Child pornography online: myth, fact, and social control

Journal of Sex Research, May, 2003 by Robert Bauserman

Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online. By Philip Jenkins. New York: New York University Press, 2001, 253 pages. Hardcover, $22.95.

Few areas of sexual behavior arouse as much condemnation or as little critical thought as child sexual abuse, and child pornography (despite lack of a consensus definition) is often presented as the epitome of sexual abuse. Consequently, Jenkins' book is valuable to those interested in issues of child and adolescent sexuality, sexual abuse, pornography, and sexuality on the Internet. Despite its flaws, no other comparable work exists that explores the online subculture of child pornography based on the thoughts and beliefs of the participants themselves, primarily as posted on message boards catering to individuals seeking to collect child pornography (CP) images.

Jenkins clearly states that CP images are exploitative and abusive, but manages to be (usually) calm and reasoned in discussing the nature and extent of the problem and possible responses. Jenkins is well qualified to take a levelheaded look at this online subculture. In his earlier book, Moral Panics, he documented how periods of extreme concern over sexual threats to children have occurred several times in 20th-century America, leading to exaggerated claims about prevalence and effects in order to advance social and moral agendas. Jenkins also writes that he recognizes the contradiction between his earlier exposure of such concerns as overblown, and his effort in this book to raise social concern about an authentic problem he believes is neglected.

In nine chapters, Jenkins focuses exclusively on online material of interest to men attracted to adolescent or pre-pubescent girls (he acknowledges the existence of a parallel group of men attracted to boys, but reports being unable to locate a parallel online culture for this group). As Jenkins explains, this material is almost impossible to find in other formats (such as magazines or films) due to severe legal penalties and the success of law enforcement in eradicating commercial production and trade. In his first chapter, he describes the hard-core nature of some of the child pornography available online, then lays out three goals in writing this book: (a) to present a critical case study of efforts to regulate Internet content; (b) to understand why society has such a distorted view of online threats to children, focused largely on "cyberstalking;" and (c) to examine the implications of the online child pornography subculture for theories of deviance.

The mere act of downloading a sexual image of an adolescent or child to view on a computer screen is illegal under federal law, regardless of whether the image is saved or transmitted to others. To avoid this problem, Jenkins' primary source of information was written messages posted on web-based "bulletin boards," where CP collectors discussed their activity and shared information but where illegal images did not appear. He also disabled the "autoload" feature of his Netscape browser, which meant photos on sites he visited would not automatically appear on his screen but instead be shown as small icons merely indicating a photo was present. Of course, this raises the question: How did Jenkins know that the sites actually contained CP if he did not view the images? His answer is that the collectors posting on the message boards quickly informed one another if sites did not actually contain child or adolescent images and commented on the content to each other. In effect, the collectors served as informants. Jenkins' use of the messages of actual participants in an online sexual subculture is itself a useful contribution: It suggests a means for sexuality researchers to access writings and images from practitioners of many paraphilic and/or illegal forms of sexual behavior outside of clinical and legal settings.

In Chapter 2, Jenkins discusses the concept of child pornography itself and challenges a number of assumptions. For example, he notes that definitions of childhood and social acceptance of childhood sex play and even adult-minor sex have varied greatly in different societies. He also makes the thought-provoking observation that most people were "pedophiles" at one time in that, as children, they were sexually curious about other children. Jenkins also exposes the more hysterical claims surrounding the child pornography magazine and film business of the 1970s, prior to its criminalization. Far from a multibillion-dollar industry exploiting hundreds of thousands of children, it was at most a multimillion-dollar industry and was eliminated almost overnight in the United States by federal laws. However, early bulletin board systems--later followed by the World Wide Web and the advanced graphics it made possible--allowed CP to reemerge online.

All of this raises another question: Just how large a problem is online CP? The discredited Rimm study featured in Time magazine (later disavowed by Time, and panned by Jenkins as well) suggested an Internet filled with pornography sites just one or two keystrokes away. As is typically the case, this claim was exposed as an exaggeration. Jenkins admits that only the roughest of estimates is possible. Based on his observations of the different nicknames appearing on the discussion boards he investigated, he suggests that at most there are several thousand active participants on the "lolita" boards, with perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 regular "lurkers" who observe and collect images but do not participate in discussions. However, he offers no rationale for this estimate other than his own impressions. With current estimates of several hundred million people worldwide with Internet access, Jenkins' estimate indicates that no more than a fraction of one percent of Internet users ever view such material.