Do you believe MAP publicity and visibility will reach the peak it enjoyed a few years ago?

[BLueRibbon]

I'm on Twitter quite a bit. There is an active "map community", but it's more of a pro-para community that happens to have a lot of maps in it. You can't publicly express that you're a map (you get banned), but people allude to it and will straight-up admit it if you ask them in DMs. I believe there is an issue of the map community getting mixed in it's efforts. Some are for spreading an anti-c/pro-c message, some are "no-limits gooners" and some are just trolls using the map flag to be edgy. I believe most of the map publicity right now is around diddy/epstein, which isn't exactly good for our reputation, but it's also allowing the topic to be discussed frequently. Just wanted to share my experience since I'm in this circle on Twitter.

I personally, don't believe that people like Epstein, Diddy, and Trump even fall into the category of MAPs or pedophiles. These are sociopathic predators, who target children because they see them as weak and vulnerable, and an easy way to feel power over another person. They never felt romantic love for the kids they abused, they were nothing more than a hole to stick it in to these monsters. I think this is the distinction that the general public need to be educated on. MAPs aren't abusers in general, because we actually love kids.

Excellent point.

[John_Doe]

I'm on Twitter quite a bit. There is an active "map community", but it's more of a pro-para community that happens to have a lot of maps in it. You can't publicly express that you're a map (you get banned), but people allude to it and will straight-up admit it if you ask them in DMs. I believe there is an issue of the map community getting mixed in it's efforts. Some are for spreading an anti-c/pro-c message, some are "no-limits gooners" and some are just trolls using the map flag to be edgy. I believe most of the map publicity right now is around diddy/epstein, which isn't exactly good for our reputation, but it's also allowing the topic to be discussed frequently. Just wanted to share my experience since I'm in this circle on Twitter.

I personally, don't believe that people like Epstein, Diddy, and Trump even fall into the category of MAPs or pedophiles. These are sociopathic predators, who target children because they see them as weak and vulnerable, and an easy way to feel power over another person. They never felt romantic love for the kids they abused, they were nothing more than a hole to stick it in to these monsters. I think this is the distinction that the general public need to be educated on. MAPs aren't abusers in general, because we actually love kids.

It seems to me that, to control for the negative perception of pedophiles and MAPs (and I don't believe that there are allosexuals who aren't literal MAPs), you're setting up this standard of what it means to be a MAP that necessarily precludes genuinely immoral behavior. I decided to reply because 'they were nothing but a hole to stick it in' suggests, to me, that you think that they were attracted to them on some level despite not being 'true MAPs' (I would otherwise not have replied if you had just said that it was about power and not attraction even though it's not necessarily clear to me why most men would feel a need to express power in that way. I understand that prisoners sometimes use sex to dominate each other, it just doesn't seem likely to me that attraction or some kind of sexual interest would be divorced from that in most real-life scenarios but I could be wrong), that's how I took your wording. Maybe you think that it was about experimentation/novelty rather than true attraction for them (which I can't understand if we're talking about prepubescent children. I absolutely do not accept that someone who is attracted to Tanner stage 5-looking adults won't be attracted to some teens as well, I don't think that any of those people were involved with prepubescent children so that you would question their 'MAPness' is unbelievable to me, unless maybe a 'MAP' is someone who prefers minors).

I know almost nothing (and nothing in Diddy's case) about their sex crimes, and I don't doubt that most pedophiles love children but I don't think that's what defines pedophilia. For example, you can wrongfully 'exploit' someone whom you are genuinely attracted to so true pedophiles can be abusive and negligent toward children as well (just as straight men can abuse women, you can't claim, "Oh he's not really straight, it was just about dominating a weaker person," even if he really does have this need to exercise power over someone or his behavior is genuinely exploitative that wouldn't negate the possibility of his being straight, those things are not mutually exclusive). Sexual attraction is a kind of 'love' to me but it is ultimately self-interested so I don't think it has to be packaged with compassion for the people you're attracted to (even though I doubt that anyone truly and completely hates someone they want to have sex with for its own sake and attraction can be conducive to sympathy and compassion, people ignore the needs of others even in platonic relationships, sometimes). I don't think the counter to the demonization of pedophiles should be a reverse angelization of them. If you're going to use 'pedophile' or 'MAP' to describe someone with a romantic love for children, what word are we supposed to use to describe a sexual attraction to them? (Personally I think of romantic love as attraction + affection, or that + obsession if we're talking about infatuation, so I think that the key difference between pedophiles under a romance-based definition and regular people would be the sexual attraction).

It goes back to something I've always mentioned about the de-sexualization of romantic interest in order to legitimize the latest underdog orientation or lifestyle in mainstream culture. I agree that we should differentiate between 'child molesters' and 'pedophiles' but pedophiles can be the former, mistreating children or minors can't be the proof that one isn't a true pedophile/MAP. Again, I don't think that Diddy or Epstein at least had anything to do with actual children, I'm not sure to what extent their crimes involved forcing or coercing minors into sex or abusing them in whatever ways (I've heard Epstein say some ugly things, he may not have been the nicest person; I don't know, but did he actually force or blackmail teenage girls into sleeping with him? Because until I find out otherwise, and I know I'm so behind/ignorant about this, I don't think I have reason to believe that it wasn't consensual at the time even if the girls later felt that it was exploitation in retrospect. I don't want to undermine human suffering and real-world injustice but because of the general cultural attitude about sex, whenever I hear something like 'sex trafficking' in the news I have to think, "Has someone actually been kidnapped and forced into sex slavery or even blackmailed into it or did someone just move from location a to location b with a sex worker who voluntarily went along with it without any 'coercion' at all but their consent isn't seen as legitimate because they're supposedly acting out of financial desperation or unwise judgement?" You also have to stop and think, is any given case of 'child molestation' just straightforward abuse or was it entirely desired on the child's end or is there some nuance and gray that might make it so that it wasn't the worst crime in the world but still inappropriate or maybe some kind of a mixed bag or whatever.