A topic suggested by Kamil Beylant, possible reasons why some people are so unaccepting of the idea of a non offending map.
It's not really that surprising when a person who has never looked into the subject of pedophilia turns out to be a hater. Modern media offers extremely biased coverage, when pedophiles are mentioned only in context of fathers murdering serial rapists, celebrity scandals, and complaints about fashion for girls. But once explained the difference between a child molester and a pedophile, an attraction and an urge to rape, most people grow sympathetic. There is one category that doesn't, they can be called the true mapmisiacs (a very useful word), and they are very persistent in denying facts about minor attraction to justify their hate.
Their common points include: calling pedophilia a mental illness/fetish, insisting all child molesters are pedophiles, accusing the map community of “fueling urges”, denying existence of minor maps, and believing that stigma is beneficial for CSA prevention. Neither of these is true, and we had doctors, researchers, CSA preventing organizations speaking up against it.
This eagerness to be wrong looks very puzzling, but you can notice the same behavior in other spheres. For example, linking AIDS crisis to homosexuality – yes, it's true that a gay person used to have more chances to get infected than a straight one, because they weren't accustomed to using protection, but nowadays LGBT+ is not the biggest risk group, far from that. Some people, however, insist that HIV can spontaneously spawn in a gay person's body, and use it to excuse homophobia. Or, if we return closer to map discourse, the “stranger danger” myth and denial of the fact that most children are sexually abused by relatives and family friends, not strangers. This myth is used to call for stricter parental control and isolation of children, which endangers them more and deserves a separate post.
The words “stranger danger” hold the key to the explanation why this is happening. People like to pretend, for their own comfort, that the danger can come only from strangers. They want to think that there are inherent telling signs of someone who can or cannot abuse a child, so they could group people by these signs and feel safe. Pedophilia, unfortunately, seemed like an ideal candidate. And they hold onto their wrong ideas about what minor attraction is, not because they're exceptionally stupid, but because they're scared and they don't want to lose their illusion, because it would request from them more learning and more work on preventing CSA, if they want to keep feeling like they're good people.
This is all very sad to think about, but it also shows that they don't have any solid ground, and that they will disappear as time goes, and all we really need to focus on is educating those who are willing to listen and working on eliminating CSA.
