MAP Forum

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23178922/

This study estimates the prevalence of CSA, which is split into 5 types and roughly corresponds to what many of you call AMSC:

1. No contact abuse (inappropriate sexual solicitation, indecent exposure)

2. Contact abuse (touching/fondling/kissing)

3. Intercourse (oral, vaginal, anal, attempted intercourse)/sexual violence

4. Mixed type of sexual abuse/type of abuse not specified

5. Other type of abuse

If 8-31% of girls and 3-17% of boys fall into this category, that's hundreds of millions of people in the world. If even a small fraction of them recalled a positive experience and thought that the therapy and society's response is worse than the abuse itself, as some of you claim, you would expect a large number of "MAP allies" among them.

However, there seems to be really few victims that pursue changes to age of consent laws, or who push pro-contact positions in public, or even who participate in sites like this. I know some of you were abused / had AMSC as children, but I have yet to see one case that is not also a MAP.

I know that there are positive testimonies, but if this were a common thing, I would expect more than that. I would expect some of them becoming activists.

While this is not directly an anti-contact argument, I think y'all should have a good explanation for this if you are advocating for the legalisation of AMSC.

Well, honestly, I don’t agree — in fact, following that line of reasoning, we’d have to conclude that people’s reaction to that experience was basically indifferent, if not irrelevant, since with those percentages this forum should be buried under layers of comments from people talking about their traumatic experiences.

Instead, what we actually see is low activity — which simply means the causes lie elsewhere.

Even if someone had a “good experience”, that doesn’t mean they have the strength or the desire to waste their time ruining their own reputation, career, social relationships, etc., just to go against the current — just to present what would be seen as an exception.

It seems much more reasonable to me that the people who take the biggest risks and invest the most are those who have a concrete, even self-interested, stake in change — which, of course, are the MAPs and adolescents.

Seriously, why would someone spend time on this topic just because they weren’t traumatized by it? We’re talking about activism, right? How many people are animal rights activists? (And very few people actually dislike animals — that’s an exception — and socially, loving animals is seen as a good thing, even as a necessary trait to be considered a “good person.” Yet despite the huge number of people who love animals, activism in that area is still extremely rare. And that’s even though there’s zero risk in doing it.)

I am not entirely clear on what you're trying to get at here, but if this is some kind of argument or critique you're trying to use, it is extremely flawed on so many levels. There are a few things you have to understand about the use of CSA in the scientific literature; for one, every interaction between an adult and minor of any age under the legal age of consent is considered CSA, regardless of the interaction being mutual or not. Two, you may have known this but there is a thing called sociogenic harm where basically society such as the parents, LEA, and the psychiatric health care system will convince of the young person that their experience that was positive or neutral was actually abusive. After a lot of pressure from these forces of society, the young person would give in. These two factors I listed alone can really skew the CSA statistics data easily, so that is one of your big flaws right there. Lastly, sexual abuse is sexual abuse. Even if the statistics were right where it represented kids being actually abused, then that doesn't change anything. Using data of people being sexually abused does not discredit the fact that a mutual sexual interaction between an adult and minor of any age is not inherently harmful. Why? Because sexual abused is different from non-abuse. It's that simple. And as an FYI, sexual abuse is anything that is coercive, manipulative, and/or exploitive in nature that violates a person autonomy and thus, can cause potential psychological and physiological harm. Period. If you knew that, then you wouldn't make such a fruitless post.

Learning to undeny wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 6:10 pm While this is not directly an anti-contact argument, I think y'all should have a good explanation for this if you are advocating for the legalisation of AMSC.

I think this could be achieved by an exercise. Find some sort of topical self-alleged non-judgement board (a therapy board, a reddit sub, etc) which encourages people to talk about their childhood experiences. Then make a post claiming to have been sexually abused, however state that you harbour no ill feelings to the perpetrator. That you don't feel abused. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, what matters is the responses you'll get.

Generally speaking, you'll be met with some mild passive aggressiveness. People that come out with true stories like this are met with their feelings being invalidated.

For example, in this article here, the author states: "if you were sexually abused, you were likely damaged by the experience, even if you don’t recognize the damage"

The article goes on to say: "You may have admitted to yourself that you were abused but at the same time convinced yourself that “it wasn’t all that bad.” You may have even convinced yourself that you enjoyed it. [...] It is important for you to get past your denial and confusion about whether you were sexually abused or not and come to a place where you can tell yourself the truth about it"

If you don't feel damaged by your experience, you're treated like you just don't recognize it yet. Read this rhetoric enough times and you'll begin to feel wrong because you don't feel damaged. 'Survivors' that don't fall in line are effectively shamed into silence and dismissed. Your voice only matters if you agree that you've been damaged; if you haven't been damaged, you're simply repressing it and should only speak when you're able to "tell yourself the truth" about your experience.

Not Forever wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 6:31 pm Well, honestly, I don’t agree — in fact, following that line of reasoning, we’d have to conclude that people’s reaction to that experience was basically indifferent, if not irrelevant, since with those percentages this forum should be buried under layers of comments from people talking about their traumatic experiences.

Instead, what we actually see is low activity — which simply means the causes lie elsewhere.

Even if someone had a “good experience”, that doesn’t mean they have the strength or the desire to waste their time ruining their own reputation, career, social relationships, etc., just to go against the current — just to present what would be seen as an exception.

It seems much more reasonable to me that the people who take the biggest risks and invest the most are those who have a concrete, even self-interested, stake in change — which, of course, are the MAPs and adolescents.

Seriously, why would someone spend time on this topic just because they weren’t traumatized by it? We’re talking about activism, right? How many people are animal rights activists? (And very few people actually dislike animals — that’s an exception — and socially, loving animals is seen as a good thing, even as a necessary trait to be considered a “good person.” Yet despite the huge number of people who love animals, activism in that area is still extremely rare. And that’s even though there’s zero risk in doing it.)

Ok, your comparison to animal rights seems adequate. So if I understand your point, activism is extremely rare even among people who share a movement's ideas, especially when they have nothing personal to gain. Still, I would expect some of them to at least communicate directly in MAP groups showing support anonimously, but I am not so sure.

As for Bookshelf's response, I agree that article seems to negate how the victim feels. But my point was that a small percentage of the victims would eventually recognise that they do not feel like society tells them. Also, many cases go unnoticed and so the victim is not treated like that (although they are indirectly exposed to this climate).
Society's reaction will also depend on the country to some extent.

Learning to undeny wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 7:57 pmStill, I would expect some of them to at least communicate directly in MAP groups showing support anonimously, but I am not so sure.

For me, to see something like that, you’d have to be in a public space — a real public space — like Youtube and not just watching a video made specifically to attract the attention of people who are against this kind of thing. You can’t really expect that to happen in a space like this one, because even if it’s dedicated to “MAPs and Allies”, you actually have to look for it knowing exactly what you want to find. You have to be interested in the topic to end up on this forum.

That said, these public squares do exist on YouTube. If you watch certain videos (I’m talking about where I live), where people discuss things like anime, consent laws, and so on... there are many people who criticize this kind of sexophobia, sometimes even sharing personal experiences. (To be clear, I’m talking about adolescent experiences, not prepubescent ones. But it’s also true that it’s normal for adolescent experiences to be the most common, simply because they’re far more frequent.)

Not Forever wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 6:31 pm Well, honestly, I don’t agree — in fact, following that line of reasoning, we’d have to conclude that people’s reaction to that experience was basically indifferent, if not irrelevant, since with those percentages this forum should be buried under layers of comments from people talking about their traumatic experiences.

Instead, what we actually see is low activity — which simply means the causes lie elsewhere.

Even if someone had a “good experience”, that doesn’t mean they have the strength or the desire to waste their time ruining their own reputation, career, social relationships, etc., just to go against the current — just to present what would be seen as an exception.

It seems much more reasonable to me that the people who take the biggest risks and invest the most are those who have a concrete, even self-interested, stake in change — which, of course, are the MAPs and adolescents.

Seriously, why would someone spend time on this topic just because they weren’t traumatized by it? We’re talking about activism, right? How many people are animal rights activists? (And very few people actually dislike animals — that’s an exception — and socially, loving animals is seen as a good thing, even as a necessary trait to be considered a “good person.” Yet despite the huge number of people who love animals, activism in that area is still extremely rare. And that’s even though there’s zero risk in doing it.)

I agree. There is some stigma around 'radical' vegan activism, and I think the idea that non-human animal suffering and happiness is fundamentally as valuable as human suffering/happiness is controversial, but most people don't have a problem with 'diplomatic' vegan or animal welfare activism or the basic idea that we should care about animal suffering to some degree. Most people prefer that non-human animals not suffer. The radical vegans just 'go too far' but activism oriented around de-stigmatizing pedophilia or even child-adult sex on principle is on another level entirely, regardless of whether or not pro-MAP activists take a diplomatic or confrontational or self-righteous approach or how inflammatory their rhetoric is, etc.

There are plenty of common positive and negative experiences that average people have had that hasn't pushed them toward some kind of activism or to devote their life to some cause.

For example, in this article here, the author states: "if you were sexually abused, you were likely damaged by the experience, even if you don’t recognize the damage"

The article goes on to say: "You may have admitted to yourself that you were abused but at the same time convinced yourself that “it wasn’t all that bad.” You may have even convinced yourself that you enjoyed it. [...] It is important for you to get past your denial and confusion about whether you were sexually abused or not and come to a place where you can tell yourself the truth about it"

This is unbelievable to me. If someone does x intending to cause someone else pain or not caring whether or not it does then I would respect critiquing that person even if it happily turned out that no one was harmed by x; the intended or possible victim may even have benefited from it, because we want to discourage people from making choices that are likely to harm others, but to try and convince someone that they have been damaged by something that they insist they don't feel bad about or because of (and you have to consider the mere possibility that they're being honest or are simply correct), they may even have enjoyed it, is something else. It's as though you want them to feel bad about it. Unlike responding to pain that people actually/already feel or critiquing someone for not caring whether or not they harm others trying to persuade people that pleasurable sexual intimacy they engaged in when they were younger was inherently bad isn't rooted in 'empathy' or at least not a concern for their emotional well-being. I would rather people agree with me that suffering is inherently bad, and by extension that the things that cause it are instrumentally bad for that reason, but we experience suffering as inherently bad even if we rationalize otherwise upon reflection (in arguing that child-adult sex is inherently bad you're priming people to feel bad about it, even if it doesn't cause actual emotional pain at any given moment, and that might be appropriate relative to your values but I believe suffering is what actually harms children).

Edit-This is rushed but I have a hard time believing that anywhere near 31% of girls and 17% of boys have had sexual contact with adults as legal children (a part of me suspects that teenage boy-woman relationships would be more common since there's less of a stigma and the boys would be more open to it; less likely to see themselves as victims of exploitation and males in general are more promiscuous, on average). I have heard some people online, including on this site, say that they looked back fondly on childhood sexual experiences with adults, I don't know what number exactly you would accept as legitimate evidence (and I'm not sure for what exactly. I've never understood the idea on both sides that research is needed in order to determine whether or not child/minor-adult sex is intrinsically harmful because a single anecdote can disprove it being inherently damaging or benign. Research might help in terms of making predictions about statistically average children but even then, even if children are rarely not harmed- is it the sociogenic harm that people on this board often mention or is normal human psychology just structured in a way that sexual contact with adults, but not necessarily with other children or young adolescents, as a child or young adolescent is likely to damage someone for 'organic' reasons not related to socialization?).

Not Forever wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 8:25 pm

Learning to undeny wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 7:57 pmStill, I would expect some of them to at least communicate directly in MAP groups showing support anonimously, but I am not so sure.

For me, to see something like that, you’d have to be in a public space — a real public space — like Youtube and not just watching a video made specifically to attract the attention of people who are against this kind of thing. You can’t really expect that to happen in a space like this one, because even if it’s dedicated to “MAPs and Allies”, you actually have to look for it knowing exactly what you want to find. You have to be interested in the topic to end up on this forum.

That said, these public squares do exist on YouTube. If you watch certain videos (I’m talking about where I live), where people discuss things like anime, consent laws, and so on... there are many people who criticize this kind of sexophobia, sometimes even sharing personal experiences. (To be clear, I’m talking about adolescent experiences, not prepubescent ones. But it’s also true that it’s normal for adolescent experiences to be the most common, simply because they’re far more frequent.)

Ok thanks, I think you may be right, they'll just complain about this "sexophobia" instead of associating with paedophiles.

These statistics were just something that I found disonant with the pro-c view, but yeah they seem compatible.

John Doe's comment also makes sense, thanks!

Learning to undeny wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 7:57 pm But my point was that a small percentage of the victims would eventually recognise that they do not feel like society tells them.

Well, do they do. They just don't have a platform to speak about it where they can receive real support, outside of pro-c MAP circles. If they do it in a public space they'll be met with dismissive responses, or they'll be told it's wrong to view it as anything other than negative.

The r/Molested sub on Reddit is filled with "I liked it / I didn't mind it / I'm not traumatized / I miss it" stories and in every single one, there is pseudo support in the form of "Those feelings are okay, but it was still abuse" — pretending to acknowledge the feelings while simultaneously dismissing them outright. In this post here the poster talks about how they missed it, and the top comment— while feigning support— is pathologizing their feelings. Explaining the reason for the enjoyment by stating they were lonely, vulnerable and sad growing up despite the OP not saying any of those things.

The comment below it just calls the positive feelings "terrible".

Bookshelf wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 8:57 pm

Learning to undeny wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 7:57 pm But my point was that a small percentage of the victims would eventually recognise that they do not feel like society tells them.

Well, do they do. They just don't have a platform to speak about it where they can receive real support, outside of pro-c MAP circles. If they do it in a public space they'll be met with dismissive responses, or they'll be told it's wrong to view it as anything other than negative.

The r/Molested sub on Reddit is filled with "I liked it / I didn't mind it / I'm not traumatized / I miss it" stories and in every single one, there is pseudo support in the form of "Those feelings are okay, but it was still abuse" — pretending to acknowledge the feelings while simultaneously dismissing them outright. In this post here the poster talks about how they missed it, and the top comment— while feigning support— is pathologizing their feelings. Explaining the reason for the enjoyment by stating they were lonely, vulnerable and sad growing up despite the OP not saying any of those things.

The comment below it just calls the positive feelings "terrible".

Ok, but I have taken a look at that sub and I find it extremely sad, people are suffering a lot because of their abuse. Even for those who enjoyed it at the time, it made them hypersexual and caused problems well into adulthood. Honestly thanks for showing me the other side. I don't care if society is the cause of much of the harm, we'll always live in society after all.