As a break from Ewok-taming, I now want to tweet a few summary points from the recent debates, which being challenged has helped me clarify...
1. Some people (me included) are anti-contact MAPs. We did not choose to be attracted to minors, and we have gradually come to realise we therefore don't have to feel shame that we have this attraction. We can't change it, we prefer not to live under a rock.
2. Other MAPs (often younger ones) are only just discovering their attractions. They have good intentions but they hear the daily lie "pedophiles are ticking time-bombs; it's only a matter of time before you offend" and they are terrified it might apply to them.
3. These MAPs feel both stigmatised for what they are and advantaged if they can keep it a secret. They decide it's too dangerous to talk to other people about it, to ask for help or sometimes even to think about it too much. They have to work on this entirely alone.
4. Where does a person who can't talk to other people turn? To the internet. At this point there are three messages they can hear: (a) you're evil; kill yourself (b) society is wrong and touching kids is OK or, now, (c) you're not evil BUT touching kids is not OK.
5. If they listen to message (a) they're going to have a terrible life, perhaps harm themself, which may affect the lives of other people around them. If they listen to (b) they could hurt a child or children. These are both the wrong answer to this issue.
6. They need to be helped to find what they need to live a valued, law-abiding life, whether that's professional or peer support or resources or moral friends. They need it quickly too and without too many conditions. They don't need reporting if they've committed no crime.
7. Now for a tricky part. While the attraction to minors is wholly involuntary, dealing with it day to day involves voluntary choices, which are not easy to make...
7a. The first and easiest decision is to choose never to harm a child and to accept that consent is impossible. Every anti-contact MAP accepts this as the most basic part of being anti-contact.
7b. A second and much more difficult choice is whether to tell non-MAPs in your life that you have these feelings. With society as it is, there is no right answer to this. Occasionally it might be a good idea but it's really hard to predict the consequences.
7c. A third choice is what to do with the feelings inside your own head. Will you fantasise about minors (which hurts nobody) or try to ignore or suppress the feelings. Again, there's no one right answer to this one for everyone (I say: no harm, no foul).
8. In debating the various choices with yourself and others you're going to think a lot about what MAPs are most like. Are we like gay people? Like kleptomaniacs? People with an illness? People with a genetic condition? People in such-and-such victimised group or another?
9. In reality, we might be a bit like some of those things but never exactly like any of them. Ultimately, minor attraction is most like minor attraction. It is unique and calls for a unique response.
10. That response therefore has to be based on the facts of minor attraction. (a) It's unchosen (b) currently uncureable (c) includes thoughts which harm nobody and (d) need not involve actions which do harm children.
11. That last point is where all our attention should go. If our efforts to prevent abuse by MAPs fail, that is the point that will have gone wrong. In other words, getting upset and angry that pedophiles have sexual fantasies about kids is a gigantic, irrational distraction
12. Yes, get upset that abuse happens, but understand the simple fact that not all abusers are MAPs and not all MAPs are abusers, nor destined to be abusers. THEN we can work out how we prevent potential abuse by the MAPs we can reach.
13. And in the meantime, don't ban us (the convinced anti-contact MAPs) from twitter, don't shut us down. Let us do what we can do in a society that mostly doesn't want to hear about this aspect of the problem. And let @StopSO_UK @virpeds and others help us.
You can follow @BlyRede.
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