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Lots of interesting comments are pointing out that CP, including potentially lollicon, can sway the "marginal" pedophile. Do we have any evidence true marginal pedophiles exist? I'm not talking about those who have urges but don't act because of incentives, but sleeper-agent types who would develop urges if they sufficiently engaged with the idea or pornographic content.
My impression had always been that true paedophilia was some kind of mental illness that was much more binary and that "marginal pedophiles" were rare. People who are attracted to teenagers (Ephebophiles?) would fall into a different camp, which would be a lot less binary and have many marginal members.
I'm not basing this model on any real knowledge, but if seems to me the anecdotes of people being molested are usually about younger children, not teenagers. If marginal pedophiles were a major concern, I'd expect higher frequencies of molestation in older children/teenagers.
The answer to this is complex. My short answer is something like "Basically almost everyone is a 'marginal' pedophile [though this ideally would receive a lot of elaboration], but it's not worth worrying about media 'swaying' them because possessing any sexual attraction bandwidth that is seriously dedicated to children is usually only a small part of their motivation if any."
I wouldn't expect that myself necessarily. People who are attracted to "older children/teenagers" are not "marginal pedophiles"; they are simply ephebophiles/hebephiles. They're different brands of sexuality, perhaps interrelated to some degree especially at the age margins where they overlap, but one is not a "marginal" version of the other. The guy who is not attracted to a 14 year old (and by "guy" in this case, the case of being attracted to an objectively sexually attractive 14 year old, I mean essentially every guy alive) is not expressing a "marginal" version of an attraction to an 8 year old (which has less universal of an uptake as it is of a wholly different character).
Putting aside people who are bona-fide pedophile and are attracted to actual children, it sounds like in your model, (e?)phebophillia is a more of a fetish or a preference. I do think porn can exacerbate, and even create fetishes/preferences, at least temporarily. So it seems the marginal aspect is a valid concern.
On the other hand, I doubt people with porn-induced/enhanced phebophilia are that much more likely to engage in morally problematic behaviour with minors.
Lollicon probably appeals to an even wider audience who like anime and hentai. Because the visuals are so unrealistic I doubt it's harmful. I don't think anyone is developing a significant bestiality fetish from the wacky stuff often portrayed in hentai (cat-people, tentacles, etc.) and I don't see why lollicon would be any different with respect to pedophilia.
I'm kind of confused by your response. Let me clarify:
A. I don't know what "phebophilia" is. It's just "ephebophilia". (Hebephilia, if that confused you, is a different thing, the next youngest age bracket.)
B. My model is definitely not that ephebophilia is a mere fetish. Ephebophilia, for a refresher, is the sexual attraction to older teens, around 15-17 (the arbitrary cut off for it only because of the common legal age of consent, even though I'd say that being sexually attracted to a 17 year old is far more similar to being sexually attracted to a 20 year old than a 12 year old or even a 14 year old).
My model is that this is essentially universal (at least and especially among men) if not the default ideal and strongest preference (in the absence of social pressure, mostly from women), because there is zero reason that we would evolve to not be sexually attracted to perfectly (and freshly, more unblemished ones, thus arguably superior) fertile humans right next to us (and history proves that's not the case) just because future people millions of years later would decide that the age of 18 is the correct arbitrary cutoff for sexual autonomy. Porn cannot probably "exacerbate" ephebophilia any more than fast food commercials can "exacerbate" your need to eat food to live or your inherent desire to do so with greasy high-fat/high-carb junk food (which is maybe some via exposure effects (though this is likely to more just affect particular brand preference as opposed to preference for the entire underlying category), availability heuristics, etc., but it's still not in any way rewiring your fundamental preferences as opposed to just appealing to them).
(A simple proof of this is the massive popularity of "barely legal" pornography, girls who "just turned" 18, and the overwhelming popularity otherwise of young girls, particularly (legal) teens, in porn, relative to their percentage of the overall female population. That is, men already park their erotic preferences pretty much as absolutely close to the legal line as they can, suggesting that they'd have no issue going lower if it were more legal/frictionless (and actively want to). If I'm pressed up against the doors of a store, that's evidence that I want to get in when it opens, not that I want to stay pressed up against the doors. It's just that this one door isn't budging.)
To elaborate on my prior analogy: McDonald's does not make people desire unhealthy food; our brains are wired to crave unhealthy food and McDonald's simply provides it. Maybe a McDonald's commercial shifts things psychologically on the margins somewhat, erodes your willpower to have a healthy salad instead by reminding you that the dark side exists, but if McDonald's didn't advertise at all, they'd maybe lose 2-10% of their business max (which still makes it more than worth their while to pay for them), not 100% or even likely 80%. The desire, which necessarily precedes the object that grants its fulfillment (otherwise nobody would have any reason to produce the object), would still exist.
The same is true of any erotic stimuli and ephebophilia. Maybe it can make you more likely to actively think "Hey, I'd like to fuck [a/that] 15 year old." in any given moment, but it can't put the desires/neurology/psychology producing that thought in your head (as proven by the fact that equivalently seductively produced content of a toilet or a banana isn't likely to make anybody who didn't have those thoughts before suddenly think they want to fuck a toilet or banana). Nature did that. (And if you see in real life a sexually attractive 15 year old, your probability of thinking "I want to fuck her." isn't likely going to be affected by prior/recent exposure to sexualized content of 15 year olds any more than your probability of accepting a free greasy burger in real life that's suddenly offered to you is going to be by whether you've seen a fast food burger commercial recently (which is again probably maybe some, but again not in any that alters the underlying inherent calculus much).)
Calling it a fetish is like saying people have a "food fetish" for McDonald's. That's obviously not the case.
Thanks for explaining, that does makes sense and is pretty convincing. People who consume the barely legal type porn are definitely marginal ephebophiles, if not full-blown ones.
There's definitely variation among people's taste, though. In my view, someone could have a "youthful" fetish the same way they have a mature/milf or an asian fetish. I suppose whether these are "fetishes" or not is a terminological debate, but I certainly did not have your view pinned down until you explained it.
There is, but it seems transparently obvious to me based on all of the data about the subject that in the statistical distribution of age-based attraction those who prefer the young/"barely legal" teens/etc. vastly outnumber those who prefer the old/MILFS/etc. (again at least among men).
Can somebody have a "youthfulness" fetish? I think they can have a fetish for the perceived social paraphernalia of youthfulness (which to me explains the distinction between ageplaying, which is genuinely a fetish as you describe I believe, and youth-oriented chronophilias), but to say that they have a fetish for youthfulness itself seems as nonsensical to me as saying someone has a "fetish" for symmetry or pertness or fair skin (all traits commonly enhanced by youthfulness).
The extreme ends of youth-oriented chronophilia could perhaps be explained/characterized as a "fetish" for neoteny (and I believe they are explained by simply having a higher-than-average genetic preference for neoteny), but this is so fundamental that "orientation" describes to me more accurately the character of it.
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Empirical findings from places and times where CP was legal suggest it depresses sex offences.
I think it's fairly obvious why this is true. Porn use lowers male interest in pursuing women by satiating the sex drive.
We could even test this shit by conscripting a large enough sample of students, assigned some of them to jacking off more off and then noted who was more active in dating.
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This to me is the crux of the issue. I see as much reason to believe that easy access to lolicon would lead to some marginal pedophile to sexually abuse a child as to believe that Dave Chappelle's stand up bit would lead to some marginal transphobe to physically/verbally abuse a trans person. As such, I support as little restriction on one as I do the other. Supporting one but not the other seems to me to reflect more of a difference in one's own disgust reactions - and the justifications that follow those - than the underlying reality.
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