The following is a guest article from a member of Mu's MAP Forum. Mu is always looking for content from MAPs with a wide range of views to host as guest blogs. Hosting does not imply endorsement, and the opinions expressed here are not necessarily agreed upon by all members of Mu.

Written by Batmanthecute, and copy edited by Mu while preserving the author's stream-of-consciousness style.

Introduction

I recently saw a comment on a post that triggered a train of thought. The comment said, "I'm starting to believe that mankind needs someone to hate, which allows them to focus all of their internal self-hate on others. We seem to fill this need for them, so in time we become our own worst enemy (which delights others to no end)." I've heard a lot of MAPs make this argument. On a podcast called Pedologues, participants argued that eighty years ago, society's punching bag was people of color. Then in the 70's, it was homosexuals. In the 2000's, it was transsexuals. Now it's MAPs. Podcasts like Chart O'Graph, Map The World - and I could be wrong, but I think MAPs IRL - made the same argument.

Smoke, fire, and mirrors

My friend and I used to say that stereotypes don't come from nowhere, that some of them are rooted in truth, such as the stereotype that "Canadians are polite". What I'm saying is that one could argue MAPs didn't get their reputation from thin air. The thousands of kids who go missing every year are a contributing factor. Child trafficking is a factor. Shows like To Catch a Predator are a factor—especially episodes where the guy brings rope and duct tape. Humans are designed to categorize. That's how we make sense of the world for good and bad. Fire hurts you, so you stay away from it. Angry people are prone to violence, so you keep your distance. If all you've ever seen is the negative side of inner-city life, then you're going to think all black people are just that way. That's just how people work.

In reality, humans are too complex to put in a box. However, if the world only sees the negative and ugly side of MAPs, can you blame them for hating us? Especially when men like R Kelly are caught urinating on girls while chaining them up in a basement, or Jeffrey Epstein is found to be offering teenagers to his friends like party favors. Elvis Presley cheated on and abused Priscilla, and Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. Dan Schneider was emotionally abusive towards his staff of kids, and Jimmy Savile was allegedly a serial rapist. Is society's perception of us based on "man's need to have a group to be a scapegoat", or is there some truth to why they hate us? We've been categorized as villains because many of our 'representatives' have been pretty bad people. The only celebrated MAPs from my understanding are characters such as 'No Face' from the animation Spirited Away, or American poet and writer Alan Ginsberg, but that 'take' does depend on your views on statutory relations. It'd be nice if highly respected public figures who do not have a criminal record came forward to show that there are good MAPs who don't want to kill children and leave them in a ditch, but that's not going to happen due to the extreme stigma and assumption of criminality among non-offenders. Therefore, how do we differentiate between unjust stigmatization and justified societal protection?

MAPs as the scapegoats for 'degeneracy'

It feels bad to say it, but a lot of moral hysteria from the past has always been rooted in pedophilia. There's a PSA from the 1960's warning the general public of homosexuals, called 'Boys Beware'. You can find it on YouTube. It's about homosexual men luring high school boys, and it focuses entirely on the seduction of underage boys. In the early 1900s, it was taught to the general public that African Americans are prone to rape and molest children. This sparked the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, the association between cannabis and criminal behavior, including extreme and false claims that it causes people to commit sexual violence against children, can be traced back to early 20th-century propaganda. This belief wasn’t rooted in fact, but rather in deliberate misinformation and racial prejudice. During prohibition, authorities justified criminalizing alcohol by arguing that drinking led fathers to make sexual advances on their children. The Nazis propagated the idea that Jews were sexual predators, including framing them as pedophiles, as part of their broader campaign to dehumanize and demonize Jewish people. This tactic was a key element of their antisemitic propaganda, and served to justify the persecution of Jews by portraying them as dangerous to women and children. The Salem Witch Trials were rooted in fears of children being abducted.

In Modern America, the main argument against trans people using women's restrooms is that they could be registered sex offenders targeting little girls. A lot of Christians argue that one of the main reasons why Christianity has experienced a decline is the scandal of 'pedophile priests'. So many people are against immigration because it's preached that Mexican and Muslim people have a CSA problem that they will inevitably import. This fear is amplified by the depressing reality of human trafficking across the Mexican border. The point I'm trying to make is that MAPs have always been villainized, and have long been exploited to exercise control over other marginalized groups.

Here's the thing about the argument that mankind needs a group to hate; it is often associated with the concept of the "scapegoat mechanism" and can be linked to ideas from a multitude of disciplines including sociology, psychology, and anthropology. The theory suggests that societies perpetually seek out a marginalized group to blame for their problems, maintaining social cohesion and channeling collective anxieties or frustrations onto an "other." French philosopher and anthropologist René Girard proposed that human societies use scapegoating as a way to resolve social tensions. According to Girard, societies project their conflicts onto a single individual or group, blaming them for the purpose of restoring harmony. The chosen scapegoat is often powerless or outside the dominant group. In-group and out-group dynamics, rooted in evolutionary psychology, explain the tendency to define an "us" by creating a "them." This mechanism strengthens group identity by fostering hostility toward an external group. Such dynamics are evident in various forms of prejudice, including racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Critical theorists argue that power structures perpetuate the marginalization of groups to maintain the status quo. By defining certain groups as deviant or dangerous, dominant systems can justify inequality and control. This sociological perspective highlights how society constructs deviant identities. Labeling theory suggests that once a group is marked as "other," it is systematically excluded or demonized, often becoming a focus of societal hatred. This cyclical pattern reflects a broader human tendency to externalize blame for internal issues, often in ways that perpetuate suffering for marginalized groups.

The normality of MAPs

So are MAPs the victim or is the fear justified? In all of my comments about other groups being targeted, fear was a tool used to justify prejudice against them. The difference between those groups and MAPs is that it's believed anybody who has a pedophilic sexual orientation is an inherent danger to children. There may be some stereotypes against MAPs that are rooted in truth, but I haven't experienced them. Just like how normal heterosexual men don't think about sex all the time but will think "damn" if they see an attractive woman at Walmart, I occasionally do that as well when I see an attractive minor. There's the sex addict type of guy in like Charlie Sheen in Two And a Half Men, Barney in How I Met Your Mother, and Quagmire in Family Guy, who constantly think about having sex with women. Likewise, there are probably some MAPs for whom sex with kids is an every-second thought. However, just like how most men don't find EVERY woman attractive, I don't want to have sex with every minor I come across. The other day, I was walking home when the local middle school track team was doing laps through neighborhoods. As they passed by me, I didn't find any of them attractive. I wasn't paying much attention, but still. I don't know if it's because I'm predominantly attracted to adults, but based on what the exclusive MAPs I've met have told me, none of us have this ticking time bomb problem. I'm not saying this to argue that MAPs are exactly the same as normal people, but in most ways we really are. There are different types of MAPs just like there are different types of everyone else. I used to think "bullshit" when I heard the words 'asexual pedophile', but the more that I think about it, the more I remember what I heard about asexuals in my youth; that asexuals are not sexually attracted to anyone, but can be emotionally attracted to and love someone. Can a pedophile be attracted to a kid without sex being involved? Can they just fall in love with the kid him/herself? It just hit me that it could happen.

MAPs are not sadistic

Adult women face higher overall rates of sexual violence than children, largely due to their greater societal exposure. Extreme child-related crimes, such as child abduction cases that involve rape and murder, are less frequent but tend to garner more public attention due to the victim's age and vulnerability. More women are likely abducted for rape and murder overall, given their higher societal exposure and the broader context in which such crimes occur. However, crimes against children tend to evoke more visceral reactions and public attention, potentially skewing perceptions of frequency.

The FBI's studies on sexual offenders and serial killers indicate that the vast majority of pedophiles do not abduct, rape, or kill children. Estimates suggest that less than 1% of individuals with pedophilic inclinations engage in abduction, sexual assault, and murder. Do heterosexual men suffer from the stereotype that they abduct, rape, and kill? No. But it's believed that pedophiles do so because that's the only representation that we get. If Americans knew how many of us exist, they would never stop shitting their pants. But we aren't all sexual deviants. I don't want to invite a young girl over to get her to make out with me. I don't want to take a middle school girl's virginity. I don't want to ask a young girl for nudes so I can spread them around the internet. And I especially don't want to rip off a young girl's clothes to destroy her life for personal gain. I'm not the sadistic sexual deviant that the world thinks I am when they hear the word 'pedophile'. I love the warm feeling I get in my chest when I help people. I loved putting a bouquet of roses on my eighty-year-old neighbor's doorstep for her birthday. I love helping people get out of a sticky situation; for example, helping to care for a neighbor who was suffering from elder abuse at the hands of his adult son. I love being kind and respectful and considerate and taking care of people. I know it might sound selfish to say this, but it makes me feel happy when I see someone is doing well because of me. I used to have Mormon missionaries over for Christmas every year and I'd buy them their favorite cake or pie, or whatever was their favorite holiday treat from home. The smiles on their faces meant everything to me. I love helping people, but the moment they'd find out about my MAP identity, it was like I was a completely different person. They'd scold me as their noses scrunched at the very sight of me. Now they didn't want to work with me. Now the missionaries couldn't wait to leave. Every kind gesture had some kind of absurd hidden 'agenda', and every word had a forced smile. It didn't matter that I got their electricity turned on, all that mattered was that I was a sexual deviant in their eyes.

Conclusion

I'm saying all this because I'm unsure about whether it's justified to hate us. You can't blame someone for hating you if all they've been taught is that people like you are dangerous. But how can we get help if some doctor won't even meet with us to get chemically castrated? I mean you could take out a loan of thirty grand to cover the surgery without ever even googling a picture involving minors, and still, once someone finds out about your sexual orientation, you're dead to them. Is it justified to cast us out of society instead of making it socially acceptable to come forward? Motivate us to get help? All I know is sometimes... I don't want to be a pedophile.