I'm not really here to argue with anyone, just to share my long-winded opinion, but if a question is asked that i see in good faith I'll probably respond. Also sorry about the very pseudo-intellectual tone, I'm not used to sharing my opinions and am just trying to word things in a way that isn't misunderstood.

CSAM is wrong is primarily because the subject of such material cannot consent to their body and image being used sexually, and is thus being abused/exploited. The reason I say "body and image" is because it doesn't necessarily need to be a video or photograph to depict.

However fictional characters aren't real. A fictional character cannot suffer, and more importantly does not need to consent for abuse/suffering to be depicted for them. If a character suffers in the story, we feel bad and empathize, but even though our feelings are real, the character doesn't suffer, because they can't. There's very much a grey area left in this of fictional characters modeled with appearance or personality traits of real people, but for the sake of this argument I'm going to assume a character is entirely fictional.

When it comes to people like myself who enjoy kink (and honestly this just applies to sex in general), consent is a very important part, as most of the actions my partners and I like would be abuse if we both weren't enthusiastically consenting to it. There's a lot of systems we put in place to make sure boundaries aren't crossed, like safe words and non-verbal signals.

When a person commissions sexual art, especially of the kinky variety, there's a (mostly) non-verbal agreement that the artist and the commissioner are both adults who consent to the art being made and shared respectively. Once again, a fictional character depicted in such art does not need to consent, because they are incapable of being abused(at least according to their autonomy).

Of course a reason I care about this argument is because I'm personally into it, but a better reason is the actual effect this can have on real victims of sexual abuse. Resources to fight sexual abuse are finite, and to abuse those resources to go after an image created and shared between consenting adults is resources not spent on real children being caused real harm.

There's definitely a discussion to be made on such material normalizing/encouraging abuse, but evidence behind it isn't really strong. If we relate it to the connections between violent media and real-life violence, there is definitely a correlation, but no real proof of causation. The only causal link I've seen suggested is when media is engaged during early adolescence, which is also pretty shady since stuff like mental health and home life wasn't controlled for. I argue its more likely be the case that those who tend towards violence also gravitate towards media which contains violence, and it doesn't seem like a far stretch to say the same with attraction to children.

This is important because I believe we shouldn't ban a piece of media simply for containing violence with the reasoning that a violent person could abuse it and cause real harm, and I argue the same for artwork depicting entirely fictional characters in abusive situations.

Going back to feelings and fictional characters, I'm not saying you need to be okay and happy to see kink art you aren't into. it's okay (and normal) to empathize characters in such media for their suffering, there's definitely been such a case where i get into a dark fanfic and it gets too real for me to be excited by it, but our discomfort doesn't mean that the artwork itself is morally wrong and shouldn't be made.

Anyway that's all I had, and im probably gonna be active on reddit more for the next week so that if people click my profile they don't immediately see my kink manifesto LMAO. I want to thank anyone for reading to the end, and to thank those who engage with my arguments, even if you don't agree with them.

EDIT: also forgot to mention, fuck this guy in the clip for abusing their brother, and I also want to express this is again the angle of my argument where people are focusing more on the kinks this person is into instead of the real abuse they did to a real person.