Clicking one of the random buttons, it looked like Tumblr to me except it supports freedom of expression. I guess now we know why Tumblr's new parent corp chose to censor nsfw content...
(Unrelated: whenever I read something about Tumblr, like its Wikipedia page just now, I'm always surprised to find it in the present tense, not "Tumblr was" but "Tumblr is". To me, it's just dead with the censorship, I never see it being linked to anymore, and I wasn't even regularly on the nsfw part. Every time I'm reminded it wasn't actually shut down.)
If anything dreamwidth is closer to livejournal. Livejournal predates tubmlr by years and years, but there was a migration from livejournal to dreamwidth for reasons I don't fully remember.
And even before that, there was this great purging of fanfic and other communities from LiveJournal by Six Apart (the then owners) that had people looking for alternatives, and you had a slew of LJ-alternatives built from the same code base pop up.
My memory for internet dramas is fading a bit, but I think it was both the sale to SUP (the Russian company) and the content policy changes (and the fears were only stronger under a Russian owner) that led to the massive LiveJournal diasporas to Tumblr (which was new, launching in early 2007), and the various LJ clones/forks like Dreamwidth, JournalFen, DeadJournal, InsaneJournal, etc. As far as I know, Dreamwidth is the only one of the clones/forks that not only still exists, but is maintained, which is really incredible.
there was a migration from livejournal to dreamwidth for reasons I don't fully remember
Livejournal became associated with CP thinly disguised as fanfic. Think Snape and an underage Harry Potter kind of stuff. It was sold to the Russians after its value imploded because all the English-speaking normal users left. The Russian content on there now is as far as I know innocuous; that kind of fanfic is mainly a Western thing.
I find it weird that drawn child porn is illegal actually. It's as if drawing murder or rape would be illegal.
Don't get me wrong, I understand 100% the people that find the idea repulsive, would never want to accidentally see it, etc. But that's the same with gore / gruesome scenes: I really don't want to see that, either. That's not what makes something illegal.
It might also depend on research into whether it makes pedophiles more likely to act on their feelings. If it's shown that pedophiles viewing drawn child porn has adverse effects, it should indeed not be allowed; but I never read about it having such an effect. So far as I know it doesn't hurt anyone.
There is a significant amount of research showing that pedophiles viewing simulated pornography has adverse effects, including but not limited to increasing their appetite for consuming more of it.
Would you care to point to any of this research? Specifically the link between viewing simulated pornography and appetite for consuming real-world material, or abusing children. Further, is there any evidence that the majority of people who read simulated depictions (like underage Harry Potter fanfic) are pedophiles? Does the link similarly exist for other forms of pornography? How does fanfiction or erotica compare to visual artwork in this regard?
There's ethnographic evidence (see Patrick Galbraith, Mark McLelland, Suzanne Ost) of such fans from Japan that the assumption they are pedophiles, or that they carry over their desires from "2D" to "3D" is dubious at best. The English government, when banning virtual depictions of fictional characters, admitted they had no evidence on its effects, mode of usage, or popularity among any particular group.
I had access to all of this type of research when I was a public defender, but I haven't been a PD in years.
I would suggest going to your local university library and looking it up there as access to most of these studies will require expensive journal subscriptions.
For your second question: there is a fair amount of research into the effects of visual and audiovisual stimuli on pedophiles and other sex offenders. This research was and AFAIK still is the basis for indefinite confinement of sex offenders generally and pedophiles specifically.
For your third question: there is some research on textual material, specifically as it relates to pedophiles, showing that it does stimulate demand but to a far lesser extent than visual, audio, or audiovisual media. AFAIK, nobody has researched the effects of Harry Potter porn.
For your final point: there is research showing that non-realistic visual media (i.e., manga) can, like textual material, stimulate demand, but to a far lesser extent than action or simulated visual images.
>For your second question: there is a fair amount of research into the effects of visual and audiovisual stimuli on pedophiles and other sex offenders.
I'm more just curious because I haven't seen anything (other than from the authors I've cited) on the effects of fictional (and in particular highly stylized) material on regular people, or even pedophiles specifically. Gary Young's book on The Gamer's Dilemma from 2010 or so also concludes there is no evidence for fictional material having these effects.
What do you mean by "stimulate demand"? For example, it would not surprise me at all that pedophiles find certain depictions arousing, but that still wouldn't be any reason to illegalize it, unless we are to go about banning everything that pedophiles also find arousing (which is a bridge I suspect many would not want to cross). Of course pedophiles are aroused, but are non-pedophilic individuals also aroused? The study on Japanese fans of lolicon manga does not so neatly indicate pedophilia as an appropriate category for their attractions, nor does it explain why they are so defensive against real depictions.
With fictional material, from what I can gather, there's something else at play which does not fit into the commonly held notion that fiction is always (or even most of the time) a substitute for the real deal.
To my mind, the difficult questions are: if the material is arousing to pedophiles, what does that arousal indicate in the risk of an offence (obtaining real CP or otherwise)? Do the effects persist? What is the persistent effect post-orgasm? Are stylized or fictional depicitions sufficient to arouse an interest in the real thing? Is it appropriate or desirable to prosecute or produce policy based on the tastes of pedophiles, especially given that the majority or a high percentage of CSA crimes are not perpetrated by pedophiles?
I've tried quite hard to find material on specifically lolicon manga or fanfiction, and a study among either pedophiles or others. If it does exist, I'd be very interested to see it, and I would have expected it to crop up in the arguments I've had so far. Especially, a study among those who are not already convicted for a crime (contact offence or otherwise). Those results would only, at best, tell us about criminals, and pedophile criminals with NC/C offences are almost reputable for showing lower impulse control.
To put it another way: access to regular porn may inflame the desires of a rapist, and they may even make him more likely to committ an offence; is this sufficient to illegalize porn for everybody? Alcohol may have the same effect, and the question still applies.
Yes, to your question about stimulated demand. While most sex offenders are unable to control their urges as a matter of biology or neurology (which is why they became sex offenders in the first place), pedophiles are uniquely limited in their ability to control these urges, which is why the treatment system is focused on preventing these urges entirely (even to the point of chemical castration).
In relation to risk of re-offense (aka recidivism), access to stimulating images was found to increase the risk of recidivism dramatically, by double-digit %, and pedophiles are already one of the groups with the highest rates of recidivism (in this context, we're talking more than 50% rate of re-offending).
If you get off to sexually abusing a child, that is pedophilia, so essentially all CSA crimes are committed by pedophiles. Generally the only exceptions I can think of are where both of the "offenders" are teens engaged in consensual acts before they are old enough to legally consent.
To put it another way: access to regular porn may inflame the desires of a rapist, and they may even make him more likely to committ an offence; is this sufficient to illegalize porn for everybody? Alcohol may have the same effect, and the question still applies.
This hasn't been shown to be true. But more importantly, the converse has been shown to be true: the overwhelming majority of people can watch porn, or drink alcohol, without becoming rapists, so it is not the porn or alcohol that creates the urge to rape. In contrast, the consumption of CP has been shown to create the urge to engage in pedophilic acts in pedophiles. (Additionally, CP is also illegal because it results in actual physical harm to the child.)
Again, AFAIK nobody has done a study specifically on manga, since that's an incredibly niche market in the U.S. Studies using fictional characters in the U.S. have generally used Disney characters or similar, so if you really insist on following up on this, you should start your search with that.
>If you get off to sexually abusing a child, that is pedophilia, so essentially all CSA crimes are committed by pedophiles.
The data seems to contradict this. "Estimates of preferential attraction for children among those who offend are often in the ballpark of 25% to 50%"[0]. Granted, this is talking about preferential attraction, but estimates on the percentage of men with non-preferential attraction factor in at a much higher percentage of the population than pedophiles (and others we assume are preferentially attracted). Other than this, it still seems to leave a segment of child abusers who do not enjoy their actions sexually, but for other reasons (say, power).
>This hasn't been shown to be true.
To some degree (and I suspect, to a similar degree to pedophiles) it has, see my comment here[1]. Exposure to pornography is usually shown to trigger or at least intensify feelings of sexual agression, either physical or verbal, even in non-experimental studies.
> the consumption of CP has been shown to create the urge to engage in pedophilic acts in pedophiles.
Is this true of all pedophiles generally based on a sample of the pedophile population, or those recruited to take part in such a study after being convicted of child abuse (contact or non-contact) offences? I can very easily see the fact they've been convicted as being a huge confounder here.
Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that CP should be legal; I just think that on the basis of the available evidence, I can't see any reason to illegalize fictional representations. I think the alcohol and regular porn comparison holds quite well. The longitudinal study data which contradicts the theory that increased availability of porn does not lead to higher rates of rape is simply unavailable for child porn, perhaps with one exception, though[2]. The link between inebriation and likelihood of sex crimes is to my knowledge undisputed, though.
> To some degree (and I suspect, to a similar degree to pedophiles) it has, see my comment here[1]. Exposure to pornography is usually shown to trigger or at least intensify feelings of sexual agression, either physical or verbal, even in non-experimental studies.
Do they climax or simply look at the images in an experimental lab setting?
Do they have a secondary condition? Do they have POCD?
> Is this true of all pedophiles generally based on a sample of the pedophile population, or those recruited to take part in such a study after being convicted of child abuse (contact or non-contact) offences? I can very easily see the fact they've been convicted as being a huge confounder here.
Many studies are done in a clinical setting. Someone who has self-control issues is more likely to go to a shrink for those issues than someone who does not. Other studies are done in a criminal justice setting which is similar.
It is questionable whether possession should be illegal. It incentivizes people to cover up crimes as they themselves may be held complicit otherwise. It incentivizes law enforcement to disrupt support / prevention efforts as anything someone could say could be taken in evidence.
This won't be a popular notion, admittedly. But it is an important elephant to address.
To say that fanfic of fictional characters is merely "thinly disguised CP" not only does a disservice and insult to actual victims of child abuse, but the materials which some such victims use to relieve trauma. The conflation of fiction and reality must end if we are to do right by victims of child abuse and the harmless consumers of such content.
I've never been on livejournal, no idea what that looks like. I saw elsewhere in the thread it's a fork from Livejournal's code; it just reminded me of Tumblr.
Which makes sense! Many features from Tumblr and even Facebook, were first implemented by LiveJournal. The idea of having a “friends list,” as well as the separation between just following someone or having them also follow you (hence, being “mutuals” or “friends” in LJ parlance), the idea of broad tagging across the network or within specific communities, the existence of multi-author blogs (LJ communities, essentially), the ability to see and intermixed chronological feed of posts from your friends/people/communities. Oh, and the birth of Memached and OpenID (which was essentially the precursor for OAuth).
Tumblr introduced and pioneered the concept of the reblog, which was similar to a trackback/pingback in blog parlance, except turned on its head.
(Unrelated: whenever I read something about Tumblr, like its Wikipedia page just now, I'm always surprised to find it in the present tense, not "Tumblr was" but "Tumblr is". To me, it's just dead with the censorship, I never see it being linked to anymore, and I wasn't even regularly on the nsfw part. Every time I'm reminded it wasn't actually shut down.)