CSA Prevention vs "Normalization of Pedophilia"

CSA prevention
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I’ll say as a concept, I like the idea of a group like Prostasia. Being sex-positive while approaching CSA Prevention does help uphold people’s rights as well as prevent marginalized groups from being blamed for the actions of child predators. I also think reducing stigma around researching and finding treatment options for reducing the effects of the paraphilia is very important. There should be no stigma around wanting to offer professional help to those who suffer from a condition that they did not choose. What I’d like to inquire, however, is what the official stance Prostasia has on normalizing not just discussing pedophilia, but pedophilia itself.

For example, I’m aware that Prostasia is a big believer in “peer support groups” such as VirPeds and MAP Support Club. While I am not extremely familiar with these groups, from what I can tell, they are closed off communities, separate from “mainstream society” that screen their members and have strict guidelines in place to make sure no one endorses, encourages, or commits acts of abuse. I can understand how these groups are beneficial since they allow pedophiles a place to go that is built from the ground-up for their needs. But what about mainstream social media, or society at large? A concern I, and many others, share, is that destigmatizing pedophilia itself, not just treatment for pedophilia, is a very dangerous idea that has a lot of flaws.

I would like to point to the “MAP movement” on twitter, for example. Yes, many “MAPs” are “anti-contact” but I have a really hard time believing that they aren’t ashamed, or at least want to disown their attraction since they put their Age Of Attractions in their bios as if it were their gender pronouns. It seems, to me, that destigmatizing publicly admitting to being a pedophile could possibly make some pedophiles see their pedophilia as a quirk or difference, when in reality it’s regarded as a dangerous paraphilia by many and not something to be proud of.

On top of this, many people, including myself, would simply not trust a MAP around a minor (or anyone, to be honest) in the same way that you would not trust a blind person with a plane. This has started to become a point of contention amongst the proship community in regards to Fanexus, whether or not self-identified MAPs should be allowed on the platform. One side says that child predators that want to get away with sexually abusing a child are not going to label themselves as a MAP, even if they were. On top of that, they cite peer support groups as being successful, and believe banning MAPs would prevent that from happening. Lastly, they do not see a way of enforcing a “No MAPs” rule unless it involved background checks, which is an invasion of privacy. On the other hand though, some people, including myself, believe that allowing MAPs to self identify would contribute to some of the fears I discussed; that pedophilia would be treated as a quirk, and pedophiles would become proud of their attraction. I don’t see their point regarding peer support groups when many proship community members are triggered simply by knowing a MAP exists near them, so they’re likely to get blocked and sent away. Also, I don’t think a fandom platform is the place for peer support. Lastly, while I do agree a “No MAPs” rule is impossible to enforce, this may sound weird, but if someone is minor attracted but it doesn’t affect them enough to the point that they don’t need to tell anyone publicly, (say they were a non exclusive pedophile) I don’t care, and it is none of my business. I don’t see why a platform touted for creativity and fandom needs to welcome any discussion or even acknowledgement of real world paraphilia. Clearly if they need to identify as a MAP, it affects them enough to the point the average person would assume something is wrong with them, and it’s those people (that try to start a public community revolving around being a MAP) that I think I and many others feel extremely uncomfortable with sharing a space with. Not only does it trigger many survivors, but it also feels like a slap in the face to people that have been working to prove their problematic media isn’t linked to pedophiles, and would also be perfect ammunition for outrage baiters to use to claim enthusiasts of fandom are complicit in making pedophilia normalcy, when in realty that could not be more false.

When people think of “anti-abuse” they also think of “anti-pedophile”. Many people see “treatment” for pedophiles as reducing, curing, or making their desires and attractions inconsequential. This is why some people are against outlets for pedophiles, as they see it as redundant; that pedophilia should be suppressed and controlled, not catered to and accepted as long as it isn’t manifested in a harmful way. Normalization of pedophilia is also a big fear that many people including myself have. I’m aware normalization of pedophilia and normalization of child sexual abuse are not identical, but I think both of those are problems.

I’m mainly worried about the validity of “peer support groups” being wrongly misinterpreted to allow self-identified pedophile communities not based around dealing with their paraphilia as the dangerous attraction that it is, but instead based around glorification of pedophilia as a cool quirk. I believe these online MAP communities aren’t operating like real support groups, because I don’t see why they would do things like list their Age Of Attraction if they disliked having pedophilia. To me, it’s like someone recovering from an eating disorder listing their favorite way to induce vomiting. It doesn’t look like progress from the outside.

With all that out of the way, I’d like to ask mainly,

  1. What is your view on normalizing being open about being a pedophile?
  2. Do you think I’m justified in saying non-regulated MAP communities are not helpful as they seem to be based not on support, but normalization?
  3. Do you disagree with my stance on not being just “anti-abuse” but also “anti-normalization (I really mean acceptance) of pedophilia”?
    also, feel free to comment on anything else I have said. I’m sure I probably hinted towards showing concerns about some issues that I did not include in this paragraph.

I’m going to assume Mr. Malcolm is reading this, so thank you for your time.

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Actually Fanexus has a statement coming out about this so I don’t want to preempt that. If there are any remaining questions afterwards I can answer them.

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I used Fanexus as an example, but I do not mean this in relation to Fanexus, I mean in general; Twitter, Discord, pretty much anywhere.

I’d like for you to answer these questions, but since I made it come across like I meant these statements in exclusivity to Fanexus, answer them in general, such as on any social media, or society at large. For example, "1. What is your view on normalizing being open about being a pedophile (on general social media like Twitter, or in society at large, say if a teacher publicly outed themselves as a MAP)

If necessary, read the paragraph starting with “On top of this, many people, including myself, would simply not trust a MAP around a minor (or anyone, to be honest)” as if I’m just talking about not letting self identified MAPs participate in anything someone would be skeptical in, say, a MAP trying to get into childcare. What would your thoughts be about a self-identified MAP attempting to work in a position that they would be around children a lot?

Here are the questions again, but rewritten to be more general, also I added a few more:

  1. What is your view on normalizing being open about being a pedophile? (on general social media like Twitter, or in society at large, say if a teacher publicly outed themselves as a MAP)
  2. Do you think I’m justified in saying non-regulated MAP communities (including but not limited to the Twitter MAP community) are not helpful as they seem to be based not on support, but normalization?
  3. Do you disagree with my stance on not being just “anti-abuse” but also “anti-normalization (I really mean acceptance) of pedophilia”, not just on social media, but in general society?"
  4. People are afraid that instead of treatment, pedophilia itself might be normalized, and critics of unregulated MAP communities be told that they’re bigoted, or unjustified, for, say, disagreeing with allowing pedophiles to be open about their AoA, even though it looks like normalization instead of progress. How will you address this concern?
  5. I’m also afraid that, in general, destigmatizing/normalizing pedophilia and putting literally all of the stigma on action will foster an attitude that pedophilia is fine, and not a harmful paraphilia, unless it’s too late; it’s already been acted upon. Again, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Again, thank you for reading.

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I can give my personal views. But I have much less professional expertise on this topic than other members of our team, so I don’t think that my opinions are necessarily worth a lot. Although I often act as a spokesperson for Prostasia’s team and our broader community of supporters, we are very diverse, and other people have different views. We have room for people who are personally disgusted by minor-attraction and who would never associate with MAPs, along with those who view the attraction as morally neutral and who feel that other factors that drive offending are more significant. A person’s survivor status often has a bearing on their feelings in this regard, and I personally don’t judge people who block MAPs on social media as part of their self-care.

  1. The status quo, in which openness about minor attraction is impossible, isn’t working for anyone. The social death sentence against those suspected or accused of being minor-attracted—let alone who admit it—discourages help-seeking behaviors, exacerbates mental health issues that are associated with offending, and exacts huge costs on marginalized communities, apart from being a massive distraction away from other, more significant causes of child sexual abuse. Weighing against these costs is the reactionary fantasy that being more open about minor-attraction in society will make it trendy and acceptable and encourage more people to adopt it as a lifestyle—which is frankly just ludicrous, and contradicts everything that we know about how this condition emerges in early childhood development.
  2. Most people who are minor-attracted discover this at around age 14. Keeping it to themselves is toxic to their own mental health and exacerbates risk factors for offending. Yet since sex education does not cover this topic, and since parents don’t discuss it with their children either, the first place that they are going to go to learn more about it is social media, including but not limited to Twitter. Despite what you say, Twitter’s MAP community is regulated: it is regulated by the terms of service of Twitter which prohibit people from promoting child sexual abuse or posting abuse material. As such, the community that has developed on Twitter—although of course it contains some bad apples, and enforcement is uneven—generally communicates an anti-abuse message that experts agree is positive. Furthermore, it provides a gateway to more formalized channels of peer and professional support.
  3. “Normalization of pedophilia” is not really a coherent concept at all, and is most often used by those who are using it to create fear around LGBTQ+ identities or to oppose comprehensive sex education. Maybe you should be more critical about the assumptions behind the concept that there is a movement to “normalize pedophilia.” You have to accept that pedophilia is normal for some people—in the sense that they didn’t choose it, and can’t do anything to make it go away. Acknowledging this fact isn’t going to increase the number of people who have this condition—it’s not “contagious”—it’s just going to increase our awareness of it, and therefore our ability to manage it successfully in society. It also allows us to put it in perspective; although it’s certainly an unfortunate condition, it is not an inevitable pathway towards child sexual abuse, and most perpetrators of abuse don’t suffer from it. Almost everyone who does suffer from it has the capacity to live a law-abiding life without harming anyone—normalizing that fact can only be a positive thing for society.
  4. As I have indicated above, I regard this as a misplaced fear. More than that, the fear itself is more harmful than the reality behind it—it fuels bullying and harassment of minorities, places barriers in the way of those who are seeking or providing help, and provides cover for online censorship and repression. The problem that you are identifying—that MAPs are “allowed” (by whom?) to be open about their AoA—is not proportionate to the harms that would be done by prohibiting them (how?) from being open about it. Moreover, if you spend any time interacting with this community you will discover that the profiles that are the most overt about their AoA are typically fake. At the end of the day the solution to this problem is very simple; if you don’t like seeing MAPs identify their AoA in their profiles, just block them.
  5. As a society we are so far away from learning that lesson—that actions matter more than attractions—that I simply can’t agree with you. Minor-attraction is a risk factor, not a harm. It’s important to keep that distinction clear. Someone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves with that attraction needs to be able to consider themselves as a good person, so that they can act accordingly. Telling them that they are innately evil, or treating them as such, is counter-productive if protecting children from abuse is actually something that you care about. Nobody is saying that pedophilia is “fine.” But the opposite of considering it “fine” is over-emphasizing its association with child sexual abuse, to the exclusion of all other risk factors. It’s no coincidence that the people who most reliably do this are those who use the stigma of pedophilia as a smear against others, especially LGBTQ+ people, fans and artists, the consensual kink community, and sex workers. For their sake, it is imperative to reject the false alt-right narrative about “normalization of pedophilia” and instead to promote a more factual approach that emphasizes prevention rather than marginalization.
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Hello,

I would like to, again, thank you for being civil throughout all of our interactions. I can appreciate that. I thought about your answer for a bit and I would like to clarify what I meant, as it seems that you did not understand what I meant by “normalization of pedophilia.”

First off, I do agree that pedophilia needs to be less destigmatized in the mental health community. Admittance of attraction, to some therapists, counts as admittance of action, and that is wrong and should be corrected. It prevents pedophiles from getting help out of fear. However. I do not agree with you that the fear that “allowing openness about minor-attraction will lead to people adopting it as a lifestyle” is little more than a reactionary fantasy. I think you understood what I was saying as, “this will cause people to develop pedophilia” when I really meant “this will cause people to seek out minor-attracted people not for healing, but for camaraderie and celebration.” Again, I point to NOMAP ally and MAP positivity accounts as my proof, both of which aren’t good at all.

You also mention that Twitter’s MAP community is regulated in that it cannot normalize Child Sexual Abuse. However, I’m not inquiring about that. I’m worried that it can normalize pedophilia, which I will now proceed to explain what I mean by that.

“Normalization of pedophilia” has been a term flung around by the alt-right as an attempt to discredit the LGBT movement. It’s often associated with the conspiracy theory that the LGBT community is trying to normalize “deviance” starting with homosexuality and progressively getting more “deviant” until the ultimate “deviance” is achieved; pedophilia, in some weird attempt to “topple the world” or something. However, I’d argue that outside of this context, it’s a valid worry that has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories of the alt right.

I’ve had some interactions recently that have made the concept of pedophilia normalization appear even more real than ever. Todd Nickerson, for example, argued with me that “there is no such thing as a dangerous paraphilia”. I personally strongly doubt this, considering Todd has even admitted to having to masturbate while babysitting a child to sate his urges. He claims that “pedophilia is no more dangerous to children than ‘teliophilia’ is to adults”. This claim has one big flaw; any “teliophile” cannot rape an adult without a use of force, be it violence, or drugs, or anything else to influence someone. A pedophile, however, can rape a child without any force. A child can give off the false appearance that they consent, something an adult cannot do. For example, let’s say someone has “teliophilic urges” and ask a woman out on a date. She can make an informed decision and say yes or no. Now a pedophile has pedophilic urges and asks a child out on a date. That child cannot make an informed decision, but can give the appearance that they are making an informed decision. Unlike forceful rape, you don’t have to have nearly as much of a decline in morals, if at all, to ask someone out, whether on a legitimate date or a sex-focused hookup. And because of that, I don’t see how pedophilia is somehow “less dangerous” because unlike “teliophilia”, ANY acting on pedophilic urges can harm a child, while with “teliophilia”, only forceful ones can, any failed “teliophilic” urges will only make one look like a creep, at best. No one is harmed. And I’m not even taking into account erotic media. If someone wants to indulge in their “teliophilic” urges through the media, they’ll just seek porn, but pedophilic urges can only be satisfied… through CSEM.
This is half of what I mean by “normalization of pedophilia”, which is removing the association that pedophilic urges are some type of illness, disorder, anything regarded as a “bad”, and trying to paint it as a legitimate sexual orientation. This can lead to many dangerous situations, for example I came across this thread by @sheilavdhc on twitter that tried to discredit any notion of “normalization of pedophilia” as a real concept, and then, actually explained what it meant quite well. It talked about a MAP teacher who was talking to a principal about how they couldn’t deal with their sexual feelings towards a student, and needed to switch classes, and instead of the principal firing them, they complied with the demand. Normalizing pedophilia, pretending that pedophilia is not more dangerous than a legitimate orientation, creates situations like these, where harm can happen even if no one realizes it. In that example, it could be argued that a harmful situation did happen because eventually it would become public knowledge that a teacher had to switch classes due to crushing on a student. Imagine being that student (a minor student, especially) and having to be told that you sexually excited your adult teacher too much that they had to leave.
The other half of what I mean by “normalization of pedophilia” is that by pushing the notion that pedophilia is a legitimate attraction that should not be sought to be reduced, repressed, treated, or expressed behind closed doors on a harmless outlet, but rather be a harmless difference that people have akin to a different orientation, you inadvertently have now branded all solutions that try to repress or reduce pedophilic urges as discrimatory. Take PrioTab’s supposed medication that helps people have less pedophilic urges. If pedophilia had the stigma removed from it, where it’s no longer treated as something we should seek to cure or reduce the effects of, but actually to feed, sate, and appease like any other legitimate sexual orientation, pedophilic-urge-reducing drugs could be seen as unethical amongst “MAPs”. Because they have been given validity to their condition, they can now claim that they should be allowed to continue to express it openly more. Now I am not saying that this means I want outlets for pedophiles, such as dolls, banned or criminalized. I think that they may have a place, somewhere, for those who need to relieve their urges safely, as well as I think they should exist purely on the basis that they may have some value that isn’t just urge relieving to someone somewhere. But validating and normalizing pedophilia, at least to me, invalidates the idea that pedophilic urges should be repressed, cured, or vented quietly, but actually instead appeased, fed, almost sent offerings to, when the only way a pedophile could feel truly satisfied is if they were in a sexual or romantic relationship with a real child. Something that cannot happen.

I’m also extremely confused about some of the arguments that I’ve encountered from MAPs. Some of them claim that I’m “not treating them like humans”. I think at times they misunderstand “treating their condition as something that should not be glorified” as “treating them as subhuman”. On top of that, I’ve had people tell me that they think pedophilia is a mental illness, but pedophiles should be accepted, in the same sentence. How does this work? If it’s viewed as a bad thing, shouldn’t it be cured, or worked around if it can’t? We don’t encourage suicidal people to form “non-self harming suicidal communities” that list their favorite method of cutting or asphyxiation in their bio despite claiming to be against self harm. We try to get their suicidal urges under control. How is this any different for pedophiles? Could you provide some insight?

If you’re still reading, I would like to express my thanks. If you could, I would like for you to respond to, address, or correct my concerns about pedophilia being treated as a legitimate orientation, that would create more dangerous situations, as well as the fear that normalizing it will create the mindset that we simply have to find “distractions” for pedophiles instead of working towards reducing the inherent danger that the attraction brings. Lastly, I would also like for you to address any misunderstandings that I may have of the arguments against me that I have encountered. Thanks.

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As I’ve said to you privately, I’m afraid I don’t have time right now to write another long response, and also I’m wary (and weary) of the very narrow topic of pedophilia sucking all the energy and attention out of child sexual abuse prevention, when it is only associated with a minority of abuse cases. Also, trigger warning on the next paragraph.

Many of the arguments that you give to say that stigma reduction is bad seem like rationalizations of your underlying moral discomfort with the sexual attraction itself, rather than being based on harm prevention. So for the sake of maybe short-cutting a longer discussion, a question back to you related to the example that you gave about Todd Nickerson: when you take actual harm to actual children completely out of the equation, does it matter what someone is thinking about when they masturbate? If so, what are the exact boundaries of what it’s OK to think about?

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The thing I bring up about Todd Nickerson is that he admitted to having to masturbate because of this child.

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So, if we are talking about safeguarding tips, we have some prospect of agreeing. We will have a webinar about this topic in November. Under what conditions, if any, is it OK for people who are minor-attracted to work with children?

But that discussion will be grounded in harm reduction. For example, should Todd have been babysitting? Nothing bad happened, but the risk of something bad happening might be a good reason to say no, and there could be some sensible principles in place for such situations. We will be discussing what those might be.

But if you have a more general problem with the fact that MAPs going about their business in the world may have sexual thoughts about minors—something that science tells us is probably unchangeable (even the Priotab drug doesn’t do that), then your discomfort is unlikely to abate no matter what safeguarding measures in place. If you don’t want someone to be masturbating with thoughts you don’t like, regardless of the possibility of actual harm resulting, then this is thinking based on disgust, not harm reduction. And that’s the kind of thinking that harms other innocent people.

Remember that “pedophile” is not used in a scientific way by most people and the stigma that attaches to it isn’t limited to people who are actually a risk to minors. It includes people who read the wrong fiction, like the wrong art, etc… this was your original complaint about us, remember? That we didn’t draw that distinction strongly enough? By fueling this stigma yourself, you are bringing harm to your own communities. People who aren’t MAPs but who suffer from the same stigma as those who are.

That’s why stigma is NEVER helpful and ALWAYS harmful when compared to following an evidence based approach. Yes we must still always take care around things like MAP communities. But we MUST be guided by experts on this or else we are the blind leading the blind and this WILL backfire on innocent people, with marginalized people at that front of the line.

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Well, your example is a bit ablist, because planes can be modified to be flown in a million kinds of ways, so blind people can fly planes it just depends on the plane.
BUT, on topic, while I also struggle with the idea of trusting a MAP around children, the whole idea that we can’t trust someone because of an attraction is rape culture.
Rape culture believes that if you are attracted to something, you are entitled to sex/pleasure with it. Many men believe that because they are attracted to women, women owe them sex, and if men don’t willingly get sex from women, then women being raped is women’s fault for depriving men of a need.
A sexual attraction is not a need for something. We do not need the thing we’re sexually into to get off, enjoy sex, or live life. It’s a plus when it can happen, but some people are into vore and if they could actually be eaten alive they would die. There’s more than one kind of attraction or fetish that cannot be lived out “for real”.
I honestly don’t see a problem with getting to a place where we see any attraction as just a quirk or fetish. I’m not afraid of foot fetishists stealing and ruining my shoes or robbing a foot locker.
And again, I agree with you, because of rape culture, I do feel uneasy at the idea of knowing a MAP is around children - but the other reality is they already are all the time and don’t openly identify as MAPs and never hurt anybody, which really reveals another layer of the issue: knowing someone’s fetish or kink openly can feel icky. That’s a me-being-grossed-out problem, not a them-having-an-icky-fetish problem.

I can see your point that survivors may not like it, that’s a very valid point, but some survivors are MAPs and there’s a lot of evidence to support it’s part of how the attraction / fetish forms in the first place.
This is an opinion, but I’m fairly confident the line between people who enjoy ageplay (because in the mind the fictional depictions could be realistic looking fantasy children) and people who actually prey on children because they feel entitled to the “real thing” is largely only a strong stance against predation and a healthy expression of sexuality vs an unhealthy one (which is why men are more likely to offend than women.)

When people think of “anti-abuse” they also think of “anti-pedophile”. Many people see “treatment” for pedophiles as reducing, curing, or making their desires and attractions inconsequential.

Honestly, just today, someone told me the only way to end the “cycle of abuse” was to shoot all pedophiles in the head, so I would disgree with this and say you’re being way too kind. Most people’s solution is to kill people who offend and kill children who they believe might grow up to offend.

This can happen, but I do struggle to see what’s the harm in it if they’re not hurting real children? Not harming real children is the ultimate goal, even if what other people like is icky to me. So long as they aren’t glorifying predatory behaviors, then they’re being sex positive and glorifying safe ways to handle their fetishes / attractions.
A genuine worry, and it does happen, is that in these circles predators who have no interest in safety may try to sway others into dangerous behaviors, but strict supervision by experts and moderators fixes this problem. So yes, completely non-regulated communities are always an issue with anything, honestly. It’s a huge problem with mental health groups, support groups for abuse victims where abusers posing as victims invade, etc, etc. Moderation is important.

I strongly feel there’s no way around it, we have to accept that some people have these attractions and deal with that. Non-acceptance isn’t possible, because that’s just denial, and denial gets people hurt.

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Again, this is rape culture. The idea that an attraction is action, that if a man is sexually attracted to women and we normalize that attraction to women, that means raping women will inevitably happen because men are entitled to sex with women and NEED it to satisfy their sexual desires.
It really seems like you’re struggling with issues of sex and entitlement to begin with, which makes dealing with any other fetish etc difficult, because attraction and action seem to be linked in your mind.

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Again, another example of rape culture, implying that his ACTION to CHOOSE to masturbate in an inappropriate time, place, and way, was because of his ATTRACTION. This person, Todd, is using his attraction to justify an action, which is never okay.
The paraphilia is not dangerous, he is for being someone who chooses to behave in a dangerous way.
Rape and assault do not happen because of attraction, they happen because people choose to rape or assault.

Rape culture. If a pedophile believes this, it’s rape culture, and if you believe it too, then you need to do some serious work on that, because it’s not only not true but not okay to believe the only way to be happy is to demand the exact type of pleasure you want from life and if not you’ll do something terrible to get it.

First, I think we need to address here that self harm is a logical response to stress. When we are stressed, we feel as though a tiger is coming to kill us, but in reality it may just be a big assignment we need to get done by Friday. Some people find relief from this stress by self injury because it creates an artificial fight with the imaginary tiger, thus lowering their cortisol levels. Treatment is focused on harm reduction when possible, and not on gaslighting the person for their biological stress reaction and the logical conclusion, self harm, they’ve come to to treat their high cortisol levels. They are offered alternative safer methods to achieve the same results such as medications, new behaviors like exercise, finding a way to channel that cortisol into something productive like art or writing, or even simply safer methods of self harm can be the solution such as snapping a rubber band on one’s wrist, ice to the skin, punching one’s self in the leg rather than the face, etc etc.
The goal in treatment is not to tell the person their feelings are wrong or dangerous, but that they are normal human feelings to have for some people, and teaching them how to work with these feelings, because they are not always possible to eliminate.
Being open and accepting about suicidal thoughts and methods does not automatically condone them, and the results of telling someone who’s suicidal they’re bad for feeling that way usually make the problem worse and can lead to a more likely outcome of suicide. There’s literally a thing in psychology called radical acceptance because not all things can be changed and must instead be accepted and worked around.

The attraction alone does not bring any inherent danger unless you believe in rape culture, and distractions are literally most of all psychological treatments for everything. lol

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“Normalization of Pedophilia” is an anti-LGBT conservative smear. It doesn’t have much to do with prevention or even pedophiles. It is a horrid term. Look at who is pushing these terms before making any conclusion.

I believe in free speech, therefore a lot of your points are automatically invalid in my eyes. I don’t think trolling or spamming is free speech. although from a legal perspective, it doesn’t make sense to chase them as if they were not. As far as speech goes, there is a difference between “free speech” in the public square and “free speech” on a tailored platform.

Some “pro-contact” are not actually “pro-contact” but 4chan trolls trying to create a caricature of it. Other trolls take it seriously and jump on them and get in a big fight. You can often tell who they are because only trolls say things like “maps want to join lgbt”. Trolls can be extreme to the point where they advocate things no one else would actually go to that point of advocating and they raise the temperature. This can be subtle as a troll tries to figure out what they can get away with and what will push buttons.

Trying to thought police whether someone is “pro-contact” or not is largely pointless on mainstream social media and against Fundamental Rights pertaining to free speech (welcome to democracy, buddy). I am sure it is not unusual to have doubts about establishment opinion either although this is different from shouting from the top of the soap box about your views.

In my honest opinion, debating and fighting about “contact” is tiring, pointless, and more often than not, you get a ceasefire where no one wants to go there. In practice, it sort of filters itself out except on truly unmoderated cesspits. You can’t have a community with a constant flame war raging in the background. Some places take the route of just not talking about it, it might even end up including more stakeholders who may otherwise be excluded in deliberations. You otherwise get a bias towards people who for one reason or another pursue policies geared towards political correctness than anything else. It tends to push out the moderates too as the counter-balance grows.

This is simply an observation of multiple map communities.

Why not? Lots of people don’t like to go to places with strong clinical vibes.

What you want is irrelevant either way because it is based on bigotry and ignorance. The idea that you go out and start molesting or flirting with little kids because the hormones tell you to do so like some sort of robot is ridiculous.

It is a sexual orientation but you’re not allowed to call it one for political correctness. Every fiber of your beings from romance to emotions to sexual ideation is geared towards children. Even ones who think they’re not romantic may discover they are but were never in the right situation. It simply is.

And what you’re advocating is conversion therapy which is a form of torture and doesn’t actually do anything positive. People like to pretend it might. But only because they’re so desperate for a “solution” they’re happy to start throwing ethical considerations off the table. Conversion therapy is never okay. And neither are any attempts at normalizing it. Or any “lesser form”.

It doesn’t even help because going off it is going to make you even more sensitive and likely to just break through inhibitions which previously would have held more strongly. Why do you think I look at legal little kids occasionally now? Why do you think my AoA is dropping? It is simple. It rejects it so harshly and so severely that irritating it results as a rejection reaction where it shows itself even more prominently than before. Everything you do will make it worse and that is why people are willing to do anything, even lie to keep going despite it creating even more problems in other ways. They know this. I know this.

I’ll tell you this. These quacks. These people around you. Cannot read someone at all when their life’s work involves controlling their emotions to get outed to a bigoted mass who wants to kill and maim them. It is almost an automatic reaction. So what if you don’t go off it? Well, there are other effects. It is not a compulsion in the sense of OCD. Or “sexual impulse”.

Many reasons people even getting a strong sexual impulse is because of stress and discomfort. This can create a positive feedback loop where the discomfort from stigma feeds the sexual impulse. Even if you could remove the impulse, someone would continue to try to compulsively do it for any sort of relief and sometimes will find some real life examples to practice on in the park.

Even if that wasn’t a problem, being emotionally and romantically attracted means you will go out and find creative ways to satisfy that with your brain now malfunctioning because some quack doctor from some fascist shithole like Sweden (which arrests people for commonly used fictional content) who operates on criminals pretending to be innocent said so.

From my viewpoint, everyone in this thread is blind. And willingly blind. You optimise for the wrong things and follow dogma with obsession. Some blindness is not as deep as others. I will admit.
If you don’t bother other people, they shouldn’t bother you. It is that simple. You shouldn’t be persecuted or punished for the crimes of someone else.

Unfortunately, Prostasia feeds into that to a certain degree. It always goes back to “someone did this” so everyone else should suffer. Why should I suffer? Did I go around molesting children and coming up with a ridiculous “it was the hormones” defense to try to get off scot-free? Or pretend I was “traumatised” so every child abuse trauma victim is looked at some sort of latent predator?

The second has a grain of truth. But only in the sense that someone who is traumatised is far more likely to go get support than someone who has not been. It is likely why so many “map” are trans too. Transgender individuals have a number of life issues. If you don’t have serious problems, why would you go get support?

I would prefer someone putting a bullet through my brain to them giving me “treatment”.
I am ready with the bleach if they want to pursue that.

Compared to “treatment”, genocide sounds like a gift.

Hypersexuality can be a sign of stress. Like everyone hating you.

I don’t know if him doing it there is necessarily a bad thing, if he does it in a private space like a bathroom (even that house’s bathroom) but I don’t see the need for it. It sounds like he might be trying too hard to be virtuous (not masturbating at all) and ending up doing it in the wrong place. If you don’t eat, you will get hungry. If you don’t urinate, you will feel uncomfortable.

The more “anti-contact” someone behaves. The more likely they are abusing their body and forcing it to do things it shouldn’t. This is a pattern I noticed. It is important not to allow an ideology to become a cult.

The whole point of anything is to nto be ashamed. You want someone to simultaneously be ashamed and unashamed? Is this Schrodinger’s MAP? Feeling ashamed will make uncontrollable intrusive thoughts worse and more uncomfortable. Everytime someone sees children, they will feel unspeakably anxious. Even if they wouldn’t do anything. It could even make them do something.

Being a pedophile by definition means your attraction to children is stronger than your attraction by adults. The MAP movement has somewhat tried to subvert this. But that is the proper definition. If someone’s attraction is 95% towards children, would they not have problems? What about 80%? 70%? 50%? It is not a binary value. I conducted an informal study on this.

Non-exclusives may have it worse in some aspects than exclusives even because they have two masters to serve although may be capable of taming it.

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That’s not a very nice thing to say about me. I don’t go around molesting kids and I don’t really plan to. I’m trying to pull myself together from legal images of kids. But, there is a disturbing thought lingering in my mind that Sweden is trying to normalize torture and I just can’t shake it. It is extraordinarily stressful. I would like to return to purely lolis.

I get along with exclusives the best. Especially ones with similar interests. Between you and me, the non-exclusives are a bit stuck-up :stuck_out_tongue:

If someone has a very minor degree of mapness (non-exclusive), we can’t relate that well at all. They might even dismiss concerns about human rights which certainly does not sit right with me. They might even be worse than someone who is a non-MAP because they assume they are representative for everyone.

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Treatment in an ideal science based world would simply be better sex education, and therapy to address inappropriate behaviors that cause people to act dangerously on their sexual impulses and teaching how to handle those impulses in a safe way, rather than using them as justification for rape, so I’m pretty sure you would prefer treatment. In your mind, I’m sure you’re imagining something lobotomy-like procedure, but even in Sweden where they were treating men with hyper-sexual disorders with medication it was by choice, and they promoted therapy and other less invasive behavioral modification approaches first.

So I feel like there’s so much to unpack here, and I really don’t mean to come off harsh-
you’re correct that trying to be completely abstinent in a shame-based way from masturbation can cause strange sexual behaviors, but the example Psbf8 seemed to give was Todd masturbating in an inappropriate place, which is never okay. “Todd has even admitted to having to masturbate while babysitting a child to sate his urges” this doesn’t clarify to me where he did it, and honestly, if we change this to “Todd had to slip away to the bathroom of his friend’s house to jack off about them so he didn’t feel the intense desire to rape them,” we see a big problem that regardless of if Todd went to a private place or not to jerk off about a child he was babysitting (which is not clarified), that problem being Todd believing that if he does not slip away to jack off, he will indefinitely rape someone.
It’s a completely unhealthy lack of self control based in mixed beliefs masturbation to naughty things is wrong, but also that your dick needs soothing every time it’s too erect, or that every intense sexual thought or feeling NEEDS to be acted on with masturbation or sex, or it will indefinitely result in dangerous action. I feel like someone like Todd sounds like they’re trying to self control the wrong actions and giving full permission to others by making excuses based in rape culture lies about sex and sexuality.
Hypersexuality, regardless of having a legitimate cause or not, is not an excuse for behaviors that are inappropriate, and not an excuse for having rape-culture ideas about sex and masturbation that are clearly leading to fixation and obsession. You will not die if you do not masturbate or have sex. There is no need to “sate” a sexual urge, it is not like urination or eating where you will die if you do not act on it. They go away when you’re not hyper fixated or don’t have a chemical imbalance. There is a strong want, and an especially strong one if you have obsessive fixated thoughts, I can give you that, but they are never an excuse for inappropriate actions, just like how having a mental health condition that makes it harder for someone to behave in healthy ways doesn’t excuse abusive actions.
I’m very pro-masturbation, but there’s no such thing as “needing sex” or “needing masturbation” in physical turns. Maybe someone needs it to be happy with their life, but it’s not a physical thing that absolutely has to be acted on like your life depends on it. If you try to hold your pee, you might piss yourself. If you do nothing with an erection, eventually it will go away and nothing bad will happen to you. If this person, Todd, were masturbating in a healthy way in the first place and had healthy beliefs about sex, they wouldn’t feel the need to slip away to “sate” something, because not only does that need not exist, the belief that it does is wrong too.
Anti-contact and anti-sex/pleasure are different things.
Plenty of people with fetishes they cannot act out “for real” for a million different reasons lead satisfying sex lives because they don’t fixate on the lie that only the “real thing” will work. When we fixate on needing something to make us happy, we prevent ourselves from being happy. We make an artificial rule that we cannot be happy unless this-or-that is met. It doesn’t make the desire a real need.
Plenty of people, not just MAPS, can never have whatever their “real thing” is, and they find healthy and safe ways to still have pleasurable sex and partnerships by getting over their obsession with believing they have a need for something.
I don’t support an abstinence only stance for these fetishes, simply a safe less entitled stance where people aren’t fixated on this need for “only the real thing will do” and “I have to do something or I’ll hurt someone/myself”.

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Indeed, it does not help. And it is an extreme response to a very minor crime like possession. I would sooner decriminalize possession than start to normalize this. If we can’t handle this humanely, we might as-well drop this entirely.

The “individual harms” of possession are inconsequential compared to what you’re advocating. You know. I know this. Anything else is a legal fiction and a fig leaf over outright dehumanization. If you can present a better solution. Great. Everyone wins. But, if someone is looking at something decades old, it is going to be extremely hard to justify what you’re trying to justify.

This doesn’t imply it is “okay” for the content to exist or to play an active role in producing or to encourage people to do so. Or to go so over the top that someone begins to indulge in it rather than doing the absolute bare minimum on the oldest and least grotesque material. But, there is a point where the harms of the statute vastly outweight the pros. Is this not how every law is balanced in the end? I have to wonder if very old material in exceptional circumstances is a positive trade-off but I digress.

I wasn’t going to push for the humanize possession party line so hard (artificial CP is preferable in every arena) but it looks as if we have reached the point where rhetoric over something which may have a minor contribution to undesired behavior is becoming extremely dangerous and it needs to be stopped. I avoid many things for many reasons, including morality. It isn’t a matter of consequences or “getting away with it”. I have a very unique psyche which loves lolis too much to cheat on them like that. Okay, that was a bad way of putting it. But, I don’t think it is much of a good thing.

Frankly, technological means would be even better but many countries are throwing people in prison for decades for owning a sex bot. It is the latest in the wave of victimless crime. Some people do use sex bots to deal with these problems.

I very doubt much of this is a factor either way. I wrote previously that stigma can contribute to sexual compulsivity. And that sexual compulsivity doesn’t magically disappear. I have also written that having messed up hormones can strengthen internalised stigma making it more difficult to be “treated”.

It should be noted as-well that Sweden has a ban on any fictional content which is “too realistic”, therefore Sweden isn’t a particularly good sample where individuals are relatively unoppressed. Rather, the oppression could have led to this incident. One should never apologize for fascism or the oppression carried out by others. Fascism should be destroyed in all it’s forms. No matter whether someone’s disguises it as progressivism or otherwise.

If it is POCD + Sex Addiction rather than a real MAP, this is an open question. It should be possible to stir them towards legal outlets, in theory. It is possible it may be because the DSM is quite vague in defining what a “pedophile” is. This one may truly be troublesome because if someone’s psyche isn’t built to stomach this, it could lead to a lot of psychological trouble.

Rather, it is you have to do it or it will be extremely uncomfortable. You do it. It vanishes for a long time. 24 hours? 72 hours? It may be different depending on stress. If you hold your bladder, as I do in a pitiful attempt to self-harm, that is very uncomfortable as-well and I do it in the same fashion as not ever dealing with sex.

I theorise a lot of people who reject themselves hold it in whenever they can and it emerges at the worst possible moments. The stigma from society, the stigma from self-rejection and the sexual stimuli combine into one mass which is difficult to deal with. But, this is only a theory.

And the reason you would do it privately would be because it would be extremely bad to do it in-front of a child for a multitude of reasons. There is a distinction there. I would hope any individual would deal with the problem prior to leaving for somewhere a problem might arise.

I personally would not do something like that in a situation like that. It doesn’t sound like it would do me any favors. Or any situation where I am expected to do something in a professional capacity, things like this are better left for the home in private.

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