Why not? It doesn't hurt anybody physically anymore, and if it keeps those people of the streets on on their screens, even better. It's not like they're gonna be cured of their tendencies if they don't have access to such material.
Are you sure? There's a strong neurocognitive argument to be made that reinforcing the tendency, by repeatedly acting on it with pornography to the end of, among other things, rather strongly triggering the dopamine reward system, will tend to strengthen the interest by reinforcing the circuits which interact with it, and vice versa.
I don't think anyone would argue this "cures" the tendency - certainly I will not! But, at the very least, I can't see how it could do other than make a pedophile less likely to graduate to child molesting, to have built a strong habit of not acting on the urge - and, again, vice versa.
There are also other forms of harm than the physical. I am not myself moved to dismay by the possibility of images of my own abuse circulating on the Internet, although that may have more than anything to do with the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no such images were made, and in any case said abuse occurred long before the dawn of the era in which such distribution became trivially simple. But I hardly imagine it is my place to tell someone who does find such a possibility - or a certainty - dismaying, that she is wrong to feel that way, or that she should not consider herself to be harmed thereby. Nor do I believe it is anyone else's place to do so.
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Are you sure? There's a strong neurocognitive argument to be made that reinforcing the tendency, by repeatedly acting on it with pornography to the end of, among other things, rather strongly triggering the dopamine reward system, will tend to strengthen the interest by reinforcing the circuits which interact with it, and vice versa
Reinforcing the circuits to reward yourself with more porn, not with molesting children. Your whole point is exactly the kind of pseudo scientific rationalising every authoritarian uses to push their "moralistic" agenda.
Real studies have actually shown that exposure porn reduces recidivism and tendencies to molestation, except in a small class of pedophiles which already have violent tendencies.
That's a counterintuitive result, and I would be very interested to learn more about it. Rather than sling accusations of pseudoscience and authoritarianism, will you cite some of these studies?
I'm surprised you think whatever intuitions you may have developed on such a complicated subject as human sexuality and neurology actually mean anything. Plenty of people with just as much confidence as you that ordinary porn was harmful were similarly surprised decades ago when rape and sexual assault rates continued to fall despite the continued spread of porn. Why would pedophilia be any different than any other sexual fetish in this respect [1]? In fact, there exists direct evidence that legalized child porn reduces sexual abuse against children [3].
All of the studies purporting to demonstrate links between possession of child porn and child molestation are plagued with methodological errors [2]. This issue is so emotionally charged that most of the science around it is garbage. The stigma against child porn is no different than claiming that consumers of staged rape fetish porn must all be closet rapists, and viewing this porn will simply make them act on it. It's a patently absurd claim.
About the only possessors of child porn that are at high risk of molesting a child are the ones that actually produce it, and so had already sexual abused children [4].
Is there really such a strong argument about not reincorcing etc?? There were people with such tendencies for millennia before there was even the possibility of photographic reproduction of such images.
There were also people for millennia who died of diseases now easily treatable and indeed routinely treated. Does this constitute an argument against modern medicine?
In pedophilia specifically? I doubt it. But it's not a far inference from dopamine's role in sexual arousal and satisfaction [1], and its role in drug addiction [2].
While it would be a stretch to postulate that the effect of child pornography on those disposed to it exactly matches that of drugs which provoke massive dopamine release on those who take them, the effects of dopamine on sexual behavior in the human male, and its role in the brain's reward system in general, lend I think considerable plausibility to the hypothesis that engaging in pedophilic behavior centered around child pornography, and obtaining sexual satisfaction thereby, tends to potentiate further engagement in the same behavior.
Empirical studies have actually shown that consumers of child porn are unlikely to molest children. Those that are arrested for possession of child porn AND have a high likelihood of future molestation ALREADY had a history of molestation.
This shouldn't be surprising. Consumers of rape fetish porn are unlikely to actually rape someone, but actual rapists are likely to consume rape fetish porn. Furthermore, in countries where porn of all kinds was legalized, including child porn, enjoyed falling rates of child molestation.
The OP is making some of the same old arguments people have trotted out against porn for decades, just couched in pseudo neuroscience. The fact is, we don't understand these relationships to the degree the OP needs to justify his causal claims.
Maybe, maybe not. That's a fraught subject around pornography in general, with tendentious argumentation on every side.
On the other hand, children are extraordinarily vulnerable to many forms of abuse, this among them. In a system of laws one of whose explicit purposes is to afford those vulnerable to mistreatment protection under law, I don't think it is on its face unreasonable to argue that children merit extraordinary protection as well. While there is perhaps a fair question to be asked around whether the sort of law under discussion actually serves that end, I would at the very least suggest anyone raising the question in a serious way be very well prepared to answer objections and counterarguments of every imaginable sort.
