Gaetz nomination and MAP visibility

[Pharmakon]

Could there be an opportunity for Mu to attract mainstream attention in connection with Trump's nomination of Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general?

A key element of the opposition to Gaetz appears likely to be allegations he had sex with a 17 yo female. Mu could, consistently with its stated principles, argue that it is unfair to Gaetz to treat this as disqualifying on the basis it is sex with a "child." (It could be disqualifying for other reasons. The female may have been paid for sex, and Mu need not argue that paying for sex is not disqualifying, only that the difference in age between a 17 yo female and an 18 yo female should not matter.)

If the Gaetz nomination reaches the stage of a Senate confirmation hearing (it might not), the amount of public attention in the US focused on it will be huge. A timely intervention by a MAP organization criticizing the attempt to stigmatize Gaetz as a "pedophile" might be able to take advantage of this.

The attention Mu might obtain through such an intervention would most likely be negative. That is, opponents of the nomination might try to bolster their case against Gaetz by publicizing the fact that a MAP organization is seeking to "normalize" his allegedly deviant behavior. If Mu's primary task is to attain more visibility, the fact that the attention would be negative is at least potentially outweighed by traffic driven to Mu's activities and Web presence.

Neither side of the political divide that will be mobilized in support of and in opposition to the Gaetz nomination is even remotely pro-MAP, nor does Gaetz' attraction to 17 yo females qualify him as a MAP (unless almost all heterosexual men are MAPs, which maybe they are). But if the Gaetz opposition does seek to exploit a Mu intervention to further stigmatize Gaetz as a sexual deviant, the pro-Gaetz forces will need to look for ways to defend him. One possible response is that they may strategically ally themselves with Mu's claim that a 17 yo female is not a "child." There are likely significant elements within the Trump-MAGA base that would be receptive to this. But even if the Gaetz supporters avoided any challenge to the prevailing consensus that a 17 yo female is a child, any response to a Mu intervention would still help to bring attention to Mu's MAP advocacy.

For those unfamiliar with the sexual allegations against Gaetz, this plea agreement provides more detail:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/press ... 1394536/dl

Count 1 of the indictment against Joel Greenberg is the offense that would have been charged against Gaetz, had the US Department of Justice sought to charge him, which they did not. The US House of Representatives Ethics Committee continued to investigate, however, and had prepared a report which it may have been about to release when Gaetz abruptly resigned his House seat after the AG nomination, effectively terminating the power of the Committee to investigate him.

hugzu ;-p

[Jim Burton]

Our argument would have to be that the Americans are just mad, and this isn't even a MAP issue. Sure, we could inflame the topic by claiming that Democrats are acting like Puritans, because this is the case.

So our angle here would be the "I swear she wasn't a child" defense, pre-empting that Democrats would pick up on the fact that our argument is the same as Trump's, right? Are you any good at drafting press releases?

[BLueRibbon]

Could you write the essay, Pharmakon?

You write well, and you are clearly interested in this story.

[Pharmakon]

Thanks for the encouraging responses. I will see what I can come up with. I have posted in another thread here on Mu about this, and also at BC, looking for feedback on various possible approaches.

One that appeals to me is "Hands off Matt Gaetz' non-normative sex life," arguing for sexual privacy, conservative definitions of prostitution so that an older person's financial contributions to a less well-off younger partner are not construed as payment for sex, but instead where possible treated as the generosity to be expected in such situations, and claiming Gaetz as a MAP insofar as he understands that the 18 yo dividing line is arbitrary and unrealistic and that his 17 yo partners, if any, were entitled to freely exercise their sexual agency.

Characterization of Gaetz as in at least some sense a MAP would be intentionally provocative. Gaetz can be characterized as queer based on the Rubin definition, which includes non-monogamy. If more prominent voices than the one I have already cited pick up on stigmatizing Gaetz as a "serial pedophile," we can exploit the general recognition that most heterosexual men find at least older teenage females sexually attractive to undermine the hegemonic pedophobic discourse.

[ZVOTD]

I was thinking about this too. Gaetz is getting a lot of unfair treatment from both sides due to something that isn't a big deal at all. It is gonna be tricky to get people on here to defend him because I'm sure a lot of people on here are left-wing, but we should defend people against these terrible witch hunts no matter what side of the aisle they are on. Obviously he isn't in the running for AG anymore but that doesn't mean we can't defend him against these terrible attacks. Hopefully this also shows people that democrats aren't on our side either.

[aeterna91]

It's a delicate situation, because, if his defense is going to be that he's not a monster because he is not even a pedophile, that could reinforce the idea that real pedophiles are monsters.

However, I can see some potential here. In fact, I think we should be explaining as many MAGA guys as posible that, in some measure, they are MAPs themselves too. I mean, they are heterosexual guys. What percentage of heterosexual men might be attracted to a 17 yo girl at any given time? 95%? More? The message should be "be careful who you send to the woodchiper, you could be next". Increasing our numbers is practically our only hope at this point in time.