Today's news on the break up of a ring of paedophiles who distribute pictures of child abuse on the internet:
Irish Times
Guardian UK
Note how neither newspaper uses the term 'Child Pornography', but this is the phrase repeated over and over today in the radio coverage.
Is it not time to abandon the term 'Child Pornography' when referring to these crimes? Pornography implies 'top shelf' publications, or the dodgy videos that teenage boys giggle about at weekend sleepovers. Pornography, however exploitative, has become a legal industry, and so implies an element of consent by those who take part.
Pictures and videos of children should be called the commercialisation of child abuse. Those who view these images are not some kind of pervy peeping toms.
They are child abusers.
In the same way as the person who employs a hitman is guilty of murder, so are those who pay others to abuse children guilty of child abuse.
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