A Swedish academic who triggered severe public backlash after writing his PhD thesis about masturbating to fantasy child sexual abuse material for three months has now released a book on the topic. Karl Andersson, previously a PhD student at the University of Manchester in the Japanese studies department, announced the publication of his new book, Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan, in a recent YouTube video where he states that the text incorporates his “philosophy of boy worship.”
Shota, a shortened version of shōtarō complex, refers to comics, cartoons, and other forms of visual media which focus on young boys in erotic and sexualized situations. The boys are primarily depicted as prepubescent, often having hairless bodies and very small features.
The medium is largely regarded as a form of fantasy child sexual abuse material, and is illegal in many countries including Canada and Australia as a result. It is also illegal in the United Kingdom, where Andersson’s PhD program was based.
In the YouTube video where Andersson introduces his book, he explains, “It is my research, basically. I have studied shota for over ten years, but most recently in the form of a PhD, and in the form of field work I conducted in Japan in 2023. So basically I associated with a lot of people who like shota,” he says.
Andersson neglects to mention that two years ago, following intense public scrutiny, Manchester University launched an inquiry into the circumstances of his PhD research and its publication. The paper, published in April 2022 in the academic journal Qualitative Research, sees Andersson admitting to masturbating to fantasy child sexual abuse material for three months as his chosen method of “research.” In the 4,000-word article, titled “I am not alone — we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan,” Andersson details undertaking his “experimental method” of masturbating to shota pornography.
While Andersson does not reveal the ages of the youth in the sexual comics he masturbated to, he does refer to them as “young boys.” Later in the paper, Andersson writes that “very young boy characters would greedily jump over the first cock that presented itself” in a description of some of the comics he read.
Last summer, a University of Manchester spokesperson told the press: “The recent publication in Qualitative Research of the work of a student, now registered for a PhD, has raised significant concerns and complaints which we are taking very seriously. We are currently undertaking a detailed investigation into all aspects of their work, the processes around it and other questions raised. It is very important that we look at the issues in-depth.”
Andersson was soon expelled from the PhD program, with the University of Manchester ruling that his work had caused “significant reputational harm” to the university. Sage, the publisher of Qualitative Research, retracted Andersson’s paper, and a representative explained that the decision was made “after an investigation determined that there was a lack of institutional ethical oversight and a lack of adequate and appropriate ethical review ahead of publication.”
Yet in his new book, Andersson claims to have received only praise for his paper from his academic peers prior to its publication.
His own academic supervisor, Andersson claims, complimented the paper as “pretty damn good” and described it as his “best piece of writing”. Additionally, one reviewer for the academic publication Qualitative Research emphasized that the rationale behind using masturbation as a research method was “well justified”, and said of the shota-obsessed academic: “The author has conducted provocative research by use of a highly bold and innovative application of autoethnography. Best of all, the author has done this extremely well.”
According to him, the unnamed convener of a PhD course in “queer autoethnography” where the paper was drafted celebrated the child pornography research as a “wonderfully written, reflective, analytical and intriguing essay on masturbation ‘in the field’”, and added: “This is already very publishable, should you so desire. Bravo.”
This remark appears to describe a reaction from Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, who is a professor of gender studies affiliated with the University of Stavanger, in Norway. In his PhD paper, Andersson explicitly thanked Prof. Engebretsen “for commenting on an early version of this article.”
Curiously, Engebretsen has published questionable “research” herself, having authored an academic paper about “anti-gender campaigns on social media” which specifically named and vilified women critical of gender ideology as “trans-exclusionary feminists.”
However, Engebretsen has denied any involvement with Andersson’s work, saying, “I have given feedback on an essay written for a PhD course I taught. I had nothing to do with the research project itself or the peer review of the article that was published.”
As news of Andersson’s PhD paper began to circulate in 2022, it also came to light that he was responsible for two disturbing visual media projects which focused on the sexualization of young boys: Destroyer Magazine and Breaking Boy News.
Andersson created Destroyer Magazine while living in Prague and published the graphic magazine out of the Czech Republic, just after he graduated from Stockholm University. The erotic publication billed itself as “the leading international teenage boy magazine!” While Destroyer was derided in Sweden for its disturbing content, Andersson was sympathetically covered by Out, an international gay news outlet, in 2012.
While not explicitly pornographic, Andersson’s magazines revolved around eroticizing young boys and their behavior. Breaking Boy News focused on even younger teens and more gruesome content, with the stories eagerly highlighting young boys committing violence against animals, females, and each other, with a particular emphasis on pain and degeneracy.
During a 2012 interview with the now-defunct outlet Vice, Andersson doesn’t shy away from the label “boy lover,” and describes his attraction to minors.
“The boy is the one who does all the things we learn later in life not to do. He discovers things, tests limits, helps people, but he also robs, rapes or even murders. And they’re cute, of course. Boys are like kittens, it’s hard to take your eyes off them.”
Andersson’s Destroyer magazine received praise from pro-pedophile academic Jacob Breslow, who resigned from his post as an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics in late 2022. Breslow, who was a trustee for UK-based trans activist organization Mermaids, which advocates the halting of children’s puberty, described Destroyer as “a magazine dedicated to the beauty of the boy” and approved of Andersson’s “academic(ish) critique and aesthetic appreciation of boyhood, deviance, and the LGBT community.”
Notably, Breslow had previously spoken at a conference hosted by the pedophile advocacy organization B4U-Act, in a bid to lobby the American Psychiatric Association for changes to the diagnostic definition of pedophilia in order to “reduce stigma” against “minor-attracted people” (MAPs).