Many people believe many things about us, but most are wrong.Bly Rede is the co-director of Virtuous Pedophiles. Blog posts reflect his personal views, and are not statements from the organisation.
A thread about intuitive and common ideas that normal people have about non-offending or anti-contact MAPs, but which aren't usually true). If you only just heard about NOMAPs or ACMAPs, maybe start here.... (1) "MAPs who talk about their urges are more likely to act on them". This depends on how they talk about them and who they talk to. If we can encourage MAPs out of the company of people who might push them toward child porn or toward justifying contact, then kids are safer (2) "MAPs need therapy to stop them offending". Some do, most only need it to increase their confidence level that they need not, and will not offend. Everyone is different and the therapy should reflect an actual assessment of risk. (3) "Instead of indulging these thoughts, MAPs need to go get help to stop thinking about kids sexually". At the moment there is no firm evidence that MAPs can be "reprogrammed" to not be attracted to kids, any more than this can be done for others with 'normal' attractions. (4) "Giving MAPs a platform on twitter normalises the rape of kids". But anti-contact MAPs aren't interested in getting the 'right' to rape kids. We know that child abuse is a terrible thing, and want other MAPs to see this too. For this we need to be visible to other MAPs. (5) "A sexual fantasy about kids is a fantasy about the rape of kids". While it's true that sexual activity with a kid is ALWAYS rape, sexual fantasies can have different rules to the real world. They may be distressing to think about, but the fantasies do not hurt kids directly. (6) "Pedophilia is illegal! I'll report your tweets!" - Pedophilia (i.e. the attraction to kids) is not a crime anywhere. Thoughts are not crimes. It IS a crime to sexually assault a child or use child porn. But we don't do those things or support them. (7) "Talking about this will normalise pedophilia and embolden pro-contact pedophiles, who will offend" - In reality, pro-contact pedophiles were around for decades before the anti-contact pedophiles started speaking up. As with abuse itself, silence helps only the abusers. (8) "It's too big a risk to have you anti-contact MAPs around kids". But we have existed for long before you heard about us. It's only through us speaking up now that people even realise we've been here a long time, NOT offending (but keeping silent out of shame). Now we speak. (9) "You guys are NOT joining LGBTQI+!" No, we know that MAPS are not in the same boat as those folk (although some of us also fall into that category too). You likely won't see us on your Pride marches asking for the same rights. (10) "You cannot come on to twitter and take PRIDE in being attracted to children". What we are expressing is not pride. Maybe you can't have pride in something you never chose. But we are expressing a desire to escape shame, if we do nothing illegal and harm no children. The list of fallacies is longer than this, and these ideas are understandable when facing a new, previously silent category of people. The only way we can explain who we are is to put it in public, in words. That is the help we can give each other. That is where hope lies.
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| thread: are prevention programmes effective? |
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| thread: what doesn't harm kids? |
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| what made quora change its mind? |
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