Argon, I think you might be missing the point I was trying to make.

There is NO WAY to put an age on something that is virtual. You HAVE to go by appearance. And for this reason anything that has the APPEARANCE of being under age is not allowed to be shown in the nude.

There are two issues here that seem to be melded into one. There IS a difference between child nudity and child porn. However, there are also some people that cannot separate the difference ... and some who are stimulated by ANY child nudity. I am not arguing that fact.

What I am arguing is that you can't take a figure and put a virtual driver's license on it claiming its age. The only way you can judge is on a case by case basis. And even then, opinions will vary.

xxxander, not to put it too bluntly, but you aren't an impartial judge of what is right or wrong - this much is clear from the way you misconstrued what I said.

I agree 100% - two children exploring their sexuality is different from a "sick pervert" raping a child - I never said that the latter was a good idea, did I? I also said it's not a good idea for him to jack off to a photo of a nude child (one taken expressly as a sexual image, not the sort of artistic photos you can buy in a David Hamilton book), because he's part of the chain of abuse. But if he does so to a picture done completely in Poser, no one is being abused, and furthermore, there's absolutely no proof that anyone ever will be abused as a result. That's where you are off the track - while some people do act on their impulses, that's not the same thing as having certain erotic interests - no rational psychologist can prove that a person will act out any and every fantasy that occurs to him or her, and many psychologists will further say that people who find some sort of private release (and not just sexual, but aggression and others - child abuse is not just about sex, folks, it's about control, the same as rape) are less likely to degenerate into physical acts. My saying that, however, is not a statement that we should create digital child pornography to keep our streets safe - I'm just saying that people fail, either unintentionally or intentionally - to distinguish between thought and action, and between erotica and child pornography; if it's got real children in it, it's wrong, but there's no valid proof that visual stimulation of any sort leads to abusive actions in the real world.

If you're so concerned about sexual misconduct, xxxander, you might also want to consider changing your username - many people immediately associate "xxx" with hardcore pornography.

Quote - Argon, I think you might be missing the point I was trying to make.

There is NO WAY to put an age on something that is virtual. You HAVE to go by appearance. And for this reason anything that has the APPEARANCE of being under age is not allowed to be shown in the nude.

There are two issues here that seem to be melded into one. There IS a difference between child nudity and child porn. However, there are also some people that cannot separate the difference ... and some who are stimulated by ANY child nudity. I am not arguing that fact.

What I am arguing is that you can't take a figure and put a virtual driver's license on it claiming its age. The only way you can judge is on a case by case basis.

But the problem as you adimt is that even the people that stimulated by child nudity are subjectively percieving it as child porn. So how is a subjective judgement on the part of the people enforcing the guidelines helping to solve it? The judgements are most likely wildly different and it's the artist that have nothing to do with those that are stimulated being made to suffer for it.

If the subjective judgement is going to follow that course, how long until every phallic symbol is eliminated because of the perception it might effect?

In the mix of conflicting perceptions, how do you tell which IS valid? That's why if you're going to follow guidelines on child nudity, you have to have some VALID way of defining what a child is. All the laws they have require a proof of age in the form of an ID.

**ptrope:  I agree wholeheartedly with xxxander.  I don't know who you are and I personally don't ever want to know. I feel sorry for you if you think child nudity in any way is OK!   It only provokes the *inevitable!  ***

You probably were not victimized as a child, held down and raped from behind for hours on end or forced to watch pornography while some man plays with himself and your private parts or forced to look at another child either in pictures or in a film getting brutally abused sexually were you? Do you have any idea what seeing a child nude does to people like us?? Do you even understand the velocity of the pain and emotional scaring this does on us?? I think not.... and until you can see it from eyes that experienced it, your opinions, to us mean nothing.

XXXANDER is a nickname for another name........ it has no relation to pornography you sick weirdo.  If you know anything about anything you'd realize that.

WHY give them anything TO look at as far as children go? my working theory is that fantasy can fill a role for some of those sick people, to help them to stay away from actual children. i'm sure that won't work for everyone. i'm equally sure that for some fantasy leads to acting out. i'm also sure that the latter isn't automatic, or true for a majority of people. i don't know whether it would have worked for the person who abused me as a child (my uncle, also an upstanding family man and church goer). when i tried to seek help i was the one who was at first not believed, and then blamed, because i was supposedly such an unruly and disobedient child that obviously i had to have been doing something wrong (yeah, a prepubescent child who had no clue about sex would come on to a grown man. feh). frankly, the abuse i got from my mother left deeper scars than that from my uncle; at least he didn't hit me or destroyed my feeble self-esteem. it took a fair bit of therapy (and divorcing my birth family) to come to terms with that background. but i have come to terms. and i think suppressing fantasies is not the way to go. i believe instead that making a much clearer distinction between fantasy and reality is called for, and that we need stronger boundaries, especially for children. no more blanket obeying of adults because they are adults. no more having to put up with cheek pinches from aunt hatty. no more spanking. that's how it starts, for a child -- not being allowed to say NO! to being touched by an adult, not having their body respected. i have some fantasies that i would never, ever, want to live out in reality, because reality couldn't be like what i imagine. (most of those fantasies are not sexual, though some are, and none of them involve children, nude or otherwise.) they allow me to vent aspects of my life that are negative. they allow me to engage in wish fulfillment. fantasies are IMO only harmful if they a) take over somebody's life so they no longer function well in reality, or b) are pushed into reality and onto other, real people by somebody who does not respect boundaries. my fantasies are not of that kind. they do not hurt anyone, including myself. digital images do not hurt anyone either. conflating nudity and sex hurts a lot of people. it took me a long time to become comfortable with my nude body (my family consisted, aside from that upstanding family man and church goes mentioned above, mostly of religious zealots for whom there was hardly a human trait free of sin). now i believe there is nothing whatsoever wrong with nudity, and that includes, of course, children -- we're born nude. what could possibly be wrong with a nude baby? nothing. the nude human body can be so beautiful. and i am not talking about airbrushed models in playboy, i am talking about the line of my chubby partner's hip in the morning sun, or the delighted splashing of the neighbour's 3 year old in the new wading pool. there's also nothing wrong with consensual sex; it's hopefully fun, and sometimes beautiful. oh, and it happens to propagate the species -- how can that be wrong per se? nope, don't buy that. i wouldn't necessarily take pictures of my partner or the neighbour's kid (with permission) to share as art on the net, because that goes against my sense of privacy. but i see nothing whatsoever wrong in recreating such images and moods in poser, and sharing those. will they be looked at by perverts? probably. ANYTHING will be looked at by people who sexualize it. if y'all have read that long fetish thread, you know about the breadth of human sexuality. people get turned on by the strangest things. perverts will get off on it. prudes will get upset by it. it's not for me to judge, unless they force it on me. the fantasies of perverts don't hurt me. the self-righteous indignation of prudes doesn't hurt me. my raping uncle hurt me -- his fantasies crossed over into my world and tried to mold me according to his will. the laws of prudes hurt me -- their imaginations cross over into my world and try to mold me acccording to their will. i am vehemently opposed to both. keep it in your head.

(to blacq_nyght_vampyre ) You're right .. you don't know me. I wasn't victimized as a child, so I don't have that unique perspective. All I can say is what I know and observe about people, about their interpretations of events and ideas, and of how I see them act and react constantly, in real life. I don't doubt that a person who has been abused - or has been an abuser - interprets things differently than I do. I have no urge to abuse a child or to seduce one, and I don't think it's right to do these things. I've said as much. My argument is against people who insist that what a person thinks and what a person does, in areas both legal and ethical, are one and the same thing; they aren't. You automatically assume things about me because I try to maintain a rational perspective that doesn't happen to conform to an extreme set of experiences and perceptions, that I defend or even entertain abuse of children, even to the point of employing thought police. I don't have to experience it to have an opinion, nor to make rational observations that there is no established cause and effect at work in people's assumptions and assertions. No one, especially not myself, said anything about condoning abuse - I even specifically spoke out against it, but apparently that is not my right to do so and still address the issue at hand, which is not abuse, but the impossibility of establishing either a valid yardstick to the "age" of digital characters or that depicting them in anything other than the most wholesome terms is related to a despicable act such as child abuse. I see hundreds of Poser pix depicting the torture and degradation (in my opinion) of adults, but it is because they are depicted as adults that no one does anything but shake their heads and say, "That's not for me," and never make claims that these depictions will definitely lead to the actual torture and worse of living human beings. Why? Because it's not part of their own experience, or it's not part of their agenda.

Would we be better of if there simply weren't any young figures available for Poser? Probably. And why is that? Because while they are created seemingly with the best of intentions, they are not supported with the very things that will allow people to use them in much other than erotic imagery - no one seems interested in making clothing for the teen figures, but they seem damned interested in making sure that they aren't rendered without them. Do you not see the paradox there? The outright hypocrisy? And at the same time, we create, sell and buy modifications and clothing that make the adult figures look younger.

I'm clearly not the only person with issues.

And while xxxander may simply be a nickname, with no intentions of impropriety, this entire thread is about how people perceive and respond to implied, or more to the point, inferred sexual cues, even when none are present. We see "XXX" constantly related to the seediest, darkest aspects of sexuality; don't deny it. So saying that it was not intended to be sexual means nothing to the people who seek out sexual implications, good or bad, and will do nothing to prevent them from doing so - exactly the same way pictures will do. All I did was point this fact out; it's relevant to the attitude of this discussion.

Quote - If you're so concerned about sexual misconduct, xxxander, you might also want to consider changing your username - many people immediately associate "xxx" with hardcore pornography.

You know..I said I was done with this God forsaken thread...but someone linked me and told me to read....let me tell you a couple of things.....

ONE YOU can stop bolding my name and acting like I am something sick or sinister...my name does NOT mean anything sexual BUT even if it did I am a GOD DAMN consenting adult..who ONLY plays with and gets off with other ADULTS period. Don't fucking assume anything about me.....

TWO No I am NOT impartial and I never will be, and I will ALWAYS speak out against this kind of bullshit.....if any of you wanna get off on photos, renders, paintings of nude children....then there's not a damn thing I can do about it..BUT keep it off the forums...NO ONE wants to know about it.....and IF you put it on here..ALWAYS expect VICTIMS like myself to speak out against you....sheesh......and yes...MOST of the time these people DO act out on their "fantasies".....READ UP about pedophiles...also..they can ever be "cured" they ALWAYS re-offend.......so FORGIVE me for standing up for what I believe is right.....

Everyone carry on with this ignorant debate..I am almost done with this site as it it....shakes head

And PLEASE no one link me back here......I don't CARE ....

You certainly did make a point .... and as for the "adult situations" in poser images.... I find them somewhat disturbing but not as bad as seeing a child depicted in an image even if the child is chasing butterflies in a field fully clothed. I think you miss most of the point expressed... AND it is difficult to place an age on 99% of the images portrayed.... but the obvious is the obvious. XXXANDER may very well have 3 X's but on this particular site,  that is certainly not the issue. I feel you are grasping for something in which you assume too much. You know what ASS U ME means I am sure. You have your opinion and I have mine..... I am going away now. This entire topic has made me recall unpleasant images and moments in my life so do with it as you will....

I am out...

xxxander, will you just shut up and listen for one minute? Don't make assumptions, don't make accusations, because you've been wrong every time you've done either.

I bolded your name because it's your username, and I do that as a habit on every BBS - I consider it proper netiquette to give the users the respect of making their names distinct from the rest of the text, especially since so many users have names that sometimes fall into the regular vocabulary. I meant no comments about you nor did I make any, and I'm somewhat concerned that you perceivemy actions as such. Surely you're not so inexperienced online - you claim to spend a lot of time on it masquerading as someone else in order to save children from abuse - that you don't know anything about this practice. I'm certainly not going to apologize for trying to afford you the same respect I do for anyone else I address on this board.

I made an observation about how other people may perceive you because of your chosen expression - I made no observation about you. Get the f*** off your high horse and learn the difference - give people the respect of listening to what they say, and not what you want to hear.

xxxander, i had a girlfriend who was raped, and nearly died, was in the hospital for 4 months

her favorite thing after which (and during accually) were little cupid statues, and a few pics
she rendered of cupid, having just a lion cloth (or whatever is it) on. and sometimes faeries
then people label everything child porn, and they're deleted, when the pics were far from it
cupid holding a bow is on countless valentines day cards, so we're giving our kids baby porn?
should we take away every card like that simply because it has a baby's nipples showing?

the baby is not naked, but because it has a nipple showing, people like you who want it all
banned, label it child porn, and it gets taken down

and true while sick people go into these chat rooms, so do kids, you can go after the ones who
arents kids, while at the same time, ignoring the kids, and leaving them to join the rooms
its a 2 way street, sure some rooms are made for kids, kids belong there, but majority of
parents do nothing to see if its a "clean" room, do (usually) nothing to teach their kids not
to talk to those kids of people, and the rooms which were made for adults, have just as
many (and accually more) kids joining when they shouldnt, than adults joining kids rooms

NOT taking any blame away from the sick adults,  but when a parent does next to nothing
to stop their kids from joining in the first place, or in the case of kids rooms, teaching their
kids that bad people might be in them, then the parent is also at fault a bit

if a lion has cubs, but leaves them to wander in a meadow, and doesnt teach them to run
when there is danger, and they get eaten, who is at fault? obviously the one who ate them
as "they cant help themselves", but also the parents for not teaching

the danger will always exist, pics of nudity or lack thereof, will not change it, taking away
the freedoms of others who have nothing to do with it, will not change it, the danger remains
nudity isnt porn, hell theres probably porn with people fully clothed -_^
so to ban a pic that has no "naughty sexy touchy"stuff in it (vague limit to porn) is against art
and takes away freedom of expression

So any depiction of children is demonised?   An innocent picture is exactly that:  innocent.   That it allegedly awakens painful memories in a certain minority doesn't alter the fact of its innocence.   Should this be put on a bonfire?

Quote - You say "Ban the perverts"...laughs saracastically HOW do YOU know they are perverts..the man who brutally raped/molested/abused me for SIX years.....from age FIVE to ELEVEN...was a CHURCH member...

Church member ain't nothing to do with it, far as I am concerned.  I would gleefully K to the I to the double L anyone who harmed a child, should I ever know about it.

Naked children is one thing - and the CGI representation thereof - real action is something else.

true, is no cure, but not everyone released, will reoffend, thats been proven, you say otherwise
you can say perhaps a MAJORITY, but not ALL

simple proof to just a few cases, some of the males got their balls chopped off with surgery
while a bit drastic in some cases perhaps -_^ they dont reoffend
there is injections, that while not perfect, do inhibit (a bit) the feeling and desire

many people would like to believe many things to be uncurable, and unfixable, to help
themselves justify their actions, which are more than often, a bit extreme
now am i saying i want them on the street? no, id be happy with burning them at a stake :P
but i can act without being overly extreme, and would never be in favor of a rule that would
punish/limit the innocent

Quote - Whether or not you agree with Rosity's rules, if you're here you have to abide by them. Whether or not you agree with your country's rules, you should abide by them if you want to stay out on the streets.

But this is America, rules mean nothing. And there's some 12 Million here who intend to prove it on May 1st....

"...they ALWAYS re-offend.......so FORGIVE me for standing up for what I believe is right....."

Some interesting data and expert opinion:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11164933/#storyContinued

not that data will change anyone's views on such a charged topic - we believes what we believes and so it shall be.  Germany went through a traumatic experience with Nazism and to this day bans anything that they feel glorifies or promotes that sick philosophy.  Still, skinheads and fascists seem to be enjoying a new resurgence there.  It's much easier to attack bogeymn and scapegoats than it is to solve the real problems that plague society.  Bannine faeries isn't going to reduce pedophilia any more than burning Mein Kampf is going to eradicate fascism but it makes people feel better I suppose.

wow the numbers are accually lower than i thought o_O way way more than i prefer
but still lower than i thought

Quote - It's much easier to attack bogeymn and scapegoats than it is to solve the real problems that plague society.  Bannine faeries isn't going to reduce pedophilia any more than burning Mein Kampf is going to eradicate fascism but it makes people feel better I suppose.

Good point and given that it doesn't solve the problem, you begin to wonder if the policies they do implement gets something else done, more than just making them feel better about it?

Quote - The "no nudity on characters appearing underage" has been in the TOS for many years.
It was clarified around a year ago and at the same time changed to prevent topless shots of young girls.

It's only been around for a year, maybe a year and a half.

There was a time when this site had hardcore porn images with 3D figures made to look very youthful. Then the hardcore went away and it was limited to softcore, but any age - this is about the same period that R-otica was made. For a year or so though, links between these two sites were on the pages of both.

That lasted for most of the site's history. Many artists in here did faerie work, and others noted such things as cupids, romeo and juliet, a lot of rennaissance art, and paintings by Rockwell. All of that stalled the fundamentalist crowd for a while, but sometimes in 04 or 05 it changed.

While I'm glad the hardcore violent and or underage is gone, I think the switch in the other direction has gone a little too far if even Rockwell would be banned here...

damn it showed a page 5 and no post -_- i just  a mod made me miss somethin >.>

Enough of this. People are becoming upset, angry and hurt. I have no wish to have to hand out warnings.

This is not the place for debating root causes of paedophilia or rehabilitation rates. If you want to debate the wider issues, please do so on a more appropriate site.