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.