Mu is an international organization representing MAPs around the world.

A recent survey of various MAP communities revealed a number of key concerns. One of the biggest issues was the harm to young people as an indirect consequence of MAP hysteria. Let's take a quick look at some of the ways that MAP hysteria can harm young people.

Mentors run away scared

There are many children in need of mentors, who may or may not be MAPs. As we discussed in our press release about MAP misunderstandings, most MAPs feel extreme levels of emotional attraction and empathy for young people, and enjoy platonic relationships without any expectation of them becoming sexual. These platonic relationships can be highly beneficial for the younger person, who is often in need of a caring older male (or female) figure in their lives.

There are also many non-MAP adults who would like to mentor youth. This could be due to the challenges they faced as young people themselves. However, when the hysteria is as pronounced as we see in English-speaking countries today, the few people motivated enough to take the risk are ironically more likely to be MAPs. Regardless of the older person's sexual orientation, hysteria over platonic adult-child relationships is harmful to the young people who need support.

Platonic adult-minor relationships should always be accepted, and children properly educated on how to get help if an adult makes them uncomfortable.

Let's avoid self-fulfilling prophecies

Our survey revealed that the barrage of extremely hateful commentary has a devastating impact on the mental health of many MAPs, even when they have not been publicly identified as MAPs. The extreme hatred, of which MAPs are very much aware, makes a lot of MAPs feel incredibly isolated, completely excluded and detached from normal society. Although the majority of MAPs are able to internalize this, by not hurting others but nonetheless suffering from debilitating depression, we are concerned that a small number of MAPs are more likely to engage in harmful behavior if they are driven underground and left feeling like they have nothing to lose. If you tell a large group of people that they are evil monsters with only one possible destiny, and bully them relentlessly so that they feel isolated and vulnerable, it is inevitable that some will believe it and act accordingly. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can even lead to violent extremism in an exceptionally small number of cases.

Distinctions and youth agency

Mu is not an age of consent abolitionist organization like NAMBLA, but we do think there are distinctions between the various kinds of criminalized relationships. Our survey participants expressed concern about the issue of statutory crimes being conflated with acts of violence, which reduces much-needed focus on sexually violent behavior (often committed by situational offenders rather than MAPs). Courts and law enforcement authorities have finite resources, and many MAPs think this should be focused on those offenders who are actually hurting children.

Another issue raised by some respondents was that of youth agency. Although this concern is almost certainly not entirely selfless, it's also quite justified. Teenagers are frequently attracted to young adults, and may feel limited by prohibitions on relationships with them. Even worse, relationships between two teenagers of the same or similar ages are criminalized in many countries, often with more severe consequences for the male partner. Although some jurisdictions provide close-in-age exemptions, many do not.

Two of Mu's authors proposed a legislative solution that gives teenagers a stronger voice in deciding whether or not an older partner is prosecuted.

Freedom to roam

One major consequence of MAP hysteria, and of paranoia over safety in general, is that of children losing their freedom to roam. Even though young people are more likely to be sexually abused by a relative or close family friend, and despite the fact that getting hurt in a traffic accident is more likely than being abducted by a stranger, the hysteria over 'evil MAPs' has robbed children of a childhood in which they are free to roam and explore. This was not discussed much by our survey respondents, but it is something that many MAPs find quite depressing, despite the vast majority of our community having absolutely no interest in going out in a fit of madness and abducting a child.

Reporting fears

Some of our survey respondents raised the issue of young people feeling hesitant to report crimes. As a result, we reviewed a number of resources discussing the problem.

Our research indicated that many victims of sexual abuse seemingly felt the stigma surrounding age-disparate relationships applied to them as victims, not only to perpetrators of sexual violence. Stigma which is leveled at MAPs (often conflating them with sexually violent offenders) is felt by young people who were engaged in violent and even non-violent AMSC. This dissuades young people from reporting.

Many young people who wanted to make a report were also apparently afraid of what would happen to the adult, having some awareness of the extremity of sentencing in countries like the US.

If minor-attraction and related matters could be dealt with rationally, without extreme hysteria, it would be easier for victims of actual abuse to come forward.

Better protection of young MAPs

Our survey revealed that many MAPs become aware of their sexual orientation while still minors themselves. As a very rough average, the age of 16 is perhaps most common. Respondents to our survey reported struggling massively with the extremely hostile messaging, including suggestions that they were equivalent to or worse than rapists, sub-human monsters, deserved to die, or should actively seek to kill themselves. It's bad enough for adult MAPs to be bombarded with such abuse, but even worse for a teenage MAP who is still discovering their identity and place in the world.

Unfortunately, services like Twitter and Bluesky - which have been used by teenage MAPs in search of their identity - actively support violent and threatening messages against these young people. Meanwhile, they suspend accounts that do nothing more than clarifying a distinction between MAP and child molester, offer peer support, help MAPs to access mental health services, or actively discourage offending.

Why preserve ignorance?

Many people are desperate to identify MAPs in the misguided belief that doing so will keep children safe. However, the deplatforming of MAPs on social media, and the refusal of mainstream media to acknowledge MAP issues, merely preserves ignorance that keeps the public in the dark. Instead of learning about MAPs firsthand, and about how to detect those MAPs that actually may pose a risk to children, parents are forced to rely on the poor and inaccurate testimony published by those who do not truly understand us. MAPs would very much like to engage in open and honest dialog with the public, but when our social media accounts are banned on sight and our comments to the press are ignored, it is extremely hard to do so.

Conclusion

Young people are not protected by hysteria over MAPs, nor censorship. Society bombards young MAPs with the message that their only future is to become a child rapist, and scares away well-meaning mentors (including 'normal' men) who could be making children's lives much better. This simplistic and short-sighted approach only deters victims of sexual abuse from reporting their abuser, and keeps parents from knowledge they could use to protect their children. The 'MAPs as the enemy' model has to end.

Please feel free to discuss this article in our forum thread.

Appendix: Summary of survey findings

The key issues for our surveyed MAPs were those of misunderstanding and isolation from other members of society. Respondents were troubled by the conflation of attraction with action, and particularly upset about the belief that they were sadistic monsters who wanted to brutally assault screaming children. They explained that even their fantasies were non-violent in nature, and felt this was not well understood.

Reactions to coming out were generally more positive than we expected. Family members tended to react better than friends, and reactions to coming out as a boylover were overall more positive than reactions to coming out as a girllover. Many participants reported that while family and friends accepted them, their sexual orientation was rarely a topic of discussion.

Although being unable to relieve their sexual feelings was a problem for many participants, it was not the most serious problem. MAPs reported feeling exceptional empathy toward young people, believing they had a unique emotional connection with children that went beyond their sexual feelings. They felt they were unable to satisfy these emotional feelings due to the stigma of adult-child platonic relationships and the presumption that sexual abuse would be inevitable.

Getting 'caught out' in minor ways, such as someone picking up on their sexual interest in children, was a common traumatic experience for MAPs. It is clearly very difficult to perfectly hide such feelings for children. Reactions generally did not involve violence or police complaints, but did result in the breakdown of relationships with adult or child friends. Many MAPs reported their most traumatic experience to be the neverending nightmare of simply living among the barrage of hateful messaging. Of course, for those who experienced being arrested, this was their worst experience.

The constant hateful messaging also has negative effects on family and friends, as well as the wider community. It causes MAPs to be insecure in their relationships and not trust others, which may be confusing and hurtful to those who are unaware of the reason. For those who do know, especially close family members, there is often a significant fear of the consequences of the MAP being outed, potentially resulting in guilt by association.

Respondents raised a plethora of concerns about how MAP hysteria might affect children. These included the risk constant extreme messaging driving MAPs insane and thinking they must inevitably become monsters, the danger of the relentless hunt pushing MAPs underground, the conflation of violent and non-violent actions due to all AMSC being labeled 'child rape', minors being afraid to report actual abusers due to the fear of consequences for themselves and the abuser, excessive limitations on youth sexual agency, constraints on platonic mentoring relationships and adult-child interaction in general, and the damage caused to those who realize they are MAPs during their formative teenage years.

In terms of change that MAPs hope to see in the future, the focus was primarily on awareness and understanding. Reforming Age of Consent laws and attitudes toward AMSC were discussed, but they were secondary to participants' desires to not be treated as evil monsters. Some people advocating AMSC-related reform predicated their demands on the basis that such changes are needed because the public is often incapable of drawing a distinction between attraction and action, and between violent and non-violent AMSC. Listening to the voices of young people was an important concern for some of our respondents, who felt that it was wrong for only adults to be speaking about an issue that affected the agency of youth.

Many participants saw positives in their attraction to children. Notably, they felt they had a gift for connection with children, and wouldn't want to lose this. Others discussed a greater tolerance for other marginalized groups, and a more open-minded perspective on issues in general.

Overall, the picture is one of MAPs suffering immensely from stigma, isolation and hatred. Legal prohibitions were a concern, but being unable to maintain a normal social life and experience platonic relationships with children were more serious problems. For representatives of the MAP community, and our allies, resolving these issues should be a key focus going forward.

Published by The Mu Committee