Category Archives: Child Abuse

Child Abuse, Grooming, Image-Based Culture, Legislation, Literature, Media, PCP, Playboy, Stats, United States

How has Playboy infiltrated children’s entertainment?

Playboy is arguably one the best-known brands of the sex industry worldwide. In sixty years, its founder and CEO, Hugh Hefner, has managed to transform a magazine with centerfolds of naked models into a global success, its reach extending far beyond the pages of Playboy Magazine. It has infiltrated political movements (the sexual revolution), curbed legislation (United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803), lined the racks of clothing stores (for children, too), and can be found in virtually every entertainment medium, including video games (Playboy: The Mansion), DVDs (Playboy Playmates), reality shows (The Girls Next Door), and theatrically-released Hollywood films (The House Bunny). The brand, and its iconic logo – a silhouette of a rabbit wearing a bow tie – are everywhere.

It is reasonable to assert that when most adults see the Playboy logo, whether it’s on jewelry, carved into a truck’s mud flap, inscribed on a shot glass, or on a teenager’s sweatpants, they accept it. Such is the power of ubiquity: Playboy has emerged as a popular symbol that adults and children alike can adorn without question.

In 2011, Playboy managed to reach children in a whole new way: by targeting the audience of a mainstream Hollywood children’s film called Hop.

Hop, a feature-length animated movie, features as its main characters several animated rabbits. In the film, the Easter Bunny wants his teenage son, EB, to succeed him as the next Easter Bunny. EB, however, would rather pursue his dreams, and so he runs off to Hollywood to become a star.

When E.B. arrives, the first place he visits is the Playboy Mansion, hoping for a place to stay. Knowing that the “Playboy mansion has been home to many sexy bunnies,” he speaks with Hefner himself (providing his actual voice), and insists that he is “incredibly sexy.” Once Hefner takes a look at EB (through a camera!), EB is rejected, ostensibly because he does not fit the Playboy mold of “sexy bunny.” Disappointed, EB leaves the mansion.

The dialogue of the scene is as follows:

Voice at Playboy Mansion: [through an intercom] Listen, this is the Playboy Mansion, not a hotel.

E.B.: [looking into a map] I know, but it says ‘Since 1971 the Playboy Mansion has been home to many sexy bunnies.’

Voice at Playboy Mansion: I can’t even see you. Step closer.

E.B.: I’m just saying, I am a bunny and am incredibly sexy.

Voice at Playboy Mansion: I don’t have time for this.

E.B.: Hello? Hello? Ugh, this must be the rags part of my rags-to-riches story.

The lasting impression of the scene is that the Playboy Mansion is exclusive and consequently desirable. Were EB just a bit sexier, perhaps he’d be able to join all of the sexy bunnies in the Mansion. In another version of the story, perhaps EB would learn how Playboy and Hefner himself have been long documented as having supported the sex trafficking of women and children, have depicted children sexually in their magazines, have literally promoted the “hate raping” of conservative women (“So Right, It’s Wrong” campaign), and have contributed to the average early death of 36 for all Playboy Playmates.

Hop was a large box office success, earning more than $180 million at the global box office and spawning licensed video games, books, candy, clothing, stuffed animals, and exclusive Burger King kids meal toys. It wasn’t received well by critics (it has a 25% rating on the film review aggregate site, Rotten Tomatoes), but the failures of the movie were attributed to bad but “harmless” writing. Alas, such is the power of ubiquity.

Hop is, of course, just one example of many ways in which Hefner has tried to reach children as a target demographic with Playboy. There have been other attempts, and there will be more. After all, this is the same man who is quoted as saying, “I don’t care if a baby holds up a Playboy bunny rattle.” Are we surprised? Are we even capable of recognizing it when we see it?

The history of Playboy, Playboy Magazine, Playboy Enterprises, Hugh Hefner, the Playmates, and their impact on our world will continue to be explored in scope throughout Pornography FAQ.

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Child Abuse, PCP, Profit, PTSD, Stats

What are the most common female roles in pornography?

In an in-depth study of 10,000 female porn performers, it was found that they were most commonly cast as “teenagers” in pornographic films.

In descending order, women were then most frequently assigned the roles of “MILF” (“Mom I’d like to fuck”), “cheerleader,” “nurse,” “daughter,” “coed,” “girlfriend,” “cougar,” “sister,” “babysitter,” “sorority girl,” “schoolgirl,” “hitchhiker,” and “runaway.”

It is worth noting that around half of these roles explicitly sexualize girls under the age of 18 (daughter, schoolgirl, babysitter) and / or target women in need of some kind of support (hitchhiker, runaway).

In a way, the pornographers’ focus seems logical, if uncreative, when considering how they manage to have an endless supply of women. For instance, there are countless reports of the industry exploiting women into pornography by deception (fake modeling jobs), coercing girls (many of whom are survivors of sexual abuse) to surrender their boundaries and “loosen up,” intoxicate the susceptible, and exploit economic poverty with the promise of financial security. It’s hardly a surprise that these very roles are the ones that the pornography industry recycles back to the consumers in a vicious feedback loop that never ends. It makes sense: it’s how the pornographers get their victims, it’s what the men in porn have been consuming, and it’s where the girls in porn come from.

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Censorship, Child Abuse, Japan, Legislation, Literature, Profit

Is child pornography legal in Japan?

As of June 2014, a law prohibiting the possession of child pornography passed in Japan.* Once this law was implemented a month later, a one-year moratorium was placed on the penalties for possession, so as to encourage men to dispose of their child pornography collection over time. As it stands today, the penalty for possessing child pornography is up to one year in prison and a maximum fine of one million yen, or $9.800.

Around this same time, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government also made illegal the selling of manga depicting and sexualizing the rape of children, such as “Little Sisters Paradise! 2,” directly to children. Adults, however, were well within their rights to pick up a copy. In fact, to this day it is still legal to possess and distribute animated and illustrated depictions of children being raped and in other exploitative sexual interactions.

Under Japan’s “Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Protection of Children,” only people who perpetrate against children directly are recognized as having violated the rights of children. As there are no “real” children in manga and in anime, artists, free speech advocates, and publishers have argued that there is no harm. By invoking the Japanese government’s strict censorship before World War II, these groups of people (namely, male) have successfully managed to morph the issue of sexualizing children into a fight against the government’s ideological repression of sexuality. For these anti-censorship crusaders, the matter of harm that their “free speech” does to children (sexualizing children, portraying children as sex-starved “Lolita’s,” making entertainment of child sexual abuse, suggesting that children understand and desire sex on the same cognitive and emotional level as adults) does not seem to matter.

These are the same advocates fighting for the right to code and  distribute the popular “RapeLay” – or “rape play” – a game in which the protagonist must grope, stalk, confine, and rape a mother and her two daughters to win the game.

In more recent times, there have been increased demands within Japan to more strictly prohibit the sexualizing of children via manga, anime, and so on. As of yet, additional police efforts on further legislation have been blocked by stakeholders in the publishing industry.

* In 1999, Japan outlawed the production, distribution, and possession with intent to distribute child pornography. Possession without intention to distribution remained legal in all prefectures (except for Kyoto and Nara, which have both explicitly banned child pornography possession on the grounds that it is obviously harmful).

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