Proof
I wonder how one can prove that cartoon people are of a certain age, considering the difficulty in doing that with real people, let alone cartoon characters that are not likely to carry ID on their person.
Danes work up head of steam over manga exhibition
A manga exhibition in a Danish museum is attracting protestors concerned that material on display depicts fictional children in a sexual manner. The exhibition opened on Sunday in the Kunsthallen Brandts' media museum in the city of Odense, and is due to run through to late October. According to museum curator Christian Hviid …
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 17:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
not always that difficult
A lot of shota/loli-con stuff is in the line of 'slash fiction' (wonder when they're going to get around to banning that) - it depicts characters from other popular manga/anime series doing things they would, erm, never do there. These characters obviously have well-established profiles and backstories, so it would be hard to argue that the characters in the loli were actually entirely different and significantly older characters who just happened to look, dress, act and speak exactly the same.
Even when they're entirely original and not using someone else's characters, they often have characters in very age-specific clothing and situations (which apparently is all part of the attraction...) such as attending school, wearing school uniforms. Again, it'd be a bit tough to argue that they're *actually* eighteen year olds who just happen to look like second graders, dress in second grade uniforms, and attend second grade at school without anyone being surprised...
(posted anonymously for obvious reasons, though it's kind of sad I have to do this just because I happen to know something about the genre. Most anime/manga fans do, by osmosis.)
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 23:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
In Japan...
Just come back from 3 weeks in Japan, and it is actually very common to see young women (up to 30) wearing what looks like a school uniform to me.
Also the Japanese have a bit of a facination with women having almost no marks on their skin (which is how you often work out how old someone is) - just think of Maiko and the way that their entire face is is painted white.
However, saying all that, as a Westerner, (with westerner brainwashing)** it seems a bit questionable.
**When I say brainwashing, I mean the way that anyone who interacts with a child, or takes photographs that include children is a child molester...
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Friday 27th August 2010 10:05 GMT heyrick
Who's a schoolgirl really?
"Again, it'd be a bit tough to argue that they're *actually* eighteen year olds who just happen to look like second graders, dress in second grade uniforms, and attend second grade at school without anyone being surprised..."
What, you mean like most of the school girls in the movies? Hell, I think some are near enough my age, and I'm more than twice as old as I was when I left school!
Maybe if we had actual children in actual children's parts, we wouldn't get all confused. See? It's all Hollywood's fault. Next!
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 13:15 GMT chr0m4t1c
It's not that simple
IIRC, The Simpsons first appeared in 1987 and Lisa was 8.
That makes her about 31 now.
OK, so she's a freak of nature, but not a child anymore.
Wait...Which bit matters? Is it the subject being a child or looking like a child? And where does that leave the fashion industry where a lot of the models look like 12 year old boys?
No, I can't get my head around this stuff either.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 15:55 GMT Adam Foxton
No child was harmed
No harm, nothing actually bad happened except in someone's head.
These bans should be repealed. People think sick things, people think things that just wouldn't be acceptable in polite society. But to be honest, they're just thoughts. Put pen to paper and write them out or draw them, and it's just a bit of text or a drawing.
If these suggest that someone _could_ have committed an offence, say if the drawing resembled a rape scene and included details not released to the press, or if the text is "DIE, $recent_murder_victim" then the police should investigate it.
If they don't, then surely there's no reason to get worried about these things? No-one's been hurt to get that actual picture, there's no indication that anyone was hurt in the making of it, so it is a crime that is victimless.
A victimless crime should not exist on the law books- the concept of Justice cannot work without a defendant and an alleged victim whose testimony and rights/responsibilities are balanced with the evidence
Yes, you find it offensive. And yes, you worry. So don't socialise with the artists. Don't visit their exhibitions and don't invite them round to look after your kids if you're that worried.
I find protests like this offensive- the very idea that you could make something "safe" by banning it (otherwise known as pushing it underground, closing the group that partakes in this activity and so leading to a positive feedback loop that makes them more and more extreme until it does start bursting out of that group and into real life) is a dangerous one that smacks of simple animalistic fear and short-sightedness. And those are two things that I really find offensive.
Oh, and actual child raping paedos should be hung up by their testicles and get torn apart by rabid dogs.
Not posted anonymously (because I'm confident that not only am I right but I can prove it properly).
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 15:58 GMT Larry Sanger
Small correction
The pic that is I am said to have pointed out earlier is not, in fact, one that I reported to the FBI. The worst images I saw were not in Commons' "Lolicon" category but in their "Pedophilia" category. Yes, Wikimedia Commons actually had a "Pedophilia" category and then dutifully filled it up with quite explicit and realistic drawings of children engaged in sex acts. Last I checked--which was, admittedly, some months ago--the Wikimedia Foundation had still not removed these images. Given their intransigence, I doubt they have been removed.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 15:58 GMT David Webb
Not manga
It's a genre within manga, Hentai/Echii, hentai being Japanese for "perverted". Manga itself isn't perverted at all, some are really nice family stories, the Echii though are to get around Japans very strict censorship laws (no pubic hair....).
An example, Hagar could be considered a manga, Peanuts too, except it's a cartoon because it's western, but a similar publication in Japan would be a manga. When it's animated it becomes anime, most animes are based on mangas, and if anyone can find anything perverted about...
http://www.crunchyroll.com/chis-sweet-home
that, then they really need to see a shrink!
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 17:31 GMT Henry Wertz 1
Well..
"I wonder how one can prove that cartoon people are of a certain age"
Well, I found the claim that everyone in a few animes I've seen were over 18 or over 21 fairly dubious (why they claimed it I don't know, since these were sci-fi action shows and the worst they did was maybe smoke a cigarette).
(boilerplate): "Everybody in this show is over 18"
(student): "Boy, this first day of high school sure is difficult".
We'd laugh and comment on how many years these students must have been held back 8-)
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 09:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Henry Wertz 1, 24th August 2010 17:31 GMT
do you honestly believe that all the teenagers that appear on the Disney Channel/Movies are in actual fact teenagers?
how about p0rn films that take place in a highschool or collage (western films mind you), do you honestly believe those are teenagers as well?
there is a difference between the age of the character in the story and the age of the actor in real life. In the case of anime, the only real thing about them, are the writer, artiest and voice actor (if voiced), all of which by the way are over 18.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 17:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
As a Dane...
... I´de hate for us to go down the same mental police road as our fellow Scandinavians. I thought we had always stood for rationality and level headedness. But I guess as we are slowly nearing a election thats been put aside for media stunts and cheap voter points.
Ano because i dont want my head scanned for none approved thought.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 17:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Don't these people see a problem
with making the possession of drawings of child pornography the same level offence as the real thing.
Haven't these fools heard the phrase "I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb"
I'm damn sure the paedo's have and they will trade in their drawings for pictures of real kids increasing the number of kids that are abused.
The arm waving, Daily Mail incited hysterical mob have a lot to answer for.
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 09:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
hmmmm
tell that to all the drug dealers in prison at the moment. or the people done for speeding etc... there is no harm done there and certainly no victim.
the law doesnt care about people
<anon as someone who spend a year at her majesties pleasure for selling some Es to some mates>
yes, those people are still my mates and nobody could call them victims.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 18:02 GMT JaitcH
What of drawings that include multiple intertwined drawings?
I have seen drawings where a number of characterizations have been incorporated in a single drawing and only people with certain visual capabilities can discern or separate the figures.
A sort of Rorschach test, with lines instead of inkblots.
Could these contravene legislation since a person has to interpret the drawings?
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 18:03 GMT xj25vm
Hmm
'In an interview with that newspaper, he said: "I have to admit that I myself was shocked at how extreme this genre is, and how deranged the imaginations are in this universe.
"But we’re not showing the works for the sake of displaying child pornography. We’re looking for a debate on the issue. So if people are offended by it then they should by all means speak out and say so."'
I don't really get it. So what's there to debate? Even by his own admition, this is the product of some seriously disturbed people. Why feed on their output? I'm a bit lost here.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 22:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Art
Art of all disciplines is full of disturbing works.
They challenge your perceptions and ideas, if you can't handle such works then you probably arn't much of a person.
Also who's to say that the disturbing works are the ones including children in sexual situations?
I remember one work of goro that had an act called "Death by Vivisection" where a mother was given a numbing agent then vivisected by agents of the state in front of her daughter as a punishment for her acts against the state. Afterwards the daughter was given the remains in a bag and left outside of the execution centre.
It was horrible and graphic, but interesting and raised a number of questions in my mind.
A lot like Romper Stomper, a horrible film full of racist violence but interesting none the less.
If you don't like it leave the art to grown ups and go watch yet another rehash of an old movie at your local cineworld.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 22:41 GMT ph0b0s
Controversial for the sake of being controversial
Probably doing it to get their place a lot of free publicity. Like someone showing a load of Nazi stuff, but saying they don't support fascism, they just wanted to 'start a debate'. Lots of free publicity for the gallery and the amount tickets sold goes up....
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 18:05 GMT ph0b0s
Precrime....
It's great that these new pre-crime laws are coming in. Now law enforcement and society can tell you are going to commit a crime before you actually do based on what you are doing now. It's scientific approach with lots of studies to back it up
-So if you are looking at extreme p0rn they can tell that you are going to either engage in beastiality, non consensual sex involving S and M or messing sexually with a corpses.
-If you are looking at Manga you must be about to molest a child.
They should really expand this and I sure now they have this beachhead and public support they will.
Next to be introduced..
-People playing volent computer games to be charged since they are all people who will go on to commit murder and other violent crimes.
-People sitting motorcycle tests to be charged with speeding, cause they obviously like speeding and will break the speed limit.
-People taking martial arts classes to be charged with GBH as they obviously want to beat someone up in the future.
-People watching movies involing any of the previous activity's because they obviously will go on to commit crimes involving them.
BTW Since I was little, I have played games, watched movies, taken martial arts and watched anime. Oh and I have a sports motorbike, so you really aught to keep away from me as I am obviously the next Jack the Ripper or Dahmer or can't think of any famous Ped0's or Speed limit breakers...
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 23:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
How it should work...
Though, you should be able to use these things aganist someone if they have already commited the crimes.
So people convicted of sexually abusing children should get into trouble if they are caught looking at drawings of children being abused. They lose that and other rights by commiting the crime against a real person. This is how the Law should have been made.
The same could be used in the other examples used i.e like not letting Jeffrey Dahmer watch the Saw movies. Or Graham Coutts, if ever released, should be in trouble if caught watching vids of suffocation sex or whatever it is called?
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 09:15 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Rather how it should work not.
"So people convicted of sexually abusing children should get into trouble if they are caught looking at drawings of children being abused. "
It's an interesting proposition and one which seems to be taken as a given by the general public as well. But if you think about it - it's the paragon of stupidity, really.
So, you take someone who is a paedophile (we assume that the prior conviction was justified) and who has served his allotted time. He is still a pedophile and will always be (you can't change that by putting someone in prison for a few years). Now, if you really want him to not bother children anymore the last thing to do is to take away the only substitute for real action he can conceivably have - the pictures.
What that will do is quite clear - given that looking at pictures and committing the real acts bear the same risks, your paedophile will be much more inclined to go the whole way. Won't someone please think of the children, just for once?
And the same, as you say, goes for Jeffrey Dahmers etc. You totally confuse cause and effect - it's what's in their mind that makes them like these pictures, not the other way round.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 22:37 GMT Paul Crawford
For f*ks sake!
These are cartoons, a picture version of a fairy story, etc. The original Brothers Grimm stories had terrible things that, if turned in to a film, would be unlikely to pass an 18 rating!
And funnily enough, children found them OK and life went on...
Today, with so little of real note to worry about in life as we have food, shelter and good medical care, there is a need for a terrible bogeymen to distract the public from the real threats and politician's impotence to deal with them (e.g. pathetic balance of trade with China, pension timebomb ticking away, fuel costs rising and going to rise MUCH more in the coming decades, etc) so they need things to distract us, and to allow them to be "tough on crime" even if there is none committed. Hence the extreme porn laws, criminalisation of cartoons, jokes, etc.
If you don't like this, just ignore it. As already pointed out, there are a LOT of things people do that do not lead to crime. Is drawing a dick on a Bart Simpson cartoon really the sign of a budding paedophile?
No, it is utter rubbish and those who press for such law have nothing to back up the claims, other then their own sense of moral outrage and their impotence (a deliberate choice of word) at fixing the bigger problems facing society.
Beer icon, as there is little else to do when faced with this western fundamentalism than drink yourself stupid.
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Tuesday 24th August 2010 23:20 GMT Watashi
f*cked up society
The tradgedy is that thousands of women are raped every night across Europe, and mostly these victims are not children, or sex-trade prostitutes, or women attacked by predatory serial rapists (as the press would have you believe) but are just normal, everyday women assaulted by their partners, male friends, friends of friends or co-workers.
I guess it's easier to lock up weirdo outsiders and social non-conformists who look at nasty cartoons than tackle hard working, regular voting men whose victims tend to keep quiet and not make a fuss (and who were probably drunk and "asking for it" anyway). In 2008 only 6.5% of UK rape cases resulted in a conviction, compared with 34% of criminal cases in general. Tens of thousands of non-extreme-porn induced rapists get away with their crimes every year.
Are we really targeting the resources of our criminal justice system at the right people?
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 10:12 GMT EvilGav 1
And how many . . .
. . . of those rape cases didn't go anywhere because it was found the complainant was lying and there was no case to answer ?
Criminal convictions turned to have it easier because they have tangible proof, rape almost always tends to be one persons word against another.
I'd love to know where the statistic of "thousands every night" comes from, screams of random numbers pulled out of your arse.
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 12:33 GMT John H Woods
Those figures are deliberately distorted...
When they talk about non-sex crimes, they quote the ratio of convictions to charges. When they talk about sex crimes, they quote the ration of convictions to allegations. If it were 'scored' like burglary, the rape conviction rate would be nearly 60% not 6%. And, ironically, the widespread quoting of the 6% figure probably discourages legitimate complaints, as women believe they won't get justice - and it may even encourage certain kinds of men to think they can get away with it.
So PACK IT IN. Thanks.
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 08:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
what worries me....
... is that fact that to drive their point, they brought mangas that no one have heard off.
It seems that, if you wish to ban something, then find the most extreme examples of them and use that to support the ban. The fact that the examples used are extreme or the fact that people (who are into the work) haven't heard of them, is considered irrelevant.
How popular are those mangas that are suppose to represent the gender? Are they high selling money making mangas? or are they extreme examples of mangas that *failed* in the market?
if you truly wish to have a healthy debate, shouldn't you be getting popular works (that people have heard off) and starting the debate between the supporters of the work and the supporters of the ban? I honestly doubt that anyone is going to defend "Condom fairies".... so the debate would be one sided.
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 11:18 GMT bugalugs
Your email address is never published
in japan manga is sold at street level everywhere.
manga for little kids is of the sort shown on the site cited above. ahem..
quite extreme_visual_expressions of rage and passion are common in manga read by
high-school students and young workers especially whilst travelling (their only free time).
past prime minister Aso was manga-kichigai (mad) too.
japan is a very crowded_and_intense, but remarkably well-behaved place.
the psychological relief engendered by manga plays a part in helping it to remain that way.*
of course there will be extremes of taste in a country of 127 mil - and as more westerners get the manga bug extremes have emerged here. human nature. if no harm done, move on.
this is not to sanction instructions on how to commit crimes of course.
hentai manga will be ignored by most round-eyes anyway ; plenty of the real thing quite handy !
* as do " toruko " ( turkish baths/brothels ) , asexual maasage/pampering centres, " pachinko " ( sort of pinball ) parlours and more often-bizarro " theme " bars, restaurants, shops and city-edge sporting facilities for singles than you can imagine. visit for innocent fun when flush recommended.
big brother because of ph0b0s 's postulations
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 12:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
They are trying to challenge (Political) Sophistry.
The prudes, the Political Correctness cult, the "Save the Children" cult, the religions, and other political opportunists, have too much power, and seek more power, so we need events like this to challenge them.
This is fictional art, even the work of the Marquis De Sade is art; he intentionally created disturbing works of fiction, to encourage people to think about what is and isn't abuse, and who the abusers were.
If no living creature was an unwilling participant or harmed to make a thing, and you have the choice not to experience a thing, then there can be no honest justification to call its existence, possession, or use, harmful to others, period!
Religion is irrelevant to this discussion because they all appear to be mere fiction, and it is stupid to fiction as the basis for judgement.
Crime is just a label which the state puts on some things which hurt people, hurt the state, or are a political abuse of power, including many things which are not harmful to others, or should be civil matters.
Photographs taken by other people of naked, immature, living children, or provided for sexual purposes are a different matter altogether, because they are an infringement of privacy and may cause harm to the child, however this offence must be proven and not just assumed.
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Wednesday 25th August 2010 22:13 GMT mhenriday
We here in Scandinavia seem to be as readily seized by moral panic
as people in most countries in Europe and North America. Fortunately we - our at least our governments - are equally willing to tag along in the criminal wars of aggression that certain powers carry out throughout the world. Thus we get to play with the rest of the children - all of whom, of course, are well over the legal age of consent - instead of being consigned to the sidelines....
Herni
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