Would you censor fictional sexual content that depict minors?

[Scisca]

Johnw1104 said:

That's about the only thing I prefer being censored... Kids should not be sexualized even if it's just a video game.

Really, everyone knows deep down why we like erotic portrayals of people in games and art, so there's somethg inherently wrong in portraying minors in such a way as there's really only the one reason to do it.

I suppose there's something of a cultural divide here, though, in that girls in their early to mid teens have long been sexualized in Japanese art/anime etc... I still remember being surprised by the unedited original Dragonball series with how they treated the child version of Bulma. Of course, people often incorrectly conflate this with pedophilia when technically it's called "ephebophilia" (attraction to 15-19 year olds) which is not considered a mental illness, but they do often seem to go younger than 15 at times in their animes.

This is, of course, not exclusively a Japanese thing, historically speaking. The Greeks (and to a lesser extent the later romans) very much idolized the young male (~11-18) body as is quite evident in their art and sculpture, so it can certainly just be a cultural thing. That said, it still strikes me as wrong to portray these kids in that fashion, and it is especially egregious when they simply claim they're "15" or older but draw them with the appearance of a ten year old. That's one loophole that certainly needs closing.

The difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia is not any arbitrary point in age. It's not "from 15". It's about the look of the body. If the body is still the body of the child and that's what's turning somebody on - it's pedophilia. If the body is already developed and is the body of a young woman or man, it's ephebophilia. In fact, you can see this reflected in the laws of different countries, which allow people to have sex from a different age. In Europe it's usually 15 (Poland for example), but in Italy it's 14, while in Spain 13. So in Spain you could bang the chick from XCX and everything would be fine  That's also why in any case we can't talk pedophilia in XCX case. That girl is already very well developed (looks certainly more than 13) - she's got boobs and the body shape of a grown up woman. They could easily put a higher age and be over with it. It is a sci-fi game after all, they could just as well say she's 3000 years old.