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Comment on Are shrunken heads a rights violation?

I would consider trophies derived from human bodies to be immoral in the same way that child pornography is. The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.

For many years after western contact with Aotearoa, people were deliberately killed for the sake of producing preserved heads which would be purchased by collectors in Europe.

If there were to be a resurgence in demand for such objects, there is no shortage of people either desperate enough or cruel enough to revive the practice of killing people to produce them.

Sure, there could be systems put in place to verify that a head was procured humanely after natural death, but it would never be foolproof, and there would always be some degree of black market causing harm on the fringes in order to meet demand.

We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?

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spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Given the nature of the discussion… I really have to ask about that user name.

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DragonWasabi@monyet.cc ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Very true, I agree with your points. Just like procuring a file of CSM, procuring a shrunken head or even something like a tooth would be imo contributing to a demand for more to be made, as well as perpetuating a culture where those things are desired or even accepted to a degree, which could in turn lead to even more morally unsound methods of producing/acquiring them.

However I would also add that I think even in the hypothetical where accessing or even storing/viewing some CSM files somehow didn’t contribute to any more being produced or shared by anyone, it would still be fundamentally unethical to access it/store it/view it, because while the most clearly abusive component has already happened, continuing to view or use the product of those actions is further violating the child’s right to not have themselves commodified or exploited like that, and disrespecting their right to privacy… for the same reason that a peeping tom is violating someone’s right by spying on them in their privacy, even if the person doesn’t know it happened (except in this case, it’s a violation on top of another violation - the child has been exploited, and then people are further violating the child’s autonomy by viewing it). This aspect of something being fundamentally unethical even if it doesn’t contribute to more bad things happening in a measurable/utilitarian sense but in more of a deontological way where the action itself is violating certain moral duties by disrespecting their bodily autonomy, is where I’m coming from by thinking that using/displaying the dismembered body part of a person is unethical regardless of whether doing so contributes to more of that product being created.

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sailingbythelee@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.

We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?

I think you may be making a logical error here. Wanting or needing a transplant, or buying sneakers, or any other consumer product for which there is a legitimate and legal supply chain, does not make you responsible for any parallel illegal/unethical/immoral supply chain. There are black market supply chains for everything from food and basic necessities to luxury goods. There is no fool-proof way to ensure that ANY product you purchase didn’t derive at least partially from an immoral supply chain. It is impossible to track all products that closely. The fault is not with the consumer but rather with the immoral supply chain participants. Don’t take away the agency of those who participate in such things.

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- Longpork3@lemmy.nz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I agree with you somewhat, but I think in the case of body parts, which require the death of a person to procure, the risk of encouraging such bad actors is significant enough that we ought not to enable any market at all except where lives may be saved by their procurement.
  
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