Radicalism and assimilation - the gay movement and NAMBLA

[PorcelainLark]

I think the internet has a conservative effect, which means it's much harder to be "radical" compared to the past. Imagine that homosexuality today in the West was still a crime. No communities or neighborhoods could form, no activism could be organized without intense scrutiny from every side of the internet. A similar thing happened with video sharing and remix culture: in the early days of the internet and before it, there was very little that corporations could do to stop people from violating copyright.
We are between a rock and a hard place: the more anarchic populists tend to support hate and vigilantism against MAPs, while the establishment has little interest in improving our conditions.

I think there needs to be shift in the moral weight we give to MAP related criminality before this could change. Drugs are treated it as a serious crime, even though a lot of the public and educated people don't give much moral weight to drug use. This has the effect of people being more receptive of ideas concerning ending the war on drugs.

[Jim Burton]

We are speaking from a position of privilege, namely hindsight of NAMBLA's strategic failure and the toolkit given to us by preventionists and NOMAPs (plus hindsight of their strategic limitations).

Most likely, NAMBLA's failure was not rhetorical, or had nothing to do with losing an argument, but had to do with a lack of relevancy and assent from the media/elite/lawmaker class. They were of no use to anybody else at the time, and became an unwanted distraction.

[Pharmakon]

NAMBLA's successes, its failures, and the strategies it pursued need to be understood in the context of the activism of the 1970s and the broad social reaction against that activism that took hold in the decades that followed. All of this can be most simply termed the Reagan-Thatcher revolution. From the end of WWII until about 1980, prosperity in the US and Europe permitted concessions to the demands of working people and oppressed groups. The French phrase "Les Trente Glorieuses" is often invoked to characterize this roughly 30-year period.

A good analysis of the transition from this era to the one we remain mired in today is Michael Hardt's The Subversive Seventies. Hardt (who avoids focusing on Reagan-Thatcher and electoral politics, in part because he sees this as a global phenomenon) develops the concept of the "end of mediation" to illustrate how the gains of the postwar decades were rolled back or redirected into avenues that did not threaten ruling elites.

NAMBLA was one of many groups that at the end of the 1970s sought to sustain the subversive momentum that had seemed for about three decades to herald real change. The marginalization of NAMBLA was in many ways a fate suffered by nearly all these groups. NAMBLA's agenda was perhaps more subversive than that of most such groups, but feminist and Black activism also moved from demanding deep social change to accepting "representation" in the form of language policing and membership in the lower echelons of ruling institutions. The most telling sign of this transition was the decline in membership and political influence of labor unions. Instead of trying to buy off the working class, increasingly mobile capital abruptly changed strategies and simply moved production to postcolonial nations where labor was more easily exploitable.

Today, MAPs would probably be happy with the end of registries and almost any small level of public acceptance that age gap sex can sometimes be a valid choice for both partners. In 1979, sex offender registries were still rare and the panics about age gap sex that made "stranger danger" a weapon against us had yet to occur. NAMBLA could not foresee the strength and depth of the erotophobic reaction ahead. If it had voiced more moderate demands, these would not have resonated with boylovers as the positions it actually adopted did, and the group would have been less effective at the thing it did best, organizing our community. And moderate demands would have done nothing to stave off the broad retrenchment that has characterized the last four decades.

[TMKnight]

As I mentioned in other posts. We lack a public speaker. Someone willing to risk (it all) to share the truth about MAPS, Pedophiles or whatever you are embarrassing. Rather you believe in acting out on those feelings/desires or not.

Any group that is trying to make meaningful changes starts with having a well-financed organization. That one or more of its members has enough financial resources to weather the backless that he/she (hopefully a small group of them) would receive.

As a group we need to condemn certain actions that are often attributed to people like us like human trafficking, or if any of the conspiracy theories about adrenochrome is true, and once we establish a property etymology consensual and non-consensual. Condemn any act that does not fall within consent.

The failure of these groups and any future one is not taking risks, coming out publically, and working together. With most of us already disinfracished, and the level of barbarism towards us is unreal. We need to curve this, and hold ground.

In another thread, I ask the question How many of you? (https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=435) and the purpose of this. Is to see how many of you are willing to risk (...hopefully not it all) to bring more light to the public.

I am going to start another threat soon. I want to understand all MAPs position on something relating to the LGB......and so on letters. Where do most of us stand. We will see I guess.

[Harlan]

We lack a public speaker. Someone willing to risk (it all) to share the truth about MAPS, Pedophiles or whatever you are embarrassing. Rather you believe in acting out on those feelings/desires or not.

One speaker will look like a lonely freak among a large mass of haters. We need many speakers, content makers, bloggers, artists, composers, poets. All of them can use virtual avatars and remain anonymous. The community should not look like a puddle, it should become a sea. We will no longer be considered a bunch of monsters when there are many voices.

[Harlan]

This is true, but we also need secure and reliable hosting. Otherwise one sneeze and all of those blogs and websites get taken down.

There is hope for the transition of online platforms to WEB 3.0 technologies. For example, there is a platform like

Odysee: is an American decentralized video hosting platform built on blockchain technology. It positions itself as an alternative to mainstream services like YouTube with a focus on free speech and decentralization.

They claim that it does not remove controversial content, but only hides it from search and it remains available via the link. What do you think about this?

[TMKnight]

One speaker will look like a lonely freak among a large mass of haters. We need many speakers, content makers, bloggers, artists, composers, poets. All of them can use virtual avatars and remain anonymous. The community should not look like a puddle, it should become a sea. We will no longer be considered a bunch of monsters when there are many voices.

Absolutely correct, and I agree. The idea is to get a few celebrities or other VIPs who are (arguably) a MAPs to come forward. Use their influence and say something positive about MAPs and how people should treat them better (hopefully in a better way that I wrote). Coupled with more scholars coming forward.

Even if we had a public speaker, we don't even have a podium. We are systematically ignored and silenced. Even if I'm happy to field media interviews, who is willing to interview me?

As soon as I can get my business off the ground about six months to a years after starting that. I want to put together a team of sympathetic people, fellow MAPS, and other groups to try and bring the public to a better understanding. In some cases force the hand with challenges to current statues. But that will have to be done gently.

Hopefully soon, need to meet a rich SOB. haha

[Harlan]

...They also failed, for the most part, to attract boys to their cause. While an occasional voice seconds NAMBLA's outrage over age-of-consent laws , the question is clear: Just where is the army of boys backing NAMBLA and fighting for the rights of teens to have sex with whomever they wish? The short answer is that there is no army...

Likewise, one can ask the question: Why was there no army of black slaves fighting against slavery and for the rights of blacks?

Even after white men accepted the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, it took many decades for blacks to start fight for their rights. And even the Declaration of human rights did not stop either racism or homophobia

“...I have been trying to convince the NAMBLA people for years that they should argue for an age of 14 or 15, something that people could see as a little more reasonable,” says William A. Percy, a professor of history at UMass/Boston and the author of Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece. “But they're a small group of inbred and fanatical ideologues. They only talk to each other. They won't listen to ideas of compromise.”...

AoC 12 as a compromise and accepting of youths sexuality and expanded autonomy as first step.