Pedophilia and South Park

Pedophilia in South Park is, like abuse and trauma a common subject of fan interest and controversy.
As the show focuses on fourth grade characters who are underage, and who are the focus of the fandom itself by and large, controversies indicating some portion of fans may harbor pedophilic inclinations are a common and controversial topic.
==Canonical References==
Main Article: Abuse and Trauma in South Park
South Park frequently deals in black comedy or dark comedy, which is "is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss" and this frequently includes references to characters, including child characters, being victimized by adults in inappropriate situations, experiencing forms of abuse that would cause serious, life-lasting trauma in reality, but in the context of the show, is often never brought up again nor treated as contributing to meaningful psychological damage.
Many episodes of South Park canonically depict underage characters in inappropriate situations for humorous purposes, including child characters being seen masturbating in multiple episodes, frequently discussing sexual topics with adult characters, measuring each other's penises in "T. M. I.]]" and particularly the episode "Wieners Out", which depicted nearly all of the underage male characters with full-frontal nudity as they protest the girls' treatment of them. Many of these scenes are incredibly uncomfortable to watch and deeply disturbing. 
Many episodes include jokes intended to satirize pedophilia, such as season 8's "The Jeffersons" and season 10's "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy".
==Fandom Controversies==
===Archive of Our Own===
The website Archive of Our Own, the primary home for internet fanfiction across multiple fandoms, is supported by donations and has a well-known anti-censorship policy that has lead to controversy and discourse for several years in fandom spaces throughout the internet, with many accusing the site of supporting pedophilia for allowing such content to be uploaded.
===Aging Up===
Main Article: Aged Up
Aging up characters is the practice of representing canonically youthful characters as older ages, generally to facilitate themes or depictions of behavior that would be considered inappropriate for someone of their canonical age. It is an extremely common and accepted practice in South Park fanfiction, where it is deliberately invoked, though fan artists generally age the characters up visually as well; however, casual fans often express disgust and believe that the characters are children no matter the intentions of a writer or artist.
Though it is often associated with depictions of romantic or sexual activity, aging up characters is also sometimes done in non-shipping fic in order to explore themes relevant to High School or college, such as gaining acceptance to a particular school or worry abut the future, or issues such as drug use that may seem too sensitive for depicting children. It is also sometimes used as a way to depict the characters in more mature/advanced personality development, as children often change as they become adults.
In some spaces, aging up characters is seen as a pedophilic practice that normalizes the sexualization of minors. and can be looked down upon; however, this varies wildly from fandom to fandom and space to space. Some fans may age up the characters despite being close to their canonical ages as a way to explore adult topics, and sometimes a storyline may simply require depicting a passage of time that may allude obviously to aging.
===South Park Fanon Wiki===
This wiki was accused of supporting incest, pedophilia and bestiality shipping since a few ships like this were listed based on off-site fanfics containing them. The staff members had initially felt that their responsibility was to document the existence of even distasteful fan content, and that users could seek out the original content hosted elsewhere to have it removed if they felt inclined. Though the intention was to avoid appearing to endorse any particular pairings, by listing abusive ships, it was widely interpreted as implicit support and endorsement by the staff. This issue was largely raised on social media outside the FANDOM or Wikia infrastructure rather than being brought up directly to staff.
References to these ships were deleted from the website in response and they are no longer allowed to be referenced; consequently, many pages were updated to place a greater emphasis on fan criticism and discourse and the Rules and Policies began an update process to reflect the new approach, rather than simply documenting fandom, the wiki would now focus on controversies in the fandom instead.
==Real Incidents==
Many individuals, especially deviantART users, have been accused within South Park fandom spaces of targeting underage users or having sexual motivations.
==External Links==
Category:Discourse
Category:Under Construction