On the topic of Recent Twitter Dissent

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I think it’s safe to say that Twitter is perhaps one of the most worthless places a person could get an opinion, be it political, social, whatever. There is nothing of value there, people’s only desires seem to be how many Internet points they could win by appealing to the most people. It suffers from the same problems that Reddit suffers from, but unlike Reddit, it’s still a social network worthy of communication and discourse.

I’ve been a follower and supporter of @prostasia for a good couple years now. They’re the only organization that actually seems to truly care about CSA prevention in a utilitarian manner, and I mean ‘utilitarian’ in both a philosophical and a practical context.

Coming from someone who is NOT a pedophile/MAP, I think treating it as a ‘disease’ or mental disorder worthy of eradication is precisely what’s wrong with socially politicizing it. It becomes less about focusing on the reality behind exactly what pedophilia and CSA are and more about appealing to and conforming to a social standard that actually works against the truth and the facts.
The focus becomes about moral conformism, despite the fact that those ‘morals’ become disintegrated from contemporary moral philosophy.

Yes, pedophilia is unfortunate and a sexual interest in children is not something someone would likely want to have.
But it’s still a fact of life. It is, by all intents and purposes, a sexual orientation, just like homosexuality.

It will never go away.
You can’t pray it away.
It can’t be ‘cured’, either through therapy or medication.
Once a person has it, it will always be there.
Being born with pedophilia is not and should not be a death sentence, nor should it be a commitment to a lack of sexual indulgence or forced celibacy. Sexual preoccupation and expression are natural things that, if suppressed, can and will cause stress. This is a known fact in psychology.

Of course, adult-child sexual activity is ALWAYS wrong and harmful to the children who experience it.

From a feedback standpoint, the brunt of the dissent seems to come from Prostasia partnering with MAP Support club and how, mistakenly, Prostasia having worked with registered sex offenders for brief periods of time, namely Guy Hamilton-Smith and Jeff White.
It’s a good thing that Prostasia no longer works with these people, both from a PR standpoint as well as a functional one, but the fact of the matter is is that with such groundbreaking and controversial standpoints that Prostasia takes as a means to prevent child sex abuse.

I do think some proper transparency from Map Support Chat should be warranted, in addition to excluding those who are under the age of 18 a stable rule, as well as being upfront about how it works and who works in it.
Some suggestions would be:

  • Change their ‘unspoken rule’ to a proper rule, whereby minors (under 18s) are prohibited from participating in the MSC.

  • Be transparent about the counselors and psychologists who are present when MSC is functioning, as well as include brief snippets on the types of subject matter which may be discussed and maybe even breakthroughs.

  • Make registering easier and be transparent about the rigorous vetting procedures that are done on both particiapnts and observers, regardless of whether or not they are MAPs.

I do think that working with sex offenders and not being more transparent about the operating procedures of MSC are issues. I don’t think, however, that using these mistakes

Destigmatization of pedophilia will actually REDUCE sexual offenses. Stigma does nothing to help anyone. Taking such hard-line militaristic stances towards anyone with an unconventional sexual interest or desire is precisely one of the things that contributed to the HIV/AIDS pandemics of the 80s and 90s, whereby it was seen as ‘intrinsically linked’ to homosexual sexual activity, which, combined with the growing cultural stigma founded by fundamentalist Christian and conservative ideology, along with an anti-science sex-negative attitude, did nothing but ensure those who were at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS did not receive the proper information they needed to further safer sex practices.

We’re seeing a similar, if not identical effect with pedophilia and child sex abuse.

Again, in case anyone reading this post may have glossed over it, CSA (child sex abuse) is ALWAYS wrong and completely unacceptable.
Under no circumstances should real-world adult-child sexual activity be condoned, enabled, committed, or allowed.

I think at the end of the day, @prostasia will have to do something to convince those with reasonable skepticism of its validity as a child protection/CSA prevention charity and organization.

What do you think, @terminus ?

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Change their ‘unspoken rule’ to a proper rule, whereby minors (under 18s) are prohibited from participating in the MSC.

I thought they allowed people from age 14 to participate? We literally have one guy that age on the forums rn and I don’t see why they shouldn’t get support. Maybe introduce a separate MSC with people who are the same age? And introduce moderators + counselors to that chat as well.

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If your not a map they shall deport you.

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I do see their point in why allowing convicted sex offenders to operate in a child protection charity is a bad thing.
It really isn’t something I agreed with either.

But I can forgive Prostasia for either not knowing about their past convictions or whatever.

We have to see eye-to-eye on something, and I knew right from the get-go that allowing under-18s in the MSC would be a PR nightmare.

Even if the chats themselves are heavily moderated.
Even if councilors are staffed around the clock to monitor and facilitate safe and healthy discourse and rapport.
Even if they do everything right.

That level of risk still looms, and to be quite frank it needs to be addressed.

I know @prostasia is a good charity.

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The benefits outweigh the harms. Unless you want them to go to OMC (which is majority pro-c), or NNIA (which allows pro-c’s), or mainstream social media (which is toxic as hell), or wait a long, long time for my partner’s exclusively anti-c instance to be set up. I’d rather have bad PR than be an ageist and throw under the bus MAPs in need. MSC already is ageist and bends far too much to political pressure (re: I was kicked out before I came out as a MAP, because I was a minor ally).

I do see their point in why allowing convicted sex offenders to operate in a child protection charity is a bad thing.

You will not accomplish effective CSA prevention and understand why CSA happens without hearing the perspectives of offenders. Moral panics over ex-offenders and the registry are far more harmful than a bit of bad PR.

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Yeah MSC thinking there safe from hate because they ban non maps under 18 is pretty dumb.

I’m sure that the peaple sending death threats are start gonna respecting us due to that policy. :roll_eyes:

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From the 9/1 newsletter: “Although we stand by our decision, it may now be time to revisit it with our stakeholders and experts. We’ll shortly be holding a meeting of our Board to discuss whether restructuring Prostasia would make it more effective. Whatever decisions are made and whatever lessons will have been learned, we remain proud and unrepentant for attempting something that had never been done before: to demonstrate that an organization devoted to child protection doesn’t also have to be one that stands by or is complicit in the abuse of human rights.”

I support Prostasia’s CSA prevention as my late wife was a CSA survivor and would have approved of the fight. As a libertarian, I also appreciate not having people’s rights being trampled or the loss of civil liberties in this fight. I dearly hope @prostasia can continue both efforts.

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Prostasia does not need to change. All of this Twitter outrage is just fluff with no real meaning or consequence behind it.

Prostasia has done good work and continues to do so. They’ve done nothing wrong.

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What are they gonna re-evaluate?

It’s not like if they were to suddenly turn on maps they would gain social accolades. They will be forever known as the charity that supporters ``EviL PedOs"

There’s nowhere to run for prostasia.

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What would they need to run from? Being anti-stigma and humanizing pedophiles is not a bad thing, regardless of how these trolls make it out to be.

The only thing worthy of criticism would be having worked with Jeff White and Hamilton-Smith, something that the Foundation has long since atoned for.

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Running from the hate and harrasment.

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It’ll blow over with time. I have faith that Prostasia’s reputation will recover and these reactionaries and trolls will be a thing of the past.

I’ve engaged with some of the dissenters and trolls, they’re all mindless drones and reactionaries who are only upset because someone told them to be upset.
They all parrot the same “normalization” fallacy, along with a general misunderstanding of pedophilia and what the difference between a pedophile and a child predator is.

I think a commitment to not working with those who have prior criminal offenses could be a way to appease the more educated skeptics, along with generalized transparency. But don’t budge on civil rights positions on pornography, sex positivity, or loli/shota/dolls and remain committed to an empirically valid position.

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Besides. Twitter is worthless.

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Obviously working with sex offender was a terrible idea but they don’t do that anymore.

“It’ll blow over with time. I have faith that Prostasia’s reputation will recover and these reactionaries and trolls will be a thing of the past.” Yeah it probably will, which is why I’m confused that prostasia has decided to review its “policies.”

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I’m more or less worried about all of these conservative political commentators, sex-negative feminists, and alleged ‘centrists’ and other irrelevant pundits signal boosting the idea that the Prostasia is a ‘pro-pedo’ charity masquerading as a child protection charity. This sentiment is obviously unfounded, but that won’t stop them from coming up with their own troll responses to valid arguments.

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Why though? There’s nothing wrong with working with ex-offenders. And they didn’t even know about Jeff, since he didn’t disclose his history.

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They still work with Guy Hamilton-Smith IIRC? And I don’t believe it’s a terrible idea.

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No, they don’t. Not since 2019.

And a child protection/CSA prevention org working with registered sex offenders is bad because it can be seen as a potential conflict of interest by the organization.
I believe that sex offenders do face unreasonable amounts of stigma and I applaud Prostasia for “leading by example”, but working with them in an official capacity is and can be seen as problematic.

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Antis will always look for the easy way. Instead of addressing our ideas they’ll just use some “pre recorded” responce like saying that “your normalizing pedophilia” “virped, so your saying that your viritouse not rape children, haha you pedos are crazy”

We cant give them easy ways out or fuel for the hate train.

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But that’s just it. If we give them nothing, they’ll just make stuff up. To rescue a “witch”, one should never waste time talking to the peasants.