My point was that images of children on a sexual site do not bode well for those users who use the site for legal means.
Good point. Most people here view material which is legal. Things like cartoons and anime throw a wrench into the clockwork and things go from simple to complicated with fictional, animated characters.
Artists can make excuses for age. It doesn't matter. If they look like kids the risk is no less just because you say so, and the material is no less a liability. If we start splitting hairs about what type of child-looking pictures are ok and what types aren't, and what specific age group is ok, and what isn't, when they're ALL really young anyways, just makes this stupid and needlessly complicated. Thats also a form of bias towards art style as well, which is, ironically, what loli supporters don't like being done to them, yet whats being proposed by others in making exceptions for some things is no better.
Most people who use this site legally are viewing material that is legal. They have a reasonable expectation to be safe here and that material which imposes any kind of danger is not allowed. These are adult men and women, couples, and people with families.
Its important to point out that many of these loli/underage anime drawers and fans are teens, young adults, or underage themselves. They identify with younger characters more so than adult characters, and they live out their fantasies through these younger characters. Let alone, thats fine. But when you attach fetishism to the topic and you put it on an adult-only board, it takes on a new nature and their presense and their interest contradicts itself and takes a site from operating well within the law, to walking on the line of it just by the addition of their material alone. Thats how hazardess it is.
I didn't see any artwork problems until anime came on the scene in this community. This whole issue, in this topic, really can be targeted on the anime style. There are more and more younger people joining sites like TMF and TT these days. Many of them are not supposed to be here, and when they see their favorite anime characters drawn with their fetish in mind, they stay. When they see there are artists willing to draw their favorites, regardless of age, they're hooked.
For those don't understand why anime characters are so young, allow me to explain something (I've done this several times), but its always worth it:
In Japan, a girl is considered coming of age at 14. Here it's 16. In the japanese culture children are pushed into independance sooner and faster than in other cultures. More is expected of them sooner, and so they are made to be more mature for their age.
This cultural ideal flows into anime too. This is why most anime series revolve around a young character either coming of age or making their way in the world. It focuses on them specifically, as opposed to any adults, because the creators want to hook younger viewers, yes, but it also does it to show this cultural ideal that young japanese people will blossom into strong adults with integrity. Many anime series are coming of age stories, and most characters are 14-16, and supporting characters are usually barely legal themselves. The adults are shadowy figures that we never really see often, and the kids are made to look like they're running their lives on their own and they're fully functional.
Many series don't stress the importance of parental or adult support or adult respect, and many show the parents as these bumbling bafoons and that their children have it together better than they do. To then sell this to an impressionable preteen or young teen makes perfect sense because an anime fan is likely to identify with some of those things. The characters are made to look more mature for their age and adult and responsible, and this leads to adult qualities being put into a nubile who hasn't even lived yet. The problem with that, is it eliminates the desire to draw then any older. Teen fans figure they don't need to draw them older because they've already adult. Problem is the body doesn't match. Teens are trying to be more than they're called to be, and this is a trend in anime also.
The problem is that the japanese have so engrained the idea of younger, younger, younger, on the characters they create that even western artists who mimick the style carry over this sentiment as well. This then filters down to the fanartists.
Slap a fetish and adult website on it, and you can see how the japanese influence effects this. Really, any artist could choose to draw characters as 23, 31, 50+ years old. But they don't. They're caught up in this adolesent, preteen, nubile, I'm mature for my age and take care of myself I'm so cool, characters. They identify with the 14-18 age group because thats where they are themselves. In cases where they're older (in my case 24) then theres less excuse for drawing younger characters by impulse, since you've moved on and grown past that stage.
Its the people who don't grow out of the desire to draw younger characters or create younger characters who impose in the problem. Its almost like they're stuck in a Peter Pan Neverland sort of thing. They're growing, but the characters aren't. They see people like us as the Captain Hooks of the world, trying to ruin their fun.
We're not. Having young characters isn't a problem. But making them all young characters, and then having those characters and/or the adults (which is even worse) doing fetish things to eachother just isn't right on a site like this. They need to start respecting that this is an adult website for adult material, which doesn't involve or concern itself with underage material of a tickling or fetish nature.
The arguement has been too far and long and way too interpretive than it needs to be. Its as simple as this being an adult website. That theres a struggle to keep the material adult is sad.
Alot of people bash the TMF for things it has done, or hasn't done. Well, I have to say, they've got this particular issue better under control than this site does, and we need to follow that example before people start resenting eachother.
The younger people need to respect that this is an adult website for older people with adult fetishes and adult situations. They need to accept the fact their their anime fetish pictures undermind the nature of the site and delute the line of whats acceptable with the japanese influenced taboos and nubile themes. The increasing ammount of younger and younger members on TT, compared to TMF, is noticable. If we want to nip this in the bud we need to put our foot down like TMF did.
How that foot goes down may be different, but something needs to happen. I don't like it when topics like this come to an end, people calm down, people lose their fervor and just go back to business as usual as if we're not taking this seriously and we're just talking just to talk. We're bound to repeat this, and its far too easy to just let this calm down. We all know what will happen if we just let this calm down and let it drop. Its far too tempting to let that happen and just put off a solution for a later date. Thats what the opposition would want. "Ah, lets just let them get the moral victory, things will calm down and it will be back to business as usual until the next big debate. The mods will say they'll look into it, but we know they probably won't follow through, and we're safe for another few months"
No. We've got to do something about that. Obviously, we're just online, typing away on a computer. The only things we can do are post, type, and complain. Those are the only three things we can only do. Its our only tool, and we need to use it more often, not just when we're roused to action by a little poll or the world loli gets thrown around.
Thats not proactive, thats reactive. We shouldn't be reacting, we should be acting.