This thread is a firestorm but I’m going in, wish me luck.
I think is a connotations game here.
Lolicon have less bad connotations than paedophile.
The world paedophile makes you think of a criminal, someone who have content that was made hurting children. Someone who probably has hurt children themselves. Despite the more profound consideration that a paedophile might or might not act on their impulses, the connotation on the word is that.
Then there is the word lolicon. That word have a different connotation. Here you think about some anime geek with terabytes of drawn naked kids. But you don’t tend to associate their behavior with real kids. Regardless on the possibility that lolicons do hurt children or also have material that hurt children. The connotation of the word is that their obsession only focus on the drawn naked children.
Most people in general consider drawn pictures of children less harmful or even not harmful at all compared to actually abusing kids. So one word really doesn’t have the same weight as another.
Then, we have the question. Using a word with more/less weight is justified here or not?
We all now some paedophiles have rebranded themselves as MAPS, precisely trying to shake of the bad connotations of paedophile.
Is this the same case? Is using lolicon trying to evade the “paedophile tag” or is it something actually different?
I get the disgusting feeling about lolicon. But personally I do think is essentially different to what we normally think about a paedophile. If someone told me “X is a paedophile” I would as “so are they in jail?”. But if someone tells me that “X is q lolicon” I won’t assume that they have done something deserving jail time, I’ll probably be wondering if they are also a paedophile, but the fact that I think of it as an “addition” means to me that those are not the same.
On another differentiate fact. I think it’s not uncommon for people to accidentally see lolicon, it has happened to me. Looking for some yaoi you might end up opening a lolicon manga, or maybe you watch an anime and have some lolicon tones. The normal reaction is not liking it and move on, but it’s not a traumatic experience. I have luckily never watch CP but if somehow it was accidentally showed to me I think it would be a traumatic experience that probably would scar me for life.
So, on the bases that I think different things when I think about each of those words I do not think that’s an accurate translation.
Then there is the question to people who do think those two terms are the same. Do you truly think those two terms refer to the same thing or you just feel so disgusted by lolicon that you want the term lolicon to be viewed with as much disgust as people see paedophile?
abigscaryhobo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are a lot of arguments on the internet about it, your moral compass usually dictates where you land on it. Personally I think any sexualizing of a child (deliberately or not) is wrong, so the words carry the same meaning.
That said, in anime, it’s often used as a way for a kid to call an adult a pervert or a weirdo, the way kids call strangers names all the time. So there is a difference in tone between “go away weirdo” and “aren’t you that felon who got convicted for CSAM” but arguing the finer points of it doesn’t help your case from a moral ground.
Arguing over drawn vs real is like that joke about a pedophile vs an ephebophile, there is technically a difference, but knowing that and debating it makes you sound like a pedophile.
Reginald_T_Biter@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Debating it makes you a paedo imo. Its apologism for people who want to fuck kids. They should all be hung. Yes I mean that. I mean it 100%.