem to be key to any harm being done.
Your approach is consistently to say that “this is harmful, this is disgusting”, but not to say why. Likewise you say that the “metaphors are not at all applicable” but you don’t say at all what the important difference is between “people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality taking pictures of your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using alorthimically derived likenesses of your naked body” and “people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality imagining your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using imagined likenesses of your naked body”. Both acts are sexualisation, both are done without consent, both could cause poor treatment by the people doing it.
I see two possiblities - either you see this as so obviously and fundamentally wrong you don’t have a way of describing way, or you know that the two scenarios are fundamentally similar but know that the idea of thought-crime is unsustainable.
Finally it’s necessary to address the gendered way you’re talking about this. While obviously there is a huge discrepancy in male perpetrators and female victims of sexual abuse and crimes, it makes it sound like you think this is only a problem because, or when, it affects women and girls. You should probably think about that, because for years we’ve been making deserved progress at making things gender-neutral and I doubt you’d accept this kind of thing in other areas.
There is an institution in society specifically designed to strip women of their autonomy, reduce them down to their sexual appeal to men, and proliferate the notions of their inherent submission to men. This simply does not exist the other way. This will not be a major problem for boys, teenage girls are not creating fucking AI porn rings with pictures of boys from their classes. That isnt happening. Will someone do it? Almost certainly. Is it a systemic issue? No. Men’s bodies are not attacked institutionally in this way.
And youre still trying to equate imagination with physical tangible media. And to be clear, if several of my friends said they were collectively beating off to the idea of me naked, I would be horrified and disgusted. The overwhelming majority of people would. Again, they’ve taken you an actual person they know and are friends with, and have turned you into a sexual goal to be attained. It is invasive, exploitative, and above all else dehumanizing. Yeah if even one of my friends told me he jerked off to the thought of me naked I would never see him the same way again and would stop being friends with him. If I was a teenager it would probably fuck me up pretty bad to know that someone who I thought was my friend just saw me as a collection of sexual body parts with a face attached. If I found that a whole group of boys, some who i might not even know, were sharing AI generated porn with my face it would be severely psychologically traumatizing and probably shake my trust in men and boys for the rest of my life. This isn’t a fucking game. Youre acting like this is normal, its NOT FUCKING NORMAL. Photoshopping a girl in your classes face onto a nude body and sharing it with a group of boys is NOT NORMAL. That is severely disturbed behavior. That shows a complete malfunction in your empathy. It does if thats your imagination too. And finding that out, that somebody has done that, is absolutely repulsive.
And no I find it perfectly sustainable. We have no means by which to detect pedophiles by their thoughts. But pedophilic thoughts are still wrong and are not something we tolerate people expressing. Creating CSAM is still illegal, whether or not the child is aware such content is being created of them. They cant consent to that as they are children. This is the same. No we cant fucking read people’s thoughts and punish them for them. Having thoughts like that is absolutely a sign of some obsessive tendencies and already forming devaluation of women and girls and reduction of them to their bodies, but the correct thing is for them to receive counseling and proper education about sex and relationships. Creating, sharing and distributing AI generated porn of someone is so fundamentally different from that I have to think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about what an image is. This isnt a fucking thought. These boys and men can do whatever they want with this pornography they’ve made of you, can send it to whoever they want and share it as far and wide as they want. They have literally created porn of you without your consent. And for teenage girls this is a whole other level of fucked up. This is being used to produce CSAM. They cannot consent to this. It is a provable act of violation of women and girls. This should be illegal and should be treated extremely seriously when teenage boys are found to have done it.
You all say youre feminists until someone comes after your fucked up sexualities and your porn addictions. Always the same.
So the fundamental reality is that imagination and physical tangible media are very similar in this regard. That’s what you just said.
And if they were just talking about a shared fantasy - with your face? You still have the “ring” aspect, the stranger aspect, the dehumanising aspect, etc.
This is why there’s the connection that I keep getting at: there are many similarities, and you even say you’d feel similarly in both circumstances. So, the question is: do we go down the route of thought crime and criminalise the similar act? Or do we use this similarity to realise that it is not the act that is the problem, but the effects it can have on the victim?
Why do you think doing either thing (imagined or with pictures) means that someone just sees the person as a “collection of sexual body parts with a face attached”? Why can’t someone see you as an ordinary human being? While you might not believe that either thing is normal, I can assure you it is prevalent. I’m sure that you and I have both been the subject of masturbatory fantasies without our knowledge. I don’t say that to make you feel uncomfortable (and am sorry if it does) but to get you to think about how those acts have affected you, or not.
You talk again about how an image can be shared - but so can a fantasy (by talking about it). You talk again about how it’s created without consent - but so is a fantasy.
Another thought experiment: someone on the other side of the world draws an erotic image, and it happens by pure chance to resemble a real person. Has that person been victimised, and abused? Does that image need to be destroyed by the authorities? If not, why not? The circumstances of the image are the same as if it were created as fake porn. If it reached that person’s real circle of acquaintances, it could very well have the same effects - being shared, causing them shame, ridicule, abuse. It’s another example that shows how the problematic part is not the creation of an image, but the use of that image to abuse someone.
It’s my view that paedophilia, un-acted upon, is not wrong, as it harms no-one. A culture in which people are shamed, dehumanised and abused for the way their mind works is one in which those people won’t seek help before they act on those thoughts.
It’s kind of shocking to see you again erase male victims of (child) sexual abuse. For child abuse specifically, rates of victimisation are much closer than for adults.
Luckily I know you’re not representative of all of any group of people.
Are you OK with sexually explicit photos of children taken without their knowledge? They’re not being actively put in a sexual situation if you’re snapping photos with a hidden camera in a locker room, for example. You ok with that?
The harm is:
No, but the harm certainly is not the same as CSAM and it should not be treated the same.
as far as I know there is no good evidence that this is the case and is a big controversy in the topic of fake child porn, i.e. whether it leads to more child abuse (encouraging paedophiles) or less (gives them a safe outlet) or no change.
If someone fantasises about me without my consent I do not give a shit, and I don’t think there’s any justification for it. I would give a shit if it affected me somehow (this is your first bullet point, but for a different situation, to be clear) but that’s different.
Hm. I wasn’t expecting the pro-child porn argument. All I can say is that’s absolutely legally and morally CSAM, and you’re fuckin nasty. Oof. Not really gonna bother with the rest because, well, yikes.
Hey, it’s OK to say you just don’t have any counter-argument instead of making blatantly false characterisations.