Lolicon

Lolicon art mixes children with sexual themes.

Lolicon (ロリコン), is a slang word for the phrase "Lolita complex". In Japan, the word explains a attraction to drawings of young or young-looking girls. Outside Japan, the word is less common. It denotes a genre of manga and anime in which youthful female characters are shown in a sexual way. The word has an origin in to Vladimir Nabokov's book, Lolita. In the book, a middle-aged man sexually desires a 12-year-old girl, however to use this origin as the current meaning is not ideal as the word has changed its meaning through time.

Some people claim that lolicon adds to actual sexual abuse of children, while others claim that there is no facts that show this, or that facts show the opposite. Countries have tried to make lolicon that shows children naked or having sex illegal as a type of child pornography.

One of the few that has made it actually illegal is the United Kingdom where the possession of lolicon pornography is illegal. These laws have been criticised by a coalition of publishers and graphic artists , and charges of lolicon child porn tend not to stick, because a judge reasons that no real children were harmed to make it and posses it and therefore it is not worth conviction, or because the harm that will be caused by giving the person a jail sentence is considered disproportionate to their charges.

The male version is called Shotacon.