To think this is horrific? TW CSAM in a Novel

[sellotapechicken]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/sydney-daddy-little-toy-book-tori-woods-b2720934.html Australian author has been arrested after writing a book about a man lusting after the barely legal daughter of his best friend, but the entire premise of the book is that he’s fancied her since she was 3 I agree she needs to be arrested!

Oh And to make it worse the dedication in the beginning was ‘I’ll never look at my kids the same way again’ her kids are under 5 years old

Oh and it’s called ‘daddies little toy’

From a poisoned mind to a poisonous pen.
That's awful.

I haven't read the book, so how can I judge? Also people write books about all sorts of unthinkable things - murder, rape, torture - it doesn't mean that they would consider doing them or condone them.

Are they going to ban Nabokov's Lolita as well?

I've never heard of the author, so can't comment on the literary merit of the book.

This.

I think (having not seen more than the headline posted) that it’s the fact that she’s referred to as a writer of erotic fiction that puts it in a different light than Lolita.

Why would she be arrested and not Bret Easton Ellis for writing American Psycho?
Writing about CSAM is disgusting and actually yes, I almost think for the dedication in the book she should probably be looked at/questioned. But fundamentally we shouldn’t be arresting authors for writing fiction.

Agree that that makes it 1000x more grim (and I doubt her writing is on a par with Nabokov) but I’m not convinced it makes it more illegal, does it?

I see what you are saying, but if someone is looking to 'get off' on abuse stories, they could pluck almost any misery memoir off the shelf to get their fix.

If content breaches obscenity laws in the country in which it's published, it shouldn't make a difference whether it has a black cover with red glittery writing; a sepia-tinted photo of a ragged child overlaid by a graffiti-esque typeface; or the Penguin Classics insignia on the spine.

There are ways of writing about abuse, even sexual abuse, that are not salacious or puerile. You can explore the subject without writing porn. There shouldn’t be banned subjects, but there’s justification for obscenity laws. Of course, there’s a whole other dimension of what constitutes obscenity.

"My juicy lucy, perfect at three years old." "I got so excited I wet my pants, at night I used my unicorn stuffy and thought of my Dads best friend and wished he could be my Daddy"

Those are direct quotes from the books.

I think it's horrific that a writer was arrested for writing fiction.

I saw some people talking about this on TikTok the other day and thought I couldn’t be that bad but that is fucking gross.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

As a PP noted, the writer in question is probably not on par with Nabokov. But the quality of the prose shouldn't be the reason to arrest or not arrest a writer. Are all potentially distressing subjects to be banned? That is a slope of the slipperiest variety.

Fictionalised CSA is abhorrent.
There is no defence.

Abhorrent, yes, but is it illegal? I don’t think it should be.

Then where do you draw the line? Is it ok to use AI to create images because it's fictional? If this was a man people would be screaming to have his hard drives searched. There is something wrong with you if you write sexually explicit scenes of paedophilia that you sell as romantic erotica.

Should I be able to write a detailed description of how to make an explosive device and smuggle it onto a train, plane or ocean liner? What if I used my inside knowledge of a concert hall to describe precisely how to carry out a massacre? I wouldn’t do it, I’d just write a fictional story.

I honestly don’t know where I draw the line. AI was not something I accounted for when i formulated my moral code, and I feel very strange about that. I would probably say AI IMO falls under fiction. It isn’t real, there is no victim. (I am not actually sure of the law on this in the UK currently!).

Where do YOU draw the line with fiction books? Should writing a graphic murder scene be illegal too?

The thing about AI is that its knowledge is entirely drawn from what it scrapes from the internet - whatever people might claim about generative AI, it isn't capable of original thought. So any human images it produces are drawn from actual people somewhere.

That is helpful to know. I actually googled some things around the law - a man was jailed for creating images using AI but it seemed to involve real people in manipulated images. I am glad that is illegal.

That seems different to writing a fictional account of something, though.

Laws are in the process of being passed to make AI generated abuse material illegal in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d90qe4nylo

It's a very interesting ethical issue. Do we ban art (in it's widest sense) if it offends is? If it describes an illegal act?

What about all the novels and films with depictions of horrendous murders?

I certainly wouldn't want to read any descriptions of CSA, fictional or otherwise, but do I want to ban fiction? I really don't want to go down that road.

Human produced fiction (and 'art' of all kinds) has always been something of a morally controversial area - can things that are abhorrent be justified on the grounds that they are 'art'? However, the 'art' justification can't be applied to AI generated material, so there isn't the same grey area.

Childhood sexual abuse, the overpowering and disempowering of a child through sexual means.

Why would anyone want to write about this in a fictional style and more importantly what sort of person would want to read it.

It is the most gruesome taboo.
I am aware that it is not illegal and of that I can do nothing but I can voice my utter disgust at this being considered as an 'art' form or indeed any form of entertainment.