The anti-contact identity as peformance

[PorcelainLark]

A conversation I saw today had an anti say that he was "101%" anti-contact. If that was really the case, would he be level headed enough to make that statement, instead of just insulting people he perceived to be pro-contact? The answer is that he isn't authentically anti-contact, it's a performance. He acts out the role of the anti-contact, without genuinely feeling it.

Maybe there are real anti-contacts out there, but I don't believe I've met any. It always rings hollow to me. Compare, for example, Alex Jones defense in court that he wasn't a journalist, he was an entertainer; that no one would believe he was reporting news. That's what I think is the origin of the anti-contact performance is, it's kind of legal strategy rather than a belief.

The strictness of Virped, seems less serious and more hammy. Like they're making a show of it. I doubt people feel as guilty or ashamed of their desires as they outwardly express. I think it's mostly just fear.

I'm on the edge of saying the only way for the MAP community to move forward is to start calling the anti-contacts's bluff, because they have been unwilling to work or compromise with pro-contacts.

What do you guys think?

[FairBlueLove]

I also believe that many anti-contact individuals are either lying in bad faith or lying to themselves. In the first case, they often signal that all around in a sort of self-preserving show-off, or performance as you say. Self-preservation could also be the motivation behind the behavior of the second group, but the origin is moral judgment and beliefs (religious or otherwise).

But how to distinguish real anti-c from the bluff?

You are saying that those who are unwilling to compromise with pro-contacts, are a bluff? I don't quite follow the logic: Can you please expand a bit more on this?

If an anti-contact person says that he strongly believes that sexual contact with kids is inherently harmful, how do I understand if he is honest or not?

A complication is that, as I start to understand, many people are so comfortable with lies, to the point that they either don't even discern them as such, or they even seem to consider them a virtue.

[Jim Burton]

I'm sure some of them do, but are we also dismissing an entire range of alternative motivations for joining the community, based on our own?

[PorcelainLark]

But how to distinguish real anti-c from the bluff?

I'm kind of skeptical that there are real anti-contacts. I think there are probably people who have been traumatized into feeling there really is something wrong with contact (e.g. people who have been through the legal system), but even amongst them I think they know they aren't as bad as society says they are. If they were really just self-serving sociopaths they wouldn't feel any guilt or regret, after all.
In those contexts, I feel like it's more the product of psychological abuse. Like how strict religious families drill dogmas into their children regardless of whether they understand them and shame or guilt trip them for dissenting. If you're at the mercy of a hostile legal system and culture, that's not a position where your conscience can be free.

You are saying that those who are unwilling to compromise with pro-contacts, are a bluff? I don't quite follow the logic: Can you please expand a bit more on this?

I mean stop arguing with anti-contact people if you think they're arguing for things they don't actually feel are true. Rather than try to compromise, try working from the assumption that they are just pretending to disagree with pro-contact perspectives, because of ulterior motives.

If an anti-contact person says that he strongly believes that sexual contact with kids is inherently harmful, how do I understand if he is honest or not?

I just don't think it's the case that people believe that. What is bad about contact? Sex? Exploitation? Why just not say all sex or all exploitation is bad? I think the harm people actually have in mind is violence or cruelty - but those are separate things from sex. Sex isn't inherently cruel, violent, or even exploitative. The unwillingness to distinguish the two is a way of retreating into a position where the age of consent remains unchallenged

A complication is that, as I start to understand, many people are so comfortable with lies, to the point that they either don't even discern them as such, or they even seem to consider them a virtue.

I suppose even if they think they're telling a noble lie, I don't think it is a noble lie. I feel like it's a dangerous and harmful myth.

I'm sure some of them do, but are we also dismissing an entire range of alternative motivations for joining the community, based on our own?

Why would a person get involved in the MAP community if it wasn't either to control their desire or try to change society to accommodate it? If there are MAPs that have no sexual desires and want other MAPs to also stop having sexual desires, maybe I could see the motivation for the anti-contact, but they aren't the focus of the conflict (if you have no desire, what do you need self-control for?).
I think the underlying motivation is desire, and whether or not it should be expressed. MAPs that don't feel desire, whether pro-contact or anti-contact, are tangential; an asexual MAP doesn't have the same motivation to change the age of consent or need for help to avoid offending.
Maybe there are a contingent of MAPs that just hate other MAPs, and will make any excuse to leave the age of consent unchanged, in which case, again we would be dealing with bad faith.

[Jim Burton]

The existence of Virped renders necessary an anti-contact discourse, and its protection from pro-choice discourse.

There can be any range of motivations for upholding and defending that; it doesn't have to be a calculated act vs a need to control impulses.

Users might be indifferent/ignorant and earnestly believe that pursuing anti-c is strategically the only way of achieving their long-term goals.

Users might be personally invested in the Virped discourse, e.g. for professional reasons. They might have personal experiences that mark them out as abuse survivors, and see participating as a form of primary prevention. They might pin their sexuality on early experiences, and want to prevent pedophiles acting. These are just a few of the potential motivations.

Being a pedophile doesn't endow you with some kind of intrinsic knowledge (that "children really like sex") etc.

[PorcelainLark]

The existence of Virped renders necessary an anti-contact discourse, and its protection from pro-choice discourse.

There can be any range of motivations for upholding and defending that; it doesn't have to be a calculated act vs a need to control impulses.

Users might be indifferent/ignorant and earnestly believe that pursuing anti-c is strategically the only way of achieving their long-term goals.

Users might be personally invested in the Virped discourse, e.g. for professional reasons. They might have personal experiences that mark them out as abuse survivors, and see participating as a form of primary prevention. They might pin their sexuality on early experiences, and want to prevent pedophiles acting. These are just a few of the potential motivations.

Being a pedophile doesn't endow you with some kind of intrinsic knowledge (that "children really like sex") etc.

Makes sense, I suppose. Still have a hard time believing it though.

[Glvr69]

Do you consider lap sitting and wrestling/horseplay as contact?

[TheOtherKindofPride]

I'm sure this issue is very multifaceted. But to have anything akin to a productive discussion about this, we literally can't get stuck in the weeds, or this just become an Ouroboros. Regardless as to why some MAPs might be, or pretend to be no-contact, I think the very idea behind no-contact is, for the majority of MAPs, either useless outside of optics or not even the case and they are mostly just pretending to be no-contact for safety, as a result of being abused by antis, or because its supposedly politically useful. It looks better to those who don't outright want us exterminated. But I don't think appealing to the fence-sitters is going to get us very far, as the super loud minority will get their way regardless of what the middlemen do or don't do. As we have seen in politics, the centrists don't exist, there is only the left and the right. There is only MAPs and those who want to destroy us completely. The minuscule stage play of people pretending to be "ok" with us while not being one of us is a Christmas miracle, not something we could even begin to rely on for general safety and progress towards a world where we can exist free of unbelievable oppression.

Being pro-contact is not a problem so long as you do it correctly, same as any interaction with children. If you change a baby's diaper badly, you can harm them, and you should avoid doing that. If you feed them expired formula, you can harm them, and you should not do that. If you are too forceful with them sexually, you can harm them, and you should not do that. Of course antis will say that even something as minor as a light brush across their genitals is apparently as bad as the most violent and destructive form of abuse imaginable, but that's just a result of stupidity and brainwashing for generation preventing them from thinking critically about actual reality. This effects people in more ways than just being anti-MAP. At best, Antis, and to a lesser extent no-contact MAPs, are misguided about what pro-contact even means for most reasonable MAPs. At worst, they're doing the enemies work for them by saying that acting on being a MAP at all is bad, full stop, bar none. This is poison for any MAP community that has any intention of normalizing it at all whatsoever. And if the point of a MAP community isn't to normalize it, which would automatically have the effect of dismantling the oppressive structures that harm us so significantly, then I don't know what the point is.

The vast majority of people either don't care about us, or directly hate us. We wont get anywhere by trying to appeal to their sense of empathy, because they have little-to-none for us. The only possibility is attempting to normalize it to the public as much as possible in whatever ways works. Using the lolicon community and trying to get them to realize or admit that they are MAPs and realize that there are more of their fellows out there than they might realize could help bolster our numbers and the confidence by which we could engage in at least online discussions. Sure, lolicons are also a very hated group, but ending the ridiculous artificial divide between our groups could help force people to take us more seriously as a group worth listening to, rather than some small fringe group of freaks that they can afford to eradicate. Lolicons can actually push their weight around if they feel the need, because they at least have a good bit more social clout than we do.
And maybe some degree of non-contact advocacy helps, but too much will just stagnate us or even set us back as the no-contact folks get ostensibly "mistaken" as anti-MAPs, or "useful idiots" anyways, by the actual anti-MAP community. They are the "do-nothing Democrats" of the MAP community. Laudable in their goals of unity and peaceful methods of achieving it, but ultimately not useful for the goal of achieving anything close to equality and freedom in the world.

And as for whether or not lap sitting and wrestling is considered "contact", that depends on who you ask, but I'd say since it is literally physical contact, and to a MAP who is sexually attracted to the minor they are making contact with, it sexual/romantic in nature. So its MAP-related contact with a minor.

[PorcelainLark]

Of course antis will say that even something as minor as a light brush across their genitals is apparently as bad as the most violent and destructive form of abuse imaginable, but that's just a result of stupidity and brainwashing for generation preventing them from thinking critically about actual reality.

I've said before that people are more comfortable thinking about a nuclear war than an 8 year giving someone a handjob. There is an irrational fear of child sexuality that underlies the hatred towards us in my opinion. A child performing a sexual act isn't the end of the world. Also it's bad for people that actually experience sexual abuse; we're telling people that they're broken beyond repair and any positive memories are just an illusion. It's not just oppression, it's psychologically abusing victims.

The vast majority of people either don't care about us, or directly hate us. We wont get anywhere by trying to appeal to their sense of empathy, because they have little-to-none for us. The only possibility is attempting to normalize it to the public as much as possible in whatever ways works.

I disagree, I think there are plenty of people out there which wouldn't care or even be sympathetic to us, if there wasn't a mob that shouts down anything perceived as supporting us. Think about all the sensationalism about it in tabloids. It creates an atmosphere where no one can think for themselves about this topic. Nobody wants to face the backlash. Consider figures like Camille Paglia and Barbra Streisand. Paglia's Sexual Personae basically praised pederasty and wrote that one day teacher, priests, etc. wouldn't be locked up for their preferences. Streisand had a similarly sympathetic attitude toward Michael Jackson, not denying the allegation, but saying words to the effect of "so what if he's a pedophile?". Both were publicly pressured to make retractions and eventually did. Again, John Grisham made statements that people shouldn't be charged just for viewing PIM; again he was pressured to make retractions.

I think most liberal minded, educated people know intuitively that the hatred of MAPs is irrational. The more pedophiles become the go to scapegoat of right-wing populism, the closer we come to getting them to take a stand.

[TheOtherKindofPride]

I've said before that people are more comfortable thinking about a nuclear war than an 8 year giving someone a handjob.

Exactly. It's far from any rational concern based on well-evidenced facts and logical processes. It's a mental derangement unlike most out there. It's some sick twist of mind-shattering incredulity, a smug since of inherent superiority and supremacy, and a disturbing level of unmitigated hatred usually reserved for mass murders: people who have actually committed real harm to real people. But like any good bigot, these people take the worst possible examples of a type of person, such as someone who has tortured and murdered children for no justifiable reason, as if you could justify that, and extrapolated this onto anyone who so much as glances in the direction of children or too long (if they're a man anyways). They're not even waiting to react to actual MAPs who have the gall to make there mere existence known at all, they go out looking for us like paranoid schizophrenics looking for aliens and Bigfoot under every rock and around every corner to the point whee they're claiming non MAPs are pedophiles, or just using the term as a general insult for anyone they don't like. It's akin to how people used to use the term gay to mean "bad" or call soft men "faggots".
(IDK what the rules are here against using slurs referentially, but if that's a problem I'll avoid doing that in the future since i have nothing at all against gay people. Just covering my bases since I'm used to most "normal" websites being very ban-happy for even referring to slurs at all). Terms like this and terms like "pedo" should not be used casually against people as generalized insults, they should be used sparingly when it actually applies and is warranted. At least until we develop into a society that is not incapable of withstanding hearing a certain word regardless of context. I'm not particularly republican, but I do think society has become a weird mix of "soft" and evil at the same time. Getting extremely upset when hearing certain words, but also advocating for the extreme suffering and even genocide of entire groups of people in the very next breath for the high crime of having a different sexuality as them. It's unbelievable.

I've said it somewhere here before, but they're jumping at shadows and inventing boogeymen to project onto the vast majority of us who want to enjoy our interactions with children as much as we want them to enjoy their interactions with us. But they twist it into thinking tat by "enjoy" be always mean "destroy", when that's obviously far from the truth.

There is an irrational fear of child sexuality that underlies the hatred towards us in my opinion. A child performing a sexual act isn't the end of the world.

I would argue that this is due to the public belief that sex is inherently a power play, potentially inspired by early feminist attempts to expose how powerful individuals used their money and influence to make it easier to get away with bad thing they did to women, as well as men who were not equally powerful. But this indicates the underlying infantilization of women in general, seeing them and treating them as basically just "tall children" with less potential power than men (essentially the only "real" adults). Men being expected to protect women while women don't have to do the same for men, women and children being given the privilege of escaping a dangerous situation first while men are left behind to either die and/or hold back the danger for them. But paradoxically the one thing they didn't carry over from children to women is the taboo of having sex with them.
I have a conspiratorial theory, that I don't fully believe in, that I think could be interesting to consider. Maybe the reason there is this idea that children cannot consent to sex, legally or personally, the extreme cultural taboo against even talking sexually about children and the extremely harsh laws against it is actually to not just fuel the underground market, but to create it in the first place. Potentially rich and relatively anonymous men engaging in sex with children in "underground" locations, billions of dollars changing hands all to facilitate this. The worst thing that could happen for those who enjoy the "exclusivity" aspects of this and the unbelievable amount of money in this "dark industry"... is legalization and the removal of the societal taboos against it. If pedophilia and sexual interaction with children was normalized and legalized, there would be next to no incentive to spend billions of dollars on the privilege of doing it, because you could just go next door and do it for free. Though I'm sure "white markets" would easily find ways to profiting off of it with pedophile-themed merchandise and weddings between adults and children, but that's obvious.
Now I don't have any reason to believe this is the case beyond just my own personal speculation, and how true this may be is entirely unknown to me, but IMO, I think it just makes too much sense for it not to be at least somewhat true. I don't think enough people would even think about this simply due to the subject matter it's related to, much less in large enough numbers to be considered a threat, but I do hope I don't get killed for stating this theory. Most likely wont, but you never know.

Also it's bad for people that actually experience sexual abuse; we're telling people that they're broken beyond repair and any positive memories are just an illusion. It's not just oppression, it's psychologically abusing victims.

Yep, I've thought of this too. Similar to how if you react to a child falling off their bike in a calm and even jovial way, the child will react as though its not a big deal. You'll just help clean their wound, put a bandaid on it and they'll be back on their bike playing in 15 minutes. I think the way people react to "CSA" is actually a lot of the reason why many "victims" end up having traumatic reactions to these experiences. Not just because of the mere fact that they were engaged with sexually by an adult, but by the other adults around them that treated the situation like the kids had been tortured like a POW in the Middle East or something. That insanely over-the-top negative reaction to something that many of these children either didn't have a problem with or perhaps even enjoyed at the time, could likely have made them feel incredibly confused and pressured to say and do only what the "responsible" adults wanted the to do; react with fear and pain and regret, even though they didn't actually feel that way about it naturally. And many of the incidents of abuses doing extreme things to keep kids silent and even the more intense sex acts they commit could largely be explained by the desperate situations they are put into due to their harmless sexual preferences being so deeply hated by the public and intensely illegal if caught, but that's a bit of an aside.
These kids are being gaslit into believing they were abused when they actually weren't, and the gaslighting is the actual abuse. The "responsible" adults in many of these situations may very possibly be the ones doing the most harm, or even all the harm, to these children, whether they realize they're doing it or not. And they think they're the heroes...

Imagine how many children developed crippling psychological issues not due to the sexual contact, but the intense peer pressure and psychological warfare being forced against them by people they were told they should respect and feel protected by. And on top of that, they can't even push back against this unsolicited advocacy because they don't have the words or the respect from adults to say how they really feel or have their words be taken seriously at all, unless those words reflect exactly what the antis want to hear. And even worse, when they are old enough to be able to state their case, they have become aware of just how insanely cult-like the anti-pedophile people are and how dangerous it is for them to admit that they didn't actually have a problem with the sexual "abuse" that happened to them, and that it was actually the feverishly unreasonable reactions of the "responsible" adults around them that really traumatized them. Any "victim" who admits anything like this goes from being seen as a sympathetic "victim" to being a psychologically deranged "traitor": basically nothing more than an extension of the "enemy". The psychological abuse continues...

I disagree, I think there are plenty of people out there which wouldn't care or even be sympathetic to us, if there wasn't a mob that shouts down anything perceived as supporting us.

That's a hopeful thought, but I just feel like the hatred against us has grown so deep and spread so far that even these few specs of temporary support don't feel like they've gotten us any closer to being treated any better. For every Camille Paglia or Barbra Streisand, there is a hundred Mutahar or Nuxtaku's, or even worse in regards to those who gather information on and even hack MAPs accounts to doxx them. Maybe I'm more in the internet side of things so my understanding of how this issue is tackled in real life is lacking, but I feel like the internet is being so incredible hostile, yet strangely hypocritical, about pedophilia, even of the cartoon variety, that the hatred of us overshadows any sort of neutrality or support we might have in either "realm". Sure, there's the hope that most people are faking their outrage for ulterior reasons or have just not done enough introspection or realize how unreasonable they're being, maybe the prevalence of lolicon and lolis in media in general and how many people respond positively to it is a good indication that a lot of this overt hatred is a blown-up balloon made to look big and scary when it's actually just a loud minority, but that doesn't change the fact that there are intense laws that are strictly enforced against acting on these feelings in most countries, and basically nobody ever expresses sympathy for MAPs who are caught committing such crimes. I'd love to be so hopeful that the world is just one mask-slip away form being pro-MAP and that most people are at least neutral about pedophilia under the thin veil of hatred perpetuated by a small minority of weirdly influential hatemongers, but I cant bring myself to give in to that hope. I'm just too afraid of being devastatingly disappointed.

(I hope I formatted this post correctly. I haven't put quotes into one of these replies before, so here's hoping it doesn't look too janky lol)