Tuesday 16 January 2007

Pic of the day: Are 14 year old girls in bathing suits "depictions that sexualize children"? Kazuto from the anime World of Narue does seem to think so, but then again he is 14 himself. Oh, and if you live in Norway you may have to format your hard disk now or go to Hell jail.

Child porn for children?

I'm not an expert on child porn, thank the Light. The lack of expertise reflects lack of experience, I am happy to say. Or at least that's what I thought. Then, one of these days, I actually read the Norwegian penal code, §204a, which forbids child pornography here. Until that minute I had assumed that children were, you know, children. Those smallish people with hair only on their heads, and without the typical male or female proportions of an adult. Possibly some budding teens as well, still easily distinguished from adults. Not so.

A child is anyone under 18, or who pretends to be under 18. (There is no exception for those under 18 who pretend to be over 18, and often pretend it quite effectively. So basically anyone who doesn't look reasonably middle-aged could be a child.) Any "depiction" that "sexualizes" these people is child porn. The law does not spesifically say photography, so perhaps anime that show teenagers as having sexual attraction (even if they never act on it) is forbidden too? (Because, you know, in the real world boys under 18 never get distracted by short skirts or tight sweaters...)

Not only does this make nearly all normal Norwegians pedophiles. It also collides at the speed of thought with the age of consent in Norway, which is 16 and more likely to fall than rise (it is 15 in neighboring Sweden). So basically you can have hot sweaty sex with your girlfriend every night for almost two years and then go to prison for years if she sends you an MMS showing off her new underwear.

There is an exception to this if you both are the same age, 16-18. But even then, photos must be taken by the person who keeps them, and individual agreement is needed in each case. Yes, this means that a 17 year old boy can't look at "sexualized" pictures of random girls his own age. He can presumably look at older women, but not those his own age. The same holds true for the girls, of course, but they mostly tend that way in any case.

Dude, if you don't need porn until you're 18, you'll never need it. This is the age when people think about sex every ten minutes (or was that ten seconds? I have forgotten). What's worse, this is the age where they live at home and their parents generally slyly sabotage any attempt to get laid on or near the premises. Through their God-given genes, their Creator loudly proclaims: GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY! but due to the evils of the capitalist system with its division of labor and correspondingly long educaton, the best they can hope for is Kleenex and the underwear catalog. (Not that I recommend that, of course. I am describing, not prescribing.)

Now, it's not like people can't live without porn. That's not the point. The point is that, according to Norwegian law, there is no difference between a guy taping baby rape and a 17 year old boy staring at the breasts of a 17 year old girl. I'm sorry, but this just failed the Common Sense exam.

I guess I could put this in a larger context. Regular readers will know what I think about treating teenagers as children: Basically it is a crime against nature, or against the Creator for us who believe in one. These people don't have sexual urges because they want to spite their parents and The Establishment, nor is it some kind of cosmic mistake. The mistake is in a society that comes up with pseudoscientific explanations that make your first ten adult years sound like some kind of pupal stage where your brain is dissolved and put back together in its correct adult form. More about that sooner or later, I am sure, if I am alive and writing.