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LOLICON-E: A MORAL DEFENSE

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Lolicon-e: A Definition
3. Legality of Lolicon-e by Country
4. Does Lolicon-e Harm Children?
1. Are Lolicons Necessarily Attracted to Real Children?
2. Does Pornography Cause Harm?
3. Studies on Lolicon-e in Particular
5. Freedom and Safety
1. The Nebulous Concept of "Obscenity"
1. Degrees of Forced Exposure
2. The Right of Art to Be Dangerous
3. Illegal Acts Committed During Production
2. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Lolicon-e
6. The Origins of Lolicon-e Panic
1. Our Ancient Hardware
2. Virtue Signalling
3. Abrahamic Religion
7. Slippery Slopes and Guardrails
1. What About Child Sex Dolls?
2. Could Child Pornography Ever Be Legalized?
3. Could the Age of Consent Be Lowered?
4. Ecchi Anime as a Bridge

1. Introduction

In this essay, I seek to argue that the creation, distribution, and possession of lolicon-e, meaning fictional, animated representations of minors engaged in sexual activity (with adults or otherwise), should be morally and therefore legally acceptable for adults.

In defending lolicon-e, there are a number of questions that need to be clarified. To have an opinion about lolicon-e implies having an opinion about many other related things such as the status of pornography in general, the validitity of age of consent laws, to what degree "thought criminals" like pedophiles can exist in society, and to what degree liberty should be prized over safety. The original pragmatic question of whether this particular material should be legal or illegal to create, distribute, and possess often gets lost in these philosophical rabbit holes. Given that I am bound to be deemed suspicious by at least some people without reading this full article, I implore you to at least read these following clarifications if you do not read the rest of the article:

I believe that the creation, distribution, and possession of pornography in general is a morally acceptable action as long as it is made with and by consenting adults (those over the age of consent). Lolicon-e meets this definition as no real children are involved in its production.

I believe that it is for the best to have something like an age of consent law and I don't support changing the age of consent law in most countries. I have some suggestions for reform about certain aspects of age of consent laws but they are quite moderate.

Pedophilia is a condition which we have to deal with on some level. There will always be pedophiles. Coinciding with my above position, I don't think it should be legal for them to act on their desires. But I do think that they should have something to masturbate to that doesn't involve real children. I see it acting as a "buffer".

I think that all art has the potential to make people act in socially unacceptable ways. All forms of expression do, in fact. But this does not give us the license to censor it. It is an attack on freedom of expression, which is a right we all should cherish and protect.

Even with these caveats, this is a controversial position to stake out. I will most likely be suspected of engaging in "motivated reasoning" to justify my own lusts. It is fallacious to attack my argument on this basis. My argument should stand on its own merits. But I will still explicitly state that I have viewed this material while living in Japan (where it is legal) and experienced no particular stimulus from it. In blunt terms, it didn't turn me on. My own sexual tastes are not what leads me to engage in this defense. I don't even watch that much pornography these days in general.

In that case, what is it that motivates me to argue for the morality of lolicon-e? It is a simple desire to be consistent in my adherence to the principle of freedom of expression. It is the realization that drawing lines on the legality of what we can depict happening to fictional characters represents a dangerous precedent. I refuse to stand by and be the one who says "First they came for the lolicons, and I did not speak up, as I was not a lolicon..."

Even among those who do not see lolicon as particularly dangerous, I predict many will still critique this essay. Many may say something to the effect of "Is this really the hill you want to die on? Drawings of naked little anime girls?" They might compare it to the kind of "anti-SJW" crusades against things like standing up against a female character's breasts in a video game being made smaller. I also vigorously oppose this sort of neo-puritanism, though am not as immediately concerned over it. Large-breasted or otherwise "sexy" characters are not nearly as likely to be made illegal as the underage subjects of lolicon-e are. Regardless, the skeptics will sneeringly ask: "Is this really that important in the grand scheme of things?"

You're damn right it is. This dismissal of threats to the legality of lolicon-e to me resembles dismissing threats to the legality of gay pride parades by saying something to the effect of "You really care that much about the right of a bunch of half-naked dudes to wave their dicks around in public?" Defending essential freedoms not only demands of us defend things that are controversial, despicable, and hateful, but also things that are silly, embarrassing, and juvenile. The first targets of censorship and repression are rarely the kinds of noble, high-minded protests that make history books. They are rarely the kinds of eloquent, intellectual treatises that launch revolutions. The first targets are usually things of "little consequence." And they are especially things that we have been culturally conditioned to see as base and puerile.

There is a cynical logic to it: First, convince people that something is so worthy of mockery and derision that it would be too embarrassing to defend. It will then be much easier to convince people that they will not miss it when it is gone. And all those who wish to defend the bit of liberty being sacrificed will start to appear eccentric if not downright pathological. With that, the censorship has already become culturally engrained, and any legal codification of it will be all the more passively accepted. And that is all you need to march headlong into tyranny. And if I may be so bold as to say so, as someone with a background in Japanese media studies and art history, I see myself as uniquely suited to the task.

2. Lolicon-e: A Definition

I use the term "lolicon-e" to refer to animated representations of prepubescent children in sexual situations. To begin, I will clarify a few related but commonly- confused terms in order to clarify my position and aim in this text:

ロリコン (lolicon): This term is short for ローリタコンプレックス (lolita complex). It is a slang term in Japanese with no exact psychological definition, but is used to refer to adult men with some kind of obsessive interest in girls who are prepubescent or in the early stages of adolescence. It is named after the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which depicts just such a figure. The term is used ambiguously in a fashion that is often jocular. Sometimes it merely refers to men whose preoccupation with young girl characters is based on their cuteness and is not explicitly sexual in nature. These cases do exist. Perhaps the most famous is Lewis Carroll. Even more confusing is that the term ローリタ (lolita) is also used in Japan to refer to a form of fashion involving dressing like a fancy kind of European doll which doesn't necessarily have any sexual connotation.

ロリコン絵 (lolicon-e): Many westerners refer to animated representations of prepubescent girls in sexual situations as "lolicon," but the term lolicon technically labels a person, not the material. For that reason, I introduce the term lolicon-e (literally "lolicon pictures") to use for the material in particular. After all, this is where the questions of legality and morality will be focused, as we cannot legislate or judge what happens in peoples' minds alone. In this essay, I will refer to fans of this material as "lolicons," retaining the ambiguity over whether fans of this material are interested in it for explicitly sexual reasons or not. I will refer to the fictional prepubescent girls depicted in lolicon-e as "lolis."

ショタコン (shotacon): "Shota" is a Japanese slang term for prepubescent boys, just as the term "lolita" refers to prepubsecent girls. "Shotacon-e" then refers to the male equivalent of lolicon-e: animated representations of prepubescent males in sexual situations. I consider lolicon-e and shotacon-e to be morally equivalent, so any defense of lolicon-e will apply for shotacon-e as well. However, concern is generally asymmetrically focused on lolicon-e. It is likely because the majority of shotacon-e depicts adult women molesting young boys, which makes up a much smaller amount of child sex abuse cases than adult women molesting young men. Perhaps my focus on lolicon-e alone will be seen as unjustly perpetuating the silencing of male victims. But I would argue that focusing on artworks like this is itself a poor way to address these issues. Thereofre, I choose to discuss lolicon-e alone as it would become too cumbersome to say "lolicon/shotacon-e" every time and lolicon-e is the form that draws the most visceral ire.

Pedophilia: "Lolicon" is a folk-psychological term, unlike pedophilia, which has an explicit definition in the DSM-5. It refers to sexual attraction to prepubescent children. I will use the term "lolicon" to refer to those who are sexually attracted to lolicon-e rather than "pedophile." The reason is that there seem to be at least some cases where those who are attracted to the animated representations are not attracted to real children and vice versa, though I will concede that there is almost certainly a large overlap between the two. The definition of pedophilia does NOT solely mean being attracted to "minors." Attraction to adolescents who have gone through puberty but are not yet at the legal age of consent is socially taboo to acknowledge, but is not considered to be psychologically abnormal. For this reason, when I use the term "children" in this essay, I will be referring exclusively to prepubescents.

Child molestation: This is the term I have chosen to refer to sexual encounters in the real world with real children and real adults. I refer to the adults who engage in sexual relations with children "child molestors." Not all pedophiles are child molestors and vice versa. Even pointing this out is somehow seen as a taboo these days, which is absurd. I also believe it is morally wrong and should be illegal, as it leads to bodily injury, lingering trauma, and negative imprinting in sexual tastes.

Child pornography: For the sake of this essay, when I use this term I refer to that which depicts sexual encounters with real, 3-D children. Not all photographs or videos of nude children count as "child pornography." I'm sure your parents have some photos somewhere of you naked as a kid that no one would object to. However, this line can be blurry. In the United States at least, photos or videos of nude children are considered child pornography on the grounds of their "obscenity" and "lack of artistic merit," which are very nebulous and subjective concepts. I will discuss this particular issue in more depth later on. But for the sake of my argument, "lolicon-e" refers to fictional, 2-D representations alone and "child pornography" refers to photos or videos involving real children.

3. Legality of Lolicon-e by Country

Please be aware of your country and district's laws. This essay is not an endorsement to access materials that are illegal where you live.

Lolicon-e is 100% legal and relatively easy to find in Japan, where the majority of the material is made and consumed. There are likely cultural reasons for this which I aim to spell out later in the text. However, Japanese laws on the material have their own peculiar standards of censorship, as all genitals are required by law to be blurred with mosaics even in material restricted to those over the age of 18. This law applies for all pornographic materials in Japan. Other countries that have declared lolicon-e to be legal include Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Mexico. However, cultural taboos have kept lolicons in those countries from being as out in the open as in Japan.

Some countries have made the material illegal entirely, sometimes defining it as child pornography and giving the two equal status under the law. These include Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. I find this to be absolutely ludicrous. However, specific court cases have shown that some of these countries have been more willing to be punitive about it and others have enforced these laws more loosely.

Other countries exist in more of a gray area. One country where this issue is being fought over is the United States. The Supreme Court case Ashcroft vs. Free Speech Coalition (535 U.S. 234 (2002)) upholds the constitutionality of pornographic materials featuring fictional depictions of minors. However, under the PROTECT Act of 2003, it is possible for individual states to challenge this if they are able to prove that the works count as "obscene." As I will discuss further, I find the whole idea of obscenity laws to be a bogus remnant of religious ideology. I see it as a sneaky loophole which has allowed some states to make the materials de facto illegal in ways that are unconstitutional (and unjust). And I don't think we need such laws to keep real children safe, which is ultimately what matters most. [2]

4. Does Lolicon-e Harm Children?

The most important point for any pro-censorship argument will be whether lolicon-e poses a harm to real children. Given that the children depicted in the works are fictional, any harm posited will have to be of an indirect nature.

Those who are in the pro-censorship camp generally argue as follows:

1. Child molestation is wrong.
2. Lolicon-e depicts fictional child molestation as pornography (i.e. in an intentionally erotic manner).
3. Seeing actions depicted in pornography makes its viewers more likely to act it out in real life.
4. Seeing lolicon-e will thus make lolicons more likely to molest children.
5. Therefore lolicon-e should be illegal (or at least extremely socially stigmatized).

Before addressing the strength on this argument on the basis of fundamental values like freedom of expression, we should address two empirical questions that this line of argumentation assumes the answer to:

1. To what degree are lolicons attracted to real children?
2. To what degree does lolicon-e (and pornography in general) make its viewers more likely to recreate its contents in real life?

These questions are harder to answer than one might think. It is hard to gather data about a subject as taboo as lolicon-e. Very few would volunteer to say "Yes, I am a lolicon!" and detail their viewing of the material, especially those in countries with more stringent laws. Accurate statistical research about the material is thus quite difficult. But I can give some rudimentary observations.

4.a. Are Lolicons Necessarily Attracted to Real Children?

It might seem absurd to suggest that there is a sizeable contingent of lolicons that have no attraction to real children at all. It would seem to be fairly obvious that your attractions to idealized 2-D characters would reflect your real-world sexual tastes. Those who like large breasts in real life would like large-breasted 2-D characters. Those who like dark hair in real life would like dark-haired 2-D characters. I don't doubt that many pedophiles view lolicon-e for this very reason.

I have, however, heard many stories of consumers who enjoy things in animated pornography that they do not enjoy in real life. Many immediately cast doubt on those who claim to be attracted to lolicon-e but not to real children. They assume that it is a lie they say because they are afraid of being seen as predatory and dangerous. But here I ask: What would it take for us to believe lolicons when they say this? For in my experience, this seems to never be even entertained as a possibility by those who are in the anti-lolicon camp. The lolicon in question could have never abused a child in his life, could have never viewed child pornography, could have no photographs of real children on his computer, and the anti-lolicon would still accuse him of merely lying.

This even happens on anonymous internet forums and imageboards. Obviously, people lie on the internet every second of every day. There is no reason to automatically believe that what people say anonymously online is necessarily true. However, I bring this up for the following reason: There is perhaps no platform more stripped of the desire to save face based on the prevailing public morality as an anonymous imageboard like 4chan. And even here, many lolicons report being completely unattracted to real life children. I simply ask: Is there ever a stage where the anti-lolicon will believe a lolicon when he says this? What would it take? I see anti-lolicons accept similar cases much more easily: Most anti-lolicons are also likely against bestiality (as am I), but do not fear that all the furry porn online presents enough of a danger to animals that it should be illegal. In many cases, the subjects of lolicon-e are nearly as stylized and distinct from real children as the subjects of furry porn are from real animals.

I do think that there are reasons to suspect that lolicons and pedophiles do not overlap as strongly as we might reflexively assume. Men who like "childlike" women (women who are short, young-looking, smallish, roleplay with childish personalities, etc.) may be extend their interests in this "childishness" to an extreme degree in a 2-D realm but not in a 3-D realm. 2-D representations often intentionally exaggerate desirable characteristics to degrees that outpace the scale of attraction in the world. Extremely large breasts in 2-D animation, for example, do not experience the "unshapely" sagging effects of gravity. It is conceivable that one's attraction could "go further" in 2-D than in 3-D. I would not be surprised if similar effects exist with lolicon-e.

My point in this section is not to argue that the majority of lolicons have no pedophilia-adjacent desires whatsoever. My personal "gut feeling" is that the majority of lolicons are indeed pedophiles, or at least exist on the same "spectrum" as pedophiles. But I will not assume that it is an unfalsifiable truth that all lolicons are also pedophiles like many anti-lolicons seem to. This assumption, I argue, will bias them from having an honest interpretation of data that contradicts their worldview. For now, I remain thoroughly agnostic about it until there is more conclusive data studying lolicon-e in particular.

I have also heard that there are a non-trivial amount of female viewers of lolicon-e. Fantasies of rape and forced encounters are common among women, and "self-inserting" as the girl in lolicon-e may very well be a way to enjoy this by playing up the angle of being "helpless" and being "dominated" in an extreme way. In extreme cases, this may even be therapeutic for those who have been molested. It is not uncommon for men to "self-insert" in shotacon-e for the same reason.

In truth, however, my ultimate argument does not hinge on this point. The majority of lolicons could be legitimate pedophiles and it still would not justify the censorship or demonization of lolicon-e for reasons I now seek to explain.

4.b. Does Pornography Cause Harm?

We can assume that a sizeable portion of lolicons are attracted to real children. The next question is to what degree lolicon-e makes its consumers more likely to molest real children. This is, of course, a particular application of a broader question: To what degree does pornography itself make its consumers more likely to act out what they see on the screen in real life? And to what degree does that change or not if the content displayed would be immoral to act out in real life?

This is another difficult question to answer. But it is one with a much older lineage. The often embarrassing nature of the question once more makes accurate data difficult to establish. But we are on somewhat sturdier footing when it comes to material to work with and assess, as the taboos and, in some cases, laws surrounding pornography that isn't lolicon-e tend to be much milder (at least in the west). The argument that pornography should be illegal has largely been phased out in the west. And good riddance to it. But very little of the data we have supports the idea that pornography (even "extreme" pornography) causes more sex crimes in a straightforward fashion. It is worth spelling out this data on "normal" pornography before we ask whether there would be reason to expect a significant difference with lolicon-e or not.

The arguments put forward in the panic over the "danger" of lolicon-e very much resemble the arguments for the "danger" of "normal" pornography. These arguments are not very common in contemporary western societies that have long accepted the existence of pornography as a part of life and a private freedom that we are all entitled to. But they were omnipresent in the 1980s in the United States as part of a sex-negative backlash both in the right-wing conservative sphere and the increasingly censorious feminist sphere under the influence of figures like Catharine A. MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. A full analysis of why these changes occurred is outside of the scope of this essay. My interest here is merely responding to these arguments and showing why I believe they are undesirable and even dangerous.

I have done my best to look for studies in an objective, non-partisan way to assess the results of research on this question. This is not an easy thing to do. In the same way that fossil fuel companies are quick to use research on climate science in a misleading fashion, so are many Christian conservatives quick to use research on pornography in the same fashion. I can say that there is very little consensus here. Studies have shown mixed results and there are questions about their methodology.

In 1969, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that adults had a right to view pornography in the privacy of their own homes (Stanley vs. Georgia). President Lyndon B. Johnson then created the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The aim was to establish whether pornography had a direct effect on antisocial conduct. The result was clear: There was "no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youths or adults" and no "evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials adversely affects character or moral attitudes regarding sex and sexual conduct." This finding was later rejected by President Nixon with no scientific backing whatsoever. The resurgence of a conservative movement buried these findings and this research soon fell out of favor. [5]

This study's findings have continued to be justified. Violent crime in general, including sexual abuse, has decreased in the United States over the 1990s and 2000s, during the same era that the pornography industry massively expanded and became more accessible. This is not unique to the United States. The same pattern has occurred in most countries, and not just in the west. The increased availability of internet pornography in India, for example, has failed to have a statistically significant effect on sex crimes in the country. Some effects have been observed which could potentially be concerning, such as lessened feelings of fidelity, less emotional connection during sex, more "aggression" during sex (though almost entirely in a consensual fashion), distorted views about the prevalence of certain sex practices, decreased attraction to long-term partners, and lack of self-esteem about one's appearance. However, none of this seems to be an indicator of criminality. [6] [7] [8] [9]

The data on all of this is inconclusive. But it by no means supports the idea of a straightforward increase in sexual activity. These potential "harms" of pornography may be unwelcome in their own right. I do not think this is a justification to make the material illegal, but I will touch on this more later in this essay. In this section, I merely argue that if lolicon-e is being considered "dangerous" due to its similarity to "normal" pornography, this is not supported by research as far as I can tell. Pornography studies do not in any way reveal pornography straightforwardly causing viewers to commit crimes.

4.c. Studies on Lolicon-e in Particular

I have not been able to find many studies that discuss lolicon-e in particular. There is an immediate distortion based on the evidence: Because of legal restrictions and cultural taboos, we usually only hear about people possessing lolicon-e when they have committed a crime. Therefore, we have the impression that the correlation between viewing lolicon-e and molesting children is higher than it really is. A large majority of lolicon-e viewers likely view the material and do nothing.

While there are no particular studies of lolicon-e, we have some studies on the effects of child pornography in general in the few cases where they have been legal to study. In the countries of Japan, Denmark, and the Czech Republic, there were periods where all forms of pornography (including child pornography!) were decriminalized while child molestation remained illegal. In all cases, child molestation cases DECREASED. I know this sounds incredible, but it has been documented very well. This could imply that this material has a cathartic effect which reduces likelihood to offend in real life rather than increasing it. I don't support the legalization of child pornography itself for reasons I will spell out later in this essay. But I see lolicon-e as a significantly different moral question. And if we have studies about decriminalizing child pornography itself with favorable results, it is hard to imagine lolicon-e being different. [10] [11] [12] [13]

The modern status of Japan is our best contemporary empirical example of a society where lolicon-e is not only legal, but somewhat "mainstream" (at least as mainstream as hentai can be). And it is consistently very high on the list of safe countries as ranked by the Institute for Economics & Peace's Global Peace Index. It has the lowest crime rate of any of the G7 countries, and sex abuse fails to be an outlier among them. Of course, I am not arguing that Japan's low rate of child molestation is merely a matter of lolicon-e being present. That would be absurd. There are other reasons that I believe contribute to it and I discuss them later on. But it does give strong evidence that lolicon-e does not seem to be the potent substance that its critics fear it to be.

5. Freedom and Safety

From the limited amount of studies we have available, lolicon-e does not seem likely to massively exacerbate child molestation cases in societies. However, I here seek to argue that the material should be legally accepted even if there was a chance it could increase the likelihood of child molestation cases. This sounds like an extreme, callous position. But defending the principle of freedom of expression requires us to sacrifice some safety we could otherwise enjoy. The safest society in the world would be one where everyone lived in a cage.

There are many "liberties" that are not only acceptable, but downright essential to limit in society: the freedom to pollute the environment, the freedom to steal, the freedom to commit business fraud, the freedom to sell unregulated foods and drugs, and so on. But the one that is truly unacceptable is limiting our freedom of expression. There is always a step between the expression of an action and actually carrying that action out, which means that humans have the ability to reject it. Limitation on freedom of expression is thus the surest and quickest step towards tyranny. And to be sure, it is always cloaked in an appeal to keep us "safe." But censorship is a cup of venom, and the appeal to safety is merely honey coating the rim.

5.a. The Nebulous Concept of "Obscenity"

What does it mean for an image, video, text, or so on to be "obscene?" "Obscenity" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "abhorrent to morality or virtue" or "repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles." The first thing to recognize is that there can never be an objective definition of obscenity. The moral and ethical principles of any society are culturally and historically contingent. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" was once banned in the United States on grounds of obscenity. Films that showed interracial romances used to be considered "obscene" by Hollywood. Margaret Sanger's early attempts to educate women on how to obtain and use contraceptives were banned as "obscene."

This doesn't mean that "obscenity" is a meaningless concept. All societies have their own concepts of obscenity. All groups do. All individuals do. We all have forms of expression that we see as beyond the pale and offensive. But the different standards we have for "obscenity" are so varied and contradictory that I think there can be no justification for state-enforced "obscenity" laws. Like clockwork, such laws inevitably become weapons in the hands of tyrants:

What really is "obscenity" in a work of fiction? I see three potential arguments for works of fiction being counted as "obscene" which often get muddled together:

1. Forced Exposure: People who find the work offensive or upsetting are forced to view it against their will.
2. Dangerous Effects: What is depicted makes viewers more likely to commit illegal acts.
3. Real Illegal Acts Involved: There were illegal acts committed in the creation of the piece of art.

Outside of these three possibilities, I see "obscenity" as little more than a vestigial remnant of theocratic authoritarianism. The religious conception that the representation of certain thoughts independent of any action are themselves "blasphemous" or "sinful." I touch more on this later in this essay. For now, I will address these three possibilities and why I think that two of them do not warrant censorship and the one of them that has some legitimacy does not apply to lolicon-e. The only answer can be to have a mutually permissive and pluralistic society with respect for each others' "obscenities."

5.a.i. Degrees of Forced Exposure

In most cases, "obscenity" only emerges as an issue when the work escapes its normal environment and comes into contact with someone not primed to see its content. Miller vs. California (1973) is the Supreme Court case that first established the dangerously broad context for prosecuting "obscene" materials, and it was triggered by a case of advertisements for pornography being mailed to unwilling recipients. It is no surprise that lolicon-e now becomes subject to censorship, because it has escaped its Japanese subcultural birthplace and now is accessible to all kinds of people via the internet.

The concept of obscenity depends on access. Traditionally, pornographic materials were much more easily restricted. You would have to go into an 18+ section of a store that was clearly marked off. Even if you didn't have to show an ID, the surrounding customers would watch to make sure kids didn't run in there. Of course, nothing can be a perfect system. Even before the internet, kids could find their parent's stash of porn. But today it is much easier for pornographic materials to be accessed by anyone of any age.

This is not a problem that is unique to lolicon-e. Some may make the argument that lolicon-e has the potential to be more confusing and potentially scarring than "traditional" pornography. But I don't see this as a justifiable argument. You could make the same argument for many other kinds of "kinky" pornography, like material involving BDSM fetishes. The internet provides us with many new challenges when it comes to information access at a young age. But the impulse to shoulder the blame on artists and creators is lazy.

It might seem like delimiting lolicon-e to some very limited areas would be an ideal solution. This is the impetus of many states in the United States bringing in sweeping changes by requiring pornography sites to verify viewers' ages, as permitted by the Supreme Court decision Free Speech Coalition vs. Paxton (2025). This policy was motivated by very real fears that parents may have about children being exposed to extreme pornography at earlier and earlier ages with little ability to stop it. But the problem here is almost entirely the result of the easy access that children have to smartphones. This is far more effectively regulated in Japan.

I do not mean to imply that navigating this landscape of technology with children is "easy" for parents. But I do believe that the instinct to constantly delimit spaces for material has a strong chilling effect and can create a subtle form of social censorship. As Nadine Strossen has pointed out, when a form of expression gets the "separate but equal" treatment, it can be attacked more effectively [17]. If there's only one website with lolicon-e, you can shut down the whole lolicon business if you shut down that site. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we can expect every inch of our public spaces to be full of lolicon-e. But the possibilitiy of this form of attack is a reason that we can't accept the qualification of merely having lolicon-e "in the right place," because that place will be increasingly whittled away until there is none at all:

There can never be a coherent way to prevent people from seeing things that they find offensive or unpleasant. There could be no public art or cultural activities if this logic was carried to its extreme. There are plenty of "offensive" pieces in museums, in galleries, in bookstores, in classrooms, and so on. And what is the answer? Teach people to avert their eyes if they don't like it and move on. Teach them to avoid places where they will likely see things they don't like if they feel too offended by it. A society where we have to prevent every fleeting, passing interaction with something offensive would be unsustainable in practice and totalitarian in intent.

5.a.ii. The Right of Art to Be Dangerous

Suppose we accepted the argument that lolicon-e causes readers to be more likely to molest children. What degree of increased likelihood are we dealing with here? Clearly it is possible for at least some people to view the material and then not go on to molest children. If viewing lolicon-e and child pornography alone was that significant, then one would expect police and detectives to be the most dangerous of all, as they are the ones who see it more than almost anyone else.

If we do think that lolicon-e exposure increases the likelihood of its viewer molesting children, I ask: What percentage higher of a likelihood do you believe we are looking at? A 50% increase? A 10% increase? A 1% increase? A 0.00000001% increase? At what point does it become low enough to be a non-issue? At what point does artistic freedom become paramount? Those who are pro-censorship may sneer and say "ANY amount of increased likelihood is enough to warrant it being censored!" This argument is as shortsighted as it is dangerous.

I could point to a thousand cases of artworks considered "dangerous" when they were first created, all of which we rightly look back on as benign today. I will only focus on one: rap music. The Supreme Court case Davidson vs. Time Warner (1997) gives us an informative parallel: A Texas state trooper was killed by a man driving a stolen vehicle and listening to the 2Pac album 2Pacalypse Now. The plaintiffs argued that the music contributed to his violent action. This is, of course, ludicrous. The federal district court of Texas agreed and sided with Time Warner. Nor is this the only way that rap music has been attacked. Cases like Luke Records vs. Navarro (1992) and State vs. Skinner (2014) have been necessary to keep rap music from being banned as obscene and being considered prosecutorial evidence for murder trials. [20]

Here I ask: What about this is distinct from blaming lolicon-e for one of its viewers molesting a child? We think it is unlikely that rap music has any direct causal link to committing drive-by shootings, selling drugs, beating women, or any of the other heinous content in its lyrics. But do we know this for sure? Could it make listeners a bit more jaded or forgiving of gang violence? Certainly there is a large overlap in violent gang activity and listening to rap music. What would we do if a study came out that determined that there was a causal link between listening to rap music and violence? How strong would the link have to be to justify censorship?

I predict that those who advocate for the censorship of lolicon-e may have trouble applying this standard for rap music. I would oppose it as well. But it is clear that rap music romanticizes illegal activity just as much as lolicon-e does. In some cases it does it even more directly, as lolicon-e almost always depicts fictional children, but rap music often contains directed hostility towards other gangs or even other rappers. I think that rap music likely desensitizes its listeners to a comparable degree as lolicon. And yet most would agree that attempts to ban it would be a gross violation of liberty.

Many other arts and cultural activities that could have potentially harmful "lessons" for viewers could be mentioned as examples besides rap music: black metal, professional wrestling, violent movies and video games, intolerant passages of holy texts like the Bible and Quran, propaganda posters, prank television shows, nude beaches, BDSM, furry conventions, bumper stickers, controversial methods of psychotherapy, manifestos written by terrorists advocating violence (one item designated as such at the time of its creation being the American Declaration of Independence)... I therefore say: Art must be allowed to be as dangerous as it can be, and we must find a way to keep up to and respond to it. Drawing any lines preemptively is dangerous.

5.a.iii. Real Illegal Acts Involved

One could conceive of an animated work involving real child molestation as a necessary part of its production. An example would be something like an animation that uses audio or rotoscoped video of a real recorded child molestation. I would condemn this and exclude it from my definition of lolicon-e. And when we look at the most common distribution points of lolicon-e (conventions like Comiket, brick and mortar otaku stores like Tora no Ana and Melonbooks, web services like DLSite, even imageboards dedicated to lolicon-e), they seem just as well-insulated from these as "normal" pornography distributors are from pornography featuring illegal content like non-consensual sex and violence. That is to say, very well-insulated from it. In fact, lolicon-e distributors seem to be even better at insulating their content from illegal deviations than major "normal" sites like PornHub. So it is not as though my definition is a tortured one that ignores the reality of lolicon-e as it exists. Judicious commitment to fictional content made entirely by and for adults over the age of 18 is the norm for lolicon-e, not the exception.

Do note, however, that lolicons will often be "inspired" by real children when they make their work in a way that we might find creepy but is not technically illegal. As long as the material they "reference" are legal photographs or sketches of children (clothed or not), I don't see a moral issue with this that doesn't lead us into the world of "thought crime." There is no doubt that this is a bit uncomfortable. But all artists are ultimately inspired by real life. We can't create from nothing but our own imagination. Pornographers are no exception to this rule. When adults allow their children to be filmed or photographed in any way that will possibly go public, they are by necessity permitting pedophiles to view it. But that is simply the cost of living in society.

This is the definition of obscenity I think would be closest to consistent and agreeable. Lolicon-e is largely made entirely from the imagination in a way that has become totally disconnected from real children as models, so it would not be obscene under this definition. However, I do think that we shouldn't latch onto this definition at large for something being "obscene." There are plenty of artworks which were made by committing crimes. Think of all the great films made where directors had to do things like illegally trespass to get certain shots, old carvings made from illegally-acquired ivory, music made with remixed samples that the creators didn't bother to acquire the rights for, and so on.

5.b. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Lolicon-e

For now, the boundary between lolicon-e and "real" child pornography is still very easy to establish. Even lolicon-e that is made with particularly lifelike 3-D models can be readily distinguished from photographs and videos of real children to the same degree that other manga and video games can be. But the overwhelming technological advance in artificial intelligence will almost certainly give rise to a new category: photographs and videos that are indistinguishable from "authentic" child pornography, but that have been created 100% artificially. Most major deep learning models that generate images such as DALL-E have been intentionally designed to "block" such content from being generated. But controlling the output of these models is extremely imprecise and unpredictable. Elon Musk's Grok AI ended up being capable of just such a purpose in early 2026 to great controversy despite barriers supposedly being in place. [21] Even if the nefarious bits of code responsible for these images are patched out of major AI systems, they are highly likely to be forked or reverse-engineered by reckless hackers who don't have shareholders to answer to.

This kind of material will likely be widespread sooner than any of us expect. So we now have a pressing need to answer the question of whether lolicon-e can ever be "too" realistic. My instinctive answer would be that the ultimate morality we should judge the art by is whether or not a real child was abused in the creation of the content. No matter how realistic the AI art was, it should in theory be morally equivalent to a less realistic version if the creation was equally benign. No matter how well-made and realistic a gory horror film is, it is still fundamentally different from a snuff film. But a paradox emerges here. Every step along the way to these "perfect" AI representations of child abuse are ones I would consider a valid step of artistic freedom to achieve greater and greater "realism," so long as no real children are being abused in any of the material. But the end result seems to be one that I believe could have genuinely dangerous consequences for society at large.

This kind of material does not yet exist at scale. Outside of Grok's experiments, most AI-generated representations of children in sexual situations are still clearly artificial and cannot be mistaken for real child pornography. But it is only a matter of time. And unlike traditional lolicon-e, I would consider this sort of ultra-realistic AI-generated material to have genuinely concerning moral consequences. If widespread, this material would make it almost impossible to identify genuine child pornography, as we would no longer be able to tell if the "evidence" of these crimes was genuine or not. This would make it all the more difficult to stop real cases of child abuse. For this reason, I would like to exclude this material from the defition of "lolicon-e" that I endeavor to defend in this essay.

Granted, it is hard to draw this line. The moment that lolicon-e becomes so realistic that it is indistinguishable from the real thing is impossible to define objectively. But this is a problem that is not unique to lolicon-e alone. There can be lots of material generated with deep learning models that will have potentially devastating effects on society's ability to understand what is true or false.

The same arguments could apply for things like "deep fakes" of celebrities in pornographic situations. Where do you draw the line between erotic "fan art" of a celebrity and deep fakes? What about a perfect replication of an ISIS beheading or an Israeli army obliterating the Al-Aqsa Mosque? What would you do about an AI-generated video that shows a generated version of Vladimir Putin that is completely indistinguishable from the man himself announce that he will be dropping a nuclear bomb on the United States within 24 hours? This is the kind of danger that I think ultra-realistic, AI-generated lolicon-e could have. We can adapt to traditional lolicon-e by simply understanding the difference of appropriate rules between fiction and reality. But this standard becomes harder to hold when the material is no longer capable of being distinguished. It would be like the famous case of Orson Welles's reading of The War of the Worlds being mistaken for a real report, but on a scale that none of us can imagine.

My traditional position for regulation has always been "absolute freedom of expression, but only for humans." But this has some difficult blurry edges. Does a Twitter bot count as human expression or not? I find it very hard to draw a line that I can use to answer that question. Artificial intelligence is full of enough unknowns that I have no clue how we could regulate it in an acceptable fashion. I simply know that the answer can't possibly be "don't ever create artwork that portrays anything unpleasant."

Even if we found a perfect legal framework, it would be very hard to keep a rogue group from brewing up their own AIs and using them for nefarious purposes. The only policy I support at the moment is a complete moratorium on the creation of AI data centers to at least slow down its rapid development while we figure these issues out. In an ideal world, I would want generative AI to be completely illegal. This would have many other benefits like easing some strain on the energy and water use in the areas where data centers are created, which has immense environmental and economic costs for residents. Of course, we are in the midst of a global AI arms race, meaning that this would require a kind of global treaty like those based on the prohibition of nuclear weapon development. I am pessimistic that anything like this could be enacted, especially within the time to slow the most consequential developments of realistic AI artwork.

There will be a lot of unknown variables we must contend with when it comes to the future of deep learning models and their influence on lolicon-e. My stance in this essay is only to defend the legality and morality of the kind of material found in contemporary Japanese hentai, which is clearly distinguishable from real child pornography. This is in the end a subjective definition, but I do think it is one that can be reliably "intersubjective." Even those who believe that lolicon-e is morally equivalent to child pornography will rarely go a step further and argue that it is literally impossible to distinguish the two (if they are being honest).

6. The Origins of Lolicon-e Panic

The response to lolicon-e should justly be called a "moral panic." Lolicon-e has existed for decades. If it was going to cause an immense uptick in child molestation cases, it would have already done so. And since the 1990s, molestation cases have been declining [22]. The only reason we now have panic over it is that a bunch of people have suddenly experienced it for the first time and are still in shock. I now wish to suggest at least three possible factors that I think have contributed to why lolicon-e has been attacked so ruthlessly by people not used to it:

6.a. Our Ancient Hardware

Human brains are remarkably more complex and sophisticated than any other animal on the planet. Even chimpanzee brains are inferior to the brains of human toddlers. But Robert M. Sapolsky has pointed out something here that is revealing: when humans evolved the ability to think abstractly, we did not create new parts of our brains. We simply re-purposed ones we already have.

The parts of our brain that light up when we distinguish cold and warm environments are the same ones that light up when we judge whether someone has a "cold" or "warm" personality. It seems that when humans evolved the need to make judgements about abstract things like personalities, we had to find the parts of our brains that sort of did the same thing and attempt to run this fancy new software on hardware that could not evolve nearly as quickly.

And one of the areas where this happens is with the concept of "disgust." When we feel a strong moral indignation, we feel sick to our stomach. But that is precisely because the area that is activated by "moral" disgust is the same one that reacts to "physical" disgust at things like rotten food. The metaphor of an act being morally "disgusting" is no coincidence.

I believe that something similar happens when the pro-censorship camp looks at lolicon-e. They are disgusted by it because it is so foreign and different. It is so distinct from anything they would understand as erotic and sexy. And because these disgust circuits are activated, they desperately feel that somehow a moral offense must be taking place. But since there is no real child being molested, they have to appeal to a "gut feeling" that it will just certainly somehow result in real child molestation, despite empirical evidence flying in the face of this.

The pitfall here is obvious. There are many things we may find "disgusting" or "weird" that are by no means morally wrong. For example, as a heterosexual man I find homosexual sex to be disgusting. But does that make me think that homosexuality is immoral? By no means. This is likely the root behind a lot of racism and xenophobia. And the same thing happens with lolicon-e. [23]

6.b. Virtue Signalling

Virtue-signalling is a form of "showing off" one's moral virtues. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller has compared it to the way peacocks show off their feathers to attract potential mate. While we like to blame individuals who "virtue signal," the truth is that these people are merely doing what humans always have done: attempt to present oneself as a figure with "status." Today, most of us think of traditional displays of "status" like having a lot of money and owning expensive luxury goods to be crass and primitive. (And they are harder to achieve in an era where almost no one can afford a house.) In place of this, we have latched onto moral virtue as our primary social currency. [24]

With the influence of the internet and social media, this has become supercharged. Now people compete to become more and more zealous in order to display how truly "virtuous" they are. It is no longer enough not to be a racist, you have to be an "anti-racist" now. And the same now applies with those who seek to express their virtue of opposing child molestation. Now people experience social pressure to oppose lolicon-e simply because defending it on the basis of freedom of expression makes them slightly less zealous (and thus slightly lower status) from the next virtue-signaller. Nuance is seen as a sign of weakness of will. And that has had catastrophic effects far outside of lolicon-e.

6.c. Abrahamic Religion

We cannot draw a direct link between the religiosity of a state and its willingness to censor lolicon-e. Some countries with very low levels of religiosity like China, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have very strict anti-lolicon-e laws. However, I do believe that one reason for Japan being a uniquely tolerant society is its historical lack of Abrahamic religion. I believe that many in modern western societies and especially in the United States have unconsciously inherited much of the foundations of Abrahamic morality even when they think we have transcended them.

We are confronted with a problem: A certain subset of society has sexual attraction to prepubescent children. But it is for the best of society that they do not act out these desires with real children. What do you do on the basis of this?

One answer would be the Christian conception: See sexual desire is a moral failing and a sign of man's fallen nature and therefore demonize the pedophile as a monster. See him as a reprobate who we have no moral duty to and are free to make miserable by incarcerating for even trying to enjoy his "sinful" desires in private. This is a logical conclusion in a worldview where every man must stand on his own before the throne of god and answer for all his crimes. It entails the idea that a "sinful" desire, even in total privacy, is a public concern. In a perverse way, this way of thought prioritizes what happens in one's private conscience over what happens in his public effect on the community. In a fundamentalist Christian framing there can be no "shame" as long as you are "right with god," since the temporary shame you feel in public will always pale in comparison to eternal damnation.

An alternative answer to this problem would be the Eastern conception: See sexual desire as something that we, as natural creatures, all have and must find a way to deal with to have a harmonious society. So what would the best way be to have a society where both children are safe and pedophiles are happy? The same thing we always do when there are competing interests in society: find ways to allow both to coexist and be mutually harmonious.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a way in which both children and pedophiles could be safe and happy? Even saying this sounds beyond the pale in the modern west. But why? Wouldn't the world be better if everyone was happier? I see this as a remnant of a Christian worldview, which believes that believes that having certain lusts is some kind of choice to be wicked and twisted rather than something we naturally evolve as a result of our genetics and environment. And in that Christian worldview, we are supposed to focus on fixing the "sin" (psychological, internal state) rather than simply finding a way to keep the peace (by regulating how the individual acts). The Christian worldview will never allow the pedophile to have some "outlet" for his lusts, even if it is one that genuinely prevents him from feeling the need to act on them in real life, because that is seen as "justifying" his "sin." I say, "justify" the hell out of the sin if it keeps him from touching a real child!

In the eastern moral tradition, in contrast to the western, there is also a stronger emphasis on plurality of roles and situations. In a Christian conception, there is always one correct way of acting and we will be judged before the judgement seat of god on how closely we have adhered to it. In the eastern tradition, from Confucius onward, the "good person" is many different roles: a good teacher, a good artist, a good father, a good husband, a good pornographer. There can be no one set of rules for all of these. And there is no fear of being a "hypocrite" by holding to one set of norms in one and not the other. Which makes people feel less tension between the two very "different" norms one has as, say, an attendee at Comiket and a salaryman.

7. Slippery Slopes and Guardrails

Here I wish to address a few broader questions going forward.

7.a. What About Child Sex Dolls?

Sex dolls with the appearance of children are a related concern. They are legal in Japan. Several other countries lack laws which address these dolls legally, but the majority that do have kept them illegal. This even includes countries that have ruled lolicon-e to be legal, such as Denmark. Empirical research shows that these dolls have failed to coincide with higher rates of sex crimes. Do they present an issue by being "more real" than lolicon-e? The fact that you can touch them might imply that, but in other ways they are not as realistic. They do not have different expressions or dialogue like in manga. My position is that they should be allowed. It really does seem that having an "outlet" helps. [27]

7.b. Could Child Pornography Ever Be Legalized?

Short answer: No. In a hyper-theoretical thought experiment, I could imagine some niche cases where child pornography could be legalized. Perhaps if the child subject within it has passed the age of 18, has a sound state of mind, and gives permission for the material to be viewed by others. In this case, no new child pornography could ever be produced, but some past pieces of child pornography could be declared legal retroactively. I don't see this ever being practically implemented. I don't think you could track which child pornography is "old" versus "new" coherently, nor what permissions are real or fake.

I do think that there are possible ways to reform these laws in ways that would keep children safer. Until very recently, in Japan it was not illegal to possess child pornography but only to create and distribute it. That might seem unusual, but it the idea went that it makes people more likely to turn over materials to police and thereby help with the arrest of criminals. I don't know if this would be a good legal framework for all countries, but it's worth considering. It's the standard we tend to use for things like snuff films, after all.

There are, however, works of art in that have imagery of nude children and are not considered "child pornography" because they are not considered "obscene." The line as what counts as "obscene" legally is blurry. US precedent has described videos or pictures featuring "lascivious exhibitions of the genitals" as an example of being obscene, which is incredibly subjective and ambiguous phraseology. [28]

One can see Jock Sturges's famous photographs from nudist colonies, many of which included prepubescent children. Attempts were made to classify his photography books as child pornography, but these never came to fruition. Similar issues have happened with photographers such as David Hamilton and Sally Mann. It does seem as though everyone has some line where they would accept photographs of nude children as not being "obscene."

We simply cannot define "child pornography" as "anything that a pedophile could be attracted to," because this would remove a number of important and valuable works of art. Just because a pedophile could use pictures like Jock Sturges's for their own satisfaction doesn't mean they should be judged as child pornography. Nude bodies are one of the oldest subjects of artworks, and the nudity of children has often been used as a symbol of freedom and purity. I do fear that the broad range of what is defined as "child pornography" hampers potential photos of nude child subjects that are extremely unlikely to result in any long-lasting psychological harm.

In my case: The most "bulletproof" definition for criminal child pornography I can imagine would be images or videos of children being penetrated, masturbating, having their genitals fondled by adults or fondling adults' genitals, or photos/videos that are adjacent to these events. While you could technically have images of a fully-clothed child that would otherwise appear benign but are part of the same photoset/video as child pornography, it would be for the better to have these classed alongside just to be safe.

7.c. Could the Age of Consent Be Lowered?

The age of consent in most US states is 18. This makes the US an outlier, as large parts of the world sets it a few years lower. Much of Europe is between 14 and 17. I think this is acceptable. Europe hardly seems like a continent overrun with sexually abused young girls compared to the US. However, having more robust and comprehensive sex education is probably a necessary component of this and I would not support lowering the age of consent in the US unless this was accomplished. This makes pornography a hard case, because what could be legal in one country would not be legal in another, but pornography is a global industry. So it might be necessary to keep a standard age for appearing in pornography.

It is often repeated that the human brain doesn't fully develop until 25 and some have begun to feel that 18 is too young because of that. This is largely a myth. In truth, the brain continues to develop throughout our entire lives [29]. It also seems to rest on the assumption that we should not have to make difficult choices until brains are "fully" developed, which seems like a harmful form of coddling. If we can drive, vote, join the army, choose our career paths in university, and so on before the age of 25, then consenting to sex seems like a natural addition to these. I believe that "Romeo and Juliet" laws for younger ages of consent may be good additions, although I believe that older partners are often more experienced and therefore responsible, which implies that partners who are closer in age may actually be more likely to be abusive.

7.d. Ecchi Anime as a Bridge

A terrible consequence of a Christian morality system is the idea that all children are inherently "pure." This has led to a willing blindness of something obvious: children develop sexually even before puberty. And they certainly can't be expected to remain completely non-sexual throughout the years 14-18. We know that most children see pornography before the age of 18. I don't think that seeing some porn at that age will scar most teenagers. But I do think that watching hardcore pornography at a young age has the potential to act as a "superstimulus." It's probably wise to use hardcore pornography only sparingly until one is an adult.

The problem is that western culture at large these days has no bridge for teens who are constantly horny. If you just give them nothing and pretend that they are supposed to do nothing but wait until they are 18 to use nothing but their imagination, they will quickly laugh you off and find a way to watch hardcore porn. Japan has a good thing in place here: Ecchi anime. Here you have anime that is full of humorous, sexy content but isn't full of nonstop sex. It teaches the appreciation of the erotic that is playful and beautiful and full of tension, not just a constant stream of dicks thrusting in and out of vaginas. I think something that would prevent children from getting addicted to hardcore pornography and potentially from engaging with child pornography is having a culture that allows them to "nurture" sexuality in more age-appropriate and societally celebrated ways. Abrahamic religion has again kept something like this from emerging in the west.

FOOTNOTES

1. H.L. Mencken (reported by Gerald W. Johnson) "Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)", The Saturday Review (1956/02/11), p. 12-13

2. Wikipedia: Legal status of fictional pornography depicting minors

3. Sara Diamond, Women Against Censorship, 1985, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., "Pornography: Image and Reality," p. 47

4. Ooshima Nagisa [trans. Dawn Lawson], Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978, "Between Custom and Crime: Sex As Mediator," p. 238-239

5. NCJRS Virtual Library, "Commission on Obscenity and Pornography - Report"

6. Math SB, Viswanath B, Maroky AS, Kumar NC, Cherian AV, Nirmala MC, "Sexual Crime in India: Is it Influenced by Pornography?," Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine 36(2), 2014/04/01, p. 147-152

7. Paul J. Wright, Robert S. Tokunaga, & Debby Herbenick, "Impersonal Sex and Pornography: Potential Confounding, Moderation, and Implications for Public Health," Health Commun. 40(9), 2025/08, p. 1696-1709

8. Dr. William Thompson, "Child pornography, pedophilia, and contact offending: the empirical research"

9. Christopher J. Ferguson & Richard D. Hartley, "Pleasure is Momentary...the Expense Damnable?: The Influence of Pornography on Rape and Sexual Assault", Aggression and Violent Behavior 14(5), 2009/10, p. 323-329

10. Jérôme Endrass, Frank Urbaniok, Lea C Hammermeister, Christian Benz, Thomas Elbert, Arja Laubacher, & Astrid Rossegger, "The consumption of Internet child pornography and violent sex offending", BMC Psychiatry 9(43), 2009/07

11. Milton Diamond, Eva Jozifkova, & Petr Weiss, "Pornography and sex crimes in the Czech Republic", Archives of Sexual Behavior 40(6), 2011/12

12. Berl Kutchinsky, "The Effect of Easy Availability of Pornography on the Incidence of Sex Crimes: The Danish Experience", Journal of Social Issues 29(3), 1973, p. 163-181

13. Milton Diamond & Ayako Uchiyama, "Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan", International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(1), 1999, p. 1-22

14. Ooshima Nagisa [trans. Dawn Lawson], Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978, "Theory of Experimental Pornographic Film," p. 261

15. "If, by Pornography," Eternal Anglo weblog, 2026/01/26

16. Nadine Strossen, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, Scribner, 1995, "Lessons From Enforcement: When the Powerful Get More Power," p. 220

17. Ibid. p. 133-134

18. Ibid. p. 210

19. Christopher Hitchens, "On Free Speech," University of Toronto's Hart House Debating Club, 2006/10/16

20. David L. Hudson Jr., "Rap Music and the First Amendment," Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, 2023/08/11

21. Dan Milmo, Peter Walker, & Amelia Gentleman, "AI tool Grok used to create child sexual abuse imagery, watchdog says," The Guardian, 2026/01/08

22. Mallory Lucier-Greer, Kaylee Short, Emily Marie Wright, Catherine Walker O'Neal, Trends in the Annual Incidence Rates of Child Sexual Abuse and Child Maltreatment over the Past 25 Years in the Univted States," Child Abuse Review 33(2), 2026/04/03

23. Robert M. Sapolsky, "Your brain makes moral judgements--and it may be making mistakes," Big Think

24. Geoffrey Miller, "Political Peacocks: Sexual selection, virtue signaling, and ideology"

25. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Chapter 5, "The War on Sin," p. 158-160

26. Nadine Strossen, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, Scribner, 1995, "Toward Constructive Approaches to Reducing Discrimination and Violence Against Women," p. 274

27. Jeanne C. Desbuleux & Johannes Fuss, Child-like sex dolls: legal, empirical, and ethical perspectives," International Journal of Impotence Research 36, 2024, p. 722-727

28. Rhode Island State Probation Officer Convicted on Child Pornography Charges," United States Attorney's Office District of Rhode Island, 2014/02/11

29. Jane C. Hu, The Myth of the 25-Year-Old Brain," Slate, 2022/11/27