Child av---illegal?

Is pixelsex pornography?

More to the point, is pixelsex involving adult/child avatar (both operated by aduls) considered child pornography?

As for the laptop that was shoved in front of Robin's face, I'm pretty certain it was supposed to contain photographic images of a real child being abused in a texture that was being passed around within Second Life.

I still think it's lame for someone to ban all child avatars from their land because something untoward MIGHT happen SOMEDAY. A friend of mine has a clothing shop with some neko stuff, and she made some cute neko kid tails and ears; they were selling like hotcakes till the owner of the sim where she has her shop told her that she had to stop selling them because he doesn't want any potential "liability" if child avis show up. Give me a break!

I think some people are simply too stupid to realize that kid avs are not children.

Sometimes it's not stupidity as it is an unwillingness to stand up for a principle. They may not believe there is anything wrong with it, but they don't want any hassles over it so they fold up.

I agree and would like to add that people who actually think that their rabid objection to anything they see in SL that resembles child sexual abuse somehow puts them on a higher plain than others need to see a shrink fast.

Time to move.

Sheesh.

yah kids avatars are not real children and everyone knows that. They are "infantalized adults" as Mari pointed out, whether they try to block their natural sexual impulses or not (which in my opinion cant be very healthy but who am i to judge if people want to pretend they have no genitals).

and im not concerned at all about what people do with their pixiels because i understand its not real. im not confused about boundries which apparently alot of people here are. And that cant be healthy either, but as long as you stay out of my business i wont harress you for it.

People make huge leaps from bdsm based ageplay to real abuse against children. I cant imagine thats an easy line to cross can you? You would have to deliberately harm a child in real life to abuse them in this manner, knowing how harmful it is and being ok with that. And, thats a huge difference then two consenting adults in a pixel game having spankings with pet names like "Daddy"

Unfortunately no one wants to stay out of our business. So im afraid we are at an impasse. Because rules or no rules if something doesnt seem right to me im not gonna blindly go along with it or be bullied into conforming or assimilating to please you. im not gonna keep quiet when i see my friends labeled with slandurous accusations that are absurd and reactionary and have no basis in reality.

We can go around and around on this if you want to. Or you can start listening. Because im not shutting up.

Are you saying that certain acitivies performed by adults in SL lead to child sexual abuse in first life? I would be interested in reading the results of your research.

I may have misread your post and I am sorry.

no way. my position is if anyone ever acted out on a child in real life and also happened to ageplay in Second Life, that person was mentally unstable before they ever came to Second Life. They had the capacity before they ever logged in. i would never make that correlation in the first place. I was simply pointing out the vast difference between ageplay and real life child abuse. its not a easy line to cross. its the grand canyon.

I think I agree with you. Child sexual abusers in real life were not suddenly caused by somrhing in Second Life. The problem is not that simple.

If by pixelsex you mean at the level of SL graphics, then not in the US, as far as I know, although it might still be illegal obscenity.

But the point being questioned wasn't an opinion, it was an assertion of fact without substantiation. And while people generally have the right to make such statements, they don't have a right to be exempt from criticism - including harshly worded criticism.

It's taken several decades to convince society that gay men aren't child molesters going around trying to convert innocent kids. But it never should have been necessary in the first place. The strong negative emotions against gay people fifty years ago allowed such assertions to go unchallenged, in spite of the lack of evidence and sloppy reasoning. And while I'm not at all saying that child molestation is in any way acceptable or in any way comparable to being gay, I am saying that it's inexcusable to permit the same sort of sloppy, unsubstantiated reasoning to go unchallenged.

The last paragraph quoted above makes no sense. All of these activities have the possibility of taking place between RL pedophiles. There's even a possibility of a RL pedophile sellling a RL lightbulb to another RL pedophile. Lots of things are possible, what's the point?

Did you really mean to say that it's probably between RL pedophiles? If so, that certainly doesn't follow from your assertion about the appeal of the visual aspect. That's like saying that anyone who finds the visual aspect of pornography appealing is likely to cheat on a spouse. Or go to a nude beach. Or whatever. An attraction to a fictional visual image doesn't prove anything about real life activity.

Furthermore, your statement about the visual aspect being appealing doesn't follow from the argument that people would otherwise do activity 2, non-sexual ageplay. There could be many different things that draw people to this, and the difference between activities 2 and 3 is more than just some visual aspect.

Instead of jumping to conclusions about why people are doing this, why not put some energy into trying to find out for real? For starters, try to find out why some people want to be kids in these activities, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say that someone in that role wants to molest kids in RL.

I don't pretend to know the answer, and yes, what I'm suggesting is closer to a research paper in psychology than a news article. But until there really is some sound research, people shouldn't be making up the answers.