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by claudiawerner 2425 days ago
I think it's good you posted this; the goals listed on the first link seem very reasonable to get behind, and it's something both I and researchers in child sexual abuse material (e.g. Amy Adler's paper, which is one of the most cited in the field) have noticed. The rhetoric of "think of the children" can be and has been used many times to silence sexual activity between adults, including fictional representations (such as manga and comics, some of which are illegal to possess in the UK), kinks (online ageplay roleplay is often targeted under obscenity law, despite being between two adults), and other cases.

In my view, the protection of children based on hard evidence showing causal links is paramount, not suspicion and anecdota (it was, in fact, anecdota given before Parliament which was used in the creation of the bill in England and Wales to illegalize lolicon manga) based on the "social harms" that seem obvious at first sight but are refuted by cultural anthropology (e.g Patrick Galbraith and Mark McLelland have come to very interesting conclusions regarding how adults consume fantasy material). There is no group to fight for the few thousand people caught under this law so far (according to the English VAWG report 2017), nor do I imagine their being. The organization you linked seems, at least, to have this sort of thing on the agenda.