Outlawing AI Porn and Sex Dolls: Crime fighting or moral panic?
Here’s an interesting op-ed…On Monday, The Washington Post reports, “fast-fashion” retailer Shein banned sales of sex dolls on its site after a government regulatory agency threatened to bar the company from operating in France and referred it to prosecutors. Some of the dolls sold on Shein’s online platform were, it seems, too “childlike” in appearance.
I consider it lazy to assert, as many opinionators do, that “no one” supports, or “everyone” wants, this or that particular thing, but if there’s a subject that commands anything close to societal unanimity, it’s opposition to the sexual molestation of children. Pretty much all of us who aren’t sexual abusers of children want sexual abusers of children stopped and punished. Many even advocate capital punishment as a permanent individual solution and future collective deterrent, and while I’m opposed to the death penalty myself, I do find the opinion understandable.
It’s odd, then, that so many opponents of child molestation also advocate for laws that increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood that someone with such tendencies will act, in that way, on those tendencies.Or is it really that odd? These days, public opinion — followed by legislative and law enforcement attitudes — seems largely driven by moral panic. Many people don’t want to just stop actual harmful Activity X, but also want government to suppress anything that might activate the “ick factor” associated with seeing, hearing or thinking about topics adjacent to Activity X.
Thus the increasing tendency toward banning “child pornography” in which no actual children are involved, and “childlike” sex dolls that, whatever else they may be, are not actual children. If we want to see actual reductions in the incidence of child sexual abuse, it’s worth considering what economists call the “substitution effect.” Per the Corporate Finance Institute, that effect is the “change in demand for a good as a result of a change in the relative price of the good compared to that of other substitute goods.” READ MORE
Discover more from Florida Action Committee (FAC)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If this was truly a problem, Ken and Barbie would’ve been outlawed decades ago due to their likeness to a real human.
I was sent to federal prison for possessing CP (without any federal agent or prosecutor being able to say for certain that there was any actual child or children involved). In other words, NO VICTIM testified like: I am Jane and I was 15 when this happened. So, the feds can AND will prosecute even when no actual children are involved and they will let juries decide. My jury decided, guilty. The 11th Circuit affirmed regardless of the lack of evidence.