That being said, I'm not sure I've seen a single obscenity case since Handly which wasn't against someone with a prior record, piled on charges, or otherwise simply the most expedient way for the government to prosecute someone.

As you've indicated in your own comment here, there's been many, many things over the last few decades that fall afoul the letter of the law yet which the government doesn't concern itself with. That itself seems to tell us something.

You win this round!

Unfortunate how short the edit window for comments is on here. In either case, I suppose what I'm saying is clear enough.

Rather, if these characters aren't agents, I wonder where this leaves us re: sex positivity and "media [that] sexualizes women to a problematic degree." I don't think anything here tells me.

What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats or regards them.

The demand here is that they be treated as if they possessed agency. I see no reason or obligation to do so.

In a different context I might be more sympathetic to this specific formulation of the concept since it's not always clear how much agency the background dancers in a music video or advert have. However, on the original topic of video games, the notion of "character agency" is rather pernicious.

Either way, thanks for sharing.

Does “17 year olds collecting nudes of 14 year olds to gawk at and bully them over” not strike you as abusive and/or exploitative? Because it certainly does to me.

I think you’ve chosen to interpret my post in an excessively literal manner (i.e only adults abuse or exploit teenagers) rather than the far more obvious alternatives I intended (e.g a 16 year old “sexting” their 17 year old partner).

Or, put another way, if I say we’re opposed to abuse and exploitation, and then you present me with a situation involving abuse and exploitation, of course I’d be opposed to it. Certainly you’re capable of figuring out this isn’t the sort of thing I was talking about.

Selfies shared between teenagers are innocent! When an adult enters the picture is when it becomes a problem, because yes: it’s abuse and exploitation that we’re objecting to. Unless we think morality is a question of aesthetics, then yes, this also means drawings are not in and of themselves our concern.

Why do think this is unreasonable?

It's been the case that when I encounter people with non-normative pronouns they're trans, but you're right that isn't necessarily the case. My mistake!

I know I asked the initial question, but I guess I'm confused what exactly this conversation is about. Is the idea that people are only ever attracted to sixteen year olds because they learned to be? That feels like a challenging thing to demonstrate in the same way it being "in the genes" is, but perhaps I'm being overly reductive.

> he/they

I sometimes see people make this assertion, and interestingly enough it's usually trans people. What exactly makes you say this?

What's an example of this?