Just when I thought Academia couldn't sink any lower.

I don’t think the guy who is masturbating over images of children, and openly stating the satisfaction he gets from being part of a community of men doing likewise, is the guy whose work aim is to fight sexualized images of children and paedophilia.

What an defence for finding CSA images on your laptop - 'It really is research - look the UoM and my supervisor have approved it.'

The fact that he’s masturbating over this is pure vile.

But the basis of the phd sounds quite good.

Isn’t it researching a link between watching these ‘innocent’ cartoon characters and peados?

There should be no cartoons that sexualise children and if studies need to be done to ban them then I’m all for it.

I'm not a Tory voter or reader of right-leaning papers, but I hope they pick this up as this really is showing some parts of academia have lost the plot (meanwhile, proper rigorous subjects like languages and classics are having courses cut all over the place!)

Fucking patriarchy.

Men and their dicks with their rape fantasy, abuse fantasy, and actual abuse of women and children.
Just fuck off the lot of you.

Yeah, what a world. Detransition is too controversial but a man seeking to link his arousal to minors by masturbating over sexually explicit images of minors, is not.

According to a video he posted, the ethics committee turned it down so he is reworking it for a re-submission in September.

Given he wrote a PhD about masturbating to it I think this bar is met "The Act defines a ‘pornographic image’ as one which must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal."

The solely or principally part is a high bar with which the CPS has sometimes had difficulty. In this instance, the researcher's work seems to cover handily whether the drawings are "principally for the purpose of sexual arousal".

'...no matter how my research participants’ takes on shota differed in terms of favourite theme, preferred age and style of characters, how they related their own selves to the story, and so on, they had one thing in common: almost all of them said that they masturbated to shota material...'

I am surprised - but not as surprised as I should be - that the Manchester University Research Ethics Committee (or in this case likely a small subset of the UREC who reviewed the application) did not point out to the student that there was a risk of his research being used in criminal evidence against him.

@lechiffre55 I agree. What policies does he want this to inform?

Meanwhile, elsewhere, detransitioning gets turned down by the Ethics committee (as a PhD topic).

Men are sick. Yeah, yeah, not all men. Too many are.

Yuck. Fucking weirdo men as usual. Like the subculture of porning over child sized AI models etc.

There seems to be an archived copy.... just in case it gets deleted.

Given he wrote a PhD about masturbating to it I think this bar is met "The Act defines a ‘pornographic image’ as one which must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal."

Do we need to know that much about male sexuality? 🤢

Odd, as this is his page on the university website where he says My PhD research is funded by the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/karl.andersson-postgrad.html

I feel sick. Boak.

This offence is targeted at non-photographic images; this includes computer-generated images (CGI’s), cartoons, manga images and drawings.

I think I noticed he said he gain some of the material in Japan? Japan is/ was (haven't looked it up for a while) one of the few places that allows child sex abuse cartoons. Vile.

I'm going to phone the university tomorrow and I'll be phoning the police too.

The paper says no funding so I'm guessing they are either a self-funded PhD student or employed by the Uni as a Graduate teaching assistant

Andrea 'middle finger' Jenkins. Yes definitely.

Is it worth complaining to the universities minister whoever that is these days?

I'm not a lawyer but this seems to imply that it is
www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/indecent-and-prohibited-images-children
This section in particular:
"Prohibited Images of Children
Section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 created the offence of possession of a prohibited image of a child. It is triable either way and punishable on indictment with a maximum of 3 years imprisonment.
The Law
This offence is targeted at non-photographic images; this includes computer-generated images (CGI’s), cartoons, manga images and drawings.
The offence specifically excludes indecent photographs, or pseudo-photographs of children, as well as tracings or derivatives of photographs and pseudo-photographs.
Section 62(2) to (8) sets out the definition of possession of a prohibited image of a child. ‘Possession’ is to have the same meaning as s. 160 CJA 1988 and s.1 PCA 1978.
The Act defines a ‘pornographic image’ as one which must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.
Even if an image is pornographic, it will not be a prohibited image unless it also satisfies all the other aspects of the offence."

better understanding of human sexuality

That's male sexuality, mate.

I literally can't think of anything to say beyond registering my outrage.

Is there any way to challenge the funding for this?

You can read the whole article!

No discussion of ethics. He does talk about his 'self care' though. He talks about how he likes knowing he is part of a community of men masturbating to the same material. He may have stumbled across part of the reason for paedophile communities there, or what they get out of it, but he doesn't talk about that. Because he's not really interested in the ethics of it.

I thought obscene cartoon images of children is illegal?