FishFace

Do you believe that finding out that, there is an entire group of people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality taking pictures of your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using alorthimically derived likenesses of your naked body, has no psychological consequences for you whatsoever?

Do you think the consequences of finding out are significantly different than finding out they're doing it in their imagination? If so, why?

Youre essentially saying that men and boys can’t be expected to treat girls and women as actual people and instead must be allowed to turn their friends and peers into fetishized media content they can share amongst each other.

And, just to be clear, by this you mean the stuff with pictures, not talking or thinking about them? Because, again, the words "media content" just don't seem to be key to any harm being done.

Your approach is consistently to say that "this is harmful, this is disgusting", but not to say why. Likewise you say that the "metaphors are not at all applicable" but you don't say at all what the important difference is between "people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality taking pictures of your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using alorthimically derived likenesses of your naked body" and "people who you thought were your friends but are in actuality imagining your head and masturbating to the idea of you performing sex acts for them using imagined likenesses of your naked body". Both acts are sexualisation, both are done without consent, both could cause poor treatment by the people doing it.

I see two possiblities - either you see this as so obviously and fundamentally wrong you don't have a way of describing way, or you know that the two scenarios are fundamentally similar but know that the idea of thought-crime is unsustainable.

Finally it's necessary to address the gendered way you're talking about this. While obviously there is a huge discrepancy in male perpetrators and female victims of sexual abuse and crimes, it makes it sound like you think this is only a problem because, or when, it affects women and girls. You should probably think about that, because for years we've been making deserved progress at making things gender-neutral and I doubt you'd accept this kind of thing in other areas.

Hey, it's OK to say you just don't have any counter-argument instead of making blatantly false characterisations.

Sir, this is a joke about how it would be awful if the sun were always up.

But also, the UK just had its second warmest June ever (England's warmest ever) and was over 30C in many places. During these heatwaves, the temperature rises rapidly, making it uncomfortable because people are not used to the warmer temperatures. After 7 days of warm temperatures, people get used to it.

It's interesting in the case of Ukraine (also with cluster munitions): the problem is that they leave UXO which is then a danger to life and limb for decades after the war. But, so is being under the thumb of a murderous, genocidal dictator. So surely the standard should be not an outright ban, but a ban on using mines outside your own territory, or the territory of another country with their consent?

It gets difficult with territorial disputes but it also needs to be practical.

Are you OK with sexually explicit photos of children taken without their knowledge? They’re not being actively put in a sexual situation if you’re snapping photos with a hidden camera in a locker room, for example. You ok with that?

No, but the harm certainly is not the same as CSAM and it should not be treated the same.

• it normalizes pedophilia and creates a culture of trading images, leading to more abuse to meet demand for more images
• The people sharing those photos learn to treat people like objects for their sexual gratification, ignoring their consent and agency. They are more likely to mistreat people they have learned to objectify.

as far as I know there is no good evidence that this is the case and is a big controversy in the topic of fake child porn, i.e. whether it leads to more child abuse (encouraging paedophiles) or less (gives them a safe outlet) or no change.

your body should not be used for the profit or gratification of others without your consent. In my mind this includes taking or using your picture without your consent.

If someone fantasises about me without my consent I do not give a shit, and I don't think there's any justification for it. I would give a shit if it affected me somehow (this is your first bullet point, but for a different situation, to be clear) but that's different.

Its not a matter of feeling ashamed, its a matter of literally feeling like your value to the world is dictated by your role in the sexualities of heterosexual boys and men. It is feeling like your own body doesnt belong to you but can be freely claimed by others. It is losing trust in all your male friends and peers, because it feels like without you knowing they’ve already decided that you’re a sexual experience for them.

Why is it these things? Why does someone doing something with something which is not your body make it feel like your body doesn't belong to you? Why does it not instead make it feel like images of your body don't belong to you? Several of these things could equally be used to describe the situation when someone is fantasised about without their knowledge - why is that different? In Germany there's a legal concept called "right to one's own image" but there isn't in many other countries, and besides, what you're describing goes beyond this.

My thinking behind these questions is that I cannot see anything inherent, anything necessary about the creation of fake sexual images of someone which leads to these harms, and that instead there is an aspect of our society which very explicitly punishes and shames people - woman far more so than men - for being in this situation, and that without that, we would be having a very different conversation.

Starting from the position that the harm is in the creation of the images is like starting from the position that the harm of rape is in "defiling" the person raped. Rape isn't wrong because it makes you worthless to society - society is wrong for devaluing rape victims. Society is wrong for devaluing and shaming those who have fake images made of them.

We do know the harm of this kind of sexualization. Women and girls have been talking about it for generations. This isnt new, just a new streamlined way to spread it. It should be illegal.

Can you be more explicit about what it's the same as?

Shocking. Guess we have to hope it gets blocked and overturned in court but I don't know if there's anything remotely like a precedent for that.

That link just forwards me to twitter :S

I mean, the artifact in LotR is magical. Reading too much into the name would be a mistake.

The term "social murder" is co-opting violent language to describe things that are not violent. I'm sure you can understand the difference even if you do like to use the term. What you mean is that the consequences of politics can be extremely severe, but once you see that is not the same as violence the way we both understand the term literally, you see that "politics is violent" is not a useful reply.

What you seem to be trying to say is that, because political decisions can cause mass deaths, violent language is by default justified in political discourse. That's dangerous and wrong, and leads to politicians getting killed. And it's not going to be right-wing politicians who get killed the most, because right-wingers are more l ikely to carry out political violence, once it becomes normalised through violent political discourse.

But this was about Israel more than the USA.

There are significant relevant differences between Britain and Israel today compared to German Jews and Germany in the late 1930s. But the same calculations need to apply when you allow violence into your speech: is it going to increase the risk of violence against innocent people? Anti-semitic assaults in the UK rose by approximately 50% in the wake of October 7th. (I was not able to find comparable figures for Islamophobic assaults, unfortunately), so this is against a backdrop in which Jews are at an increased risk of violence. So although "death to the IDF" does not call for violence against Jews in general, as the Chief Rabbi wrongly claimed, it does increase that risk.

Coming from the other direction, shouting "death to the IDF" does not materially call for justified action in a way that "fuck the IDF" does not; they are both merely expressing directionless disapproval. They will be seen too as calls for the governments to stop funding Israel, providing it with weapons, and associating with a government actively and brazenly carrying out ethnic cleansing.

We can also see that things are different for the people directly affected by violence. If a Palestinian shouts "death to the IDF" I don't see that as unacceptable violent speech; I see that as an inevitable response to the violence enacted upon them. But Bob Vylan is not a Palestinian being attacked by the IDF so we shouldn't give him the same latitude.

Not convinced this really belongs in Technology; he was inciting violence and would expect to be convicted on whatever medium.

When someone makes child porn they put a child in a sexual situation - which is something that we have amassed a pile of evidence is extremely harmful to the child.

For all you have said - "without the consent" - "being sexualised" - "commodifies their existence" - you haven't told us what the harm is. If you think those things are in and of themselves harmful then I need to know more about what you mean because:

1. if someone thinks of me sexually without my consent I am not harmed
2. if someone sexualises me in their mind I am not harmed
3. I don't know what the "commodification of one's existence" can actually mean - I can't buy or sell "the existence of women" (does buying something's existence mean the same as buying the thing, or something else?) the same I can aluminium, and I don't see how being able to (easily) make (realistic) nude images of someone changes this in any way

It is genuinely incredible to me that you could be so unempathetic,

I am not unempathetic, but I attribute the blame for what makes me feel bad about the situation is that girls are being made to feel bad and ashamed not that a particular technology is now being used in one step of that.