Forum - View topicNEWS: Lolicon Backlash in Japan
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s_j
Posts: 162 |
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In this case, I'd say freedom of speech. To expand on this, I take two issues with your argument. The first problem is you have to show a direct correlation between lolicon comics and crimes against children (or more generally, pornography and sex crimes,) and not only a few isolated instances, but a significant percentage. While rape is very under-reported in Japan, even by the most liberal estimations, Japan's rape crimes percentage are 1/20th that of the United States. I'm not going to say that statistics alone can prove or disprove a connection between porn and crime, just that we cannot make the broad assumption that lolicon comics hurt the lives of children. The second problem is that by making speech responsible of damages, all speech would be curtailed. Should a game like Doom be banned because it may have inspired a shooting spree where children were murdered? Should a movie like Varsity Blues be censored because some teens thought it was a good idea to lay in the middle of a street in rush hour traffic, and were killed? The law cannot protect us from lack of inhibition, or general stupidity. No speech has so profound an effect as to take away an individual's choice...so speech cannot be held responsible for the actions that individual chose to take. |
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fxg97873
 Posts: 211 Location: Houston, TX |
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Well, that is a bit of a rhetorical land mine. I will take one for the team say that I hold nothing more dear than my freedom of speech, privacy, due process and religious freedom. There are some people, like Larry Flint, who I hate because they are scumbags. But if protecting their freedom of speech means protecting my freedom of speech, than that is a price I am willing to pay. Freedom is not everyone holding hands and singing kumbaya. Freedom is ugly and messy...and I'll have a tall glass of it, thank you. mk2000 Last edited by fxg97873 on Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Haru to Ashura
 Posts: 617 Location: Termina |
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Sorry sorry, you all do seem to have a point.
However, freedom of speech and freedom of press are two very different things. |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Martin Amis wrote an article about a group of teenage boys who killed a girl while chanting Chucky's catchphrase "I'm Chucky. Wanna play?" Lots of folks thought the Chucky movies should be banned because they obviously inspired the murder, right? Well, Amis watched the movie and said it didn't make him want to murder; it only made him not want to watch any more Chucky movies. He went on to say that the problem wasn't that those guys had Chucky in their heads; it's that they didn't have much else in their heads, while Amis has lots and lots of things- good, bad and indifferent- in his head, so there's a pecking order of ideas, and killing people because a shlock movie makes it look fun is way down in the pecking order.
I believe that what's true for violence porn is true for sex porn-the cure for bad speech is better speech. It's more efficient and effective to give people better ideas than to try and take their bad ideas away. Not that I don't want lolicon to go away, but I want it to go away because people find better things to focus on. |
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cyrax777
 Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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dude its not a real child involved in the porn.
real child pornography on the other hand bullet to the back of the perps head harvest his organs charge his estate for the costs. |
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fxg97873
Posts: 211 Location: Houston, TX |
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Well, I'll have to differ on that. At least in the United States, the Supreme Court views freedom of press as a manifestation of Freedom of Speech. Speech is not defined rigidly as only being oral communication, but it is defined as communication in general which can take many forms (e.g. music, pictures, drawings, video, newspapers). mk2000 |
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destruktolux
Posts: 2 |
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Let's face it, there's a long history of public uproar over this-or-that in Japan over content. They protested Go Nagai years ago (I could dig up the specific information, but I'm away from my bookshelf) on similar "corruption of public morals" charges. The Japanese, like Americans, seem to have a fascination with blaming large-scale (at least in terms of media coverage) events on entertainment. They very nearly fingered Hayao Miyazaki and the manga/anime industry in general for the Aum gas attacks, and remember the crazy Pokemon seizure epidemic?
Very seldom have I seen Japan take a serious swing towards the conservative end on content debates. The predominant attitude, as near as I can tell, is that entertainment can be as violent or erotic as it likes so long as it doesn't manifest itself in serious public displays, especially ones that disrupt the status quo. I'm sure the public memory on this kind of thing is just as short in Japan as it is here. I'm sure those Ken Akamatsu books will continue to enjoy long print runs. |
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bobwhoops
Posts: 1 |
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Saying that lolicon breeds child molestors is similar to saying that regular pornography makes people rapists. It's clearly wrong. Just because people enjoy lolicon does not mean that they want to do it in real life. Child molestors must be born with some type of mental defect, or something similar. Reading lolicon isn't going to make a person a child molestor.
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jfrog
 Posts: 925 Location: Seattle |
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Let me guess, you've never known anyone who has been the victim of sexual abuse at any time in your life, right? Even though I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, that first sentence came off as extremely offensive to me. Lolicon and shotacon are a form of pornography. There should be no major freedom of speech issues here - I really don't know how it can't not fail the Miller Test, which is how the US government judges if something is considered obscene or not (don't know anything about Japanese obscenity laws, so I can't comment on that). Doesn't matter if no real children were involved, it's whether it depicts/describes something illegal. If it is considered obscene, then people aren't going to be going around banning Lolita, Salo, El Topo (naked children!), Emperor Tomato Ketchup, or any of that. Hell, my video store has multiple copies of all of those. Those don't appeal to the purient interest, and have serious literary/political/artistic values (regardless of whatever you personally think of them). Lolicon is wank material, pure and simple, and it turns my stomach in ways that can only be equaled by the scene in Rain where the artist kept cutting back and forth between one character having sex and another character describing their experiences as an SS officer at Treblinka. |
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cyrax777
Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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oh man I know im going to regret this but since were talking about drawning and not REALITY
Dont like it DONT READ IT. Same goes for rape fantasy porn DONT LIKE IT DONT READ/Watch it. as far as real Child porn see my above post for my opion on it. |
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Ranmah
 Posts: 294 Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower |
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So far I heard a lot of good arguments regarding Lolicon. These artists who create these works of hentai are protected under free speech. Though I agree there is a fine line when it comes to the drawing of little girls being raped. Frankly I can't stand that sort of hentai. I really don't like any hentai that seeing a girl or woman being raped. It just doesn’t settle well in my stomach.
These rapist and pedophiles probably have a screw loose in their heads. That screw is called a conscience. I know that statement alone will ruffle some feathers. This has been an over-swollen thorn on the side of Anime and Manga for many years. I really doubt this will change the reading habits of people who are into that kind of stuff. I have no problem with a person reading or watching this kind of thing. As long as that person doesn't do any action after watching it. But if that person acts on the urge to rape a little girl or boy. Then my friend, they have crossed the line. Many of you have relatives that are young children. I'm sure it will not sit well if one of them gets violated by these sick people. I think having people talk about this situation is a small step to help prevent things like happen in the future. Ranmah |
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s_j
Posts: 162 |
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jfrog-->
1) Yes, I know it might have been taken the wrong way, hence the 4 paragraphs below it that explain my position. I do know people who have been sexually abused, but even if I didn't, that really doesn't have much bearing on my arguments at all. From the gist of my post, you should see I don't even think this is an either-or proposition...Haru writes as if the mere existance of these comics is a crime akin to physically assaulting a child. I just don't buy into it. I see my first sentence as merely blunt, not offensive. But sorry all the same if you felt otherwise. 2) We need to be careful with our wording here...pornography *is legal*, and is protected by the first amendment. But obscenity is not. 3) This is just a sidetrack, but since you brought up obscenity law...currently there is a big challange to obscenity laws, and the crux of it is this: it's not illegal to own obscene material, but it is illegal to distribute it. By making distribution of said material illegal, it infringes on the reader's right to own material he is legally entitled to. Therefore all obscenity law should be thrown out. Not my view, this is just one challenge going through the courts now. 4) Actually, it *does* matter whether real children are involved or not. That's why COPA and its various incarnations have been in and out of the Supreme Court these last few years. 5) Another aside...in the Castillo conviction, the jury completely disregarded the Miller test. So sadly even books that satisfy the Miller test, and the retailers who sell them, can be censored in face of overzealous, unscrupulous prosecutors. Anyway, I have to disagree somewhat with you on the merits of these comics. While most may find the ideas presented by these comics to be vile, the actual production of the comic itself is quite an artistic endeavor. Just because it is completely prurient in nature should not detract from the technical aspects, the worksmanship of (some of) these comics. That's why the Miller test has three parts...these qualities need not be exclusive to each other. Actually, this is one of the problems I have with obscenity statutes when applied to literary works...it's impossible not to find serious artistic merit in fictional prose. The law should not be in the business of deciding the artistic worth of books or comics...a poorly written book shouldn't be denied protection. |
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SamusekTDS
Posts: 42 |
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There is also a case to be made for Porn SUBLIMATING desire. ie: there have been studies where allowing porn mags in prison has been shown to have an affect in cutting down on rapes.
Japan is if anything a cultural CASE-STUDY in the use of fantasy material to sublimate desire. There are still much higher cases of rape, incest, and child molestation in the US then in Japan, and Japan has plenty of films and animation containing all those subjects that would be BANNED in the US. Case in point: Battle Royale will NEVER be released in the US, but Columbine was where, again? --- Sam. |
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JERM57
Posts: 2 Location: Canada |
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From Ranmah..
As much revulsion as you may have for rapists, it would be technically wrong to lump the two groups together. A pedophile, in the accurate sense of the word, is a "child-lover". "Pedo" meaning child, "-phile" meaning "lover of" or just "lover". In fact, lover is probably too strong a word anyway. But I digress. Just because someone is a pedophile does not mean that he/she is a rapist. The same is true, vice versa. Regarding CASPAR's attempts at getting lolicon banned, yes, it probably started out as a righteous cause. But if anyone who knew anything about politics, you'd know that they're simply targetting lolicon to generate public sympathy towards their cause. If they were so intent to wipe out lolicon or to "protect children from molester" in the first place, why didn't they start doing it the moment they were founded, in 1989? Why wait till now? Its not as if lolicon didn't exist yet, lolicon has been in existance way further back than 1989, FYI. They have chosen this opportune moment(murder of young girl), to push forward their agenda. The lack of ANY conclusive evidence or "scientifically sound" studies is also questionable. The fact that they had to draw petitions from the masses, proves that their argument is about as sound as a leaky bucket, that was eaten by termites, ran over by a semi, set ablaze and had an atom bomb dropped on it. They are merely using the emotional response of *coughuneducatedcough* people to drive their cause. Arguments like, "Do you have young, vulnerable children you want to protect against pedophiles?" are geared to attack the emotionally insecure and the uneducated. Yeah, it would be great to protect my kids from harm, but what does scapegoating a popular anime genre gotta do with it? It does not make child-molesters, just as violent movies don't make violent people. If that last statement was true, then with the amount of violence coming out of Hollywood, the US should be full of raving, bloodthirsty, maniacal, gun-totting killing machines. Hah, imagine that. 
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10446 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Although the two are similar, they are not in fact the same. The difference is that a person can watch porn, get turned on, and then go have concensual sexual relations with an adult (paying for it if need be). No problem, right? But now try applying the same process to lolicon. -t |
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