The “video games cause violence” argument is wrong, because the vast majority of gamers don’t try to use games as a substitute action for violent behaviour.
But there are of cause at least some mass murderers and school shooters, that have played violent games in order to fulfill their violent phantasies, couldn’t do so in a long term and murdered real people instead.
Same goes with pedophiles. They want to fuck a child, use fictional characters to fulfill the phanstasy, get used to it and then escalate to pictures of real children and eventually real children.
Do you have any real-world or professional experience with people suffering from pedophilia?
I don’t, but I doubt that stance as being unfairly projecting some idea of how things have to work on those people.
I for one can jerk off to the weirdest porn fantasy things, from the usual thinly-veiled step-siblings trope to rape play, weird power dynamics or tentacle porn (depictions of children not among them, I feel I have to mention that explicitly here), but I don’t have any desire to experience any of that in real life, because I absolutely know it would be wrong.
I don’t see why that should neccessarily be different for them.
Do you have any real-world or professional experience with people suffering from pedophilia?
I have been schooled on pedophilia in a professional context, during my undergrad and in a work-context. Yet I have not worked with pedophiles directly, nor have I had any contact to one, that I would be aware of.
Looking at the science both of our positions are reflected. As with so many things the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no”.
It looked at both of our positions: FSM (Fantasy Sexual Material) leads to real sexual violence against children vs. FSM reduces the risk of said practice.
Here is their summary of my position (FSM leads to sexual violence against children):
When applying the motivation-facilitation model to the context of FSM use, it can be theorized as to why, for a subset of users, engaging with such material could become problematic and increase the likelihood of committing a child sexual offense (whether that be offline or online), while for others this is not the case. As pedohebephilia is thought to be a motivating factor towards sexual offending in Seto’s model [21], engaging with FSM relating to children could heighten sexual arousal and therefore act as a facilitator to increase offending likelihood. With abstinence from masturbation being self-reported as a risk-management technique by some people who are attracted to children [16], this is a recognized idea by some members of the community. Over time, engaging in CSEM (especially forms such as child-like sex dolls, which offer a more realistic sexual experience) may contribute to the development of offence-supportive beliefs and the adoption of implicit theories about the acceptability of engaging in sexual activity with children (or child-like targets). The combination of enhanced sexual arousal to children (a potential motivator of offending), coupled with the development of permission-giving beliefs (facilitators of offending), may subsequently increase the risk of abuse being committed by somebody with attractions to children.
Here they are summarising your position, as far as I understand it (FSM helps to prevent sexual child abuse):
Alternatively, FSM use could be seen as beneficial by the motivation-facilitation model and instead reduce the likelihood of offending. Rather than heightening arousal, FSM could act as a safe sexual outlet that allows for a feeling of release and sense of catharsis [84], which could reduce a motivation to seek out real children as a sexual partner. Engaging with FSM also avoids the problematic suppression of sexual interests, with such suppression being linked to increases in self-perceived risks for offending among those with attractions to children [15]. In contrast to Stevens and Wood [16], Houtepen and colleagues reported that engagement in masturbatory fantasies was a common coping mechanism used by some people experiencing attractions to children, avoiding the need to access CSEM due to an alternative outlet being identified [3•].
They conclude, basicly, that more research is needed:
Given the present lack of understanding of FSM and how they are used, it is important to identify the factors associated with use and whether they are risk-enhancing or risk-reducing (i.e., protective). This knowledge could be beneficial to clinicians in the search for more effective methods to support people who are attracted to children when they are seeking help to manage their sexual interests. Nonetheless, Seto’s motivation-facilitation model provides a theoretical framework for thinking about this topic in a more nuanced way [21].
So, there we are. A long post to say maybe.
I suppose both of our positions might be viable and it can’t be said yet, under what circumstances each one of us might be right.
Because as I said, people with an interest in CSAM tend to escalate in their behaviour. Most don’t jump straight into child pornography but start with less serious things like jailbait and non-sexualised images of children etc. It doesn’t take a huge leap to see the same pathway with images of fictional children.
I’m not suggesting that everyone into this material will go on to abuse children or start to consume actual CSAM but there’s a non-zero amount of actual paedophiles who started their journey with this exact material.
How is this argument different than the “video games cause violence” argument?
The “video games cause violence” argument is wrong, because the vast majority of gamers don’t try to use games as a substitute action for violent behaviour.
But there are of cause at least some mass murderers and school shooters, that have played violent games in order to fulfill their violent phantasies, couldn’t do so in a long term and murdered real people instead.
Same goes with pedophiles. They want to fuck a child, use fictional characters to fulfill the phanstasy, get used to it and then escalate to pictures of real children and eventually real children.
Do you have any real-world or professional experience with people suffering from pedophilia?
I don’t, but I doubt that stance as being unfairly projecting some idea of how things have to work on those people.
I for one can jerk off to the weirdest porn fantasy things, from the usual thinly-veiled step-siblings trope to rape play, weird power dynamics or tentacle porn (depictions of children not among them, I feel I have to mention that explicitly here), but I don’t have any desire to experience any of that in real life, because I absolutely know it would be wrong.
I don’t see why that should neccessarily be different for them.
I have been schooled on pedophilia in a professional context, during my undergrad and in a work-context. Yet I have not worked with pedophiles directly, nor have I had any contact to one, that I would be aware of.
Looking at the science both of our positions are reflected. As with so many things the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no”.
If you want to take a bit of a deep dive, I recoment this study from 2023.
It looked at both of our positions: FSM (Fantasy Sexual Material) leads to real sexual violence against children vs. FSM reduces the risk of said practice.
Here is their summary of my position (FSM leads to sexual violence against children):
Here they are summarising your position, as far as I understand it (FSM helps to prevent sexual child abuse):
They conclude, basicly, that more research is needed:
So, there we are. A long post to say maybe.
I suppose both of our positions might be viable and it can’t be said yet, under what circumstances each one of us might be right.
Because as I said, people with an interest in CSAM tend to escalate in their behaviour. Most don’t jump straight into child pornography but start with less serious things like jailbait and non-sexualised images of children etc. It doesn’t take a huge leap to see the same pathway with images of fictional children.
I’m not suggesting that everyone into this material will go on to abuse children or start to consume actual CSAM but there’s a non-zero amount of actual paedophiles who started their journey with this exact material.
It’s that the same with violence, people that want to commit acts of violence may start by acting out violence in video games?