The EU on Tuesday, February 17, opened an investigation into the online retail giant Shein over the sale of childlike sex dolls and what it called the platform’s “addictive design.” Shein came under greater scrutiny in November after French authorities condemned the giant for featuring sex dolls resembling children.
The probe is the European Commission’s first into Shein under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s mammoth law that aims to counter the spread of illegal content and goods online. The European Commission said it was investigating the sale of illegal products “including child sexual abuse material” and would look at the “lack of transparency” of Shein’s recommender systems.
Shein, founded in China in 2012 but now based in Singapore, said it would continue to cooperate with the commission. “We share the commission’s objective of ensuring a safe and trusted online environment and will continue to engage constructively on this procedure,” Shein said in a statement. Following the uproar in France, Shein said it immediately removed the products and banned sex dolls from its site globally, regardless of appearance.
See, I’m torn here. Is it better to take a 100% anti stance on this, and not allow it whatsoever?
Or is it better to allow the dolls, knowing it’s better these freaks get their rocks off on a hunk of plastic where no actual humans will be harmed?
But if you allow the dolls, will that directly lead to sexualization of actual kids?
These past few years have really fucked me up. I used to think the internet should be fully uncensored. Freedom for everyone.
Then I found out pedophilia is WAAAAAAAY more prevelant than I thought. I thought it was like 1 in a billion people were sexually attracted to kids.
I hadn’t considered to censor child porn, because I didn’t think it existed. The fact that they were kids made me think “well, no one will produce child porn, because it won’t sell.” I THOUGHT that was a reasonable train of thought. And then Epstein happened. Now I realize that the only thing seperating people from being pedophiles is wealth and power. Apperently once you can do ANYTHING, and buy ANYTHING, you get attracted to what you can’t have. And thus they become pedophiles.
So now…do you sell them a piece of plastic, and basically give them an inch to protect actual children? Or do you realize if you give them an inch, they 'll take a mile?
The dolls with train and habituate progressively worse pedophilia and it won’t be long before they seek real children.
Child pornography is a high risk prior to pedophilia.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178914000810
I think it’s a mistake to consider Epstein Island pedophilia the norm, the people with that level of power were sickos to begin with (see also the UK), Clinton, Trump, Musk, Gates, Bin Laden were all doing fucked up stuff long before they became palls with Epstein. If you’re willing to cause the deaths of 10s of thousands of people, it’s not suprising you don’t treat kids like humans, you don’t treat anyone like humans!
I think overall it’s one of the many places where our de-facto carceral only approach fails hard.
Like most rapes, pedophilia is largely between people that know eachother. Much like rape the per-existing relationship means that:
But also once the rape is done the harm has been caused, so we really need to work out how to prevent the rapes not just catch pedos.
Focusing our policies on harm reduction, safe consumption & treatment of the underlying physiological issues is a much harder conversation to have, but ultimately will help protect kids far more than knee-jerk policies based on disgust of pedophiles, who I assume mostly never actually cause harm to kids themselves.
In the age of AI porn, where no kid has to be harmed to make it, but also it can physiologically fuck up the consumer through unrealistic depictions, we should be exploring new approaches, as the old approach (finding CSAM distributors, and tracking down who accessed the images), isn’t really going to work anyway (and really never did, given that for decades powerful people kept dossiers of blackmail material on other powerful people rather than exposing them, Epstein is just the latest in a long trend).
I think these sex dolls are another example of that, I don’t really know if they make owners more or less likely to offend, but I do suspect this policy is more based on China Ban + Pedophiles Evil, than actually reducing harm to children.
I’m definitely gonna be in the minority here looking at the comments, but this is rapidly approaching thought crime levels of regulation in my opinion. If they want to regulate sex dolls, show there is a correlation, prove that this is a pathway to extremism so to speak.
If this evidence already exists and I’m ignorant of it, please share, because I will happily change my stance.
Otherwise it really just feels like video games cause violence bullshit to me and reaks on senseless vilification. I’m pretty sure everyone has had thoughts that they’d never act on and repulse themselves for having, just as I’m sure many of you have watched videos or played video games depicting actions you would never participate in in reality. I really struggle to see this as problematic.
The idea that I subscribe to is that a pedophile is more likely to commit child sexual abuse when there is some sort of normalization going on in the form of fictional depictions of csam (or in this case, dolls). A pedophile should come to the conclusion that these thoughts are wrong, and seek help in fighting urges through medication and therapy. If it is deemed okay to indulge “just a bit”, it would probably make it easier to justify going over the edge because you wouldn’t see it as “as wrong” if you are part of a community that is barely persecuted for it.
There will always be a lack of studies in this area though. When it comes to criminal elements, deals are cut and records aren’t fully made public because so many people plead guilty to lesser charges and the full extent of their crimes aren’t brought into the light.
Well that’s a slippery slope now, isn’t it? No one is saying just a little bit of child abuse is okay, and my entire argument is that I don’t see a correlation. Extremely distasteful? Sure, but I have no desire to censor or restrict another’s actions that don’t harm or affect others, which is why I say show the correlation.
Communities that are normalizing paedophilia and spreading actual csam are absolutely an issue. They need to be shut down and offenders need to be held responsible for their actions. Those are things I agree must be ardently fought against normalizing, however I reject your notion that using a sex dolls equates to just a little bit of pedophilia. I will again reiterate that I see that as the same viewpoint of playing a violent video games makes you a violent person, and we know this to be false.
Most people understand the difference between reality and fantasy and the moral implications of having a fantasy versus acting on it. A chunk of plastic does not equal a child.
Its a very fair question. I’d be interested to know if there is any evidence that the dolls prevent harm, but my instinct is to say that it probably only reinforces desire. I don’t think it’s a good thing but I’m open to being wrong
Recently, a Danish politician was caught with hundreds of CSAM files and a child-looking sex doll (that the police failed to categorize as evidence and then it mysteriously disappeared).
In that specific case, it doesn’t seem like the doll prevented the person from acquiring a large amount of real CSAM material.
Personally, I think this is giving pedos more of a full step toward their fantasy than an inch, and I’m glad to see regulation stepping in on this issue.
Yeah. Pedophilia is a mental illness, and generally speaking enabling the fantasies of a mentally ill patient is not a good way to treat it.
This paper concludes this.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178914000810
That would be true, except almost every country on the planet has made it illegal to admit the thoughts, so they can’t get help. They can’t help that they have the thoughts and then they can’t get help to fix it. We’ve (seemingly all of humanity) made their existence illegal and then refuse the social accountability of helping them correct things. I think it was an Australian psychiatrist who set up the anonymous hotline for people who wanted help. That’s the only time and place I’ve heard about people able to get help in this way.
And, to add insult to injury, it really seems to be almost entirely created by trauma. So, the people who would victimize are victims themselves and our universal stance is “sorry, you can’t exist.”
It’s possible in Denmark too. However they usually only get to the conclusion that they need help after they have been caught in possession of illegal materials.
The psychologists working on it have difficulty getting funding for research. The questions are if it really is a disease on it’s own and if it’s treatable. There’s not a lot of valid data to work with. This made the news last year or so.
I’m no psychologist but my impression is that it’s more like a symptom of a different trauma, which might make more sense to throw money at. It would be interesting to hear from the psychologists who work in prisons.
Anyway, the foundation Save The Children has hotlines for young people who are concerned with their sexuality in one way or the other.
Pedophiles like Epstein do it BECAUSE it is forbidden and torturous to the victims. Others I’m sure have those feelings and try not to act on them, feel shame instead. The former would not care for these dolls, the latter might.
Personally, I feel things like these dolls do sexualize children and enable feelings of pedophilia. Considering that latter group of pedophiles, I could see it being damage control that prevents harm to real children. Maybe they could be a tool that is only available when prescribed to pedophiles in treatment.
Most child abuse is committed by someone close to the victim, often a family member. Money and power doesn’t cause it, it only enables it, especially at scale. Check you local sex offender registry to see.
I was just reading about how pedophiles have their own algorithms to locate children who have responded to previous attempts to lure them.
It’s not just pedophiles, it literally everything! Every industry is figuring out how they can combine AI, mathematics, computer science, statistics, data, and the Internet to exploit us ruthlessly in every possible way…
AND THEY’RE JUST GETTING STARTED!
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What kind of fucked up porn? Because the context varies the answer wildly.
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None of those make me think the viewer is likely to be a rapist, just because of the porn they watch.
Even cnc?
They won’t stop at plastic dolls. Don’t give pedos an inch
I don’t get the use of the phrase addictive design in this case.