MAP Forum

I've spoken to MEDAL and to Peace about this idea before, so some of you may be aware of it. Basically, the idea is to try to personally persuade leaders of anti-pedophile organizations to moderate they're views.
A name that frequently comes up, when I read about news relating to laws concerning MAPS is the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Usually in the context of applying pressure to politicians to tighten laws.
You may say "how could they ever change their minds?" I derived the idea from reading about Patty Wetterling's involvement in the campaign to reform the sex offender registry. My thought is that if the figureheads of child abuse activism could be persuaded that their approach doesn't really help children, you could challenge prejudice more easily across society.
I think the prejudice against MAPs is stoked by some of these organizations to a level which is higher than it would otherwise be.

If you were to write a letter to one of the board/staff members, what would you say?

My cynical opinion is that these organizations function more like businesses. Their funding depends on stoking fear. To persuade them to alter their approach, we'd first need to persuade them of a financial incentive. What could that be?

BLueRibbon wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2024 3:49 am My cynical opinion is that these organizations function more like businesses. Their funding depends on stoking fear. To persuade them to alter their approach, we'd first need to persuade them of a financial incentive. What could that be?

I'm not sure about that. I think some of them must believe what they're doing is right. Also, winning over figureheads would undermine the influence of those who are only in it for the money within their organizations.
But for the sake of argument, perhaps by encouraging scope creep: e.g. expanding into therapy for MAPs, or studying the unethical behavior amongst pedophile hunters. By putting a spin on things which are in MAPs interest which could be framed as serving their goals. Over time, if fear mongering has diminishing returns, an organization could be financially motivated to switch focus. Don't know if it's realistically possible though.

i think you should go with your gut feeling! But try to be as "sober" as you can about the ways in which these fellow humans are challenged. For one, they've been building their current momentum for some decades, if not centuries. Plus they are structured in typical hierarchies, filled with true believers (but not thinking things thru too deeply) in the implementation "ranks" while the vanguard at the top of these groups hold much more cynical and political-challenged identities.

That's my approximate idea, so far, any way.

Those in the "bottom" ranks get tied into these ideologies out of their organick need for meaningful community, but don't see that more liberatory groups are systematically suppressed. Of course they don't want to RISK LOSING what tiny foothold of a "community" they have!! But if we were able to build up a momentum that can defy the political police and their mercenaries, and was truly liberatory for all, well, i think THAT would make sense!!

Sadly, we also must contend with egos in our own movement, often which can be VERY afraid to relinquish fair and equal hearing out of the ideas outside of their own often narrow belief system!

And of course, the political police in the US and Europe are already hard at work to undermine (and "drive a wedge" between) what bridges we are able to make and build up between all of these basically artificial strictures; all efforts of the scapegoats will be systematically undermined and distracted "at every turn", so to speak. That is the history of "cointelpro" in the USA, once "illegal" but now quite legal.

Did i miss anything?