Australia

5123 readers

155 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 days 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

[–] Yeoldetelephone@aussie.zone 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not a psychologist, nor have I done research on CSAM, but have been in a team doing addiction research from another discipline.

An orgasm is a biological reward for behaviour, and if that behaviour involves representations of children then they are being rewarded for sexualising child-thing, which would probably reinforce the behaviour or increase its value when real children are encountered. There is little to no evidence supporting what's called the thermodynamic model of addiction (Ie. "pressure release") and long term behaviours tend expand rather than being relieved with repetition.

Additionally it would be very hard (albeit possible in some way I assume) to do any ethical research on this to get the answers you are after.

[–] stevles@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the information. Based on studies and articles I've come across, paraphilias such as paedophilia, sadism, and many others tend to behave like addictions; allowing oneself to indulge increases the likelihood of needing that “fix” again. Overall, normalising sexual interactions with child-like dolls seems like a bad idea, especially since paedophilic urges should never be acted upon to reduce offending against children.