>A leading university has launched an inquiry after it emerged that one of its PhD students has written a research paper about sexual attraction to young boys.
>Karl Andersson spent three months recording his thoughts and feelings while masturbating over images of young boys in Japanese comic books.
>In the abstract for the paper, Andersson, who is interviewing fans of shota comics for his PhD, said he wanted to “understand how [they] experience sexual pleasure when reading shota”.
>His 4,000-word study, which details his sexual habits and sexual encounters between boys in the comics, was published in the journal Qualitative Research in April. It provoked outrage from academics, an MP and others after it was circulated on Twitter this week.
>The University of Manchester and Qualitative Research have announced they are investigating the circumstances of the research and its publication.
>In the paper, Andersson explains how he will document the details of each masturbation session in a journal as “a kind of critical self-reflection”. He describes how he gave up all other sexual activity, from sex with other people to other types of pornography.
>“I happened to live alone during this experiment, and I had newly become single after a long relationship – these factors probably contributed to my willingness and eagerness to explore this method,” he wrote.
>Dr Mara Keire, a historian at Oxford University who writes about sexual violence, expressed her shock at the research paper, tweeting: “How was a description of the author masturbating to the images of young boys peer reviewed and published?”
theguardian.com
admit it, you were interviewed for this
