The MAP (Minor-Attracted-Person) Community: More Narcissism, Dishonesty and Manipulation From Child/Teen Sexual Abusers

In December 2018, Tumblr banned adult content on their site. Valuation plunged, users left en masse, and most importantly for our purposes today, one of its most toxic sub-cultures - MAPs (Minor-Attracted Persons) - moved onto Twitter. In March 2019, Twitter updated its guidelines just to make it real clear that they knew about their new pedophiles transplants, and btw, “Discussions related to child sexual exploitation as a phenomenon or attraction towards minors are permitted,” ensuring MAPs can continue to use the platform as a community organizing space. 

Great job keeping your users safe once again, Twitter!!! Especially since more than 1 in 10 of your users is between the ages of 13 and 17... *eye roll of all time*  slow clap

MAPs say they are harmless, looking to provide education and support to others like them. Their theory goes like this: MAPs suffer from an entirely unwanted and unasked for sexual attraction to children and teens, and as a result, they experience social stigma, isolation, mental distress, inability to get help, blah blah blah, host of other maladies and complaints. As for why this pedophile-sympathizing, pedophile-coddling bullshit deserves any kind of platform, MAPs say that their work ultimately “protects” children, because it helps keep MAPs from acting on their attraction and offending against children. 

Oh, okay. 

Of course, once you begin to detangle the mess of appropriated, twisted logics used by MAPs, it falls apart quick: the language, structure, activity and justifications of the MAP community… it’s all bullshit…. just the narcissistic, self-pitying, abusive and manipulative MO characteristic of children and teen abusers.  

One of the central arguments of the MAP community is that their attraction to minors is a “sexual preference”, representing just one point on the vast spectrum of human sexuality, and that attraction to children and teens isn’t in itself harmful and doesn’t merit the suspicion and “stigma” of the community. Like many victims, I take profound issue with the term “Minor-Attracted Person,” because: 

All adult sexual interactions with children and teens are RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE, and have nothing to do with attraction. There is no “attraction” to children and teens that exists outside a framework of rape and abuse. Just like rape is about power, control, sadism and manipulation, pedophilia and ephebophilia is about power, control, sadism and manipulation. 

These things are not about attraction or sex at all!!!  

They are about HURTING PEOPLE.

A persistent desire to rape children and teens doesn’t express an “attraction”, but rather an ongoing fixation and obsession with sexual abuse. The use of terms like “attraction” and “sexual preference” covers up the sadism and violence that is inherent in the desire for sexual activity and sexual interactions with children and teens, and diverts attention away from the essential nature of sexual abuse. “Attraction” also suggests that MAPs have positive feelings towards children, while of course the desire to rape children and teens, represents the greatest extremes of hatred and abuse of children…. typical manipulation and distortion from a group of people who often claim they are targeted by the “seductions” of children….

This is not a community about attraction, but about pedophiles and ephebophiles publicly expressing their desire to rape children and teens, and forming entire identities, communities and support systems around it… all while dressing it up in fancy, social-justice-y diversionary language. Though many victims object to this euphemistic language and find it highly triggering, MAPs insist on using it, reflecting how this community consistently prioritizes itself over children/teens and victims….

Egregious intellectual dishonesty continues in how MAP language is wrapped in linguistic forms and analogies that echo those of the LGBT and survivor communities. While MAPs claim they aren’t appropriating concepts and terminology from the LGBT community, in framing the discourse around “sexual preference” and “sexual orientation,” they are deliberately stratifying their community alongside the queer community by using its terminologies. This is particularly insulting to LGBT people, who are more likely to be survivors of child and teen sexual abuse and are sometimes falsely and maliciously called pedophiles due to *actual* stigma against them. Yet MAPs complain about the “stigma” they experience and internalize -- an experience we understand as that of marginalized groups as they are treated by dominant society. (Keep in mind that most sexual predators are male and straight, so there is significant overlap between who are the sexual abusers of society and who has gender and sexuality privilege… making the use of these terms and constructs particularly offensive as well as misleading/lying…)   

Indeed, one of the most notable strategies of the MAP movement is how they position themselves as victims, claiming stigma, depression, anxiety, suicidality, difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships/intimacy, etc…. As a survivor, there’s a good chance you’d read this list and say, “Hey, that sounds like me!!!” It’s no mistake that these “symptoms” resemble what survivors of child and teen abuse say about what trauma looks like for them -- the mental and physical experiences they have, the social isolation that results, the very real stigma that society holds against abuse victims. MAP logic has the effect of positioning both abusers and their targets as similar/symmetrical victims of similar/symmetrical pains… 

And what, exactly, is the MAP’s great suffering anyway? 

The fact that so many MEN can’t have their desires met legally or in a socially accepted manner because their gratification relies on abuse? The fact that these, again, MEN, feel some guilt for wanting to abuse children? 

There really is no material basis here to claim any long-standing stigma or oppression -- guilt isn’t oppression, inability to legally commit rape and sexual abuse isn’t repression. And if we’re being totally honest with ourselves, this proposed societal stigma against MAPs doesn’t even exist. Pedophiles and ephebophiles are commonly accepted in their families, communities, professional groups, etc. and usually allowed to continue abusing children without any intervention, even when other adults are made aware of their behavior…  

Which brings us to how BY FAR the most disturbing thing about the MAP community is just how many young people are involved in this group. This alone is a reason why Twitter should ban-hammer this group even if its unable to accept, on principle, the notion that “pedophilia is bad.” Teenagers and young people, as young as 13-14 and ranging up to the early 20s, have found the MAP community and are actively involved in it, many as “allies” of the MAP community, engaging in reciprocal following relationships, signal-boosting MAPs and defending them, and offering support to “struggling” MAPs.

Here, the way that MAPs portray themselves as victims -- of a society that hates them and won’t accept “minor attraction”, of “antis” who oppose their community -- seems critical in recruiting and forming bonds with children and youth. To properly contextualize the participation of children and teens in MAP groups, it’s important to consider just how manipulative pedophiles and ephebophiles are: gaining access to children and youth, and getting them to feel a sense of emotional connection, is paramount to the grooming process.

 The fact that the MAP community has established itself on first Tumblr, then on Twitter, where there are large populations of youth, where they maintain a highly visible presence, and where they engage with youth users, indicates that the MAP community provides yet another outlet for sexual abusers to establish contact with and groom youth…  

Some children and teens affiliated with the MAP movement even express the belief that they are able to consent to sexual activity with adults. This is a classic platform of ephebophiles and pedophiles, and one they also try to convince their victims of, using techniques like flattering children about their “maturity” and taking advantage of the way children look forward to adulthood and like to think they are more grown-up and worldly than they actually are. Seeing this logic repeated by youth online is undeniable evidence of the grooming process playing out in direct connection with the MAP community. 

We also can’t discount the MAP community as a way that pedophiles and ephebophiles find each other. Many “testimonials” and bios of MAPs specify an age range to which the MAP is attracted to -- information that should be totally irrelevant to the MAP community’s supposed goals and aims. Yet, this information is central to how MAPs talk about themselves and introduce themselves to each other. Why, exactly, would it be important to emphasize the exact age range of children that a pedophile wants to harm, if not for purposes like finding child sexual abuse materials, meeting vulnerable youth of the target age, or bonding with other pedophiles over the targets of abusive and violent fantasies? 

Keep in mind that pedophiles and ephebophiles have long organized as a way to facilitate child abuse -- whether you’re looking at Catholic priests who established entire networks and programs to assist each other, the way Epstein found and and hung out with other ephebophiles and traffickers like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, or the way that sexual abusers forms networks and communities online to share and distribute child sexual abuse materials (“child porn”). Society often portrays pedophiles as lone, shadowy, isolated losers (not unlike the stereotype of the stranger rapist), but this directly contradicts how pedophiles operate and organize in society, particularly online. Failing to see MAPs using this community as a twisted and sadistic organizing technique is not only naive but dangerous when you realize the number of children who are actively engaging with this community on a daily basis. 

One final point here: another big red flag (on an island made entirely of reds flags) is how the MAP community continually couches itself through the goals of being “lawful,” “non-offending”, and not committing “crimes” against children. What stands out to me is the framing of harm against children through a totally legal/carceral framework, with the emphasis on avoiding any interaction with the criminal justice system as opposed to a focus on stopping any kind of harm to children. Important because pedophiles and ephebophiles make themselves deeply aware of the laws governing adult sexual contact with children, and will alter and shape their behavior to avoid being implicated in the legal context. Abusers will move to areas with less restrictive rules about age of consent, traffick children to areas with different laws, and groom children from a younger age only to commit the actual physical assault (as measured by legal standards) once the child has reached age of consent.

 Not to mention that many of the behaviors and manipulations of grooming aren’t considered illegal, even though they lay the stage for assault and rape and even more than that, are in and of themselves harmful in that they confuse children, isolate them, manipulate and distort a reasonable sense of boundaries, etc. (Not to mention how many of these MAPs post photos of children on their pages… )

Harm should be framed around morals and values, rather than laws which have generally been crafted with little regard for victims around a system that abuses and re-victimizes victims more than it ever protects them or even prosecutes offenders… laws which are suitably broad to allow a huge range of sexual offenses that aren’t considered illegal or prosecutable…  

Leaving justice up to a society that actually embraces and coddles pedophiles.

So, in summary, and because this is getting pretty long: I’m really sick of seeing MAPs being coddled by social media users, tech platforms, in the media, and even medical institutions -- the fact that this movement is embraced and platformed in this way further contradicts the idea that MAPs face stigma and are cast from society -- this is more of a projection or a fear/anxiety more than an actual reality for the vast majority of child and teen sexual abusers. People really seem to think that coddling abusers prevents sexual abuse -- or like MAPs, they disingenuously claim that that’s what they care about, when actually they are just reinforcing a society where child and teen sexual abuse is woefully common, operates in plain sight with no consequences… 

More thoughts on pedophiles and ephebophiles soon (I just was digging into the Epstein thing recently)... light and love to all survivors and those fighting these fucking predators… 

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