Illustrated Underage Sexualisation

This policy has not been formally rewritten yet, but please see the original document introducing this policy below, which is still in effect.

⚠️ Info-Hazard: Violating material is subject to deletion at any time.

Work in Progress

Original Introductory Document

Originally posted 2023/04/03

While it doesn't bear explaining here why real pictures of child sexual exploitation are banned, the question of what to do with drawings depicting sexualised children is far more difficult.

I abhor to ban anything, even some things which disgust me. Many things I permit because I believe the freedom afforded by doing so is more important than preventing the potential harm of allowing them. Judging that balance is very difficult but life has a way of forcing one to make such decisions.

Drawings of children, implicitly or explicitly sexualised, are obviously disgusting to anyone without paedophillic tastes. There are, however, 2 mitigating points:

  • Unlike sexualised pictures of real children, illustrations do not necessarily require real-life sexual abuse of children to take place.
  • It could be argued that paedophiles can use illustrations of sexualised children as a sexual outlet, and are thus less likely to abuse real children. Given these factors, I have always had some hesitation about outright censoring such material.

However, our policy is firmly to disallow such material. What follows is the qualification and justification for this policy.

First, let us ensure we don't go too far. Many illustration styles, especially Japanese, often depict young people in the range of about 14-20 years old as indistinguishable age-wise from each other. Many such styles are also globally-popular and accepted. If, in the given style, the character could plausibly be 18, then generally assume they are. This often requires arbitration, and ambiguities must be dealt with carefully.

But if the character couldn't be older than 12, we have a problem.

When judging an illustration, consider these factors:

  • Does the illustration include a character which is clearly prepubescent?
  • Does the illustration seem to be intended to invoke lust?
  • Does the illustration focus on the form, state, or other precise details of the bodies of such characters?
  • Does the illustration feature suggestive objects or substances in interaction with them?
  • What is the degree of artistic abstraction? Are the body proportions realistic? The lighting? How much detail is included?
  • Could the illustration reasonably have been drawn by someone without paedophillic tastes? As before, making such determinations often requires arbitration, and ambiguities must be dealt with carefully. This is ultimately subjective, but in most cases, to most people, it is obvious.

The justification I have for this policy is not as categorical as I would prefer, and each of these points may not be a sufficient justification on their own, but together they reach just over the threshold of justification, in my opinion. The justification arises from these factors:

  • Anyone who creates, holds, or shares such material is likely to be a paedophile.
  • Some such material may be traced from real child sexual exploitation images. This is not sufficiently different than sharing the original. It is also nearly-impossible to determine.
  • Such material is illegal in many western nations. Unjust laws do not deserve respect, but this law is not clearly unjust, even if you may have misgivings about an entire nation restricting it. Either way, these laws pose a plausible danger of extreme consequences to some of our community's members, including its owner.

Discussion around this policy is welcome, but beyond some specifics, the policy is very unlikely to change.

A few additional points:

  • The given/canonical age of a character, be it 14 or 14,000, is usually not relevant.
  • Recognising an illustrator's attempt to sexualise something is not the same as finding it attractive. Similarly, understanding that a knife can be used to kill someone is not the same as actually stabbing someone to death. This equivocation is one of several tactics used to justify posting paedophillic content in general. All such tactics should be ignored, and result in severe suspicion of their user.
  • Deleting potentially offending content may (and often should) be done even before its legality is determined.
  • Posting a screenshot of the full message which includes potentially-disallowed material is allowed in the non-public moderation channel only, but should be deleted as soon as arbitration is complete.