Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

I don't really understand the position of people who are upset about rights and inquisitions.
If you create a Google news page with headings pedophilia and child pornography you will find a plethora of stories about real world prosecutions and abuse. People who enjoy this content are not just playing online games. The idea of a community necessitates some kind of standards or agreements about where the lines are drawn. Real people who might enjoy Second Life, people who have suffered sexual abuse or work with peope who have , or work to prevent it, or even offenders in recovery, deserve to be able to participate without being exposed to content they find hateful, i.e. graphic iimages or language while using the search function or simply wandering through the world. There are plenty of contexts for anyone who enjoys such content to be able to do so (even in Second Life) without creating a lot of attention, but if you do enjoy thinking about children having sex you may want to consider and even talk to someone about what your real life views are. It has been found that any activity creates and strengthens neural connections in the brain. So while you may not be a pedophile, you may want to consider if you are doing any harm to yourself or others by fantasizing about such activities. The Community Standards seem designed to allow people to create and participate in whatever they like without being exposed to hateful content directed toward any group. I doubt there would be a great deal of hue and cry if it were found out that a sim owner created a game based on the Nazi holocaust or American Southern lynching and this were disallowed, but someone could argue what harm could an online game really do anyway? If you return again to our Google news page about pedophilia and child porn, there appears to be a preponderance of evidence across many social contexts that people who enjoy images of children having sex and use the internet to fantasize are expressing content that is grossly offensive to most people and may also be doing real world harm in many instances. Not everyone who does so is necessarily a criminal, people have often been abused themselves. Anyone who spends an equal amount of time reading about the real world harm done to children by adults who sexually abuse them as they do participating in virtual role play, will surely develop an aversion to the idea that these activities are the appropriate content for a game. If they do not perhaps they might develop some compassion for those who do.

Talk about thin ice...what happens if the murder victim is also a child? What happens (as in the Jamie Biulger case) when both victim AND murderer are children?

For those who don't know it...Jamie Bulger was two years old, taken away and tortured and killed by two ten year old boys. the two ten year old boys were given a custodial sentence, released after about 8 years, and given full anonymity and protection.

If they had sexually molested Jamie, but left him alive, the custodial sentence would have been approximately the same (under current UK sentencing guidelines), but they would, upon release, have been put on a sex offenders register for an extra ten years - in America, under "Megan's law", their identities would have been publically available to anyone who asked - certain media organisations are campaigning strongly for similar rights to access to the list in the UK.

If someone had a video of the murder of Jamie, they would be commiting no crime. It might be viewed as reprehnsible and offensive, yes - but nothing you could charge them with. If they had a video of the sexual abuse - again, up to ten years jail and then ten years on the sex offender's register.

Jamie was a total innocent - at two years old I can't see how anyone could argue otherwise. His attackers, at only ten years old...are they innocent, when you take into account what they did?

I expect someone will blame the parents, the upbringing...as far as I know there was nothing in their past which doesn't mirror any other ten year old boy's life...and yet not all ten year old boys are murderers.

I, personally, don't want to see videos of murder. The Gorean murder fantasies in SL disturb and revulse me deeply. But they are NOT real, and I would not campaign to have them banned. The point I am making is that as soon as sex is involved, people get very posessive. Involve children as well, and they lose ANY ability for rational thought.

Last word...despite the Linden's incredibly wishy-washy definition of age-play, I think we can all agree they are only talking about age-play with a sexual element. If I were to make a further assumption, I would say they are FAR more concerned if that activity involves an apparently adult avatar engaged with an apparently child avatar. What would be the community's reaction to seeing an adult avatar killing a child avatar on one of these machines? Greater, equal, or less revulsion than seeing them together on a pair of sexual poseballs?

I must admit I am not 100% happy about child role play at all, even if there is no sexual element, mainly because I think there may be a fair chance such people may be unduly emotionally vulnerable. Perhaps (like some others) they are seeking to use Second Life as an escape from the first life, of which they may have issues coping with.

In short I think such vulnerable people could be exploited, and as a mature citizen of both this world and the first one, I accept the fact that a civilised society has a duty of care for those of which may not be wholly functional.

That is my personal view but I accept this view goes beyond the now current overall Linden Ban underage on sex role-play.

However those of us who live on private Island Estates may wish to petition the Sim owners to modify their covenants to completely prohibit underage sexual role play within their own title land and to eject avatars who breeched this rule even in private. This would provide a robust legal defence.

Certainly the Caledon Sims has this rule about underage sex, so it is nothing new.

Please note I am NOT talking about the more common adult desire to muse upon the classic and willing 16/17-year-old mini skirted young lady.

Finally I do not have such strong views about other role play groups such as the fur people or the Goreans for example, neither do I have (I hope) any real hang ups with any other issues of race, creed, colour, gender, or any other sexual male/female avatar adult orientation

And here we are again...the two statments above give us, quite neatly "The only opinion that matters is mine"

16/17 would be outlawed in some American states (I forget the actual age of consent - but certainly 18, and in some states I think it may still be 21)

And the fact that you have no strong views about anything else means it's okay with you, so it can continue. Gee thanks. I _DO_ have strong views about it...particularly the ability to murder various avatars in a variety of unpleasant ways. Concenting adults they may be, but to take your fisrt point, anyone who consents to being murdered I would hope would meet your definition of "vulnerable".

And yet...it should continue. So should ageplay. It is not my responsibility to make the rules for others, other than to protect others from them. Killing a few pixels hurts no one. Making a few pixels jump up and down on a poseball hurts no one. The current trend of prosecuting people for actions likely to LEAD to a crime (and for that matter, invading countries because you think they might, one day, possibly attack you) is too "Minority Report" to even be funny.

So right now I'm going to go and beat up the guy next door, because he looked at me funny. He MUST be planning something.

A key statement - perhaps *the* key statement.

As a community, it *is* our responsibility to make rules for others, and enforce them.

Take driving over the speed limit. It's generally.... Safe! Millions do it every day, to no ill effect.

So how dare society say I must drive slower? Help, I'm being oppressed because someone *else* might drive too fast and get hurt!

Well, yeah. That's how it works. It is - dare I say it? Rational.


It's *completely* rational not to take up the pedophile-by-definition 'cause' of child rape as entertainment.

The speeding laws example you cite, Desmond, falls under the "protecting others from them" clause, because a reckless speeder's actions directly, immediately and demonstrably put others in danger. Same guy takes same car out on the track by himself and drives it even faster, the law has no problem with him, because he is not endangering anyone else. Prove the danger to others, and you have a case. Fail to prove it, you don't have a case. Claim the danger exists not because you have any proof but because you "feel" and say it exists, and you have become just another would-be dictator. Then everybody else has a duty to disarm you, so you don't endanger others.

Quite clearly proving as I said that people lose rationality. Don't think I ever said that real child rape would be entertainment anywhere. You want to shut down THOUGHT. Good luck with that.

Edit: nice to see the "scare" tactic is still in use too...anything but 100% agreement with the "anti" movement, and, well, you must be one of them too...

There's a speeding law, regardless of 'reckless' or not. Exceed X, get in trouble. Period. The law does tell you what you can and can't do, regardless of proof.

There's nothing that proves that you or I specifically are a danger. Nothing at all!

In fact, I used to be an automotive engineer and did a lot of high speed testing.

Does that allow me to speed on our public roads? No!




Griffin, simulation of child rape is *not* thought.

By your same arguments people should be able to simulate a good ol' racially motivated lynching here because it's 'thought'. It isn't.



Nope, I personally don't think you enjoy simulated child rape. I think you are setting up a situation where everything in the world is allowed, in the name of 'freedom of thought.'

I love how some wish to frame this issue as "right-wingers" being against this, as if this were a political issue. This is not about politics. I myself am quite liberal. This is about a business maintaining healthy public relations and ensuring that SL doesn't fail. The economy is delicate, how do you think it would react of a major scandal regarding ageplay was widely publicized and LL was found to have turned a blind eye? Not only would you see a drop in new accounts, but also a drop in investors willing to put money up to develop.

I recall the scandal with Yahoo chat, where yahoo was found to have turned a blind eye to ageplay rooms, pedophile rooms, and child pornography rooms. What happened? A major scandal broke loose, there were criminal investigations into individuals, and Yahoo was found to have ignored the issue. How did Yahoo respond? By disabling the ability to create custom chat rooms entirely. Because of the scandal, they were forced to overcorrect and show that they were willing to take drastic action.

SL is trying to prevent such a similar situation taking place by acting now, and while it is a step in the right direction, I believe there needs to be an outright ban on all sexual ageplay in entirety, as well as snuff and rape roleplay. It isn't about morality, it is about the long-term survivability of the whole of SL.

If the ageplayers which to frame the issue in terms of morals, they will loose. A simple question: if you are not attracted sexually to children, then why would you roleplay a scenario in which child avatars engage in sexual situations? There is no difference between a pedophile and an ageplayer except in the semantics-twisting rhetoric of the ageplayer.

Griffin and Har

A fair percentage of human communication is non verbal and/or non written. It is easy to quote somebody out of context and it is also relatively easy to misunderstand the spoken word

For example the points you make about the age of human consent are quite valid, they vary considerably throughout the world and in some cases they are sexual orientation gender specific.

For example in the UK, my home country, the general age of sexual consent is 16.

But until fairly recently there have been anomalies. For example for homosexuals it was at one time 21 or 18. Another point is that unrelated young adults living in the same house as part of a family may have a situation where the age of consent is 18 with regard to having sexual relations with each other. The common example is step children from multiple marriages

This link here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3699814.stm gives one example of why sexual relationship with children is wholly wrong. It is from the BBC (UK Gov organisation) so it is okay to click….

Different standards apply across the world on the age of sexual consent

But…..better minds than mine have realised that the act of a sexual relationship with a child is deviant and damaging behaviour to the child and the adult and like other fantasies can be reinforced by repetition.

That is one reason why child sex abusers can quite often come from a background where they themselves were abused, and by repeating the act in their own adulthood are reliving the experiences they had as children.

Second Life is a highly viable media that can be very realistic. I know this from direct and personal experience because I personally am afraid of heights. In my very early days in Second Life it took an act of will to walk my avatar across any bridge or construction that was above the SL natural un-powered height ceiling.

Therefore I can fairly say that virtual sex in some circumstances must be quite realistic, as sex, together with fear are very strong emotions

These reasons are why I am so strongly against virtual child sex and role play

I agree with you about your comments about murder and violence, which is wrong too in most circumstances. Again after various incidents even hardened Police and ex Service personnel can have a need for counselling, mainly because they replay the same incident in their mind over and over again.

This point increases my first view about repetition and deviant behaviour.

Any civilised society either virtual or first life NEEDS some basic rules, laws, constraints. Again to go with your point about war and killing you must have noticed many areas within Second Life actively ban virtual weapons and most of Second Life is not avatar damaged enabled.

So to conclude, in some cases our virtual society within Second Life is more superior than that of first life, certainly as far as damage violence and killing is concerned.

We just need to get up to speed with sex.

Finally virtual or natural sex between two or more adults is natural, can be healthy, and I am certainly not against it. -

I hope this post helps.

Regards

John

Argument seems to be drifitng here...in all cases what I am arguing for assumes there are adults controlling the Avatars.

And a comment on what someone said; "simulated child rape is *not* thought"...whilst in real life, sex with a child is always rape, in SL it is not...again, because there is an adult behind the avatar. Terms like this are all part of the exaggeration of what happens in SL, again based on the very simple fact that someone else doesn't like it, and will overstate the situation in order to move to the result that they want.

As regards the racist lynching...to turn that around, I'm sure there a lot of people in SL who would quite happily run an Ageplayer lynching. This is the whole thing with the pedophile argument...there's a lot of mob mentality out there, and you'll find a VERY high "killin's too good for 'em" opinion. In fact, in my country, we have had pedophiles murdered - we have also had SUSPECTED pedophiles murdered, because of the "no smoke without fire" way of thinking.

And no convictions of those responsible.

So we live in a society where a guy who takes pictures of a fifteen year old in underwear (that was the actual accusation for which the guy was never convicted) faces a death sentence, and the person who kills him is a hero. Sorry, but I'm not keen on glorifying murderers, no matter how well intentioned they may believe themselves to be.

And as a poster in another thread has finally enlightened me that NO-one is going to change their minds on this subject, I am calling an end to my contriibution here. I don't expect Linden Labs to change their minds either. Their "Your World, Your Imagination" tag line now seems to ring a little hollow.

Simulated lynching is over the line - regardless of who is being lynched.

That's hate speech stuff and I don't think there was ever a time that it was okay on the grid. Though I don't doubt that many would want to, it's still not right.


And as far as people changing minds... I'm one who has changed my opinion. I used to not really care what anyone did on the grid.

But as a parent and as someone who cares about this place I think we are about to end up like Yahoo did if we don't speak up. No pedophile suspect is going to be killed by mistake, simply because they couldn't simulate child-rape on the grid.

Yeah, John, your post does help.

Adults who want to have sex with children are obviously sick people. They need psychiatric help. That is a sickness. When they act on these impulses and actually have sex with children, or try to, what they are doing is very destructive, not only to the children but to society in general. That is a crime. Society obviously has a right to protect itself from that.

"Community standards" is something else, but similar. By that phrase we mean there are behaviors so offensive to the vast majority of people that flaunting them in public is an assault on the sensibilities of everyone subjected to it. "Community standards" is a relative concept. There are things you wouldn't say or do in a church during a wedding because they would horrify everybody that you would say or do at a stag party and be cheered on for, and everyone understands that. But people learn the norms, and generally abide by them, and violators of those norms are, generally speaking, being antisocial. Society will protect itself against that too. If society does not take a stand against such offensive behavior, the people doing it naturally begin to think it is somehow socially "ok." Society needs to dispel that notion, too. I think it is "community standards" and "norms" you are mostly addressing.

Apply this to SL.

First, crime. In another thread, someone reported a case where some malevolent individual "trapped" a child avatar in an innocent setting, a child avatar of someone who was NOT interested in sex at all, and tried to force the child avatar into a rape animation.The person relating this tale helped the victim, evidently not experienced with SL, to teleport to safety. This is an actual case of virtual crime: an actual (to the extent pixels on a screen can be "actual" attempted rape in SL. this was not play-acting between consenting adults. It appears to the people involved to have been someone who thought the outcry against sexual ageplay going on while he was doing this would make it "ok" to act out against a random ageplayer. I urged them both not only to report this abuse to LL but to see if LL could alert RL law enforcement to keep an eye on him, because this sounded to me like someone who might well be a danger in real life to real-life children. (LL, which generally does not discuss punitive actions, reported back in this case that it had "done the right thing." This was a case where zero tolerance is very probably doing the world a big favor.

Now, community standards. We have people in SL - some have posted in other threads - who were themselves victims of child molesters. We have parents of children who have witnessed or heard of crimes against children in their own neighborhoods and are terribly afraid. I suspect we have some people who are desperately trying to repress pedophilic impulses in themselves. These people have a right to be able to go about their SL lives without having depraved images and advertisements thrust on them that disturb almost anyone and are nothing short of traumatic to them. We have a "community standard" here that could hardly be more clear. And that is what LL has now made policy: "Sexual ageplay," as it is known, done or advertised in public, is now prohibited. Pedophiles have been put on notice that it is not "ok." The policy is proving effective: before this ban went out, I did a search for "ageplay," and counted 63 SL locations and "escorts" who were making it quite plain that they were offering sexual ageplay. Yesterday, I repeated the search, and found six or seven were left (one was ambiguous) - and 13 hits that were mostly emphatically stating "NO ageplay." I am sure those six or seven stragglers will be gone shortly, if they are not already. This has already made SL a better place for everybody.

What we are left with now are two things: People who still want or need to vent their feelings against child-molesting, and people who want to go beyond what is now in place and hunt down and throw out anyone who does these simulations in private, for whatever reason, but between consenting adults. I think we can all sympathize with the people who still must vent.

It is the others who are a problem: Those who would turn prosecution (of demonstrable offenses against society) into seeking out people in cases where people are expressing feelings, impulses or thoughts privately, where no-one has been hurt or offended - in a word, introducing the principle of Thought Crimes into SL. This is a very dangerous precedent, because once intorduced, it will inevitably be applied, little step by little step, far beyond pedophilia and far beyond even sex, potentially against almost anybody somebody else has decided is offensive to them. LL has stated it will not go there, and that is right.

Too little mentioned in all this is the need to find ways to keep RL minors out of the adult grid. LL has also stated it is working on an effective means of age verification. To me, this is far more important a matter to deal with. Seems to me that is what we now need to concentrate on.

As an aside to this, I should note that amongst the various SL kids I know, as well as chatter on some of the kid lists, griefing is waaay up against us since this came out - which is common whenever this kinda stuff comes up. Dun matter what kinda kid we are, we're all assumed to be guilty.

Mari
(burned yesterday, as well as posed for a couple sims)

To the defenders of Sexual Age-players' freedoms:

Tell you what -



Then we can have this debate again. Becuase unless you do those things theres No Way Linden Labs can realisitcaly allow sexual ageplay to continue as it was.

I was not going to comment on this but today, I was shopping at a location. There is a way to update products by a receptecle on the wall but I could not figure out how to work it. Another customer comes in so I turn around to ask them if they know how to update. I was shocked and surprised to see what looked to be a 10y/o girl avatar wearing a ballgag and the profile when I looked was full of disgusting ageplay things. It was one of those times where you have to teleport away before you forget your manners and say something.

I have met child avatars in SL without any nasty things in their profile. One night skydiving at Abbots with 6 people, 3 were little boy avatars, acting well like kids and wearing full skydiving uniforms with one of those board things. I know a few more and I dont think they should be forbidden to run around like they wish.

But this dressing like a Bratz doll while in the guise of a small child and having things like 8year old escort in the profile should be not allowed in public at all!!!

Send a complaint to LL, Maja, in case they somehow miss your post here.

It varies between 16 and 18, depending upon the states. There may be higher ages on the books for m/m or f/f behaviors, but a Supreme Court decision in recent years calls those into question. Basically, the age of majority at 18 applies to everything except alcohol. The only reason alcohol is allowed to be higher is that the amendment which repealed prohibition is interpreted as giving the states extra control over alcohol.

There are various exceptions. In many states there's an age delta defense, so that it's not illegal for an 18 year old to have sex with a 17 year old, but it would be for a 25 year old. Typical deltas are 3-5 years. There are also exceptions for marriage, since it's still legal for people under 16 to get married with parental consent in many states.

I don't have time to do a whole lot of research, but I have a strong recollection that 30-40 years ago, there were a number of states with age of consent as low as 14. That's FWIW.

I fail to see where the age of consent has anything to do with this discussion.

The Age required for inclusion into SL main grid is 18

The minimum avatar age used in a sexual contex is 18

The US internet universal minimum age for adult content is 18

All that age of consent matters is if adults really like young men/women they can go to those places with a lower consent and try their luck.

Doesnt make it right, just "legal"

The age of consent usually doesn't correspond to the age at which you're allowed to appear in "adult" material. It's that age which really matters on SL - since after all, no-one has real sex in SL, but by looking at someone you're downloading a picture of them.

Also irrelevant but interesting - Lesbian sex is legal in many countries in which sex between gay males is not.

In no country I saw is the reverse true.



what a world.

I just posted that as an F.Y.I. sort of thing since age of consent is being discussed in this thread. Since it is worldwide data, it shows that certain countries have ages as low as 14, (although it doesn't include laws on internet data and images) and people from those countries may feel their sexual ageplay is normal due to the RL legality of their age of consent. I am not making excuses for them, just noticing something.

yep was quoting you but mainly replying to them and their dumb age of consent arguement.

What parent of a 14 year old age of consent or not is going to be okay with their son/daughter being sexually involved with a grown man/woman?

But is it not a slippery slope argument you made in response to Mr. Reitveld's post. Indicating that you believed there were hundred's of pedophiles using SL to recruit other pedophiles into their ranks.

I suspect you would struggle to produce evidence of even one. You don't like age play, so you stamp it out. Yet you have no proof that ageplay between consenting adults produces even one single case of RL harm to a child. You are simply offended by age play, because in your opinion, it is bad. Well in some people's opinions, the world is flat. I am far more afraid of your presence in SL harming our children, and offending my morality with you narrow minded, baseless rhetoric. Ignorance is a choice, and you have made it.