(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.