The funny thing is that these spergs will complain about an intangible slippery slope of "normalizing pedophilia" with lolicon when the actual, tangible results of spouting this harmful rhetoric is already present.
It starts with fiction, and when we start using fiction, an extremely malleable medium, to set goalposts, the goalposts become extremely easy to move. Lolicon is wrong because the lines "look" like a child, which takes away the reason why childhood exploitation is harmful in the first place. It's not harmful because it's disgusting, but because a real child is being hurt in the process of creating it. When you say "ban lolicon because it has lines that look like kids in it," you start to go down a rabbit hole. What about this woman who is small and has a cups? What about girls who like "cutesy" things like pastels and stuffed animals? Does that make their boyfriends "pedos?" Are you going to arrest the woman for creating "CP" when it's her adult body? Places like Australia say yes.
Piggybacking off of that point, conversations about censorship come into play. What are the goalposts on fiction? They say, "Anything that glorifies the sexual abuse of children!" But what is glorification? What is romanticization? What are all these buzzwords, and who has the right to decide what defines them, especially in a court of law? Lolita is a book that is anti-pedo, but some people may find themselves sympathizing with the narrator, or find the scenes arousing. Lolita could have led to the sexual awakening of several pedophiles, and yet it's anti-pedo.
Even going for more tame stuff like Catcher in the Rye, a classic piece of literature that doesn't promote violence or the like, are we going to censor that because at three people have attempted/succeeded in committing homicide in relation to the book? Hell, John Lennon's killer had it on hand. These were three separate, fucked-up individuals who happened to be interested in the story and sympathize with its protagonist. Is Catcher in the Rye promotional material for serial killers?
The problem is that we are dealing with abstract concepts and trying to solidify them into goalposts. It is so simple to break down art and have it fit a certain idea. You could say that American History X, an anti-racist and anti-Nazi movie, advocates for Nazism because of the humanization of the Nazi main character, or how the movie ends with the reformed Nazi's younger brother getting killed by a black man, effectively reaffirming his and the audience's prejudices, or the, dare I say, romanticized Nazi imagery throughout the film. You could say that IT advocates for underage sex because the book uses the fucking child orgy as a moment of "bonding" for the characters. You could say that American Beauty advocates for pedophilia since the movie never stops and tells you why the main character's attraction to his teenage daughter's friend is bad. That last sentence may seem like an exaggeration, but I have actually seen people that want every bad thing in a piece of fiction to have a detailed monologue about why said thing is bad.
But, let's hone in on smutty fanwork in particular. There is literally no evidence to suggest that porn leads to higher rates of sexual violence and in fact, the argument could be made that it decreases it. And, let's be real here: Fanwork doesn't usually seek to be a literary piece of fiction with a moral message. Of course, you can say that every piece of media has a message, but typically, the artistic skills to make a piece that's going to even remotely make people question their morals are not instilled into the typical fanfiction author. Speaking from experience of being in fandom since I was 11, I can say that never not once did I interact with a piece of fanwork (even pornographic) that influenced my morals in any way.
I hear a bunch of Tumblristas going apeshit about how "I saw people shipping Sans and Frisk when Undertale was popular, so I thought minor/adult relationships were normal!" Hey, what the fuck? What kind of fucking mental state were you in that made you think that pedophilia was even remotely okay? That is a by-product of some other environmental factor that needs to be addressed within your life.
Back to the moving goalposts aspects, I have even seen this whole "loli crusade" shit expanding and expanding to ridiculous lengths. So, the initial argument was that they look like a kid, so they can't be lewded? Alright, cool. What about this JoJo character that looks like a 50 year-old but is actually 17? Still no? Alright, let me age him up. What? Aging up characters who were initially minors in canon is creepy? Uh... okay? What? I can't even do artistic nudity? What the fuck? Alright, since I can't have that character, let me like this one who has a petite body and cutesy features, but is of age and has huge tits. What? That's not okay either? You see the issue? Dare I say we're going to get to a point one day when drawing porn of women is "misogynistic" because it contributes to the fetishization of the female body? Oh... wait.
I wouldn't be so invested in this loli crusade thing if it didn't bring up bigger, more concerning matters, and if the ideas weren't so prevalent. I've seen a bunch of kids on TikTok arguing that men's sexuality is "rooted" in pedophilia because they like women without arm, leg, and pubic hair. Instead of getting a resounding "fuck you" and slap on the wrist, I've heard so many people agreeing with them. This shit is fucking stupid at best, and harmful at worst.
The truth is that this moralistic approach to things has historically never been right. We see the results of things like sexual repression in society, how harmful those ideas have been in so many respects. People always take advantage of these all-mighty good ideas and use them to justify horrible shit, from teenagers looking for a justification in bullying people like the spergs on this thread to politicians looking for censorship.
Oh no, it's absolutely hilarious, because they do a complete 180 when disproven. After you get done telling them your point, they'll either try to argue it more or say, "But just because it's legal doesn't mean it's morally correct!" I've seen the shift. Thing is, morals are different between societies and even individuals. Sorry, but my morals only go as far as if somebody who is unjustified in harm is getting hurt, and fictional characters don't have feelings, so frankly, I don't care. If a lolicon goes and molests a real child, then I have a problem because someone was hurt. But, my first reaction isn't to look at their anime porn. Besides, from what I've heard, most child molesters who view lolicon have real CP with them as well.
Also, most of these people that say this shit about lolicon are avid ACAB and defund the police supporters, but absolutely love to treat the law as the word of god when it comes to Twitter brownie points. Yeah kids, you're not supposed to look at porn until you're 18, drink until you're 21, or send nudes until you're 18, but let's focus on the drawings!
This is actually kind of a meme with pro-shippers and pro-loli people. They'll go under the callout posts and say, "If you thought this was CP, then you wouldn't be sharing it on your page," and those never get responses. Wonder why? It's almost like it's not illegal to share lolicon because it's not actual CP. Who could have guessed? I would love to have this question answered some day, because top Olympian athletes may have yet to learn from the sheer level of mental gymnastics that these people can achieve.
