Zero Tolerance = Zero Common Sense

Yes, but on the other hand, that's just stupid, isn't it?

yes, totally

but it did happen

Yes, totally, but it has absolutely nothing to do with GTA 4 apart from that somebody said it made them do it.

At which point one should really have banned God several centuries ago.

It might well be stupid... But stupid people exist.

I don't suppose there is a right or wrong answer to this topic, but suffice to say any images of child pornography in this country are illegal, whether genuine or faked. And with good reason.

Sexual ageplay could be deemed as something similar over here, and could result in access to sl being banned if that kind of activity was allowed.

Gambling and ...banking... don't really elicit revulsion as much as child porn but they are banned as well. LL made a financial decision not a moral one to ban all three.

If "Role Play is Role Play", then how can ANY example of roleplaying have "no relevance"? You're contradicting yourself.

Nope. It's not a contradiction Dakota. It's a statement meant to state that Role Play is just that - Role Play, IE: Not Real.

Star Trek is also not real. So how does Star Trek roleplaying have no relevance?

/me peeks in

Maaaan... this is still goin' on?

/me zips out

We haven't reached the minimum 200 posts for an ageplay thread.

She is below six feet!

BURN THE WITCH!

In relation to this topic?

Since you felt you really had to ask, I will be more specific: Your example of star Trek Role Play has no relevance here.

Then again you will not find many odd kinks and the like within that Genre unless you detract from it in a rather large and fundamental way or add a secondary element to it.

The line between fantasy and reality is also a bit more clearly defined in such a Genre, I have only known one person who thought that he lived in the star Trek Universe - he treated everything like one massive Holodeck Simulation.

I do not mean the next part as being offensive but he was also a Special Education Student at the time that I knew him and was kept under close watch.

Originally Posted by Ponsonby Low
If you advocate depictions of child sex, then you are advocating child sex.

I don't see how you can get around that.




You may be confused, here: "advocate" doesn't mean 'think a certain way' or 'have certain images in your mind' or 'assign certain meaning to various images in your mind'.

It means, in this context, to support.

So my meaning was: if you support or speak out in favor of depictions of child sex, then you are implicitly supporting the actual practice of child sex.

I know that advocates of depicting child sex deny this connection quite vehemently.

But that doesn't change the fact that it's there.

Not all the denials in the world can accomplish that particular magic trick.

(I'm still waiting for one of the advocates to address the analogy of the website that soliticits depictions of animal torture--the one in which the proprieter of the site said 'hey, the fact that I run this site doens't mean that I support ACTUAL animal torture!!!!' I'm still waiting for one of the pro-depictions-of-child-sex people to explain how this ISN'T hypocritical claptrap.)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponsonby Low
I notice that you completely ignored the point made by Brann Georgia ("To condone it as a fun time here in SL is suggesting that it is not to be taken seriously in RL."





Okay, now I'M the one who's confused (unless you're an alt account for Solar Legions, who is the person I was addressing, there.)




As I've said earlier, most people make a distinction between what concerns children---including depictions of children---and what concerns adults.

/me clutches her hard hat

That's not more specific; it's the exact same thing you said already. WHY is star trek roleplay not relevant? You said "Role Play is Role Play".

Yes, Dakota, it is more specific as I have told you in quite clear words exactly why it is not relevant.

Kindly go back and read the entire post, word for word instead of fixating on what you wish to fixate on.

An explanation was offered after the lines you have quoted.

Please refrain from replying until the entire post has been read.

If you still have confusion after reading that rather blunt explanation, please do not ask me again.

It does not get any clearer.

Okay.



You say "that Genre", as opposed (presumably) to the "genre" of the topic we're discussing. By this, do you mean that Star trek roleplay is not relevant because it does not involve some kind of sexual activity?

I mean that as an example it is irrelevant for the reason that the only things that you will find being played out in sexual situations are the 'accepted' kinks, under normal circumstances.

The original examples I gave are ones that at the least are hotly debated by some concerning what - if any - real life kink or morally and societally wrong kinks/fetishes/actions that the Second Life indulgence in such may or may not cause.

On any other forum, such examples and admittance to having played such things would have been met with dozens of griefers and the like crying and moaning that I must be into some sick, perverted interactions.

A pity that these very people cannot see the forest for the trees.

Much of this debate about sexual ageplay seems to be coalescing, as I think it should, around the question of what actual harm does it do. There seem to be four primary answers:

1. It creates a threat to the viability of LL and therefore the survival of SL. True. More than sufficient reason to ban its public or at least readily observable display in SL.

2. It viscerally offends nearly everyone's sense of public decency. True, but a more debatable reason for banning it, especially in the context of a place where rape, torture and debasement are widely played out by the BDSM crowd and slavery among the Goreans. If you ban one because people are offended by it, it is hard to argue against banning everything that offends someone, resulting in SL becoming like Disneyland shortly before it shuts down for good because of lack of interest.

3. People who engage in sexual ageplay must be pedophiles and therefore must be treated as pariahs. This argument is sometimes extended to include people who disagree with the person declaring "I Forbid," or to anyone who shows up in SL with a child avatar or even a short adult avatar. False.

It has been reported in a prior thread that some BDSM folks use sexual ageplay to enhance the fantasy of an all-powerful "dom/me" abuser exercising total control over a submissive, powerless "sub," and the adult-child power disparity enhances that fantasy for them; it's not about pedophilia at all for them. It also happens that I was acquainted with the person operating the child avatar in the infamous German TV video clip, in which her child avatar performed fellatio on an avatar looking like a revoltingly obese middle-aged man. She was a woman in her late 20s who had herself been raped and abused as a child and was using SL sexual ageplay in an effort to deal with her own issues about that abuse and sexuality in general ("desensitization" is a common psychotherapeutic technique). I am dubious about the wisdom of doing this, but would hardly want to be the one to prevent her from attempting what had become a very important effort for her to deal with her problems. There may well be other reasons for people to experiment with this patently offensive roleplay.

In general, I think it is a mistake to make outcasts of people in SL for what we suppose is in their minds, because we don't really know; it is necessary to confine our casting out to responding to their actual behavior.

4. The argument that it may inspire pedophiles to go act out their fantasies on RL children. This one has to be taken a lot more seriously, since it alleges horrifying RL consequences.

I know little about pedophiles in particular, but people in general commonly use fantasy as a way to express or reduce "forbidden" urges or felt needs that they cannot or dare not fulfill in RL. Starving prisoners routinely fantasized about food in World War II prison camps, for instance; survivors of torpedoed ships spending days in the salt sea fantasized about drinking cool, fresh water, etc. People in unhappy relationships often fantasize about sex with a more satisfactory partner. More mundanely, it is a common, and harmless, way of "letting off steam." Pretty much everyone has done it in one context or another; in SL, obviously quite a few do it with only one hand operating the keyboard.

On the other hand, some people respond to a "forbidden" urge by repressing it; i.e., denying its very existence and avoiding or attacking anything or anyone that might remind them of it. For them, even fantasy can be dangerous: It poses the risk they will lose control of their repressed urges and suddenly act out in a compulsive, uncontrollable, irrational, and possibly violent way. I think "repressers" tend to impute their method of dealing with unacceptable impulses onto others, in this case, onto pedophiles.

I think it is certainly arguable that the phenomenon of sexual ageplay in venues like SL instead might serve as a safety valve for pedophiles trying to avoid the awful consequences of their obsession if it is expressed in RL. It is even arguable that it might thereby reduce assaults on RL children by pedophiles who thereby are able to keep their urges under control far more than it triggers assaults by inflamed pedophiles.

But this is all speculation. We do not know about the state of mind of pedophiles. In the absence of knowledge, this argument has no validity, because as far as we can tell, it is possible that preventing it could actually do more harm than good. It is unwise to base public policy on hysterical accusation and supposition. If someone wants to argue for this as a basis of policy, they need to back it up with facts, not their mere assertions alone. We have seen plenty of assertions; facts are woefully absent.

As I was skimming the responses, I did not realize whom you meant this for and thought it was more of a comment to many of us -- I had quoted part of Brann's statements also.





Regardless of people viewing adult stuff differently that child stuff does not necessarily make that type of thinking correct or justified.

By that line of thinking, if I support people being raped here, it would seem that I am advocating it in RL. However, you seem to be saying that if I support something related to children in SL, it means I support it in RL, but supporting something related to adults does not mean I support it in RL? You cannot have it both ways.



The truth is that people simply get very irrational and emotional where children are concerned -- and quite often it is justified, but must still be recognized for what it is.

As far as why it currently is or is not allowed in SL, this is all that really matters.

Ah, OK that's fine. So we've established that it's perfectly OK and even reasonable to distinguish between different types of roleplay based on their subject matter.

The arbitrary division you're creating vis-a-vis this particular tangent is between what you think of as "controversial" sex stuff versus "accepted" sex stuff. In a post above you've indicated that you don't think sexual ageplay should be considered different from any other kind of less-controversial roleplaying because it is "not really happening" - it's roleplay, not reality. Yet now when I mention another type of roleplay, you say it doesn't count in the discussion because it's not "controversial enough". So in other words, sexual ageplay SHOULD be considered different from, say, starTrek roleplay.

That's contradiction. Is all roleplay the same, or is it not? If it is, then you cannot object to any example of roleplay, no matter how vanilla. And if not, then you cannot object to anybody else's arbitrary division of roleplay - say, for example, like "Types of roleplay that involve acts with kids that are illegal in RL versus Any other type of roleplay".



But nobody so much as looked twice, in THIS forum. Perhaps that makes this forum "more progressive" than "any other forum". If that's true, I think it's important to note that a bunch of folks who are more progressive than most STILL have a problem with depictions of child abuse, even fantastical ones.

My son does not have a Myspace account because he is not 14. He does not talk to anyone online without his mother knowing about it. He does not have a Bebo account. He is not allowed to use the computer without supervision. He does not go to the mall alone. I know who his friends are and I have met their parents. I PARENT. I parent everyday and I never get a vacation from parenting. This is my life and I love my son and I make sure that I can do everything in my power to give him a chance to grown up safely.

Any adult that fantasizes about having sex with children is sick. You don't like what I have to say, too bad.

Dakota, let me lay this out for you, so you can clearly grasp and understand this - M'kay?

1. You are LOOKING for a contradiction where none exists.
2. This Thread, and the topics/examples I have given relate more to the sexual aspect of Role Play than the non-sexual aspect.
3. This thread, the topics I have brought up and all examples I have given have been linked to/falsely accused of being linked to potentially objectionable kinks.
4. In this context, weeding out the styles and genres of RP that cannot be filed under such possibly objectionable material is perfectly fine.
5. Never once did I make any references to Child Abuse. Sexual Age Play != Child Abuse as the age range is far too vast.
6. The only reason that the people who would normally speak out when confronted with my liking fur/soft things is simply because they do not post or come here.
7. This apparent need of yours to attempt to place a contradiction in where none exists is tiresome, bothersome and is quite frankly .... irksome.

I have kept silent until now but reading this I ask you to consider, if roleplay really is "real" then what of films and acting? There are many abhorrent things being depicted in films, many of those things happen to children as well as adults. Do those actors who play those roles (roleplaying) really going to be having a desire to do those things for real too?
By the same argument no film should even depict murder, rape, torture and other types of violence and degradation for the same reasons. If roleplay is to be considered real then Anthony Hopkins should be considered to be a murderous cannibal at heart due to his awesome portrayal of Hannibal Lector.
Television, computer games would have to be totally sanitised or is society saying these other things we depict today are fine?
Even books, a depiction is a depiction regardless of text or graphic which leads us into advocating book prohibition also.

Be careful of going down the roleplay is "real" way of thinking, even playing a robber in a game of cops and robbers as a child might be seen as an early indication of a criminal mind. Extreme? perhaps but if roleplay is "real" where does the line get drawn?