Forum - View topic

ANNCast - Dork the Halls

*A bunch of stuff*

鏡 wrote:

*A bunch of stuff*

You seem to be making some unfounded blanket statements. For example, you go on about how people are attracted to loli characters because they represent certain ideals or whatever, but that's not always the case.

Some people just like the way those characters are drawn. It's as simple as that. Or do you think that if a loli fan sees a drawing of some original character online, he won't find it at all attractive unless he firsts constructs some elaborate fantasy in his head about the character and her behavior and personality?

Do you really think there are no loli fans who simply like the appearance of the characters? Because if you think that, you're very wrong.

Now, it is true that just because someone likes the appearance of a loli anime character, it does not automatically mean that they are also attracted to real life children. But to assert that there is no connection whatsoever between the two seems very disingenuous. Your claim that there is no connection has no more basis than the claim that every loli fan is also a pedophile.

Is it fair to automatically assume that a fan of loli fanservice is also a pedophile? Probably not. Is it unreasonable though? I'm not so sure.

Hey guys. This was a lot of fun!

So, someone mentioned Gatchaman Crowds; I've been meaning to check it out! I've never looked at Samurai Flamenco though.

The gist of the conversation we had re: lolicons was simply this:

-Even though I probably shouldn't, I know this person is sexually aroused by cartoon paraphernalia depicting extremely young children sexually.
-I have a young child.
-As a responsible adult, ne, parent, I probably shouldn't let them associate with this person.

I can't even fathom an actual argument against this. Better safe than sorry isn't an extremely complicated concept.

My argument is that this reasoning suffers from a fallacy of equivocation with the word child. There is no reason to think someone's sexual attraction to sexualized underage cartoon characters is maintained in a sexual attraction to real life children.

鏡 wrote:

My argument is that this reasoning suffers from a fallacy of equivocation with the word child. There is no reason to think someone's sexual attraction to sexualized underage cartoon characters is maintained in a sexual attraction to real life children.

Robot logic it out all you like.

If I've seen multiple posts where you talk about spankin' it to loli porn I wouldn't really want you around my kids. Not that tough to understand.

Of course, anyone taking their kid into an anime panel room where the parent knows ahead of time there's likely to be a high percentage of lolicon fans is kind of a dummy to begin with.

Like I've said multiple times, it's not your decision to regulate your own behaviour in relation to someone I'm arguing against, and maybe you're not asserting that a lolicon is more inclined to pedophilia than other people, in which case my posts aren't relevant to your position.

The wording of this post makes me think you're arguing that you wouldn't associate with them for reasons other than the personal safety of your children: you know the lolicon is vocal about their fetishes, and you don't want your children exposed to other people's sexual fetishes, which I think is a pretty good argument for justifying avoidance of the lolicon. But that same logic should be used to regulate your behaviour around anyone who's vocally explaining their sexual fetishes online and then attends an anime con, and for some reason loli is singled out.

鏡 wrote:

Like I've said multiple times, it's not your decision to regulate your own behaviour in relation to someone I'm arguing against, and maybe you're not asserting that a lolicon is more inclined to pedophilia than other people, in which case my posts aren't relevant to your position. The wording of this post makes me think you're arguing that you wouldn't associate with them for reasons other than the personal safety of your children: you know the lolicon is vocal about their fetishes, and you don't want your children exposed to other people's sexual fetishes, which I think is a pretty good argument for justifying avoidance of the lolicon. But that same logic should be used to regulate your behaviour around anyone who's vocally explaining their sexual fetishes online and then attends an anime con, and for some reason loli is singled out.

If I've seen you talk at length about how much you spanked it to pornographic cartoons where the main fetish bait is 10-year old characters, yes, I will avoid you completely if I have children and they're with me. I will not hire you to babysit, I'll move away from you on the subway, whatever the situation, I don't want that person around my children. Sorry.

No it is not 100% fair and not 100% logical, and it certainly doesn't fit into the narrative you're most interested in pushing about lolicons, but it's how I and many other people feel about the issue and no amount of robot logic will change that.

I never said that loli characters represent certain ideals.

What it comes down to is that loli characters are symbols of a set of desirable traits which the plot, direction and characters of a show establish as desirable. Real life doesn't have those things, and there's no reason to assume that someone who fantasizes about the anime symbol of a loli character will assert those traits as being inherent to a child in real life.

What I said was that they represent a collection of traits that are sexualized by the artists that create them, and that the sexualizing intent of the author is reciprocated by the lolicon. I'm sure the vast majority of lolicon are lolicon solely because they get off on the aesthetic; the point I was making was that the aesthetic is manufactured to be consumed by lolicon, and that a real child is never similarly manufactured.

My second point was that a real child and a loli are dissimilar in a very obvious way that is ignored by people who condemn lolicon: one is not a human being, and one is. When someone decides to consume loli, there's no reason to assume that they haven't acknowledged the lack of harm their consumption is causing, and wouldn't likewise acknowledge the manifestation of harm pedophilia would cause.

There is no relation between lolicon and pedophilia for two reasons: the objects of the fetishes are qualitatively dissimilar (one is a collection of sexualized characteristics filtered through the creative lens of the artists involved, one is a human being),

and likewise the moral and social consequences of the fetishes are dissimilar. Assuming our hypothetical lolicon is a predictably intelligent human being, the lolicon will be aware of these social and moral dissimilarities and thus delineate loli from pedophilia not just by the qualitative differences between a child and an infantalized anime character, but by the differences in social and moral consequence between the two fetishes.

By your bizarre logic there is no connection between being sexually attracted to booby fanservice anime and being sexually attracted to large breasted women- or even women at all! After all, booby fanservice anime are just as manufactured as any loli anime. So by your logic if a man says that he's super aroused by Booby Anime #9 he's just as likely to be a gay man as straight. Because he's not attracted to women, he's attracted to a collection of sexualized traits symbolized by drawings of big breasted women. Which is so totally different than being attracted to women, and has no connection whatsoever, according to you.

Also, something you may have forgotten: being a pedophile does not automatically make a person a child molester and/or viewer of child pornography. People can be pedophiles and still have the have the understanding that acting on those desires would be wrong. And choosing not to act on a desire because doing so would be morally repulsive does not mean the desire magically vanishes.

No, one is a human being, and the other is a drawing of a human being. (Or alien vampire catgirl robot whatever that looks like a human being.) Not quite so dissimilar as you think.

Again I ask: if a man/women is attracted to drawings of women, do you think it is completely unreasonable to assume they are probably attracted to real life women?

I realize it won't always be the case, but would you say there's a high likelihood of it?

Any reasonably intelligent pedophile can also understand the differences between looking at drawings and abusing real life children. So what?

Also, you seem to be implying that people can just turn off sexual desires they find problematic. I don't think it works quite so easily.

The method of delineation I outlined between lolis and children doesn't apply to "booby anime". The qualitative differences between anime breasts and real life breasts are not nearly as large as the differences between a loli and a child, and there's comparatively little disparity between the social and moral consequences of liking real life breasts and liking drawn breasts.

That's true, but I haven't forgotten it. Whether or not someone possesses sexual desire for real life children is impacted by the social and moral status of the desire.

A drawing of a human being that is also a collection of sexualized characteristics filtered through the creative lens of the artists involved in the creation of that drawing. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that someone attracted to drawings of a woman is attracted to a woman because there's not as much difference between being attracted to a drawing of a woman and being attracted to a real woman as there is between being attracted to a loli and being attracted to a real real child.

So, any reasonably intelligent pedophile would recognize that they are not a lolicon by virtue of their pedophilia, or vice versa: that the two terms are not synonymous and have no relation to one another.

What I was implying is that there is a significant difference between being attracted to a loli and being attracted to a child, and that a lolicon would be able to recognize that difference. Whether someone happens to also be a pedophile isn't relevant to the fact that they're a lolicon.

DINI: “They’re all for boys ‘we do not want the girls’, I mean, I’ve heard executives say this, you know, not Ryan(?) but at other places, saying like, ‘We do not want girls watching this show.”

SMITH: “WHY? That’s 51% of the population.”

DINI: “They. Do. Not. Buy. Toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show — “

SMITH: “So you can sell them T-shirts if they don’t— I disagree, A, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as f***ing boys do, but, B, sell them something else, man! Don’t be lazy and be like, ‘well I can’t sell a girl a toy.’ Sell ‘em a T-shirt, man, sell them f***ing umbrella with the f***ing character on it, something like that. But if it’s not a toy, there’s something else you could sell ‘em! Like, just because you can’t figure out your job, don’t kill chances of, like, something that’s gonna reach an audi — that’s just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same fuckers who go, like, ‘Oh, girls don’t read comics, girls aren’t into comics.’ It’s all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, ‘I can’t sell ‘em a toy, what’s the point?’

DINI: “That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’ — this is the network talking — ‘one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys, but right there.’ And then we began writing stories that got into the two girls’ back stories, and they were really interesting. And suddenly we had families and girls watching, and girls really became a big part of our audience, in sort of like they picked up that Harry Potter type of serialized way, which is what The Batman and [indistinct]’s really gonna kill. But, the Cartoon Network was saying, ‘F***, no, we want the boys’ action, it’s boys’ action, this goofy boy humor we’ve gotta get that in there. And we can’t — ’ and I’d say, but look at the numbers, we’ve got parents watching, with the families, and then when you break it down — ‘Yeah, but the — so many — we’ve got too many girls. We need more boys.’”

SMITH: “That’s heart-breaking.”

DINI: “And then that’s why they cancelled us, and they put on a show called Level Up, which is, you know, goofy nerds fighting CG monsters. It’s like, ‘We don’t want the girls because the girls won’t buy toys.’ We had a whole… we had a whole, a merchandise line for Tower Prep that they s***canned before it ever got off the launching pad, because it’s like, ‘Boys, boys, boys. Boys buy the little spinny tops, they but the action figures, girls buy princesses, we’re not selling princesses.’

Hey Zac, what that guy who made the comment about "Steven Universe having a male lead because only boys buy merchandise" was likely making a reference to is this recent Paul Dini and Kevin Smith interview:

Quote:

DINI: “They’re all for boys ‘we do not want the girls’, I mean, I’ve heard executives say this, you know, not Ryan(?) but at other places, saying like, ‘We do not want girls watching this show.” SMITH: “WHY? That’s 51% of the population.” DINI: “They. Do. Not. Buy. Toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show — “ SMITH: “So you can sell them T-shirts if they don’t— I disagree, A, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as f***ing boys do, but, B, sell them something else, man! Don’t be lazy and be like, ‘well I can’t sell a girl a toy.’ Sell ‘em a T-shirt, man, sell them f***ing umbrella with the f***ing character on it, something like that. But if it’s not a toy, there’s something else you could sell ‘em! Like, just because you can’t figure out your job, don’t kill chances of, like, something that’s gonna reach an audi — that’s just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same fuckers who go, like, ‘Oh, girls don’t read comics, girls aren’t into comics.’ It’s all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, ‘I can’t sell ‘em a toy, what’s the point?’ DINI: “That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’ — this is the network talking — ‘one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys, but right there.’ And then we began writing stories that got into the two girls’ back stories, and they were really interesting. And suddenly we had families and girls watching, and girls really became a big part of our audience, in sort of like they picked up that Harry Potter type of serialized way, which is what The Batman and [indistinct]’s really gonna kill. But, the Cartoon Network was saying, ‘F***, no, we want the boys’ action, it’s boys’ action, this goofy boy humor we’ve gotta get that in there. And we can’t — ’ and I’d say, but look at the numbers, we’ve got parents watching, with the families, and then when you break it down — ‘Yeah, but the — so many — we’ve got too many girls. We need more boys.’” SMITH: “That’s heart-breaking.” DINI: “And then that’s why they cancelled us, and they put on a show called Level Up, which is, you know, goofy nerds fighting CG monsters. It’s like, ‘We don’t want the girls because the girls won’t buy toys.’ We had a whole… we had a whole, a merchandise line for Tower Prep that they s***canned before it ever got off the launching pad, because it’s like, ‘Boys, boys, boys. Boys buy the little spinny tops, they but the action figures, girls buy princesses, we’re not selling princesses.’

So yeah, the execs at Cartoon network are really stupid and shortsighted for axing shows not because ratings were too low, but because the audience was too female. That might be what that forum commentor was trying to get at. They just jumped to an illogical conclusion about why Steven Universe has a male lead.