Okay, I lied. I'm reading it.
In our analysis, we point to areas of conceptual confusion in this literature, including the simultaneous denial that MAPs pose a risk to children while insisting that they are at risk of offending if they are stigmatized.
This is probably going to be the only thing I'll agree with in the whole paper. I actually feel the same way with some of the NARSOL/ anti-registry arguments. They point to low rates of re-offending amongst sex offenders (that existed even prior to registry schemes) but then they also say "people who are forced to be homeless and unemployed have nothing to lose and are more likely to re-offend". Perhaps what they are trying to say is "the rate of re-offending is currently 6%, but this would drop to even lower if we got rid of the registries", but that's not stated clearly. As for MAPs, if we want to know how stigma will impact rates of offending we probably shouldn't be analysing VirPeds, rather we should be looking at offending MAPs and asking them how stigma played into their decisions. Of course, we'll need to find out if they are actually MAPs rather than situational offenders first. There's not much point asking a prison rapist about his experiences of homophobia.
An analysis of messages on Boychat undertaken by Malesky Jr and Ennis (2004) found that over half of posts contained pictures, drawings, poetry, or stories celebrating “boy love” and more than one-fifth of posts validated paedophilic beliefs and abuse of children.
I read this very study just the other day and it actually found that apart from the common use of "euphemisms" there were hardly any posts that showed validating beliefs or "cognitive distortions".
B4U-ACT’s stated mission is to provide pedophiles with information before they act on their sexual impulses, however, the organization’s position is not coherently opposed to child sexual abuse. In fact, B4U-ACT Director of Education Richard Kramer has maintained a website for over 20 years claiming that “[s]ome clinical and many non-clinical studies find the majority of boys are unharmed” by “sexual activity with adults,” and that negative outcomes are more likely when the child is faced with “judgmental adult reactions” to the sexual activity. That is to say, according to Kramer, the harm of child sexual abuse is attributed to the belief that sexual abuse is harmful, rather than the effect of sexual abuse itself.
How slimy. Trying to imply that B4U-Act is providing information (like exists on MHAMic) to MAPs that encourages them to act on their impulses. Even if that were the case (and it's not), there is no rebuttal provided to Kramer's position. It's just thrown as a grenade "person involved has bad personal opinion, therefore organization is bad".
MAPs activism argues for a clear distinction between pedophilia (viewed as an unchosen sexual orientation) and child sexual abuse (the act of harming a child), which Goode (2011) agrees should be more sharply drawn in clinical, scholarly, and public discourse. However, MAPs activism goes further to propose that pedophiles can and should be “open about their orientation” (Goode, 2011, p. 16) and that this openness should attract no social stigma or concern.
For the former distinction to be in any way meaningful, it is conditional on the latter. If the stigma exists regardless of action then there
is no distinction between orientation and action.
In fact, two surveys of people sexually interested in children have found that they prefer medical terms such as “pedophile” and “hebephile” over the term “minor attraction” (Jahnke et al., 2022; Martijn et al., 2020).
True about the Martijn study- by a small margin. Though there is no evidence that pedophiles who prefer the term think of them as "medical terms" any more than "homosexual" is a "medical" term. Actually the authors make clear in their own introduction that they aren't even using the term "pedophile" in the study in line with the medical definition- rather they are referring to attraction to children (without defining what child is, leaving it ambiguous as to where someone with an AoA of 14-16 would fit).
the majority of the 306 participants selected the terms “child lover” (52%), followed by “pedophile” (51%), and “minor-attracted person” (40%). Other (less popular) options included “person with pedophilia” (21%), “person with hebephilia” (6%), “person with pedohebephilia” (4%), “minor-attracted adult” (12%), or “other” (7%, note that the survey did not include "pedophilic person" or similar identity first variants).
The Jahnke study, meanwhile shows that 69.1% of people use pedophile/ hebephile for self-identification vs 76.9% who use MAP. It also shows that for "being labelled by others" MAP has 78.7% approval while pedophile/ hebephile drops to 58.9%. It's a clear case of "only black people can use the n-word". We don't mind using pedophile/ hebephile amongst ourselves but have much more reticence about being called that by others.
In summary, there was nuanced variation in the application of the term MAPs, which was used to describe overlapping phenomena, including sexual interest in children, distinct from or commensurate with offending, as well as a self-identity or a label.
Agree partially with this. But early studies on homosexuality conflated "men who have sex with men" and "homosexual". Similarly should research use the term "gay" or "homosexual"? Some level of difference is to be expected. The Levenson definition is bullshit, though "there are some individuals who refer to themselves as “minor attracted persons” (MAP) or “virtuous paedophiles” who do not act on their attractions..." Offending MAPs are still MAPs (but most situational offenders and even some preferential offenders are not MAPs). MAP should never be used as a synonym for "NOMAP" or "VirPed".
Secondly, by comparing pedophilia to “queer” sexual attraction, it conflates arousal to non-consensual sexual activity (that is, the sexual abuse of children) with arousal to consensual sex between adults.
This is such a smooth-brained take. It makes me sad that an "academic" can't even wrap his brain around it.
Even if we grant that minors are incapable of consent, the fantasies of MAPs are almost universally of fantasies where minors are consenting. Whether or not this fantasy can exist in the real world is the crux of the pro-c/ anti-c debate. But most MAPs are not aroused by imagining non-consensual situations. And
EVEN IF people are imagining non-consensual sex we shouldn't be stigmatizing them for it. A gay man that is aroused by rape fantasies and simulated (but consensual) rape is no less "gay" than a gay man that is only aroused by romantic sex. Nor should the former be any more stigmatized than the latter.
For instance, Finkelhor (2008, p. 9) stated that societal “norms” play a vital role in crime reduction and that, when “norms are clear and strict, offenses are discouraged.” In his foundational work on motivations for child sex offending, Finkelhor (1984) outlines that child sexual abusers have to overcome internal and external inhibitions against child sexual abuse in order to harm children.
And how's that working out? A society that constantly makes jokes about murdering "pedophiles" and yet the problem of CSA seems to continue unabated. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." But maybe if we imprison people for 30 years and physical castration instead of 20, and threaten sausage makers instead of wood chippers then the problem will be solved!
However, contrary to claims that “stigma” is the primary driver of child sexual abuse, institutions and environments that have “de-stigmatized” sexual interest in children have been places of rampant sexual abuse and exploitation (e.g., Clegg, 2021).
References the Pitcairn Islands but links to a totally irrelevant paper about the Pitcairn responses to COVID and Brexit. A link to the
wiki page would have been better. Furthermore, to call the insular (and inbred) Pitcairns (with a population of 50) who held that the age of consent of 12 an environment that "de-stigmatized sexual interest in children" is just wrong. The Pitcairns weren't talking about interest, but action. Further more they believed they were sovereign and could set their own age of consent- but the sample size is atrocious. The convictions came down to the fact that they weren't considered sovereign and therefore the cases that they thought of as consensual were not consensual under UK law. Though with an insular community like that it's very possible that coercion and rape had become part of the culture (as they do in small insular cults even within developed nations). Even if we're talking about the effect of destigmatizing action, though an honest analysis of the consequences of an age of consent of 12 would look at the Netherlands (1990-2002) rather than the Pitcairns.
While efforts to prevent violence against women include efforts to engage early with such men, domestic violence prevention does not promote the “destigmatization” of the impulse to physical or sexual violence.
Blatant lies. Even moreso when you look at violence perpetrated by parents against their children. "It's normal to feel like you want to punch your kid in the face as long as you don't actually do it" is a large part of the messaging to parents. It destigmatizes the anger and rage while focusing on the negative behavior.
LGBT research is situated within a longer history of research with undetected homosexuals in the community that, in the absence of critical distance, risks laundering the political agendas of pro-homosexual groups as “scientific” recommendations.
True, I guess. But surely engaging with members of a certain community is important to understanding them on a "scientific" level. Unless you just plan on dictating to us how we feel.
A couple of okay takes about how MAP scholarship is in its infancy and needs to properly establish terms. Also regarding the link between stigma and offending on which more research does need to be done.