Why I support legal reform

[Brain O'Conner]

For the most part, I like the concept of the legal reform to protect MAPs from being prosecuted for being in a consensual sexual interaction/relationship with a minor. As much as I do not find AoC laws necessary at all and instead arbitrary, I think the age twelve being the AoC is a good start to make progress. Other than that, I do not support AoC laws at all.

[Artaxerxes II]

While legal reform is good, cultural reform should be just as valued. What I mean by the latter can be boiled down to things that aren't necessarily tied to legal systems but to cultural ones, although overlaps do exist. Take language for example: The terms "pedophile" and "pedophilia" used to be medical terms, but over time came to be known as derogatory terms meant to smear opponents, whether it's by using guilt-by-association or ad hominem.

Certainly the mainstream news reporting of child molestation cases doesn't help, as the perpetrators are often referred to as "pedophiles" regardless of their actual sexual orientation, and their crimes are erroneously lumped together with "pedophilia", such that pedophilia is thought of as a crime within the public consciousness. The end result is the dehumanisation of minor attracted people, which is proven by how callously antis can call for genocide and other extremely violent acts against minor attracted people with total impunity, on the top of being praised for being such a "good human being".

Despite how one may feel towards the words "pedophilia" and "pedophile", it can't be denied how those terms eventually turned into slurs within informal discussions, and recently this nature has also seeped into academic spaces.

So one of the most valuable forms of cultural reforms would be to have the media, academia, and legal bodies to adopt the term "minor-attracted people" rather than referring to them as "pedophiles" such that it gains wider currency eventually, or having it "trickling down" in simple terms. This effectively off-sets the dehumanisation carried by the term "pedophile".

Antis are, in a sense, right regarding the label "MAP" being about normalisation. But it's not about normalising minor attraction per se, as much as it has to do withbringin a sense of humanity to a marginalised groups who has been stripped of its humanity thanks to decades on end of a constant barrage of bigoted and bashful propaganda targeting them.