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Nintendo is facing calls to sack a feminist employee who penned a highly controversial academic essay questioning whether it was morally correct to censor child pornography.

A number of people have taken to Twitter and urged the the Japanese firm to fire Alison Rapp, who works as a product marketing specialist for Nintendo of America and has been responsible for promoting some the family-friendly firms' most famous games.

In 2012, she published a paper discussing child pornography in Japan, which has come under international pressure to tighten its laws on the depiction of underage sex.

Rapp, who wears a ring through her nose and tweets using the language of combative modern feminism, then drew the attention of male activists, who dug out the old paper earlier this year and began discussing it in Reddit threads and publishing articles on Medium.

Now anger has boiled over onto social media, with one furious parent calling for a boycott of Nintendo to "let them know we love our children more than to support someone like Alison Rapp".

Jamie Walton, president and co-founder of an anti-sex trafficking non-profit called The Wayne Foundation, also addressed a tweet to the firm's American branch and wrote: "Better fire Alison Rapp before Monday or there is going to be reckoning."

Rapp's thesis is called: "Speech We Hate: An Argument for the Cessation of International Pressure on Japan to Strengthen Its Anti-Child Pornography Laws."

The full paper can be read here .

In her long essay, Rapp described people who possess child pornography as "simple possessors" or "mere possessors", even though this is a serious crime.

Her thesis jumps between discussing child pornography featuring "real children" and fictionalised depictions of sickening acts, meaning it often appears unclear what she is actually discussing.

However, the content of the essay has provoked a furious response among many of the people who have read it.

Rapp wrote: "Criminalising the the possession of a type of media - whether violent video games... controversial political or religious texts, or child pornography - is tantamount to criminalising thought, and should be above countries like the U.S. and Japan who have such strong freedom of speech protections."

Rapp also claimed there was only "sketchy correlations between child pornography and the actual abuse of children".

"Child pornography is not the the cause of societal ills regarding children and its total eradication should not be considered a solution to these ills," she added.

Rapp's curriculum vitae on her Linkedin page still carries a link to the thesis.

As anger mounted, a tweet appeared on her account which said: "Like, if my opinions on sex, gender and sexual media were secret, don't you think I'd maybe not have my thesis on my LinkedIn?"

We have contacted Alison Rapp and Nintendo for comment, but neither has responded.