What I think needs to happen

[Outis]

There are a few things I think we need to be doing as a collective.

1. We should be thinking of change over decades, not years. I believe real change to public perceptions and the law can be achieved but it will take time and we should be strategising over longer periods. A roadmap of activities worked on by the community to introduce change over 10, 20, 30 years. Sure take real action now, but have realistic time expectations and implement change in stages. Objectives x, y and z for the next few years, then follow on objectives, then the next phase of objectives. Move the needle bit by bit because once the needles moved a little then it becomes easier to move a little more.

2. We such be engaging at a political level. Demographically we're a significant group and political parties are self serving. Party first, self interest second, the nation third, that's why party whips exist to keep the politicians in line with party ambition. That means cutting deals with lobbyists and party donors in the interest of the party and any effective lobby group knows they can't change the world in just one parliamentary term. A lobby or donor gives support this term in exchange for these small concessions, then more support in the next term for these other small concessions. Play the political game.

3. Build and manage treasury because everything costs money. Without a treasury then what we can achieve is limited.

4. Introduce governance. Not every map group needs to work together in an organised governance structure, but enough need to for organisation to be effective. That happened with womens rights activists and gay rights activists. The fact that forums like this means the seeds are there to build governance, treasury and organisation and that can snowball into real change.

5. Be ambitious and believe in the cause but be patient and practical. Leverage the skills of the community which is much easier with some organisation and governance. I think the community is developed enough now to do this. We have the expertise, the will and the numbers. It doesn't need many people to get started, a group of 5 people building the framework and putting it to action for others to build around is all that would be needed.

I have a lot of ideas of how this could be done and have some experience. My call to action is to come together to discuss some of these things and put in place a plan for governance and organisation. I'm happy to plan and build some of this but ultimately it should be a democratic process that is inclusive but focused.

[PorcelainLark]

I think I agree with the last three, but not the first two.

The first one reminds me of the "nuclear fusion is always 20 years away" meme. I think the problem is about effectiveness, not length of time. The question should be "what are we going to do differently?", because doing the same thing over and over isn't going to change things. A battle of attrition is a waste of time.

I'm skeptical about the second. Wouldn't an endorsement from a MAP organization be like an endorsement from David Irving? i.e. People would use it as a mark against anyone running for election, and push them to make harsher laws against MAPs to try to dissipate the impression of being "pedophile friendly".

I think we're better off doing something like the ACLU approach - make it difficult to publish views that could legally be interpreted as defamatory against MAPs, that promote hate or violence, or that spreads misinformation about MAPs. If politicians and organizations know MAPs won't be pushed around, they'll think twice about trying to make our lives difficult; however the way it is at the moment is as someone once said "no one has ever lost an election for going too hard against sex offenders".

[Fragment]

1. I agree that we need to look at what steps are viable in the short term, while keeping in mind longer term goals. But I agree with Lark that the "how" matters more than the "when". Your subsequent points kind of get into the "how", but I feel for the last 20 years, a lot of MAP communities have just been very internally focused- debating ideas amongst themselves without any real attempts at outreach. It has been quite defeatist, really. Assuming that no-one is going to listen to us, so not even trying to be heard. There have been safety reasons for that- a decade ago Evil Unveiled put a lot of effort into trying to hurt MAP communities that were just existing, even when there was little activism going on. I feel like we're slightly better positioned to engage with the community now, though our position isn't as good as it was in the 70s.

2. The problem with the political approach is that we're not enough of a "demographic" yet. Especially given how spread out we are. If all MAPs lived in a single city, we'd have a lot of influence over that city's politics. That's kind of what happened with gay people in San Francisco. But we're spread out. And we're still low in numbers. The number of MAPs isn't that low. According to news reports dark web PIM sites have tens or hundreds of thousands of users when they get taken down. It's very possible that in terms of attraction MAPs as a percent of the population outnumber teleiophile LGBT people. But most of those MAPs don't identify as MAPs. Even if they do identify as MAPs they may not be activist in any way. If you count the number of active members of all the online MAP communities and you're probably barely scraping the thousands- and they're spread across the globe. I don't think that we have the numbers, yet, to put political pressure on anyone. That's why one of Mu's goals is trying to bring more of the community together. To increase our visibility and political power.

3. Agreed. Most projects until now are funded by individual volunteers out of their own pocket. We need technologically secure ways to pool our resources together more, and incentives for people to do so. No-one wants to feel like they're throwing their money into a black hole.

4. Mu is hoping to move in that direction. So far we are still "just another discussion forum". But we'd like to have annual meetings like Ipce had. We'd like to have formal consultations with the community. We'd like to have proper channels of communication with legal experts, researchers and journalists. Formal infrastructure has been missing from a lot of online MAP community initiatives. We hope to establish more of it at Mu.

5. Indeed, that's what we're hoping to do. My personal project at the moment is just "being known in the community". A lot of the various boards have been split along pro-c/anti-c or BL/GL lines up until now. I want more people to feel like they can work together, despite differences. Right now you have VoA running its own magazine and radio station, and PM running its own magazine and radio station. While obviously there is a divide in terms of the interests of BLs and GLs, I have wondered if perhaps some of the effort people are putting into various communities has ended up redundant.

We're definitely happy to continue discussing what this will look like going forward, though. Mu's committee was never intended to be limited to the founding members.

[Outis]

All good points.

Why and How long term
There is a risk of long term focus turning into just a mechanism to kick the can down the road but I think that can be dealt with using approaches such as OKRs which are popular in industries such as technology for guiding a broad mix of departments and people towards an objective. For anybody unfamiliar with OKRs (there are other similar models but OKRs are popular these days), I'll give an quick overview.

OKR stands for Objective and Key Result.

As an organisation you set out a short list of long term Objectives, typically 3 to 5 Objectives, typically with a 5 year timeline but could be 10, 15, 20, whatever is right for your situation. Tech changes quickly so 5 years is usually used but for something like a map agenda it might be more reasonable to extend to 10 or more years. Objectives for example might be "MAPs recognised as equals within the LGBTQ community", "Possession of CP decriminalised", "MAPs human rights fully respected internationally without discrimination", "sex registers no longer applied to MAPs that have no been convicted of rape". Just examples off the top of my head.

You then set out Key Results to measure if you reached your Objective. So you might have KR's such as "MAPs listed within the LGBTQ as LGBTQM", "legal changes on the books in 80% of European countries and the USA that make possession a non-jailable offence", "Sex registers updated to no longer include people convicted of crimes such as possession of CP or creating art or literature", "Legal rights for MAPs written into law in this list of countries".

You then set out annual Objectives towards that long term objective and Key Results for those Objectives so you have a plan of progress and a way of measuring progress.

Then initiativies are created and funded that align with those Objectives. For instance, if in year one an Objective is to have LGBTQ enter dialog with the MAP community and a Key Result is to be able to show a serious dialog with at least two groups within the LGBTQ community and someone applied to the treasury for funding to travel to an LGBTQ conference then that aligns with the Objective and if approved, they can get their travel and accommodation paid for. But if someone goes to the treasury and says they want "$4000 to pay for a marketing campaign to lower the age of consent to 6" it doesn't become a debate because it doesn't align with the objectives of the treasury.

It helps to direct short term and long term. It ensure's everyone knows the long term goals, they know there's a plan to get there in terms of objectives, they know it's measured so we learn what's working and what isn't and can adapt and people can see progress. It helps people to think about what they can do as individuals and small groups to support those short term objectives.

OKR's are popular because they're simple (a few Objectives and Key Results), they help to herd cats towards a long term and short term objectives, they show measureable results. Without frameworks like this you usually end up with disjointed groups going in all directions and no overall progress.

Politics
A good point that politics is a risky game to play but I don't think it can be avoided. Politics is dirty and self-serving and people use it in various ways.
But I think we have to engage politically but carefully. A lobby doesn't go in heavy handed making overt demands, they are very selective in what they say and how they say it.

If we went in and said we want to change the law to decriminalise CP then that wouldn't be something a party would entertain. If we went in and said given the prison system is on the verge of collapse (big news in the UK) and the very high numbers of people being convicted for possession and the courts already advising judges not to give custodial sentences because there are no prison spaces, we would strongly support a change to the law to make possession a non-custodial offence in general and to be reduced in severity. It solves a real political problem for the party, saves money that can be directed to a crumbling healthcare service and law enforcement in other areas, and we would encourage people to vote for that party or even make a donation. It carries little impact with our community so disjointed and dispersed and so it only really has any impact if it becomes more organised and easier to be part of. If 1% to 10% of people are maps or are sympathetic to maps and are listening and organising then that is impactful. If we hit that objective of being part of the LGBTQ community and that community listens to and supports our messaging then the impacts compount greatly.

But I think even early political engagement on a micro level learns the lessons and helps for later larger engagement.

Also I like the ACLU approach as well. I think it becomes easier with organisation and governance.

I'm willing to work on a draft template and demonstration of how governance, organisation and treasury could work using modern tools. I'm happy to build a working model and toolset to showcase how it "could" be done. I have an idea for how this would work and the tools and techniques to use and I can forsee issues unique to our situation but I think having something up and running that can be seen by members of the community and then refined into something that really fits would be a good first step. And to be clear, my idea of governance is highly democratic, no leaders although there will always be influencers and people forming alliances that impact how things work, that's just part of any democracy.

[PorcelainLark]

I like the idea of "objectives and key results". Sadly, I get the feeling a lot MAP organizations lose steam because they don't have a clear idea of their priorities. This eases my concern.

Unfortunately, regarding politics, the right-wing have spread the idea of the "normalization of pedophilia" as a way of discrediting more liberal and/or progressive views, so I still feel that lobbying could backfire since progressives and liberals are constantly put in the position of disavowing pedophilia (e.g. the "transgender = groomer" idea). If the right-wing gets wind of a MAP group trying to influence policies, they'll use to the greatest extent that they can to discredit their opposition.

Regarding money, I'm not financially literate enough to comment. However I am aware there have been countless examples of people on the internet raising money, only to take it and run. Maybe there could be a kind of vouching system, based on how long people have participated in these communities without doing any illicit activity? (Although, I expect, as with most communities, if you've been there long enough you can probably tell who is and isn't trustworthy.)

[eineuser]

Good points.

[TMKnight]

So there are three things we need to do as a group.

One we must become financially more powerful, without money we will not change a damn thing. As Dan Pena would say.
I am working on a project but lack the finances to act on it. If anyone in our group knows someone sympathetic to MAPs or is a MAP and wants to help me build an empire. We should meet online sometime somewhere.

Two we must show the public that we only believe in the free will of everyone, especially children. That they would be shocked to learn that we are appalled by the inhuman acts of rape and human trafficking. That our advocation of children's rights is our main goal, above all else. It just so happens that some percentage of children are interested in actions that might be considered adult.

Three is difficult to write because there are so many facets to my plan that are dependent on our success. In either case, we would change the world or get the world to leave us alone in our own little corner of the world (a plan I am developing).

I know this I am not willing to wait 10 or 20 years. We need to be active now, more than ever. To do that we need to be financially stable and then we come out publically, we need to get big names like R-Kelly or Curt Johnson who each have histories in or at least convinced of. Regardless there are hundreds we could reach out to. I tried Curt Johnson, but he and another did not respond.

Are there any groups online like X (Twitter) at least to talk about my business efforts? I hope my fellow MAPS would be interested in helping me and lets talk more about what the next steps are.