Australia

5146 readers

120 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
Politics, post it to Australian Politics
World News/Events, post it to World News
A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

lodion@aussie.zone

bestusername@aussie.zone

eatham@aussie.zone

Nath@aussie.zone

Child-like sex dolls are being stopped at Australia’s border. They could be an early child protection warning (theconversation.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by arbilp3@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Importing these products is illegal. Possession is also a Commonwealth offence carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment.

Available figures indicate the scale is significant, but difficult to track consistently. The Department of Home Affairs recorded 103 detections in 2020–21, 88 in 2021–22 and 29 in 2022–23.

An Australian Institute of Criminology review called for more research in the area, but identified plausible risks involved with owning them, including desensitisation, sexual objectification of children, escalation and use in grooming.

The appropriate response is therefore neither to dismiss these objects as harmless fantasy nor to treat possession as automatic proof of future offending. It’s to recognise them as potential risk indicators that may justify investigation.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] T4peMeasure@aussie.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

Not every person who possesses or imports a child-like sex doll will go on to become sexually abusive. Current research does not establish a simple causal pathway.

In fact, some scholars found doll owners showed lower arousal to abuse scenarios and lower sexual aggression proclivity than those who didn’t own a doll.

Other studies similarly found doll use was linked to reduced deviant and compulsive sexual behaviour.

I'm finding the above misleading, because the 'studies' linked seems to be about 'adult' sxx toys, not child like sxx toys.

I believe it's quite obvious that there is No positive outcome of those wanting/ owning/ using child like sxx toys. For the sake of the community, they belong behind bars!

[–] GardenGeek@europe.pub 14 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

Mixed feelings with this one.

Offenders belong behind bars—so far, so clear. But what do we do with people who haven’t committed any crimes so far? Do we temporarily lock them up for life because of their sexual orientation? That seems to me to be a very dangerous path, both because it drives these people into hiding and because we know where the persecution of sexual orientations has led—and, with fascism on the rise worldwide, where it will lead.

The most effective way to protect children and actually prevent crimes would be to give these people the opportunity to come out and work out ways to live with their orientation (which, like all other sexual orientations, they did not choose) without becoming offenders. However, I doubt that we as a society are ready for that… your comment on this platform itself reinforces my skepticism.

[–] arbilp3@aussie.zone 10 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Some people who have sexual thoughts about children and are worried about it can get support if they don't want to carry out sexually damaging behaviours towards children, e.g. https://bravehearts.org.au/get-help/for-those-concerned-about-their-thoughts/

There also are people who do not want to get support and want to continue activities which exploit children.

I don't know if it is agreed by medical and psychological experts that paedophilia is an orientation or not. Some people who have these desires, etc, were abused themselves as children and so there is trauma-based acting out. Other people do not respond this way. The whole situation is complex but the safety of children must be the first consideration.

[–] Yeoldetelephone@aussie.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know if it is agreed by medical and psychological experts that paedophilia is an orientation or not. Some people who have these desires, etc, were abused themselves as children and so there is trauma-based acting out. Other people do not respond this way. The whole situation is complex but the safety of children must be the first consideration.

The general work for this is the DSM5, which lays out pedophilic disorder on page 697-701, where it is classified as a paraphilia and a disorder, classified alongside other conditions that involve some sort of bypassing of normal consent processes (ie paraphilias involving objects or extreme violence, etc)

[–] arbilp3@aussie.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for this information.

load more comments (5 replies)

load more comments (9 replies)

load more comments (11 replies)