Heck, I'm willing to go on the record with this, damn the torpedoes.
Over at Anime Vice, Gia asked the question — “Do you think that lolicon and shotacon (e.g. hand-drawn materials featuring underage— sometimes VERY underage —characters in sexual situations) should be banned?”
And here’s my response:
So. I can point everyone to my ‘defense of porn’ post, again
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/01/10/5by8-29-the-blind-men-and-the-elephant-in-the-roomUnfortunately, I get a lot of mileage out of that link.
Specifically loli and shota porn though? I can’t speak to that. My gut says No.
Make that Hell No, no comics should be banned, ever, ever, unless a real life child was harmed by the artist in the process of creating the work in which case the censorship and/or destruction of that work should be a consequence of conviction for those crimes, along with things like prison and/or some other life-time supervision of the Creep Who Hurt Children.
Art does not hurt children. Drawings of people are not people. Creeps who hurt children will be creeps not matter what we publish, or don’t publish, and the major consideration is not their access to Art but their access to Children.
My head, in opposition to my gut, tells me the issue is more complex than that. And reactions by civilians and the Justified Outrage of the General Public whenever they come across material like this just makes the hobby look bad.
I just want to read books. All kinds of books. Anything that gets in the way of that is bad, in my opinion. We can question the motives of people who produce works that seemingly encourage Bad People to do Bad Things to children (“Think of the children!”) but I firmly believe that in a free society that encourages free speech, free thought, and free expression we cannot question their works as works. If you can prove a crime, with a real victim, then we can revisit the value of the work.
But Books don’t kill people. People who burn Books kill people. You want to ban something “for the common good”?
I find that to be as abhorrent as the worst, least defensible porn.
