Collaborated on by MAP Rights Forum and Katie Cruz last year, this recent framework for MAP Rights states:

• Build the MAP community, including reaching MAPs who are unaware of the community.
• Achieve protected class status.
• Access to compassionate, empathetic mental healthcare.
• Access to legal services.
• Remove “pedophilic disorder” from the DSM and ICD.
• Social justice – differentiating between rape/assault/coercion/violent crimes and statutory crimes.
• Social justice for minor MAPs, and those close in age.
• Ban conversion therapy.
• Meet the physiological needs of MAPs facing injustice/discrimination.
• High-quality factual MAP media for public consumption.
• Continued honest research into the various aspects of minor-attraction.
• Improved sex education that also talks about minor attractions.
• Legalization of all fictional sexual outlets, including loli/shota and dolls.
• Social Justice – reform the sex offender registry.
• Combat false accusations, doxing, and myths of stranger danger.
• Defeat the stigma
• A credible organization to speak on and represent these goals to the public.

The Simple List © 2023 by The MAP Community is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0

The goal of the Simple List is to give the MAP community an easy-to-read, communicate, and understand platform to work towards, without being divisive along contact lines. If all major MAP spaces and organizations ratify this, it would make the community stronger, and give us numbers we can reference when engaging in activism campaigns. If you are part of a MAP space or organization that hasn’t ratified this, let them know that you support The Simple List.

This, being a list based on objectives rather than principles, is somewhat larger than Mu's own framework.

At first glance, these objectives look agreeable, and align roughly with ours. For example, if we can't be seen to practice good ethics and encourage civil discourse within our own community, then who are we to educate the public? Perhaps, to this end, unionization of major Fediverse server admins might be a good first step.

Mu's present three-person founding committee has agreed to vote on ratifying The Simple List for its own use at our meeting in 2025, with the following preliminary comments.

Brian Ribbon (Strategist):

The content of the Simple List is fine, as long as it's not to be treated as an exhaustive list that inhibits community discussion of controversial issues such as the reform of attitudes and laws connected to AMSC and PIM.

I expect groups using The Simple List as their foundation to be ultra-calm and collected, focused on being agreeable to everyone. There is a need for this. However, there is also a need for a more firebrand approach in drawing attention to the cause, and I think Mu will better support activists of that character even if the personal statements of committee members are somewhat restrained.

I suggest entering into discussions with the authors of The Simple List about mutual ratification of principles. It would be good to network and support each other, as long as it's a two-way street where neither hinders the other. We need to make sure that they are willing to express support for us even if our activists are posting ragebait on social media or publicly expressing opinions on issues that they are unwilling to openly discuss.

Jim Burton (Treasurer):

I can agree with most of the framework, especially the need for equal treatment under the law. As a socially libertarian MAP supporter, concepts such as "protected class" do sit very uncomfortably with me. But it's true that if these rules apply to other minorities, we must campaign for them to apply to MAPs or no one at all.

The language "close in age", I would deem unfortunate, since it appears to play to the already established concept of Romeo and Juliet laws. Such laws perpetuate the dumb idea that informed consent can actually become a possibility in the presence of less information; in other words, the power-imbalance/abuse dogma of normative age-grading.

Lastly, I agree that coercive conversion therapy has to be excluded from the carceral system. But having successfully expanded my age-of-attraction (under my own guidance) I am uncomfortable with the idea of a total ban. We need to be aware of the limitations - for example, praying the gay away is for all we know impossible, and cowboy therapists will always seek to take advantage of the idea. But it does appear to me there are possibilities for some MAPs with a limited AoA to broaden this considerably, even in adulthood. This could make their lives a lot easier.

Percy Shelley (Communications Officer):

One thing the MAP community has lacked for a long time is a strong sense of unity. For first wave internet communities it was the divide between BLs and GLs with different spaces based on gender preference. The second wave led to the divide between pro-choice and anti-contact MAPs, with anti-contact spaces being particularly exclusive. Now we are at the dawn of the third wave and my hope is that we can start to reach out with an open mind and a spirit of generosity to others and support them in their efforts, even where what they are doing seems ineffective or strange to us.

The Simple List was made in a similar spirit- to act as a shared list of baseline goals for organizations to adopt as part of a shared vision for a brighter MAP future. In that respect I support it wholeheartedly. That isn't to say I have no concerns with the wording or even some of the issues put forward. I also think some very important goals are missing, such as abolishing mandatory reporting by therapists. Yet, my own opinions are less important than unity. I want Mu to work with other groups and other groups to work with Mu.

There are always going to be differences, either in opinion on in approach. Mu's forum, while steering well clear of illegal content, plans on being light on censorship. That leads to conflict. Yet conflict need not be a bad thing so long as we try to understand the place the people we are talking to come from. That is why I support ratifying The Simple List- not because I think it comprehensively captures my every aspiration for MAPs, but we because ratifying it shows that despite our differences, we stand together.

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