kinda sucks being a aam (rant lolll)

[babyflowers]

helllooooo currently writing this while at school bored and was just thinking. it kinda sucks being a aam sometimes because i feel like most of the time it’s super hard to find maps and stuff and whenever i try to talk about how i feel weather it’s sexually or just about my mental health i get pushed away because of my age. because apparently im “just a child” and sex is “forbidden” until i’m 18 which is so stupid bruh. i just hate being pushed away and adults telling me that i can’t like adults and id be hurt when im perfectly capable of giving consent and knowing what im giving consent for and im also really good at reading situations and getting reads on people. its just really annoying when non map adults try to intervene with my sex life and tell me what i should and shouldn’t do sorry if im yapping but UGH

[WavesInEternity]

I keenly remember how frustrating it was, in early adolescence, to get told by adults that I wasn't allowed to look at porn. Since I made no effort to hide my disagreement (I was a fiercely independent child), the authority figures in my family made every effort to control my computer use, from Internet filters to a system of mirrors for surveillance... to no avail. I stood my ground, and at 14, I bought my own laptop with money I'd saved. From that point onward, we agreed to disagree.

I can guarantee you that MAPs feel just as frustrated as you are that we can't reciprocate your feelings—so many self-described AAMs here are females right in my age of attraction, you included. We get described as "groomers" and "predators" for wanting to fulfill your stated desires.

If you can find this forum and write a coherent paragraph, the notion that you "can't consent" to sexual activity is simply absurd. (The years of my life between 11 and 16 were some of my horniest, and I sure knew what sex was about.) But it was never about protecting children... as others have pointed out (for instance here), age of consent laws have always been more about parental control and the enforcement of "chastity" rather than protecting young people from sexual abuse. The current legal framework has proven woefully ineffective at reducing actual instances of child sexual abuse. What has proven effective? Wider availability of pornography. What would be more effective still? Proper sex & relationship education—including "consent literacy"—from an early age.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the MAP movement is in dire need of AAMs who can argue in favour of consensual AMSC from a youth rights perspective. I also offered my mentorship on the topic; in this thread, I suggested the following "preliminary reading":

1) Paedophilia: the Radical Case by Tom O'Carroll, which puts forward a proposition a bit more radical that what most of us support, but is nonetheless immensely insightful. The author's blog is great too.
2) Pretty much the entire NewgonWiki, starting with the Debate Guide and the Memes and Graphics sections.
3) Escape From Childhood: The Needs And Rights Of Children by John C. Holt, a seminal text in the youth rights movement which makes very radical proposals for social change. Any youth rights activist must understand and engage with what is perhaps the most "extreme" point of view on the matter.
4) Harmful To Minors: The Perils Of Protecting Children From Sex by Judith Levine.

I don't know about you, but when I was a teenager, engaging in activism against the absurd laws that oppressed me helped me feel at least a bit less frustrated about them. It still helps.

[babyflowers]

yeah exactly i agree with everything u say like im here and able to take care of myself and give consent lol its really dumb and frustrating. but i honestly cant complain too much because i do feel like maps have it worse than i do and it does make me feel really bad for u guys cause u guys aren’t doing anything wrong and u shouldn’t be like looked down upon from society like that. i dont see maps as groomers or predators at all and i think its really unfair to call them that. its just dumb because i also have needs and many of my friends my age also have needs and like i was able to consent since i was pretty young i was 9 when i fully knew what sex was and i’ve had needs since that age. im a strong advocate for maps and i wanna do more to help and show my support and argue that asmr is not abuse! wish i knew more ways to show support and help!

[WavesInEternity]

im a strong advocate for maps and i wanna do more to help and show my support and argue that asmr is not abuse! wish i knew more ways to show support and help!

I hope you enjoy reading and writing, because that's what would be needed above all! Here's a general template for what you, as an individual just beginning to take part in this community, can do:

~ The first step is to learn. Get to know the arguments and the research. I can provide relevant links and texts, as I already did above, but I can't learn in your stead.

~ The second step is to practice. Here, we can help more directly. Engage in debates and perfect your writing skills. Understand our "adversaries". Ponder practical proposals for legal reform. Don't ignore the most controversial issues like child pornography.

~ The third step is to write proper essays, create memes, flyers, etc. Mu and the MAP/AAM community can then help publish and disseminate them.

~ The fourth and last step is to see how far you're comfortable going with real-life activism. As an AAM, you have the benefit of largely avoiding the immense stigma that MAPs face, and as a female, you're also less likely to be dismissed as some variety of "creep". However, you're likely to face opposition from various authority figures that have more power over you than if you were an adult. (How sexually progressive are your parents? We wouldn't want you to get in serious trouble with them because of your "radical" political views.)

Those are long-term goals, of course, but every journey has to start with a single step.

[Aspire6]

helllooooo currently writing this while at school bored and was just thinking. it kinda sucks being a aam sometimes because i feel like most of the time it’s super hard to find maps and stuff and whenever i try to talk about how i feel weather it’s sexually or just about my mental health i get pushed away because of my age. because apparently im “just a child” and sex is “forbidden” until i’m 18 which is so stupid bruh. i just hate being pushed away and adults telling me that i can’t like adults and id be hurt when im perfectly capable of giving consent and knowing what im giving consent for and im also really good at reading situations and getting reads on people. its just really annoying when non map adults try to intervene with my sex life and tell me what i should and shouldn’t do sorry if im yapping but UGH

The biggest issue with how society is, is that they've scared the good MAPs from more personal contact with minors, leaving usually the bad folks who are out to get something from you. If society stopped stigmatizing and criminalizing adult/minor relationships and moved into something like the 16/12 consent model then things would improve. I strongly believe we would see more minors being well-informed and capable enough, with the respect they are getting from those who truly respect them and seek to make them happy, to properly spot and avoid the bad ones.

We all want to protect children/minors, but when the "protection" as it stands now only keeps them in the dark, they can't make informed decisions and are expected to "shut up" about it, leading to other issues like you mention. You're right to be annoyed and frustrated.

[...]

~ The fourth and last step is to see how far you're comfortable going with real-life activism. As an AAM, you have the benefit of largely avoiding the immense stigma that MAPs face, and as a female, you're also less likely to be dismissed as some variety of "creep". However, you're likely to face opposition from various authority figures that have more power over you than if you were an adult. (How sexually progressive are your parents? We wouldn't want you to get in serious trouble with them because of your "radical" political views.)

The main concern in my eyes with activism as an AAM is that non-MAP adults (or even other minors) will try to convince you that you've been "groomed" into thinking that way, when in reality it seems you've already set yourself on that course. They will do their best to make you believe you are a victim, somehow, and they will keep drilling that into you to dismiss your valid concerns/complaints. It is a big pet peeve of mine to see this mindset tossed onto people who had a positive relationship with an adult as a minor (or currently have one). It creates victims often out of thin air and scares people into hiding more than ever. They don't seek help or advice when they need it because they fear criminalization or being permanently disconnected from their loving partner.

It makes them incredibly angry when (current/former) minors refuse to out their adult partner because they still deeply love them or they refuse to accept that they were a victim. It doesn't follow their narrative of "harm" they push constantly. It is why you rarely hear stories of positive relationships, because they want to make every good one a bad one too. Most sites will take them down, reject publishing them, or ban your participation if you dare to speak positively of it.

Fragment made a good post about this kind of topic here if you want to read: https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=1513

[EOF]

whenever i try to talk about how i feel weather it’s sexually or just about my mental health i get pushed away because of my age. because apparently im “just a child” and sex is “forbidden” until i’m 18 which is so stupid bruh. i just hate being pushed away and adults telling me that i can’t like adults and id be hurt when im perfectly capable of giving consent

Indeed, a really annoying kind of gaslighting it is.

its just dumb because i also have needs and many of my friends my age also have needs and like i was able to consent since i was pretty young i was 9 when i fully knew what sex was and i’ve had needs since that age

You made me recall how I used to see the world in my youth.

Given how the boys (and girls) would say slurs about fags, make jokes about sex and whatnot and the few more good-looking and less shy were already fucking, all this "kids don't understand what sex is" seemed completely retarded nonsense. I remember how when I was ≈12 our entire class started laughing uncontrollably when we were made to sing a certain song from an old Soviet animation. The song was about a blue wagon and the adjective "light blue" (голубой) was once used in Russia as an euphemism for "gay", you see. I remember how when I was ≈8, there was a girl who would seldom visit the school's little zoo with me. Once she took a hamster out of his cage, turned him over and said "Look, these are his balls!". I remember the keen interest in her eyes. And yet, the common meme leads us to believe that a child's reaction to sexual stuff is that of shock and disgust instead of curiosity and arousal.

I could go on and on. So, it seemed to me back then that this push for castration of childhood would die out eventually as my generation enters adulthood, and so when I turned 16, I was not entirely pessimistic.

Apparently, I was mistaken. And the more I live, the stronger I'm being led to become an anti.

You may say that you and your friends can consent, but then what do you make of a case that I describe here in this https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=1555 post? Or of what happened to @WavesOfEternity's auntie, the story of whom is quoted later in the thread. These girls, shall we call what happened to them merely a disaster of their own making? The ban serves to diminish such cases, or so they say. Are they right in calling us evil if we want to lift the ban and thus allow such cases to happen?

[WavesInEternity]

The main concern in my eyes with activism as an AAM is that non-MAP adults (or even other minors) will try to convince you that you've been "groomed" into thinking that way, when in reality it seems you've already set yourself on that course. They will do their best to make you believe you are a victim, somehow, and they will keep drilling that into you to dismiss your valid concerns/complaints.

I actually know quite well how that feels, not because I was ever in a relationship with an adult as a minor (I mean, I'm a MAP), but again because of my enthusiastic use and vocal defense of pornography as a teenager. When she discovered that I was looking at porn at age 10, my mother's immediate reaction was to think I has been sexually abused, that those thoughts and feelings had "come from outside". That my innocent mind had been "corrupted" by some nefarious external influence.

Of course, that wasn't the case at all. I had been masturbating since I was 7 and had first experienced erotic desire for a girl at 9. I autonomously decided to search for Internet porn—the existence of which I had effectively inferred on my own—because I was curious and genuinely horny.

To her credit, she did believe me when I told her it was my decision, and she mostly left me alone... until she found lolicon in my room when I was 13. At that point, her and other family members started telling me that I was "escalating", that I had "started with porn of adults but now it didn't satisfy me anymore", that I'd "never be able to have a 'normal' sexuality"... That's when they really started the attempts to prevent me from looking at porn altogether.

My experience taught me that it's possible to stand one's ground despite what the so-called "adults" are saying. It's possible to follow one's heart and even convince some adults of what you're saying, as I did when I became engaged in online activism for free speech. I'd also point out that the fact that an AAM will have to face the argument that they're being "groomed" is still less of a problem than the extreme stigmatization faced by MAPs.

You may say that you and your friends can consent, but then what do you make of a case that I describe here in this https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=1555 post? Or of what happened to @WavesOfEternity's auntie, the story of whom is quoted later in the thread. These girls, shall we call what happened to them merely a disaster of their own making? The ban serves to diminish such cases, or so they say. Are they right in calling us evil if we want to lift the ban and thus allow such cases to happen?

A lot of adult women have terrible experiences with sex with adult male partners: as shown by Kinsey, the female partner in heterosexual intercourse is, among all partners in all kinds of sex, the least likely to report a positive experience, regardless of age (and indeed with little variation according to age!). Think of that other example I mentioned of the (adult) woman who felt "violated" during sex with her (adult) partner because she was certain he was secretly looking at porn beforehand. Look at the subreddit r/FemaleDatingAdvice and all the horror stories of men cheating, being "porn addicts", gaslighting, etc. Should all heterosexual sex be viewed as rape by default? Some radical feminists think so. I don't.

Strangely, we seem to have gone through somewhat opposite paths. You used to be pro-c but are moving toward an anti-c stance. For me, the opposite happened. If there's one thing that my study of adult-adult love and my own relationships with adults taught me, it's that unintentional harm is nearly impossible to avoid in love. Communication is hard, and genuine mutual understanding is extremely hard to achieve. Age has little to do with that, and our laws aren't helping in any way to foster understanding.

The strongest argument against the current laws, indeed, is simply that they don't work. The fact that "they say" the ban serves that purpose doesn't change the numbers. If they actually managed to drastically reduce the rate of child sexual abuse, I might still be anti-c, as I used to be until a few months ago. Not only are they failing at that, they also prevent proper study of the phenomenon by conflating genuine cases of abuse with consensual relationships, and by enforcing a narrative where dialogue should really be occurring.

Considering how the sexual abuse of girls was an epidemic in my family, involving the authorities would have destroyed it. The women chose dialogue with the abusers rather than criminalization, and it worked. My mother's father used to be a serial rapist of girls, but he spent the last decades of his life atoning for his many sins. He was a wonderful grandfather to me, my sisters, and his other grandchildren.

[Aspire6]

I actually know quite well how that feels, not because I was ever in a relationship with an adult as a minor (I mean, I'm a MAP), but again because of my enthusiastic use and vocal defense of pornography as a teenager. When she discovered that I was looking at porn at age 10, my mother's immediate reaction was to think I has been sexually abused, that those thoughts and feelings had "come from outside". That my innocent mind had been "corrupted" by some nefarious external influence.

Of course, that wasn't the case at all. I had been masturbating since I was 7 and had first experienced erotic desire for a girl at 9. I autonomously decided to search for Internet porn—the existence of which I had effectively inferred on my own—because I was curious and genuinely horny.

To her credit, she did believe me when I told her it was my decision, and she mostly left me alone... until she found lolicon in my room when I was 13. At that point, her and other family members started telling me that I was "escalating", that I had "stated with porn of adults but now it didn't satisfy me anymore", that I'd "never be able to have a 'normal' sexuality"... That's when they really started the attempts to prevent me from looking at porn altogether.

My experience also taught me that it's possible to stand one's ground despite what the so-called "adults" are saying. It's possible to follow one's heart and even convince some adults of what you're saying, as I did when I became engaged in online activism for free speech. I'd also point out that the fact that an AAM will have to face the argument that they're being "groomed" is still less of a problem than the extreme stigmatization faced by MAPs.

I have my own story of my parents finding out I had been looking at pornography as a young child (7-8 for me, can't recall exactly when) but that's for another day. So, I'll focus on the last paragraph of this quote in my reply here as I don't want to derail this thread with my own stories or various discussions surrounding my opinion of lolisho (I am 110% pro-fiction).

I don't disagree with you about the intense stigmatization we face for existing, let alone when we are advocating for a change, I fear it will only get worse as time goes on. However, my worry you mention is founded in the idea that AAMs have the luxury of having an "out", they can stop advocating, they can move on, they can be turned into a "victim" by them (society), and by then we've lost another. Lost one who too wanted change from the other side of it all. We however don't get that luxury, sure we could "stop advocating" too, but we're still MAPs. I'd still be attracted to children and people would still hate me for that alone.

I hope to see you around on Mu, babyflowers!

[Meiwaku_Mailing_Girl]

When I was adolescent I did hate that I couldn't tell anyone about my interest in older men, not even my friends. It's a taboo subject.

[EOF]

A lot of adult women have terrible experiences with sex with adult male partners

And unlike in our case, none of these women say that the experience was terrible because the partner was an adult. Besides, how many of these terrible experiences have traumatic consequences? Adult-minor sexual relationships are seemingly regarded as uniquely traumatizing. If it had been a 13-year-old boy friend who had masturbated your lesbian relative to orgasm, would she regard what happened to be just as horrible? Or would she have acknowledge her agency in what happened and be proud of her generosity?

the female partner in heterosexual intercourse is, among all partners in all kinds of sex, the least likely to report a positive experience, regardless of age (and indeed with little variation according to age!)

Curious. But will this be enough to convince those who claim to be victims of AMSC, the non-violent and non-coercive kind of it, that their partner being an adult is not to be blamed for their distress?

As for the least likely part, it could definitely make one wonder, if only for a moment, whether women love men at all. It's silly, of course, but, say, what to make of the "man vs bear" drama? How much does the general androphobia contribute to the predicament that we, the male GLs, find ourselves in?

unintentional harm is nearly impossible to avoid in love

Indeed. A rather extreme example to mention would be somebody killing themself from a break up.

the horror stories of men cheating, being "porn addicts", gaslighting

So, why should we expose our beloved (pure, innocent) children to all this poison? That would be the antis' question.

You may reply by saying that the laws that serve to limit the exposure simply do not work, but are there studies to back that up? The option to make the laws even more draconian will still remain in our opponents mind even if they don't disregard such studies. Then you may mention "the push", but coming from us, doesn't it sound like terrorism? Some antis have enough spirit to set us on fire (and go to jail for it). Do we?

You used to be pro-c but are moving toward an anti-c stance

Not sure if "used to" is the right expression, but how should I put it... Things that antis say just keep ringing and ringing in my ears, most of them very mean but not (entirely) illogical, and I fail to make a consistent model that would reconcile my worldview with theirs. The more I try, the more I loose myself and the more I'm stuck in negative loops, if that makes any sense.

Even refuting something as silly as "you're like a barbarian that plucks and tramples upon flowers, and I wish to keep the flower field beautiful" is somehow not easy. Let alone arguing against something like "better kill yourself anyway, cuz' your 13-year-old loli won't stay a loli forever. Or what? Do you only need her for a couple years and then that's it, you dump her into the trash?". The relevant page on Newgon wiki seems too abstract and roundabout to be an effective guide in replying to something this loaded and direct. The reasoning there also partly relies on non-exclusivity, but relying on non-exclusivity too much allows our opponent to say "well, if you can be satisfied with an adult partner, can't you stop being a blight upon society and shut up? There are more important issues at hand". Well, maybe I could be satisfied to an extent, but how should I put it. The beauty of a young adult woman is like the fire of a burning match. If she has high neoteny, a torch is a better comparison. But a 7-year-old girl is the Sun, which I will miss even if I am attached to her enough or care for her enough to not break up with her by the time her beauty completely withers in my eyes. By that point, an advantage we have over teleiophiles is that the a girl (or boy) we would break up with may as well be of perfect age to the majority of people. Is this enough to override the trope where an evil unfaithful husband dumps his good old wife for a young girl? I don't know. What I do know is that if a girl who would become too "old" for me were to grow very attached to me, it would pain me to break her heart should I follow through with the decision because she likely still would be dear to me, although probably not as much as she used to be and definitely in a different way. So, I really hate the "into the trash" part of the quote I mentioned. Am I making sense?