MAP Forum

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two steps to a moral panic.

Create a consensus that X is really bad

Concept creep: expanding the definition of X to cover more and more behavior.

We saw this happen with racism. As long as I’ve been alive, it’s been bad to be racist in America. But over the decades, the minimum definition of racism went from something like “hating people on account of their race” to “having a private preference for one’s own group over others” to “supporting policies that have a disparate impact on a protected minority” to “not actively struggling to make yourself antiracist.”

Nobody ever wanted to be the guy to stand up and say we’re overrating the problem of racism, or that given its power we should define this word very narrowly. As a result, we got the madness of the Great Awokening throughout the 2010s, culminating in the Summer of Floyd and the events of the next year or two before things subsided and the backlash kicked in.

We see something similar happening with the concept of pedophilia. In recent days, I’ve been arguing that it is of course ridiculous to call Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile, and a lot of responses are along the lines of “you may be technically right but why die on this hill.” I’m convinced, however, that these distinctions are quite important.

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There is no way to call attraction to 17-year-olds pedophilia without also stigmatizing attraction to women who are slightly older than that. We have an age of consent, and it used to be recognized that it was an arbitrary line that we have to set somewhere. But before the last decade or two, there wasn’t this idea that men whose sexual preferences did not exactly line up with the legal minimum in the jurisdiction that they happen to live in were disordered or somehow abnormal. This is a bizarre idea that is frankly inconsistent with people being able to develop realistic understandings of sex differences and human biology.

If men who are attracted to 17-year-olds are disordered, on what basis can those who like 20-year-olds be considered normal? I’ve noticed that most of the women who are mad at age gap relationships are aggressive middle age types who seem to have a deep personal interest in the issue.

JGHeaven wrote: Sun Nov 23, 2025 11:12 am It is, I've seen social media posts of men in their 40s dating girls in their 20s and vice versa and people leap onto those posts as being terrible, they should stick to their own age. I often comment in support of those posts because it's no one elses business. Two people who choose to be together should be together and to hell with anybody who doesn't like it.

ZeroXJoker wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 2:32 pm

JGHeaven wrote: Sun Nov 23, 2025 11:12 am It is, I've seen social media posts of men in their 40s dating girls in their 20s and vice versa and people leap onto those posts as being terrible, they should stick to their own age. I often comment in support of those posts because it's no one elses business. Two people who choose to be together should be together and to hell with anybody who doesn't like it.

Yea I seen people get shit on someone for having a partner that is a lot older than them. I saw a post on Reddit some time ago about an adult female having sex with an older male. All of the women who responded said about the guy was being predatory and controlling towards her and she ended up deleting her post because of it. I also see on websites about if a man is dating someone a lot younger its a red flag because it begs the question of why women his own age don't want anything to do with him.

JGHeaven wrote: Tue Dec 02, 2025 1:18 pm

ZeroXJoker wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 2:32 pm

JGHeaven wrote: Sun Nov 23, 2025 11:12 am It is, I've seen social media posts of men in their 40s dating girls in their 20s and vice versa and people leap onto those posts as being terrible, they should stick to their own age. I often comment in support of those posts because it's no one elses business. Two people who choose to be together should be together and to hell with anybody who doesn't like it.

Yea I seen people get shit on someone for having a partner that is a lot older than them. I saw a post on Reddit some time ago about an adult female having sex with an older male. All of the women who responded said about the guy was being predatory and controlling towards her and she ended up deleting her post because of it. I also see on websites about if a man is dating someone a lot younger its a red flag because it begs the question of why women his own age don't want anything to do with him.

It's a very ageist view that needs to be tackled. It's no different to not hiring people because of their age, it's still ageism.