How do you know that these people aren’t minor-attracted people?
Roughly 30% of child sexual abuse and 60% of sexually harmful image offenses are committed by minor-attracted people which is pretty significant considering what a low percentage of the population minor-attracted people make up.
And yes, there could be better and more ethical outlets available and better supports, but that isn’t any reason to say minor-attracted people aren’t a danger. I did some research on the dark web awhile back for my book - and while I wouldn’t recommend people go there, there are plenty of communities that absolutely demonstrate that many MAP communities are in fact dangerous - to themselves, to MAP advocacy, to children, and to the public.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that MAPs are a danger, even taking that into account. People in communities of abusers are a danger, regardless of their attractions. People who think it’s okay to take advantage of the vulnerable are a danger, regardless of their attractions. Implying that it has anything to do with them being MAPs just makes it harder to recognize the danger posed by abusive groups of non-MAPs
It’s accurate when a population accounting for less than 10% of the population is responsible for 30% of child sexual abuse and 60% of harmful imagery. It’s reason to look into why that is and look for ways of reducing the harms, such as supports and what can drive people away from such harmful communities. Hiding from those facts isn’t advocacy.
It’s not hiding from facts to point out that stigma and a lack of support are likely the main factors in MAPs offending. Saying “MAPs are a danger” misleads people about the source of that danger. People who are constantly told they have no option but to be an abuser and are given no access to support even when they desperately need it are a danger.
Blaming attractions just results in misdirected prevention efforts.
Someone online made this “argument” (not their words, these are mine, but this is essentially what they said):
People who are attracted to minors could eventually abuse children. The fact that these people are saying that they don’t want children to be harmed… I think it’s pretty suspicious. They need to seek help.
And here’s what I said as a rebuttal:
A frequent claim made by antis is that MAPs are essentially ticking time bombs and will eventually sexually abuse children if they do not seek help. But, why is it that it only applies to people who are sexually attracted to minors?
If this claim were true, why would it only apply to MAPs? Why wouldn’t people who are attracted to adults also be labeled as “potential rapists”? Well, duh, because “pedophilia is disgusting”, that’s why.
Whatever the case, RS is confusing anti-c MAPs with pro-c MAPs, something that he frequently does.
Why would it be so for pedophilia? The logic that all pedophiles are “potential abusers” quickly falls apart when applied to other sexual orientations.
Attractions don’t equal actions. Also, correlation does not equal causation.
Just because there are MAPs that do offend doesn’t mean that being a MAP would lead someone to offend.
‘MAPs are a danger’ feels like an incredibly simplistic way to sum up a claim. It could mean any number of things:
Statistically speaking, MAPs are (currently) more likely to commit CSA than non-MAPs (what @TNF_13 is saying)
MAPs are inherently a danger, and as long as someone is a MAP, they as an individual pose a danger to children (what Reality Syndrome was saying in the thread @anon81903312 linked)
I think it’s important not to conflate these two. Even this claim:
is compatible with claim #1 since it implies that MAPs offending is A Problem (and singling it out over people in general offending). It doesn’t seem like you actually disagree that the numbers say MAPs as a group have a higher rate of offending; you’re just attributing that higher offense rate to stigma and lack of support, which doesn’t really go against what @TNF_13 is saying ^^;
Personally, I suspect MAPs (as a group) may still have a higher rate of offending even if stigma was taken out of the picture, but don’t get me wrong, I do NOT think MAPs are more likely to be bad people than non-MAPs or that as long as someone is a MAP, they as an individual pose a danger to children. I vehemently disagree with claim #2.
This is my model of the situation; please hear me out here:
Suppose 5% of MAPs and 5% of non-MAPs are terrible people, who don’t give a crap who they hurt in pursuit of their self-interests
The 95% of decent MAPs and the 95% of decent non-MAPs are absolutely no danger to children. A decent MAP is no more of a threat than a decent non-MAP.
But the terrible MAPs are more likely to commit CSA than the terrible non-MAPs, simply because the terrible non-MAPs do not get as much out of abusing children. Sure, they get some things; profit from making CSAM, a power trip since sexual abuse is often about power rather than sex, etc. But the terrible MAPs are just as likely to get these things out of CSA, but in addition, they also get sexual gratification. So instead of committing CSA, the terrible non-MAPS are off doing other terrible things (e.g. teleio rape)
So idk, let’s say 40% of terrible non-MAPS commit CSA while 70% of terrible MAPs commit CSA. Then 2% of all non-MAPs commit CSA while 3.5% of all MAPs commit CSA.
Therefore MAPs as a group still end up with a higher rate of CSA, while at the same time it’s also true that a decent MAP is just as safe as a decent non-MAP, and a decent MAP is safer than non-MAPs on average.
So if I say ‘MAPs have a 3.5% chance of committing CSA’, it does not necessarily mean ‘each individual MAP have a 3.5% chance of committing CSA’. It could mean '95% of MAPs have 0% chance of committing CSA while 5% of MAPs have 70% chance of committing CSA.
So basically:
It’s still possible it has something to do with them being MAPs, even if it’s not nearly as big of a factor as being in a community of abusers, or thinking it’s okay to take advantage of the vulnerable. And definitely not nearly as big of a factor as the stigma-believing peeps make it out to be.
But it could still be A Factor. They can be multiple factors. The world is messy like that. :'D
The source of the danger is people, human beings, Elliot. And the fact is that the disproportionate number of those human beings are minor-attracted people, and blaming it on stigma doesn’t help prevention efforts or advocacy efforts. We don’t have reliable enough information to know what proportion of risk or danger can be blamed on stigma. We know that stigma doesn’t help that danger or risk, sure, and we know that minimizing that stigma can help prevent the danger and risk. But the fact is, there is danger and risk that comes from minor-attracted people - whether you want to say that’s a subset of minor-attracted people and not all minor-attracted people okay fine, sure, whatever, but that’s still there - and there’s no point in denying that.
What irks me to no end is saying that minor-attracted people aren’t risks. That’s blatantly false and we have the statistics to prove it. I have a textbook I can loan you if you like.
Yes, imagine ideas of risk and danger being complex and nuanced and not quite so polarized and demeaning as some advocates want to portray. There is a risk every time I drive my car or cross the street. There is danger. This is statistical fact.
At risk of being inflammatory, according to some demagogues, there is increased risk of violence depending on what city one lives on and the color of skin one is surrounded by, and there’s statistics to back that up. They don’t tell the whole story and that’s reason to dig deeper into the rest of the story, just as there is here. What causality can we draw from these statistics, and what can we do about it?
To bring it back on topic… If this Daniel J Stacey lived in an environment where law enforcement, rather than looking down on perverts and criminals, aided them in getting the support they needed, would he have been likely to engage in crime, or seek the support he needed and know what resources were available?
The very stigma that we’re railing against in this topic is baked into our replies. We want to blame the people who could help become tools in preventing abuse, and lambaste them instead of educating them in a better way.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that no MAPs are ever a risk. Some MAPs are dangerous. But so are some teleiophiles. It doesn’t have anything to do with sexual orientation whether a person is capable of rape or not. We should promote the message that no sexuality is inherently harmful or dangerous, and that it always depends on individual factors.
The problem with saying that “minor-attracted people are a danger” is that it implies that the attraction to minors is what makes a person dangerous. I would argue that this statement is the very core of the stigma. According to two surveys from 2015, roughly 95% of people agree that MAPs are dangerous. If you believe this, the only logical conclusion is that society has to protect itself from MAPs: by shutting us out of public spaces and discussions (see the Twitter thread), and by shunning, marginalizing and criminalizing us. A significant portion of people would like to see us locked away or even killed, even if we have not done anything, as a preventive measure to protect society from the “danger” that is us.
In total, saying that MAPs are a danger is harmful and in itself dangerous because it promotes the dehumanization and social marginalization of MAPs (not to mention that it causes non-MAPs to believe that on the other hand they can never be a danger making them overlook dangerous tendencies in themselves).
Those numbers should also be looked at with great care. I have done some research into how many child sexual abusers are pedophiles, and the range of numbers you find in literature is quite immense. The lowest I found was around 1%, the highest around 60%. It heavily depends on how you actually define pedophilia, the process you use to figure out if someone is a pedophile, and the specific population you look at.
The only thing you can say for sure is that the majority of child sexual abusers are not sexually interested in children. Which itself raises a few questions, like why are pretty much all preventive measures aimed at MAPs when they only make up a minority of abusers?
When it comes to imagery, you not only have to consider the same issues as above, but also the increasing attempts to criminalize all sexual outlets for MAPs no matter whether they are harmful or not. Many studies for instance consider loli- and shotacon as “harmful imagery” and lump people who watch that into the same category as people who enjoy watching the sexual torture of real children. The numbers also often don’t differentiate between people who watched it once many years ago and then turned away appalled and those who regularly consume it now.
With these little “tricks” and the lack of differentiation I am indeed not surprised that it is quite difficult as a MAP today to go through life without per definition ending up in the category as a CSAM consumer. That does not depict though how many limit themselves to ethical (fictional) outlets where no children have been harmed, or at the very least would be willing to switch to this kind of material if it was socially supported and legalized.
Begging your pardon, but I go by peer-reviewed research such as that found in Seto’s book (second edition) which reviews quite a wide range, and the range isn’t all that immense in terms of percentages, nor does it depend on definitions as you claim.
This is a very, very broad generalization of the literature and the literature tends to come from specific groups or affiliations such as NCMEC or NSPCC, or outdated research that doesn’t specifically address fiction and just lumps it in as a precaution.
I’m sorry, but so fucking what? If people want to lump fictional children in with real children, then fuck them, they don’t care about protecting children and they’re not worth paying attention to. If you actually want to make a difference, stop paying attention to and getting triggered by their disingenuous bullshittery and start getting out there and proving that fiction is different and why it’s different, and why you should have a right to it. Stop falling for the rabbit hole and start asserting your right to exist ethically.
Again, it’s a stigmatic reaction against ‘boohoo they hate us’, not a productive endeavor to actually do anything about it. Go educate and organize and try to make productive strides rather than whine about the state of things. Whining about how unfair the opposing side is will not do a damn thing. You people have no sense of strategy.
[quote=“Sirius, post:12, topic:3391”]
I don’t think anyone here is saying that no MAPs are ever a risk.
[/quote]uh
what’s this then
That is what makes a lot of people dangerous, yes, because they think it entitles them to act on their attractions beyond fiction. They congregate with groups of people that reinforce their ideas that it’s perfectly fine to hurt kids.
And the rest of your argument is a slippery slope fallacy, not logic. I am a MAP, and I’m arguing for minor-attracted people to go organize and fight the stigma in a rational, fact-informed way, not saying that it’s okay to fear and repress or marginalize minor-attracted people.
Saying that humans are dangerous to other humans because of traits that push them away from the support of other humans is fact until such time that humans start giving a damn about other humans. Your argument is with human nature, mate.
No! What makes a person dangerous in this constellation is not the sexual orientation, but believing that they are entitled to act out their sexual orientation with other people. This cognition can make anyone dangerous, no matter their sexual orientation. Maybe people who are not MAPs with this cognition will be less of a risk to children specifically, but they may be dangerous in other ways (e.g., raping their wife because they feel that she is obliged to satisfy them).
It’s the logical conclusion of your statement, backed up by history and stigma research. You can’t expect people to tolerate, accept and not stigmatize us after having established that we are in fact a danger to what’s most precious in their lives.
I’m not sure what you mean here. If anything it’s the stigma and the difficult social cirumstances we live in that push MAPs away from support, not their MAPness.
Great, so do I! Seto is actually a prime example. In his paper A Brief Screening Scale to Identify Pedophilic Interests Among Child Molesters, using phallometric testing, he found that with a cutoff score of 0 (meaning greater arousal to child compared to adult stimuli) around 40 % of abusers could be classified as pedophiles. This numer is the one I have seen cited the most by organizations like Don’t Offend. However, with this cutoff score 17 % in a comparison group were classified as pedophiles as well, which given the usual prevalence rate of around 0.1 % – 5 % found in other studies is way higher than it should be. Using a higher cutoff score that only classifies 10 % of comparison participants as pedophiles (still quite high though), it turns out that only 27 % of abusers could be classified as pedophiles.
This is what I mean. Depending on how you define pedophile (i.e. at what cutoff score do you classify someone as being a pedophile?) you get different numbers.
There are other studies which used different methods coming to different conclusions. The lowest number I found was in this PHD thesis, which looked at psychological evaluations of female offenders and found that only 2% were found to be pedophiles (and none of them exclusive). The highest number I found so far is from a 2014 paper that also looked at forensic reports of abusers and found that 46 % were diagnosed with the DSM-IV code for pedophilia – however, only 8 % in that sample self-identified as pedophiles, and of those who were diagnosed only 10 % were exclusive pedophiles.
At least in Germany, most research that I have seen only queries whether you looked at illegal images of children without further distinctions. There appears to be little to no interest to get a differentiated look at sexual outlets for MAPs.
I’m doing that already, thanks. To fight against normalized injustices and inhumane dominant narratives you have to reveal them as what they are, not repeat them.
When you go down the road of “what ifs” then anyone is just as likely to commit a rape or murder someone. These are rediculous circular arguments. So far, in my experience, the perpetrators seem to always be in trusted positions of a child. Duping everyone around them to their intentions. MAP or not, they never openly admit to it. No one ever knows about their attractions until after the fact. Most MAPs aren’t offenders IMO. These people see an opportunity and take it! Like any thief.
MAPs who reach out and seek support are not likely to do such things. Once they get honest and know their attraction is a problem, they are far greater at NOT hurting someone. These “what if”, “possibly”, “maybe” arguments are simply fear talking. It’s all moral posturing IMO. Get over yourself!
I think this is the point TNF_13 is trying to make. And I do kind of think it’s a slippery slope to say that the logical conclusion of this particular claim (that you yourself seem to agree with) is stigma
You said it’s not accurate to say minor-attracted people are a danger. They are. Every human is, because they’re human, whether anyone thinks it’s stigma to say so or not. Especially when it’s a group that’s marginalized away from support. That increases risk factors. That’s well-documented. Do I need to cite specific research showing that pushing people away from support, systemically or otherwise, increases their risks for maladaptive behaviors?
Wrong. See above. I’m just repeating myself. You all want to spout feel good stuff to make the masses of minor-attracted people feel good, not actually helpful truths that can get us the support we need. The truth is when you marginalize a group of people, they present more of a risk. minor-attracted people, because they are minor-attracted people, and because of the stigma with which they are treated and how they are pushed away from support, are at increased risk for a range of behaviors - including dangers to children.
Refusing to acknowledge that isn’t advocacy. Quibbling about the details isn’t a debate.
It’s not the logical conclusion. It’s a fear based assumption on your part, and I can absolutely expect people to tolerate, accept, and not stigmatize us because I’ve talked with people in real life. Most of my friends and family get it and don’t hate me because I’ve explained the issues over time. Convincing people takes time and means not painting an overly bright picture of what’s going on, it means acknowledging their own fears and concerns and addressing them.
You can’t make people understand if you don’t acknowledge why and how the dark shit happens. Watch Star Trek. Watch how the captains (for the most part, cough) try to own up to their fuck ups and the consequences and correct them, and try to bridge gaps of understanding. Watch how marginalized communities interact with their oppressors. Watch how hated minorities have handled the issues they face.
I guarantee you if any of them started off with ‘we’re not risks and dangers actually’ or downplayed the risks, they would never be taken seriously. To use one relevant example in America, if Black neighborhoods and Black leaders didn’t confront the violent crime statistics and come up with the statistics that literally show where that comes from, poverty from historical racism, from systemic discrimination, from brutal policing, they’d have nothing with which to convince concerned white people worried about their safety in inner cities. There are similar examples on less charged issues.
You mention Germany. If Germany handled the events of WW2 and the Holocaust and said, well, yeah, this happened, but it was only some Germans and it won’t happen again, would anyone take it seriously? No, of course not. People needed to be held accountable, and remember the atrocities and know - from the Germans - that it was not fucking acceptable before Germany could be taken seriously (the bullshit end of WW1 not withstanding). You can’t just quibble about research and expect the average person to take you seriously.
See above. If you don’t start from a basis of commonly held fact, no matter how much you dislike the fact or you want to clarify where the fact comes from, you have no common ground to go and educate people with.
If you’re doing that, but you’re not starting from a point of common ground with people who will listen, rather than trying to argue with the people who very much will not listen, all you’re doing is burning yourself out. And that is exactly what you’re doing if you’re going around saying minor-attracted people aren’t risks.
This is a disingenuous argument and one you could make for literally any issue on the face of the planet. You have to define it and measure it somehow, and no matter where you set the line, someone will bitch about it. Maybe I’d rather not sit and quibble about it, yeah? And if I’d rather not - knowing the issues and clearly being fine with a casual debate - do you think the average person will care?
There’s a massive difference between “acknowledging that everyone could pose a danger is central to some of the most effective child protection measures” and “this specific group is a danger full stop.” I’m not sure if “everyone’s a danger” was the original framing of your argument, but since you’re saying it is now, expressing it as “this specific group is a danger” is misleading and only reinforces the stigma and misinformation that make prevention so hard.
If you don’t want your points to be misinterpreted, talk about the actual source of CSA risk, rather than portraying groups that experience increased risk factors due to stigma and misinformation as “a danger.” If you mean everyone, just say everyone.
And again, if you want to know my other positions, just read up. I’m not sure why you’re trying to pretend I don’t understand the impacts of insufficient support.
I disagree that it reinforces stigma and I really don’t care what you think to the contrary. I’ve explained my point and how and why I’ve arrived at it. Minor-attracted people are a danger, and saying so isn’t stigma, it’s fact. If advocates and community leaders like you can’t get over it, you won’t get far in convincing anyone to hear you out. And no, it’s not a communication issue. I’m not sure how much more blunt I can be.
You don’t get to control what I say or how I say it, not anymore. Fuck that shit mate. I’ve been clear. If you can’t take the time to listen, don’t debate.
