Maps and lacking empathy for children

[mrlolicon93]

Do you think it is true that most maps don't care about kids and just want sex?

I have been apart of the map community for years now and it seems no matter where i am in either ani-C or pro-C spaces there is always these predatory Sociopathic/Psychopathic types of people.

A lot of Sociopathic/Psychopathic types seem to not care about children and their wellbeing and only want to see them suffer which i have gotten into arguments with people over and i stand by my opinion that because pedophile/pedophilia comes from Greek and means Child Love in English true pedophiles love kids and it isn't only about sex or a sexual attraction.

Sociopathic/Psychopathic types also say that they don't care how their actions effect other pedos and how pedos are viewed by society at large which is a problem imo.

They also from what others have told me and going off my own experience as well bully maps who try to set a good example and call us weak losers or soft and they feel entitled to groom and manipulate kids and treat them as objects for some reason and have not only harassed and bullied me but friends i have as well.

With all this in mind i would like the community's feedback. What do you think should be done about the bad people in the map spaces who ruin it for everyone else?

Pedophiles should love kids not want to abuse them and harm them.

I know a lot of them aren't technically maps and are just assholes like a lot of the dark web child molesters but it pisses me off that some of them openly identify as pedophile or map and yet give us such a bad image.

[Fragment]

It's not for me to say whether they are "real MAPs" or not. I think if someone says "I'm a MAP/ pedophile" then we need to trust them.

However, I think that it's very possible that many of these people are aroused by deviance. They enjoy feeling "dirty" and outside of the social norm. So they are attracted not just to minors, but to zoophilia, sadism and other kinds of socially unacceptable sexual behavior. They are the kind of pedophile that would have higher than normal rates of non-pedophilic paraphilia, though in some cases I think it is performative- there is a pleasure found in edginess that doesn't have a root in true desire.

The studies on empathy and feelings of romantic attraction to children do not show higher level of psychopathy in minor-attracted people.

Some studies have found that some pedophilic sexual offenders (in particular, those who select unrelated boys) score higher on measures of emotional congruence with children than other sexual offenders (Underhill, Wakeling, Mann, & Webster, 2008; Wilson, 1999). Finkelhor (1984) defined emotional congruence with children as the extent to which sex with a child fulfilled emotional needs. Emotional congruence can also include the degree to which someone prefers the company of children, enjoys child-oriented activities, and feels his emotional and intimacy needs can be met by children (Wilson, 1999). Some pedophiles not only seek sexual contacts with children, but seek romantic relationships with them. For example, Li (1991) interviewed 27 pedophiles and found that many characterized their contacts with children as part of loving relationships. Wilson and Cox (1983) interviewed 77 members of the Paedophile Information Exchange in the United Kingdom, and found that more respondents characterized their relationships with children as affectionate, loving, intimate, and 'close' (n = 25) than as genitally-oriented (n = 18). Some respondents claimed their relationships with children were platonic, suggesting that sexual attraction was not the primary motivation.

Schuler et al (2019) also showed that both offending and non-offending MAPs have higher emotional empathy towards children than teleiophiles, and non-offending MAPs also have higher cognitive empathy towards children (though it was lower than controls for offending MAPs).

Other studies looking at preferential vs situational child sex offenders show that a subset of the situational offenders have a higher rate of criminality, but that preferential offenders tend to have overall lower criminality. MAPs like to have sex with minors, but apart from that they don't especially like breaking the law or hurting people.

It's hard to know what to do about the members of our community that are interested in pedosadism. It's clear from the research that forced or violent sex will be harmful, and outside of BDSM contexts (which I don't think are appropriate for minors) non-consensual. If it remains at the level of fantasy it isn't harmful- a lot of adult porn focused on rape fantasy type scenarios, but those people don't abuse anyone in real life. But it is still bad optics- it gives a bad image, as you say.

It's hard, though, because I don't want to say "you're an evil person because of your fantasies". But some of those fantasies are really "icky" to me. It's not how I imagine my sexuality at all.

More data:
https://wiki.yesmap.net/wiki/Research:_ ... psychology

[PorcelainLark]

Maybe it's the other way around, people with personality disorders are more likely to participate in communities about taboo topics because they have a disregard about societal boundaries, rather than pedophiles being more likely to be sociopathic.

[lightseeker]

Do you think it is true that most maps don't care about kids and just want sex?

We can't know for sure. I know that I care and would rather be simply a good friend than someone taking advantage of a young person.

My educated guess is that sociopathic/psychopathic types appear to have all kinds of sexual orientations so also pedophilia/hebephilia. So if there is one percent of such people in the general population, they might be one percent in the pedophilic/hebephilic sub population (not taken into account the difficult coming of age for so many of us which can lead to all kind of psychological problems by itself). Media coverage then leads us to believe that their share is way bigger. A point you mentioned is that some of these are no pedophiles but only use kids because they are easy targets. We can't look into their brains.

In the same thinking, the trait of being more or even exclusively physically oriented compared to romantically drawn to someone else might be evenly distributed in the general population and the pedophilic/hebephilic sub population. This trait does not lead to violence or force as these people have a conscience and have a respect for the people around them but the loving/romantic aspect is not at all dominant.

The other way round this would mean that most pedophiles/hebephiles do care about boys and girls, comparable to how adult oriented people care about their partner and people in general. They would never use force or violence on a kid. No reason to believe if could be otherwise.

But: wearing rose-colored glasses can lead to behavior of the grown-up which is not beneficial for a boy or girl, like assuming they would like sexual contact when in fact they don't so instead they simply participate (maybe to do their adult friend a favor). Being able to recognize hesitation or fear and always being willing to step back and simply be the older friend the kids might long for is a challenge we all have to master.

i stand by my opinion that because pedophile/pedophilia comes from Greek and means Child Love in English true pedophiles love kids and it isn't only about sex or a sexual attraction.

This has been an ongoing debate for many years: pedophilia is the most often used term nowadays to describe the phenomenon which brings us together here. But we don't use homophiilia or heterophilia (anymore) in the same way to characterize people being attracted to the opposite or the same gender (of similar age). We use heterosexuality and homosexuality. In this frame set we might say pedosexuality to emphasize the sexual attraction (which most often comes with romantic attraction as well).

I want to think the same as you and emphasize the love aspect of this aspect of our personality but we might not be completely honest then in that we of course can sometimes adore a young person simply for their beauty and body and not instantly care for which personality and character they are.

Coming back to your question:

With all this in mind i would like the community's feedback. What do you think should be done about the bad people in the map spaces who ruin it for everyone else?

In my opinion there is little we can do. Media and government can ignore or misinterpret everything we post and publish, or reject it as defensive lies. If they want us to be the scapegoats causing the fall of the west we will be it. And they will use horrific examples of existing physical and sexual abuse to justify actions, new laws, more oppression, and so on.

Constant and steady education can shift things bit by bit. But that will take time.

[mylittlegirl]

Do you think it is true that most maps don't care about kids and just want sex?

First feelings of a MAP/pedophile toward girls is love.

[Outis]

I don't think there's any real link between sexuality and being a sociopath in any way.

Every sexuality will have people with mental disorders and varying degrees of sex drive. There will be maps who are permanently horny but most maps won't be. I have friends who aren't maps who are permanently horny.

I think part of the problem is that society conflates these two issues and jumps to a false conclusion that maps are child sex predators which is nonsense. If law enforcement, academia and the media were more joined up and collectively honest then I think a lot more constructive work could happen to safeguard kids from sexual predators while leaving maps alone, to help be part of the solution. I mean maps often have good relationships with kids who open up to them and talk freely about problems in their lives so a map allowed to be friends with a kid could be the one to be told about someone else who makes them feel unsafe, and then they could help to deal with that issue.

[ZeroXJoker]

Do you think it is true that most maps don't care about kids and just want sex?

Its hard to say. As a MAP myself I have a lot of empathy for children and that got reinforced last week. I had to take my dad to a university hospital for a test that he had to get done. When we were waiting near the entrance for my mom to get her car there was a kid sitting in a wheelchair who I'm not sure what was all wrong with he kept saying things and it hit me in the feels the entire time. I later told my parents how hard it was for me hearing that kid.

[Pharmakon]

As I have gotten older, my fantasies about age gap sex have changed in two important ways. First, my age of attraction has gotten much lower. Second, I have become much more focused on nonconsensual sex.

I attribute the latter change, at least in part, to a lifetime of being told that no kid would ever want to have sex with an adult. Intellectually I know that to be false. But the constant barrage of misinformation takes a toll, and one understandable emotional response to it is, fuck it then, who cares what the kid wants.

I also feel freer to indulge my noncon fantasies because I don't have any actual contact with kids in my life these days, so I don't worry (much) that I could be tempted to act on them.

I don't think this has made me any less empathetic toward actual kids. But I also grew up before the pedo panics, and when I was becoming sexually active in the early 1970s it was a time of considerable sexual permissiveness compared to the decades that followed. I can easily imagine that at least some younger MAPs who came of age in the environment of pedo panic might be deeply enough affected by the propaganda telling them that no kid ever could or would consent to sex with them for it to impact their capacity to relate to kids they found sexually attractive in an empathetic way.

[stropa]

I think most online MAPS who express staunch pro-contact views and the activists and apologists for them have less empathy. The reason being that if you're that upset that you can't have sex with kids that you complain about it regularly, you're probably care more about having sex with kids than about kids themselves.

[Fragment]

I think most online MAPS who express staunch pro-contact views and the activists and apologists for them have less empathy. The reason being that if you're that upset that you can't have sex with kids that you complain about it regularly, you're probably care more about having sex with kids than about kids themselves.

Is this based on anything?

In my experience, contact optimists typically seem to have a lot more interaction with kids. Anti-cs often avoid kids all together.

It also seems entirely ignorant of the dynamic operating between a MAP and minor when those relationships do end up becoming sexual.