Lawmakers, billionaires, money and profit.

[Nix]

So I'm going to start this topic off by saying that I don't claim at all to be a professional or a longtime veteran of involvement within the MAP community. However I want to pose a question: How do we as a community, find a way to appeal not only to legislation but also to the people who are making money and seeking profits? What do we have to offer to the economy? It has been said that 'money makes the world go round' by capitalistic people. What can we advertise? How can the community get funded? Can we find safe reasonable ways of making money and appealing to the market? I look forward to hopefully reading your discussions on this topic.

[BLueRibbon]

I think there is a significant demand for mental health support from MAPs, and due to the stigma associated with attraction to minors and reluctance of professionals to get involved, it is very much an untapped market. From a capitalistic perspective, this would be an excellent avenue for non-MAPs to pursue, which may partly explain the success of B4U-Act.

[Jim Burton]

Elective systems with respect to the rights of youth will likely increase administrative burden and provide new cohorts for outcome studies.

[WandersGlade]

Anti-discrimination lawsuits could be profitable to law firms. I think if you can get your foot in the door, legally, the potential economic incentive pushes the cause forward. For comparison, once you introduce anti-discrimination laws to protect LGBT people, you have lawyers that are looking for cases to take on, and then with each decision it can reinforce those laws. Perhaps the same thing could happen with MAPs, i.e. you open just enough space to allow for more general anti-discrimination laws and the economic incentive drives law firms to do the rest of the work for us.

[Fragment]

Even though there is a clear market with lots of money to be made in terms of MAP friendly merch and media, we're still at the point where there is more money to be lost.

I think we need things made "by MAPs, for MAPs" and have our own self-supporting economy first of all. MAP Merch shop is a good first attempt at that, though I understand many people are still cautious about provide postal addresses online.

Hopefully over time fears regarding being doxxed can lessen and we can find it easier to support each other financially. That's how gay suburbs arose, after all.

[FairBlueLove]

I think there is a significant demand for mental health support from MAPs, and due to the stigma associated with attraction to minors and reluctance of professionals to get involved, it is very much an untapped market. From a capitalistic perspective, this would be an excellent avenue for non-MAPs to pursue, which may partly explain the success of B4U-Act.

True, but am I the only one who perceives the conflict of interests in this case as frightening?

[Fragment]

I think there is a significant demand for mental health support from MAPs, and due to the stigma associated with attraction to minors and reluctance of professionals to get involved, it is very much an untapped market. From a capitalistic perspective, this would be an excellent avenue for non-MAPs to pursue, which may partly explain the success of B4U-Act.

True, but am I the only one who perceives the conflict of interests in this case as frightening?

There is already a conflict of interest with therapists making money off victims with trauma, though. Having therapists spend more time hearing the other side of that story is important, I think.

[OnionPetal]

I'm sure we can all think of a fair number of Hollywood films involving minor attraction in some form or other. I wonder what the combined value of these properties would be assessed at? If you want to put a dollar-value on something, I'd wager that alone would be a hefty chunk of change. Then do that with all the published novels involving minor attraction. Then art, and music.

I'm not saying we "own" all of these properties. Just that, by some monetary metric, our representation is valuable.