With that being said, here is what I will share because I think these items do need a whistleblower:

• MAP Support Club senior staff are slow to make obvious moderation decisions, if they’re made at all, even when failure to do so puts the community’s safety at risk. Every single detail is put to a vote, which contributes to the slowness.
• I have pushed for safeguarding policy and more transparent staff moderation policies/procedures, which have been sat on for over a year with nothing being implemented or discussed, even while it would speed up moderation decisions.
• MAP Support Club staff have repeatedly resisted implementing a rule whereby staff members are not allowed to go off-platform with minor members, which is common to many youth-serving organizations. While this has not yet caused any serious issue, not implementing such a rule is irresponsible and so is actively fighting it.
• New members aren’t vetted as carefully as they should be and concerns are dismissed or disregarded. Part of this is lack of staff, but only a small part.
• The senior staff team alienated two returning guides that had been there less than two weeks to the point they resigned.
• I don’t feel supported by the senior leadership of MAP Support Club and I don’t feel their decisions are transparent, responsible, or safe for the community. I know I’m not alone in that.

There are many more reasons why I am resigning that I cannot go into detail on because it would put the community’s member’s safety at risk. I have spent a lot of time, money, and effort advocating for the MAP community and rather than receiving support or the community coming together to organize against the unjustified bigotry, people insist on scrutinizing such advocates such that any decision made feels like the wrong one – while doing nothing productive besides. It isn’t worth the anguish and frustration. When you put as much time, money, and effort into things as I have, you expect the people you’re doing it for to support you and help you along the way. The MAP community and MAP Support Club especially has not done that. I’m exhausted, frustrated, and just plain done. I can’t support others when I’m this disillusioned and exhausted.

MAP Support Club has no reasonable accountability. There is no process by which I can make a reasonable appeal to someone in charge and have my concerns heard and quickly acted on. That leaves me the only recourse of calling out what I believe are failures on the part of the leadership team in this public manner. I believe it would be irresponsible to observe these failures and stay silent about these failures. I would hope that the staff focus on righting these wrongs rather than grandstanding to MAP Support Club members.

If ventures like MAP Support Club are to succeed long term, they need a proper organizational structure with clearly defined rules, policies, and procedures that people are familiar with and follow, where the entire staff team takes the initiative to get things done rather than relying so heavily on a single person’s contribution. MAP Support Club had periods in the last two years where it would have been wiser to make many channels read-only and stop accepting invites to give staff time and space to put those structures in place. They chose not to. Organization and leadership should be the proper next steps, not joking about a coup or being dictator. Advocacy and support is serious work and the more hands that help improve things for everybody. I don’t know if that can happen with the current team without some serious hard work and fresh perspectives that are heard and actioned.

I am done advocating for minor-attracted people, I am done in MAP Support Club, and I sincerely hope they can get their shit together so that minor-attracted people can get the support and civility we deserve. Continuing these failures will continue to make that an uphill battle. Someone else will need to take over Pedophiles About Pedophilia in the next year.

To those of you who believe in MAP Support Club and the idea of better supports for minor-attracted people, I think there are a lot of cultural things that must change in order to make that idea a reality. I feel like I’m failing you by resigning, at the same time I have tried for years to beg the community to better support its most prominent advocates and to organize better to be more effective, to no avail and little concrete action. There is no teamwork, there is the hard work of single individuals like Bly, Ender, and myself and those people stay in it until we burn out. This is not a healthy environment to do advocacy work in and that must change.

To the antis, haters, and people who think there’s something nefarious going on behind the scenes: If you want to help protect children, go actually learn the issue before you talk out of your asshole. If you can’t put in the time, then fuck you and keep your mouth shut. Keeping people from support or demanding support that’s unethical isn’t protecting children, it’s making primary prevention work harder.

The post My departure from MAP Support Club and the MAP community appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Definition

Pedophilia is best understood as the sexual attraction to prepubertal children, though colloquially it has come to mean sexual abuse as well. Those who use the phrase “normalizing pedophilia” want there to be ambiguity between sexual attraction to taboo populations and the sexual violence perpetrated against those populations. This is part of the reason why far-right extremists love to levy accusations of pedophilia against their opponents: They know that people will stop thinking and start siding with them. It’s an intentional ploy to drive wedges and manipulate people.

This is where the phrase gets even murkier – again on purpose. Normalizing. When we think of normalizing something, we typically think of attempts to make something mainstream, or to lead something to being widely accepted and normal. This is a phrase that does not really have purpose in areas adjacent to mental health. Nobody discusses the normalization of autism because it sounds ridiculous. We can’t force people to have autism or to saying that they have autism. The same principle goes with depression, anxiety, and any other mental health condition.

We don’t talk about normalizing these things because we recognize that they are unchosen conditions that happen quite outside of anyone’s volition. Nobody chooses to have depression, anxiety, autism, or other mental health conditions. Yet we recognize the need to destigmatize these conditions because people with them need support and allowing freer discussion of them assists these people in finding that support.

Not A Mental Health Issue

While there are of course similarities between pedophilia and mental health conditions, they are not the same thing. The DSM-5 (the diagnostic manual for mental health conditions) draws a clear distinction between those who have the diagnosable condition of pedophilic disorder, the mental health condition, and those with the attraction itself – pedophilia. While pedophilia the attraction is neutral, pedophilic disorder is not neutral and can be classified as unhealthy.

The DSM-5 describes pedophilic disorder as meeting several diagnostic criteria, of which pedophilia the attraction is one of the requirements. The other requirements for diagnosis are distress felt due to having pedophilia and the societal stigma (hatred/misunderstanding) towards those with pedophilia or alternatively, someone who acts on their attractions in illegal ways. In other words, pedophilia is not a mental health condition.

However, pedophilia the attraction is quite clearly not a choice (who would choose to be attracted to children) and just as clearly is not something that can be changed, only managed and treated.

Again though, to discuss making this attraction normal is preposterous and quite obviously not what is meant by the phrase “normalizing pedophilia.”

The Intent

The true intent behind the phrase is to subtly suggest that there is an organized effort to make child sexual abuse acceptable, and to infer that those the phrase is levied at are part of such an organized effort. However, this is a conspiracy theory. There is no formal, organized effort to promote the idea that children can safely be involved in sexual relationships with older children or adults. The people who do promote these ideas have nothing to do with this site, with Virtuous Pedophiles, MAP Support Club, Prostasia Foundation, or any of the conspiracy theorist’s other targets.

The phrase “normalize pedophilia” is simply the same conspiracy theories peddled by the far-right in their fascist attempts to control people. It’s an empty attempt to anger, not a legitimate concern that requires resources to address.

How To Take Action

With all of that said, here’s a few things you can do when you see this phrase come up:

1. Ask yourself who’s using the phrase and why and whether they can be trusted.
2. If this is online, ignore those using the phrase or block them.
3. If this is in real life, ask those using this phrase what they mean. Now watch them squirm as they try to explain it.
4. Donate your time and money to efforts to educate the public about child sexual abuse and minor attraction.
5. Seek out communities of minor-attracted people and pedophiles and offer your support.

The post Normalizing Pedophilia Is Bullshit appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

The rest of us, though, want freedom from oppression and support in ethically responsible ways and we’re weary of explaining that minor-attracted people are not a monolith and no, having an attraction does not mean wanting to act on the attraction or having some self-control deficit. I can’t speak for all of us. Nobody can. But I think I speak for a fair number of us when I say that we’re sick of explaining to people that we just want to live lives free from hatred. We want the ability to ask for what we need and the ability to say we are minor-attracted without hate and harassment.

That’s a pretty basic ask. We want to be treated with dignity, respect, and the benefit of the doubt. We deserve to be seen as innocent by default, not guilty by default. Most of us are just tired of the warring against our existence at every corner. The term some of us use for ourselves is used as an insult, people invent new ways of claiming what we want without asking us. We just want to live our lives in peace and get support if we need it. Is that really too much to ask?

The post What Do Minor-Attracted People Want? appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

On Saturday, August 27th, 2022, Twitter chose to suspend @Virpeds on Twitter. Their account has existed for many years and their mission is simply to get minor-attracted people and pedophiles the caring support we deserve. This mission also intersects with sex abuse prevention, because a supported pedophile or MAP is someone who is less likely to engage in harmful behaviors, of which child sexual abuse is just one.

This suspension comes amidst many other suspensions of many like-minded advocates on a variety of social media platforms. I guess the idea is that pedophiles can’t be trusted on social media, which is ridiculous. Look at the social media platforms. Look at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. They have a well-known and years-long problem with people posting child pornography on their platform, and in ways that would be easy to shut down. But these social media companies don’t do it. Instead, they cower to fear of the masses and suspend anyone daring to say, “Hey, I’m attracted to kids and I think we need more support than what you’re giving us as a society.” Why else would we risk all the hate on social media but for a good cause? If we wanted to hurt kids, the last thing we’d do is announce our attractions and mission to help minor-attracted people.

The media is complicit in this too. Anytime you see the word pedophile in the news, it almost always is referring to someone who harms children. This is propaganda, not civilized reporting. Imagine if adult rapists were referred to as homosexual or heterosexual. That would be disgusting, but to refer to child sex offenders by their sexual orientation is somehow okay? That’s stupid and illogical, and the end result is that people will believe whatever negative things they like about minor-attracted people and pedophiles. Besides which, most child sexual abuse isn’t perpetrated by pedophiles, making it a lie – one that impacts the prevention of child sexual abuse.

This is a black stain on humankind. Our collective priorities as a society seem to be to try to make the icky stuff go away, not to effectively prevent social harms, and this is disturbingly antiquated. Pushing a group of people into dark corners of the internet where they can be radicalized into hating society is a surefire way to make people feel more comfortable, but at the cost of not protecting children and causing untold social harm to a minority that doesn’t deserve it.

In 2020, Twitter chose to side with child “protection” programs that are excellent at this kind of security theater. They do not care about what is effective at keeping children safe, and they do not care about the research into minor-attracted people. They don’t care that the average age of discovery for minor attraction is just age 14, and they don’t care about effective methods of helping us choose ethical behaviors or finding proper support at such a young age. They don’t fund research into minor-attracted people, they do not consider anything but the performative functions of child protection. That’s not good enough and they should be held accountable for this gross negligence.

If they did care, they would do what is effective, not what is popular, and the two are very different things. In 2022, we have reached the point of technology where we can reasonably replicate the human body in digital art. To fund an industry of fictional children in sexual situations to replace the black market for child pornography would be a no-brainer. No children are harmed in the creation of such digital art, yet instead of funding research into whether giving minor-attracted people ethical outlets for our attractions, an insane amount of money goes to law enforcement which cannot keep up with the availability of child pornography and as a result, law enforcement cannot shut down hosts of this material fast enough. In fact, several law enforcement agencies have been caught distributing and hosting this material.

I have no doubt that the overall goal is not to remove child pornography from the internet, but to catch offenders. For a social media company to restrict the use of hashtags showing up in their algorithm would be simple from a technical standpoint, especially with the talent and genius that these companies have in their personnel. If the goal was to remove it, we would go further than trying to take down the material from the internet, and reduce people’s need to seek it out in the first place by giving people ethical outlets. The fact is, we did not choose our attractions and as with any other sexual attraction, we cannot be rid of the attraction. The only ethical course of action is to give us ethical outlets and stop criminalizing our very existence.

Oh, but that couldn’t work, you say. It would be harder for law enforcement, you say. It wouldn’t. It would likewise be simple to certify organizations that produce digital art and create a database for hashes of art materials to put on an allowlist. It would be simple because the mechanisms for comparing known child pornography against image hashes already exist. Canada has a mechanism, the United States has a mechanism, and I’m sure there are others. To certify organizations or individuals producing this erotic art would be a breeze for law enforcement and governments.

At the very least we could push lawmakers to fund research into this area, but that funding instead goes towards things like the sex offender registry and law enforcement – responses after harm has already happened, not methods that prevent further harm from happening. But recidivism is high and we have to stop them from hurting even more people, you say. If you search “studies on sex offender recidivism” you see even at the most basic level, it’s low, not high. The rough recidivism rate for property crimes, that is high, often above 60% depending on the study. Below 30-40% is not high, that is quite low. The disproportionate amount of government funding goes to sex offender registries, not prevention through education and proper resources.

My point is that minor-attracted people are people. We’re human, just like you. We have feelings and morality, just like you. We know it’s wrong to harm kids, whether that’s by viewing or producing child pornography or by sexually abusing a child. The mechanisms we have in place in modern society does not acknowledge these facts. Instead, we are treated as monsters, constantly equated with offenders while many of us have no interest in harming and many have never harmed a child sexually. To treat all of us as if we cannot be trusted is to give into media bias and stereotyped thinking. To treat us worse is not for the betterment of anyone, it is to assuage your feelings and

We can be allies in protecting children, rather than your enemies. We could cooperate and make progress in ensuring children aren’t harmed by sexual violence. You, as a society, could help provide us with proper support and resources and remove barriers to professional support. But the prevailing attitude towards us is that we’re trash to be squashed down.

We won’t go down. We’ll work as long and hard as we have to in order to see changes to how we’re treated. To target a group of people as if that group as a whole is dangerous is the same manner of targeting that fascists and neo-nazis use. Yet it’s justified and those justifications are just as wrong as when they’re aimed at other minorities. It isn’t okay, and the day we recognize that is the day we can truly ensure the safety of children worldwide. We’re human beings, and we deserve to live peaceful lies free of hatred. To believe otherwise is to be a fuckwitted moron. Are you a fuckwitted moron, or a decent human being?

The post The War Against Minor-Attracted People As A Minority appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Minor-attracted people are not people who rape kids. While there is some overlap, it isn’t that cut and dried. Here’s a neat graphic for you to break this down:

It isn’t difficult to parse this. We’re people just like you. We have varied interests just like you. We work. We have families. We have friends. Sometimes, they know we’re a minor-attracted person. Sometimes they don’t, and with the current political backlash against one therapist saying that we deserve support, who would blame us for staying quiet? But the threat here is not us. It’s the GOP and their continued insistence that everything they don’t like is a threat to the family. That’s the nature of their existence.

The Great Orifice Party

They try to sell you on the idea that abortions are going to ruin the family, when in reality unsafe medical procedures are far more likely to do that. They try to convince you that LGBTQ+ people are all groomers, even though it is transparently obvious that they are deliberately lying to drive wedges between groups of people. That is what they’re good at, after all, driving wedges where they don’t need to exist. So what do they do in order to accomplish this?

They deliberately try to hijack the idea of minor-attracted people to mean ‘someone who abuses children’ when this is not only a lie, it is deliberately harmful not only to efforts to prevent sexual violence, but also to the very idea of family and the children they say they want to protect. Most minor-attracted people realize their attractions at age 14. Inferring that these teenagers are rapists is wrong. They haven’t even discovered a career or who they are yet, and now they have to face being attracted to children in a world that will stomp all over them if they even try to seek help. 

But to even say these things, with the modern-day GOP, is to say that reality isn’t reality. That’s because they think groups of people are all a monolith and if it’s something they don’t agree with, it’s bad and must be stopped at all costs, whether that’s diversity and inclusion of minorities of any kind, critical race theory, science and objective reality, or even sane gun policies. Let’s face it, the modern GOP has a huge glaring issue with sexual violence as well.

They want you focused on minor-attracted people, not Matt Gaetz, a politician who is accused of sexually assaulting young girls, or the numerous Republican politicians who don’t even think a 10-year-old rape survivor deserves an abortion. They definitely don’t want you focused on a current Supreme Court Justice who was credibly accused of raping multiple women. No, they don’t want you focused on the bombastic personalities like Carlson Tucker who is on record saying minors are hot, among other things. They want you focused on this mythical group called the left, the woke, who’s a threat to every value you hold dear. The left supports pedophiles.

What Is A Pedophile?

Well, guess what? That means people attracted to children, nothing more. We’re brought up by society believing that it means someone who abuses children. But that isn’t what it is. A pedophile is simply someone with an attraction. They can be good, bad, or anything in between. They can make good choices or bad choices or both. Sure, they can abuse kids, but most don’t. A pedophile is just a term for people attracted to prepubescent children. 

Okay, Why MAP?

Minor-attracted people is a term coined by researchers and minor-attracted people themselves, and it is a term that simply umbrellas all people attracted to children – pubescent, prepubescent, and postpubescent – in a way that is not normative for their age bracket. This could be a 40-year-old attracted to someone who is 16, or someone who is 13 years old attracted to someone who is 5. It includes a wide group of people. This is intentional, since minor-attracted people are not a monolith. 

It wasn’t at all created to ‘soften’ the word pedophile. It was to create nuance where many people seem to not want to hear the nuance, or outright disregard it as Ted Cruz did by saying that “The woke Left is now openly defending pedophilia.” Ted Cruz knows full well that minor-attracted people are not the same thing as people who sexually abuse children, or else he’d use a specific term like child molester or child rapist or even sex abuse. No, he uses pedophilia to intentionally divert the issue people are focused on. 

Ted Cruz probably also knows – as evidenced by saying ”and it’s usually a he” – that most victim/survivors never come forward not because they weren’t hurt, but because they only want the abuse to stop and don’t want severe consequences for their abuser. They just want to heal in peace. I know because in addition to being a minor-attracted person, I’m also a victim of sexual violence and the last thing I want is my own mother in prison. Ted Cruz has likely heard from many survivor-led organizations and initiatives that attempt to get him to back sound public policy. Cruz and his staff are undoubtedly not new to advocates telling them the facts and asking Cruz to support sane legislation.

But again, they want you focused on this other outrageous thing over here… that we exist and we’re tired of being harmed by these attitudes. 

What Do Minor-Attracted People Want?

We want support and to live lives free from harassment. We want people to understand that we’re not automatically a rapist for having an attraction that we didn’t choose and most of us don’t want. We want people to understand that we’re unequivocally in agreement that child sexual abuse is bad and shouldn’t happen. We want people to understand that while some minor-attracted people and people with no attraction to children quibble over what child sexual abuse is, most of us have zero interest in harming a child. 

We want to be able to be ourselves without losing jobs or relationships (with our peers thank you very much, not people we’re attracted to). We want to be able to ask people for what we need without being judged or harassed or reported to the police. If we need to say, “I’m a minor-attracted person and I’m not comfortable with this, I need to leave,” we should be able to do that the same way anyone with any mental health struggle should be able to ask for what they need. 

We just want to live our lives in peace and not have to explain every single time there’s a media storm that no, we don’t all abuse children and yes, we’re just as against child sexual abuse as you are. Is that really too much to ask for?

The post Who Exactly Are Minor-Attracted People? appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

On MAP Pride Day, we celebrate the following:

• Accepting our attractions
• The process of overcoming self-hatred and stigma
• Protecting children through getting support from our fellow minor-attracted people
• That we are human and worthy of decency, respect, and support
• The goal to destigmatize and normalize the idea that minor-attracted people deserve support

Happy MAP Pride Day!

The post MAP Pride Day appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

First, let’s start with definitions. Pedophilia is most accurately understood as the sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children. It doesn’t mean the sexual abuse of children – that’s… child sexual abuse. They’re not the same by any means. The facts show that most who abuse children have no attraction to them, and there are significant populations of people with the attraction who do not harm children and have joined communities to support them in that (not that every minor-attracted person needs that support to stay law-abiding, but it do be lonely sometimes).

In fact, a pedophile is simply someone with this attraction. It isn’t an impulse or an urge, it functions the same way as any other attraction. When you see someone you’re attracted to, you want to care for them, win them over, woo them, and maybe date them. Pedophiles feel that too, towards children. Of course, we’re well aware that we can’t do what we want because it would hurt children. However, just like you, we know what the ethical boundaries are when we’re adults and sometimes as teenagers we need some pointers to figure out where those boundaries are and where they should be (as any teenager does with a slew of topics, right?). 

The unfortunate thing about having an attraction to children though isn’t that we can’t be sexual with kids. Most of us don’t care to be because we know that hurts kids, so the idea that we’re somehow missing out on a fulfilling life, sure that might come up from time to time, but that isn’t the main issue for most of us. No, for most of us, the main issue is that we can’t really talk about it except online with other people like us. 

It’s like being a gay man living in the 1960’s, unable to come out of the closet or talk about our attractions (the obvious major difference being gay men can act on their attractions). If we tell people, we could be outed, beaten, lose jobs, housing, piss off neighbors, friends, and family. There are serious dangers to talking about it, and that’s because of stigma.

This stigma is mainly generated by fear and misunderstanding. There’s a good chance you already know people who are minor-attracted. There’s also a good chance they won’t tell you or ask you for support for fear of how you’ll respond. That’s the biggest issue for most of us. 

Now let’s talk about the more ambiguous term: Normalization. According to Merriam-Webster, normalization is the process or act of making something normal. The process of the verb normalize, which they define as:

1 : to make (something) conform to or reduce (something) to a norm or standard

2 : mathematics : to make (something) normal (as by a transformation of variables) 

3 : to bring or restore to a normal condition

4 : to allow or encourage (something considered extreme or taboo) to become viewed as normal

It’s clear from that definition that the meaning often used by people opposed to ‘normalizing pedophilia’ is the fourth one, to allow or encourage something considered extreme or taboo to become viewed as normal. The issue here comes with the opening paragraph about defining terms. When people use this term in this context, they intentionally or unintentionally confuse the attraction with the behavior of sexually abusing children. Personally, I think in most cases it’s intentional because it largely comes from alt-right people who have a habit of calling anyone they want a pedophile to make them seem horrible and they largely don’t seem to care what words mean.

When I say pedophilia should be normalized, I obviously don’t mean that people should be sexual with children. That isn’t what pedophilia is. Pedophilia is just an attraction, and the conversation about whether that is normal/regular or abnormal/irregular is rather besides the point. People with pedophilia are stuck with it. We cannot change it. There is no reducing or changing our attractions. 

Sure, you’ve heard of chemical castration and such, but the thing is, the framework that such suggestions originate from is a framework in which we view the attraction as a disease, something that is inherently harmful. It isn’t inherently harmful. Sexually abusing children is a choice that most pedophiles choose not to make, and unless we believe that we can telepathically cause others pain (this article may not be for you if you believe that), this attraction has little consequence to society, especially if it’s a society where people with that attraction can seek support from minor-attracted people and non-minor-attracted people. 

In fact, the three examples involve mental health or stigma, not the supposed harms:

Mental health issues can obviously be harmful. Bullying is harmful. It’s obviously helpful to normalize discussing such subjects and when people say we should normalize these discussions, it’s not to allow mental health issues to get worse or to let bullying happen. It’s to help human beings who are struggling with other human beings who inexplicably view the victims negatively, despite them not having any choice in having a mental health issue, being a victim of bullying, or yes, having an attraction to children. 

So yes, in that sense, we do the world a favor by normalizing pedophilia because when people can get support for something they’re struggling with, that’s a good thing. It’s stinkin’ rad when humans help other humans through difficult times because everyone comes out stronger for it. The people who argue that pedophilia shouldn’t be normalized aren’t talking about mental health in a positive way or encouraging children to be safe, they’re impeding efforts to get help and resources to people.

The average age someone discovers minor attraction is age 14. That means these people are against teenagers getting help. They’re against adults living healthy, fulfilled lives in society. They’re against it for no other reason than fear and misunderstanding – in some cases, deliberate ignorance. That draconian position isn’t something any sane human should support. 

I think it’s cool and stinkin’ rad when people have friends who are pedophiles and minor-attracted people because it shows they’re willing to learn, willing to help people, and that they’re willing to have empathy for people even when such empathy doesn’t benefit them personally. It also helps children because here’s a statistic you might not know: Roughly half of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by juveniles themselves. Getting children the support they need so that they know not to sexually harm other children is a fantastic thing to do, and we can’t do that if we don’t educate children on healthy and unhealthy behavior and talk about these complex issues. 

The post Normalizing Pedophilia is Cool, Trendy… and Prevents Abuse appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

The real bit that turns your head is that the same task force this Erin Cash was a part of, Argos, has been responsible for distributing child pornography (harmful sexual imagery). But that really isn’t the point here. Let’s talk about some real reasons why you wouldn’t want to put images of children on social media that aren’t based in hypocritical fear-mongering.

Now, before I continue let me briefly explain this whole minor-attracted person thing for those of you who don’t read this blog frequently:

Consent and Ethics

The basic idea of any kind of photography is that you have the consent of the subjects you’re filming especially if you’re not recording in a public place. Do you have that child’s permission to post that picture? Does the child understand, when that picture is taken, how many people will see it and how it can impact them because it’s on the internet? If the answer to those questions is no, then parents, family, caregivers, and friends shouldn’t be posting it. It’s really that simple.

That has nothing to do with trying to scare the public about how all pedophiles are supposedly predators. That has to do with simple fact that once something is on the internet, it’s there. It’s there when that child is in middle school, trying to form their own identity. It’s there in high school, when that child is trying to form a peer group and build a reputation. It’s there when they look for jobs.

The Realities of Child Sexual Abuse

Child sexual abuse is an ugly phenomenon that most of us want to know nothing about. We’re disgusted by the mere mention of it. But the reality is, if a child is going to be sexually harmed, it will be by someone they know and trust (90%), by an older child who is still a juvenile (35-50%), and it will happen in a one-on-one situation in a residence (80%). These are basic facts that many child sexual abuse prevention organizations touch on.

But here’s one that many prevention organizations ignore: Most people who sexually harm children have no attraction to them (70-80%). They’re not pedophiles, they’re situational abusers, who are using children for pleasure the same way others form maladaptive and harmful behaviors to cope with the stresses of life. They’re divorced moms or dads who can’t find a boyfriend or girlfriend. They’re depressed aunts and uncles or friends of the family. We’re talking about people who know that sexually harming children is wrong, but do it anyways for any range of reasons.

There’s another ugly truth that any social worker can tell you: The social systems for intervening when children are harmed took a huge hit during the pandemic. They have more reports than they know what to do with, and they’re forced to triage reports that will absolutely result in a slam-dunk prosecution.

The Realities of the War on Child Pornography

It is incredibly easy to find child pornography. I’ve heard everything from social media hashtags to the dark net, accessible via Tor, to Facebook groups and Discord. It’s out there to find if you know how or where to look. The people generating that content aren’t the people photoshopping innocent images. Photoshopping images as the article suggests would take hours and hours of work for each image to make it look realistic. Ask anyone who’s ever manipulated any kind of image and they will tell you it takes awhile.

The people generating harmful sexual imagery of children are the people sexually abusing children. Sometimes, in poorer countries, they’re paying parents for access to their children. Sometimes they’re a pedophile. But that’s very different from the people who view child pornography in my experience.

I’ve talked with many people over the years who view these harmful sexual images and they usually have a few things in common:

• They were exposed to it either by accident or through their own trauma as a youth themselves
• They wish they never had viewed any of this imagery in the first place
• They’re afraid of facing consequences, whether or not they do stop viewing
• They’re very different from the people who are distributing this harmful imagery or even producing it

The reality is, many of the people who view harmful sexual imagery are attracted to children. A small-scale study done in 2013 found that figure to be 60%, though more study is needed. But here’s the thing. Rather than trying to give minor-attracted people any kind of ethical outlet, many elements of society are trying to reveal our real identities (think vigilante groups), criminalize ethical outlets that do exist, and make it harder to even do advocacy around treating us like the human beings we are.

There are fictional images of children in sexual situations that do not involve any real child. It would be very simple to take the very hash lists that authorities and nonprofits use to identify harmful sexual imagery, and form a very different list of images that are specifically fictional in nature and therefore not worthy of criminal charges. It would be simple for law enforcement groups to cooperate with artists and digital wizards that can create this imagery to certify such content as having not harmed any child at all.

There is no existing science on these kinds of images. However, many countries such as France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have already made not only looking at fictional imagery a crime, they’ve even made books that describe children in sexual situations illegal. That’s right, they’ve made it illegal to read a book or a text.

We have the capability of creating ethical imagery that minor-attracted people can use instead of harmful sexual imagery of real children. We have the tools to make a significant dent in the consumption of this real material. Why won’t we pursue that as a possibility?

If we want to protect children from sexual violence, we need to focus on the facts and we need to think critically – not engage in moral panics that rob us of our ability to think.

The post Real Reasons to Stop Putting Pictures of Children on Social Media appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

I was 14 years old when my life changed forever. That was when I realized that the ages of people I was attracted to weren’t increasing as I got older. I found myself catching feelings for the younger siblings of the peers I had found attractive two or three years prior. Scarier still, the lower bound of these ages seemed to be decreasing. I began to experience attractions to kids as young as 8 years old.

Being a teenager with internet access, my initial reaction was to go online looking for answers. What was wrong with me? What should I do about it? This went well at first; I quickly ended up on the Virtuous Pedophiles website, which helped me realize that I wasn’t alone in being a pedophile with no interest in acting on my attractions. As I continued to search I ended up on Twitter, and things went downhill pretty quickly. I saw post after post calling minor-attracted people and pedophiles evil, portraying them as monsters, and even advocating for genocide. I came away convinced that my attractions were inherently bad and dangerous and that any attempt to look for help or support would only expose me to the same hatred I saw online.

Over the next three years, I spiraled as I desperately tried to convince myself that I wasn’t attracted to kids. I hoped that if I buried that part of myself deep enough it would just go away. As anyone with basic knowledge of thought suppression or sexuality could have predicted, that only made my attractions feel stronger and seem more overwhelming, and my mental health suffered as a result. I felt isolated, unable to confide in my closest friends or family members, and at one point began drafting suicide notes in my head, perhaps hoping that if I explained what I was going through in that context it would be enough to make someone care and understand, or at the very least, sympathize. I never reached the point of actually intending to harm myself, but if I hadn’t gotten help when I did, it’s very likely that I wouldn’t be here to write this today.

Things culminated when I was 17, after I came across a video about another teenage pedophile whose parents placed him in an abusive “treatment” program centered around conversion therapy and assumed guilt. Of course, the media heralded them as heroes, and I, not knowing any better at the time, believed that they were. This brought years of shame and self-hate rushing back to the surface, and I spent several more weeks frantically searching the internet looking for someone, anyone, who would understand and want to help. Unfortunately, I overlooked a number of resources that would likely have helped me because I wrongly believed there was something wrong with me that needed to be fixed. Despite this, I came across MAP Support Club in late 2020. After a couple of days of hesitation and second-guessing, I came up with the name Elliot Porter and filled out the application.

In the Community

It’s been over a year since I submitted that form, and since then my life has changed so drastically for the better that it’s sometimes hard for me to believe. I’ve accepted myself both as a pedophile and as gay. Ironically, the latter took longer for me to accept because the stress and attempts at thought suppression from being a pedophile made it difficult for me to recognize and come to terms with other aspects of my sexuality. I have a loving boyfriend who accepts me for who I am and I’m out as a pedophile to several friends from high school who are also supportive. I’ve also made dozens of friends in the MAP community through support groups and social media.

I first started doing activism aimed at reducing stigma and helping other minor-attracted people find support on Twitter in December 2020 and quickly found myself drawn to the work. Publicly speaking out in defense of other minor-attracted people and the community as a whole forced me to recognize and address my own internalized stigma and anti-MAP biases I had picked up from society and the media over the previous 17 years of my life. I also became more knowledgeable on minor attractions and support for minor-attracted people as I looked into the relevant research in order to strengthen my arguments. At the same time, I fell in love with my favorite part of activism: Helping others in the same position I was in at age 14 find a community to provide them with acceptance and support.

For any activist supporting marginalized groups, censorship comes with the territory. This is especially true for minor-attracted people, as social media companies and other platforms use widespread misinformation as an excuse to cut off a vital source of support for vulnerable teenagers and adults and see such an action as nothing more than an optics boost. As the banned accounts started to stack up I realized that I could do more good with a more permanent list of resources for minor-attracted people in need of support. Initially, I planned to make a separate Twitter account specifically for sharing resources, but after Twitter made it clear that their platform isn’t a safe space to support marginalized groups, I decided to make a website instead. As a result, on February 1st, 2021, MAP Resources was born.

Building a Website

In the year since I first shared the link to MAP Resources publicly, it has grown from a single page with a few links into a collection of resources designed to help as many MAPs as possible. With the help of dozens of minor-attracted people and our allies along the way, I’ve created a summary of research on minor-attracted people and minor attractions, a dictionary of common MAP-related terms, and even dedicated pages with advice and support for minor-attracted minors and friends and family members of MAPs. Throughout all of these projects, however, my primary goal has remained the same: Ensuring any MAP can find safe and effective support when they need it. The most important element of working on the website has always been finding and evaluating new resources to share.

Due to my activism and role in the MAP community, I’m constantly on the lookout for new support resources for minor-attracted people. Whenever I become aware of one, I review it before I consider listing it on MAP Resources. When I review, I look for stigmatizing language or misinformation about MAPs, efforts to promote harmful “treatments” such as conversion therapy, and any use of fearmongering to convince people that they need support. Resources that contain any of these are not ones I’m willing to promote, as the stigma does more harm than good. During this review process, however, I also learn a lot about the resources themselves, giving me a unique perspective into the underlying trends in the availability of support for minor-attracted people who are struggling with their attractions.

The State of Support for Minor-Attracted People

First, the good news: Support opportunities for minor-attracted people are more abundant than ever before and the body of research on effective support for MAPs is continuing to grow. Over the past two years, numerous new resources have become available, including Help Wanted and Talking for Change, both of which are support resources intended for minor-attracted people and created by sexual abuse prevention experts. There also appears to be a growing focus on supporting minor MAPs, a particularly vulnerable and undersupported population, as demonstrated by both Help Wanted and What’s OK?, a website from StopItNow! where teenagers and young adults can learn and ask questions about sexual thoughts and behaviors.

There is still room for improvement in a number of areas when it comes to support available to MAPs. The biggest area for improvement is the pushback against any efforts to support minor-attracted people from misinformed and blatantly bigoted individuals. Despite overwhelming evidence that access to support can reduce the likelihood of offending, some groups would rather use children as pawns in order to silence minorities rather than actually protect the children they claim to care about. This uses fearmongering to stifle research into and expert discussion on support for MAPs. These stigma-based attacks have already caused demonstrable harm by forcing a researcher focused on preventing child sexual abuse to step down from their position earlier this year.

Additionally, efforts to support minor-attracted people continue to consist mainly of programs with an end goal of preventing child abuse. A reduced risk of abuse is a side effect of minor-attracted people receiving support, but these programs often present that support as a “necessary evil” in their efforts to prevent abuse. This can cause minor-attracted people to feel taken advantage of or viewed as a risk. Research suggests that minor-attracted people are less likely to pursue support from programs that seem to designate them as a risk, so by supporting MAPs for the sole purpose of preventing abuse, the individuals behind these programs undermine their own work.

The overall trends in support for MAPs are positive, as mental health, sexuality, and even sexual abuse prevention experts are increasingly focusing on supporting the mental health of minor-attracted people and reducing the stigma that causes many to need support in the first place. The MAP community itself is growing and attracting the attention of more MAPs, allies, experts, and even journalists, increasing the number of people who are aware of the support available to them. As public knowledge of minor-attracted people continues to grow, so too will the availability of resources and support. As always, MAP Resources, myself, and others in the community will continue working to ensure all MAPs can find and benefit from these new resources, as well as existing ones.

The post A Year of Supporting Minor-Attracted People appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

They look you in the eyes and say,

I’m a pedophile. I like little kids. I can’t help it and I won’t hurt anyone but I need help.

What do you do?

This may seem far-fetched, but it isn’t. According to a research study involving 1,189 men:

On average, participants recalled that they first realized their attraction to children ages 14 and younger at age 14.24 years (SD = 5.36). They began to suspect that this attraction was unusual, compared to peers, at age 16.11 (SD = 5.24). They knew their attraction was unusual at age 18.12 (SD = 5.89).

Bailey, Michael J., Paula A. Bernhard, and Kevin J. Hsu. “An Internet Study of Men Sexually Attracted to Children: Sexual Attraction Patterns.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 125, no. 7 (2016): 976–88. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000212.

This is a very real conversation that many teenagers have, but the reality is, most people with an attraction to children will never tell a soul. Why? Because of hate, stigma, and the automatic assumption that most people make that attraction to children means they will harm a child or have already. Because they have heard stories of people coming out about their attractions, only to be threatened, harassed, kicked out of their home, or worse. Some have been bullied to suicide.

Allyn Walker’s Comments

Allyn Walker gave an interview to Prostasia Foundation, a child protection nonprofit. You can watch it here:

In this interview, Allyn Walker claims that pedophilia, defined as the sexual attraction to prepubescent children – not the sexual abuse of them – is morally neutral. Many people took issue with this, and understood Walker to be saying that child sexual abuse is morally neutral. This is not what Allyn Walker said nor what they meant.

To blur the line between sexual abuse and sexual attraction is to minimize child sexual abuse by confusing it with attraction. To blur the line in this manner – which many have done intentionally at this point, including Fox News and Tucker Carlson – is to deliberately put words in Allyn Walker’s mouth and attack them with those made-up words. This is a logical fallacy known as a straw man.

That may seem like a nitpick or a quibble, but it isn’t. It isn’t because to that 14-year-old coming to their friend or family member, shaking and possibly in tears, to tell them of their attraction, they are taking a big risk in the hope that friend or family member can help them or help them find help and support. To then be demonized and assume that they have or will harm a child is disgusting and mean. Would you like to be treated as a rapist? A potential rapist? Of course not.

A Vulnerable Group of People

While it may seem hard to think about, the first step to understanding this issue and the current controversy is to understand that minor attracted people are vulnerable. So vulnerable that many if not most of us choose to use pseudonyms and take extraordinary measures to protect our online privacy simply so that we can congregate in supportive communities. Many are scared of being doxxed or harassed for even participating in these spaces.

Old Dominion University’s Official Responses

So far, Old Dominion University, the educator that employs Allyn Walker, has released three statements. In the second statement, they state that minor-attracted people is, “inappropriate and should not be utilized as a euphemism for behavior that is illegal, morally unacceptable, and profoundly damaging. It is important to call pedophilia what it is.”

What Dr. Brian O. Hemphill gets tragically wrong is that pedophilia is not the sexual abuse of children, it is the sexual attraction to them. Minor attracted people are, of course, defined by having… an attraction to children. Imagine that, right? I agree with Dr. Hemphill, it is important to call pedophilia what it is – a tragic attraction that is not volitional and causes much pain to those who have this attraction, especially when we hear people as smart as him conflate abuse and attraction in this manner.

It is clear to any thinking person that attraction and rape are different. Do we say, “Convicted heterosexual rapes woman” in our headlines? No, that would be disgusting and disingenuous. But we do say “convicted pedophile” because this sparks outrage, and outrage sells.

Death Threats and Harassment

The other piece to the second and third statements released by Old Dominion University is acknowledging that safety must come first, and that people have made threats and harassed people as a result of this controversy. However, none of these statements go very far in condemning this repugnant behavior or condemning the false narrative that Allyn Walker is somehow saying that sex abuse is okay, which sparked the disgusting threats and disruption facing their campus.

Instead, Dr. Hemphill states, “Ideally, we would be able to debate even the most challenging issues without disruption or threats of violence, but that is not the world we live in today. Our campus has recently become the target of threats and other unacceptable disruption.”

What Dr. Hemphill fails to realize is that this disruption and unacceptable threats – which I hope he has had the chutzpah to report to the appropriate authorities where they will be met with legal condemnation – are a direct result of attacking Allyn Walker and Old Dominion University with something Allyn Walker never said or intended to say.

It would seem that their approach is instead to actually fuel the attacks by making the same straw man argument of their own faculty member. That is a disgusting abuse of power and is simply an attempt to use Allyn Walker as a scapegoat for the ordeal.

Here We Are – Talk With Us

This blog is entirely dedicated to telling the stories of pedophiles and our experiences with pedophilia. Not sex abuse, our attractions to children and what this attraction has done in our lives – the disruption, the pain, and the problems, sure, but also the positive aspects.

You may think there are no upsides to being attracted to children. You would be wrong. Because of this attraction, I have met a vast and diverse community of very loving and supportive people who come together when things get tough, and I have the pleasure of watching them do exactly that right now, in this moment where academic free speech is under attack and all seems lost.

I have the pleasure of guiding people who were just as ashamed and disgusted by their attractions as you are come to a place where they can accept themselves and live wholesome lives free from harming anyone. To see people go from that place of shame to a place of peace is outstanding and shows how resilient we are.

Stop demonizing us. Stop harassing us. Stop deliberately misunderstanding us. Come talk to us. You can contact us through any number of means. Interview us. Get to know us. You cannot judge us without first doing that much, and to judge us as a monolith rather than as individuals who are just as concerned with protecting children as you are is to make harmful and dangerous assumptions that serves nobody, least of all the children you wish to protect.

The post The Allyn Walker/Old Dominion University Controversy appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.