He did actually make this argument when he said pornographic material depicting minors being available would lower cases of sexual assault...
Just because the argument was implicit and not explicit does not mean it wasn't made. That was not a straw man.
The other commenter was actually strawmanning my position incredibly heavily in another comment, but I noticed you didn't call that one out.
Lemmy is rife with this pedophile apologia, especially concerning threads about child pornography material made with AI and about comic style child pornography material, and I have no problem with saying that that is absolutely disgusting.
Are pedophiles mentally ill humans that need help? Yes. Should they be pushed towards active pedophilia in any way, shape, or form? No. They should not. As psychologists studying sexual abuse prevention agree, even in the case of VCSAM.
A direct excerpt from the paper:
Should we be worried about escalation?
The consumption of VCSAM does not prevent pedophilic individuals from future offending and can
instead act as a progressive addiction (Maras & Shapiro 2017). Some CSAM offenders who engage in contact
offending have suggested the contact offending was an extension of their online offending (Quayle & Taylor
2003). For example, in a recent study that applied Ward and Siegert’s (2002) pathways model to sexual offending
of penetrative child sexual offenders, several offenders engaged in CSAM before resorting to contact offending.
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One female offender, “commenced to use the internet…(time) to chat with other people… who gained sexual
gratification from child pornography which led to the commission of the subject offences” (Osbourne &
Christensen 2020, p. 13). The material has been argued to potentially serve as a gateway to contact offending
(Maras & Shapiro 2017), as the offender may become desensitized to passive viewing, finding it to be insufficient
over time (Schell et al. 2007). In line with the material being considered as a gateway, an offender might
commence with masturbating to VCSAM material, then escalate to CSAM material (after becoming desensitized
to VCSAM), before progressing on to act out impulses on children – in an attempt to experience the original level
of gratification when first viewing VCSAM. Sullivan and Sheehan (2002) refer to the desensitization of images
as the ‘fantasy escalation effect’ with the trajectory to engage in increasingly explicit videos and images (Sheehan
& Sullivan 2010).
Given that much of VCSAM material is computer generated, it allows for unlimited creativity in how
child characters are abused compared with CSAM (e.g., movements and depictions that are not humanly possible
in real life). In turn, offenders who escalate through the types of VCSAM, viewing unimaginable forms of
bestiality and penetrative activity, might find themselves skipping the nudist, erotic, or posing forms of CSAM
during their escalation, instead being drawn to the gross assault and sadistic CSAM. It is not, therefore, illogical
to suggest that those who commence CSAM offending from VCSAM offending may be more desensitized and
follow different offending trajectories compared with those who commence with CSAM offending, which could
be explored in future research.
While engaging with abusive material does not inevitably result in contact offending (Henshaw, Ogloff
& Clough 2015), there are effects to the exposure of such. In their laboratory study, Paul and Linz (2008) found
that participants exposed to ‘barely legal’ pornography (females depicted as under the age of consent), were
quicker to recognize words with sexual connotations (after being primed with neutral images of female children)
compared with participants who had been exposed to adult pornography (after being primed with neutral images
of older-looking models). The authors concluded that the relationship between cognitions and the likelihood of
acting on such, is complex (Paul & Linz 2008). While they argued the mere endorsement of sex-youth cognitive
schema does not guarantee deviant action, the potential effects of deviant behavior from being exposed to such
material cannot be outright rejected (Paul & Linz 2008). Paul and Linz (2008) suggest that extensive exposure
can desensitize individuals to related behaviors and content. Given VCSAM is related in content to CSAM, the
ongoing effects of exposure to VCSAM is an important avenue for future research
He did actually make this argument when he said pornographic material depicting minors being available would lower cases of sexual assault...
YOU added the "minors" part. The person you replied to isn't talking about minors. They used the word "women" specifically. Ironic that you said this earlier:
You, on the other hand, are very good at making up arguments to put in my mouth.
Ahh yes I forgot to disregard all context of the argument. That's my favorite tool in discourse, personally! Have anything to say to the rest of my comment? The actual important part?
Oh no, I know the game very well. In fact, I know the game well enough to know that the images you posted are not from this game. Genshin Impact is a completely separate franchise from Zenless Zone Zero. This is the character from the article, who is most assuredly not a child.
I'm not sure if you're being an idiot on purpose, or if it's an accident.
You're correct that nobody has quite said the quiet part out loud yet except for myself and the initial comment I was replying to.
And again, nobody is interested in arguing about the points to do with sexualization of minors in video games and anime, despite that being the comment thread they replied to.
Yes I've made mistakes and committed fallacies in this argument. No, I am not arguing in bad faith. Nor do I intend to.
Nobody has replied to the salient points, nor the research I've raised, and that saddens me, as it means people are more interested in keeping their lolicon games than reducing issues affecting real people, and as a survivor of childhood sexual assault myself, I find that pretty fucked up. I would hope that even somebody who hasn't gone through what I have would have the same proclivity to protect living, breathing children over having unfettered access to lolicon games that sexualize minors but this thread has shown me that this is not the case.
Again, you're the only person talking about minors in this thread, my guy. Nobody's replying to your straw men because we all see them for what they are.
You're just upset that the game you know nothing about doesn't line up with the talking points you had prepared, so you're trying to force them into the conversation and twist it into something it isn't. Nobody's going to humor that obvious attempt at derailing the conversation, because you're arguing against points that nobody is making in the first place.
You already made it apparent that you don't know what the game is about, let alone which game the article is even referring to since you clearly didn't read it. Why are you even here? Just to say "Look at me, I care about children"? Congrats, you're such an amazing person.