I know you said forget the legalities, but legal people and their advisors have had some interesting thoughts on this matter. Might be worth considering, since they are very important in the real world.

In Canada, which is more restrictive than the USA on this topic, the Supreme Court decided precisely that drawings and works of fiction made about personal child sex fantasy, when made purely for personal use, did not constitute illegal material:

(ex *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Sharpe )
"Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing for the majority, held that the provision [against child pornography] in the [Criminal] Code violated the freedom of expression [guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights] but was justified under section one [reasonable limits on freedom in a democratic society] as the government objective of protecting children from exploitation was proportional [in importance] to the [severity of the Charter] violation.

The Court, however, finds that the [Code] provisions were too broad for including two types of material that should not constitute child pornography as they do not pose a direct potential harm to children. First, where the written or visual representations were created and possessed by the accused for exclusive personal use, and second, where 'visual recordings created by or depicting the accused that do not depict unlawful sexual activity and are held by the accused exclusively for private use.'"

This is nowhere near as severe as what the extremist academic Ethel Quayle (Univ. of Edinburgh), one of the main advisors on child erotica policy in Europe(including the UK), is promoting as a new standard principle.

(see *http://www.ecpat.net/WorldCongressIII/PDF/Publications/ICT_Psychosocial/Thematic_Paper_ICTPsy_ENG.pdf )

Now, I will paste in what she says, but first of all, I will just explain why its wording is so obscure. The author she quotes, Oswell, has tried to justify making purely fantasy-based cp-type depictions criminal by using a branch of philosophy known as the philosophy of intentionality. (I owe thanks to a friend who studies such things for explaining this; see the first paragraph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality)

What the argument boils down to - and Cat, you're gonna love this - is that any sexual fantasy about children could not have meaning without the existence of real children to refer it to, and therefore such a fantasy, especially when drawn out, is a "crime against childhood as a universal." Yes, when you read the text below, you will see that the authors, Oswell and Quayle, purport to be talking strictly about material exchanged on the internet. In fact, though, their concept clearly relates just as much to fantasy as to manufactured visual objects, because a fantasy, as much as a drawing, "refers to a scene beyond itself." These people only stick to the visual objects as a topic because that's their particular academic turf.


"...Oswell (2006) has presented an important argument ... stating that, “Although the evidential value of the virtual image is different from an actual image (and hence the forms of police investigation and legal prosecution are different), until an image can be said to correspond to an actual case of child sexual abuse, all Internet child pornography can be viewed as real. In this sense, the primary concern is not one of the effects of the image on others or one of the relations of power encoded in the image, but one of the virtual evidentiality of the image (i.e., on the image’s capacity to refer to an objective reality that is both internal and external to the image). The ethical intensity of the virtual image lies precisely in its capacity to refer to a scene beyond itself ” (p. 258).

Oswell (2006) goes on to state that the crime of possession, making or distribution of child pornography (whether virtual or not) is a crime
not only against a particular child, but against all children. “It is a crime against childhood as a universal” (p. 252).

We argue that the crime of possession, and making or distribution of child pornography, whether virtual or not, are crimes not only against a particular child, but against all children."

I believe that Christiaan X is planning to debunk this extraordinary leap of philosophical fantasy in the Church of Jesus Among the Teachers (*www.cjat.org). He has already published a critical open letter to Quayle at *http://www.cjat.org/ipb/index.php?showtopic=33

So if you don't want to criminalize yourself against "childhood as a universal," you must make sure any sexual fantasies you have could not have any philosophically conceivable reference to the reality of children's existence. Lol.

Why am I singing Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" to myself as I write this?