Child Pornography
"Child Pornography" (CP) is a broad term which refers to nude, sexual, or pornographic depictions of children, minors, or persons under the age of consent. The definition varies across jurisdictions, often with regard to moral and cultural sensibilities such as perceptions of nudity or appropriate ages for sexual activity. There are also a number of specific crimes related to child pornography; for example - "making" images and distributing them. In many cases the laws pertaining to these things use different labels and CP remains a colloquial term.
Politically correct term
More recently, a politically correct term, CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) has come into use. However, since most such material is now produced by minors, its use is inherently problematic. It should also be noted that most such minor pornographers are in fact teenagers and not children, and that some investigations would appear to contest the idea that the rarer, adult produced "CSAM" is necessarily "abusive" in anything but a statutory sense.
Etymology
Etymologically speaking, the term "pornographos" referred to depictions of harlots (prostitutes) in Ancient Greece. Labelling child images as pornography (calling them whores, essentially) contradicts the thought process that children cannot consent to sex. Prostitutes must by definition by consensually selling sex, otherwise it is rape and not prostitution. People who are sold as objects without their consent are called sex slaves, not prostitutes.
List
For a comprehensive list of articles, see Category:Child_Pornography.
To avoid confusion of this topic, we constructed a series of articles that relate to this issue:
- Child Pornography Laws - Links to present laws.
- Indecent images of children - UK Laws in focus.
- Research: Child Pornography
- Child Pornography (Wikipedia) - Archive of an old Wikipedia article (Censored article, as of 2008).
In addition to this, all of the following may or may not be considered child porn:
- Boy Photography
- Girl Photography
- Non-photographic erotica involving minors, including literature and cartoons.