It appearsProstasia has misunderstood what people are criticizing them for. They added a largely frivolous filter as a publicity stunt, due to accusations of grooming, but it’s not an accusation of sexual grooming I hear. It is an accusation of grooming minors into thinking they’re pedophiles.
To allay such concerns, it may be possible to:
Communicate appropriately as to why they believe some minors can be determined to be pedophilic prior to the common threshold (age 16).
Distinguish appropriate between that and other paraphilias which may exist. Pedophilic schediaphilia, schediaphilia, autopedophilia, age dysphoria.
Avoid reinforcing POCD by telling someone what to believe in one way or another. This applies to users.
Refer individuals with confirmed POCD to a POCD specialist.
Combat “normalizing” pedophilia narratives which result in individuals being accused of “being pedophiles” when they’re not and sometimes getting POCD.
Take other steps to prevent someone from inadvertently suffering from POCD.
I understand in the case of minor maps, they’re attracted to toddlers and babies (nepiophilia), and this is unusual enough to automatically qualify them as maps?
I would have to ask someone with schediaphilia (also known as toonophilia, these are fan made terms) or pedophilic schediaphilia for details. This is a term I invented on the spot to separate it from pedophilia (and even schediaphilia), as many people feel they do not fall under that umbrella as they don’t report feeling attraction to actual physical children.
Anything can operate as paraphilia, there are an infinite variety of patterns to human sexuality. Podophilia is an attraction to feet. Pygophilia is attraction to buttocks. I can believe in it because I have an aesthetic attraction based on the overall cutesy scene and a second attraction which locks onto very specific body parts and looks for very specific features.
This is easily explained by research that is now five years old (APA PsycNet):
Pedophilia, the attraction, is not a diagnostic term - pedophilic disorder is, and pedophilic disorder is not the attraction itself, but the distress one may or may not feel from having the attraction.
MAP Support Club operates by very clearly identifying right at the beginning of the process to allow people space to describe why they believe they are attracted to minors, and while our staff are not specialists, we do attempt to be very clear with anyone with any question about their attractions that POCD exists and what the differences are. Virped has some very good resources that we have permission to quote to people.
There realistically is even less of a way to do this than there is to refer particularly distressed individuals to a specialist. They simply are very, very rare and there is no category of specialty therapy for POCD like there is generalized anxiety, depression, autism, etc.
I have been advocating on these issues for six years. I have never heard a single decent explanation for what people mean when they say ‘normalizing’ pedophilia. It is impossible to
POCD cannot be caused by chatting in an online community to the best of my knowledge. Generally, for those with POCD, anxiety is a background issue already, and some go through a phase where they are sure they have POCD because of how strongly they feel they do not want to be a pedophile.
OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder, the prefix in the front, which would be be “p” in this instance, only refers to the kind of themes of the obsession, and the motivation for the compulsion.
POCD isn’t a separate disorder outside the umbrella of OCD. But rather an informal term used to denote OCD which is centered around the fear of being a pedophile. As such, “POCD” is not treated fundamentally any different from any other “form” of OCD both in terms of medication, and even talk therapy.
Having POCD doesn’t mean that person’s a pedophile, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t a pedophile either. It just means they have an obsession about being a pedophile which they attempt to ameliorate in some way with compulsions.
