A new report released by the Center for Online Safety and Liberty is the first international survey of the legal status of “fantasy sexual materials,” i.e. fictional or artistic representations of sexual acts or relationships that involve no real persons in their production. This category is becoming a growing concern with the advent of highly realistic AI-generated pornography. Focusing on ten countries from six continents with very different legal systems, the report finds striking uniformity in banning fantasy materials that feature underage characters in sexual situations, with the sole exception of Japan, which has so far resisted regulations that impinge on its rich artistic traditions of anime and manga. The worldwide crusade has resulted in prosecution of teenage girls who produce erotic drawings (in Costa Rica) and novelists who describe adult characters reflecting on their adolescence (in Australia). It has reached the point where 40% of the prosecutions for child pornography in the UK (one of the few countries that separates its statistics) are now for materials that involved no actual children, while prosecutions for materials that did involve real children are declining. This massive diversion of resources and attention away from protecting real children has no real goal other than controlling people’s thoughts and imagination.
International Suppression of Sexual Fantasy Material
