Statistics reveal that accessing dangerous and pornographic content, including hardcore self-mutilation videos, is ever-easier for minors.

Nearly a third of those aged under 18 visit at least one pornographic site each month, reveals a study recently published by Mediametrie. Commissioned by the French Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication Arcom, the study found that

roughly 2.3 million minors are exposed to pornographic content for an average of more than fifty minutes per month, a rate barely lower than that of adults with 37 per cent.

Since the autumn of 2017, the number of minors who regularly view pornographic content on some smart device has increased by 600 thousand. Three-quarters of those under 18 used their phone exclusively to watch adult content, with the same rate for those over 18 reaching 55 per cent.

„What we really see is that a large number of minors come into contact with pornographic sites, particularly on their smart phones without their parents being aware,” the president of Arcom’s protection of the public working group Laurence Pecaut-Rivolier said. „These minors are even younger than we thought. 51 per cent of the boys aged between 12 and 13 view pornographic sites every month, and 21 per cent of 11-12-years-olds visit these sites at least monthly” she added.

The rate of adolescent girls visiting these sites is much lower, their presence is not measurable until the age of 11. However, 31 per cent of the girls access these content when aged 12 to 13, and then this rate declines by the time they reach adulthood, while the proportion rises among boys.

Among the 179 sites studied, the Pornhub platform belonging to the global porn giant Mindgeek is prominent, being viewed by 18 per cent of minors. The study found that approximately 17 per cent of Pornhub’s viewers were underage while 12 per cent of all those accessing adult movie content were aged below 18.

Since 2020, Arcom has given formal notice to fifteen sites to establish a real age control of their visitors and has taken legal action to request the blocking of seven of them, including Pornhub. A decision from the Paris court is expected on July 7.

The government is planning to delegate new powers to Arcom in this field. With the bill on securing and regulating the digital space, the government intends to authorise Arcom to block pornographic sites – without going through legal procedures – that fail to strictly verify the age of their visitors.

The safety of minors, however, is not only endangered by pornographic websites. As V4NA reported earlier, a website dedicated to sadistic-masochistic fetishes has been available on the Internet since the late 1990s, hosting and producing fictitious child pornography and extreme sado-masochistic content, through which anyone, including children, can easily access the most shocking content.

The site and its associated forum received more attention when it was revealed that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the medical association that sets guidelines for medical gender reassignment in children, among other things, had collaborated with it.

On December 3, 2021, WPATH released draft guidelines which included, for the first time, the category of ‘eunuch’ as a protected “gender identity.” WPATH’s updated 8th edition of their Standards of Care (SOC), which recommends medical treatment and services for those with a self-declared ‘gender identity,’ describes the relationship between “eunuch-identified people and other transgender people.”

The document states, “Eunuch-identified people may share with other gender-diverse people a desire for reduction or elimination of masculine physical features, masculine genitals, or genital functioning.”

We are excited to announce that the Public Comment Period for the Draft WPATH Standards of Care 8 is NOW OPEN. Review the Draft Chapters and leave your feedback for the SOC8 Committee by Thursday, December 16: https://t.co/8lKx0B3oct

— WPATH (@wpath) December 2, 2021

It also goes on to claim that “eunuch-identified people may suffer the same minority stress as other stigmatized groups,” and refers extensively to research collected from a hardcore fetish site called the Eunuch Archives — a site that features child sexual exploitation fantasies centered around stopping little boys from going through puberty.

The Eunuch Archive began in the late 1990s in collaboration with Body Modification Ezine (BME) and was initially hosted on the same site.

BME achieved some notoriety in the early 2000’s for a viral video titled “Pain Olympics” which featured men mutilating their genitals on camera.

Prior to the official launch of the Archive itself, members would congregate on a Usenet forum by the same name, which advertised itself in a newsgroup dedicated to sadomasochism.

In the newsgroup alt.eunuchs.questions, members shared castration fantasies, offered services, traded castration photos and videos, sought to connect with young men to “feminize,” asked for advice on chemical castration, and recommended doctors willing to perform surgeries without psychiatric evaluations.

Besides,

there are a large amount of stories within the archive that directly involve the sadistic sexual abuse of children.

The stories primarily focus on the eroticization of child castration. In some, little boys request the procedures themselves and express gratitude to the adults who perform the operations. In others, children may be forcibly castrated under extreme duress.

During the investigation, Reduxx was able to enter a password-protected area of the site. Within the protected fiction archives, there were over 3,000 stories involving minors, including the explicit sexual abuse of children, and ‘minor’ was a specially-curated tag that users could select to easily access stories specifically featuring children.

The fictional pornography includes themes such as Nazi doctors castrating children, baby boys being fed milk with estrogen in order to be violently sex trafficked as adolescents.