MAP Forum

It started with a TikTok. On a late-night doom scroll before bed, I stumbled across a creator warning viewers about a new term gaining traction on the platform: Minor Attracted Person.

That one video sent me down a rabbit hole, and for the past few months, I’ve lingered on the fringes of a movement that has sparked outrage online, and is made up of people who aren’t afraid to say they are attracted to children.

Shadowing forums and monitoring public commentary on social media, I decided to dig deeper and chose the very generic username domain123 to gain access. Those early weeks were marked by anxiety and constant clearing of my search history, an attempt to mentally scrub away some of the disturbing content I had encountered.

Unsurprisingly, the term minor-attracted person has been met with anger. Many argue that censoring the word paedophile is a calculated attempt to normalise unlawful behaviour. Critics say that diluting stigma in the name of empathy may unintentionally silence victims of child sexual abuse, and that neutral labels for non-offenders could be easily exploited by those who cross the line.