VirPed Panel: 07 October 2024

Oli asks:

What are your thoughts on some people wanting to include MAPs in the LGBTQ community?

While it’s true that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, I don’t think it belongs with LGBT. Pedophiles experience their feelings for children in very much the same way as teleiophiles experience their feelings for adults. There is often a romantic component as well as a sexual one, we don’t chose our feelings, we can’t change them etc, and particularly for exclusive pedophiles it defines our entire sexuality. What else would it be, apart from an orientation? Many pedophiles struggle with some of the things that LGBT folk struggle with: isolation, fear of rejection and/or getting outed, and much like the LGBT community, pedophiles benefit from acceptance and support from each other and from allies.

Despite those parallels, I don’t think it’s suitable for pedophiles to join LGBT. One of the biggest goals of that movement include legalizing same sex marriage/relationships, which is something that we can never ethically have no matter what. Joining LGBT will associate us too strongly with pro-contact views and won’t be productive in terms of what we want to achieve.

On some level, I think think that’s a shame, because at the end of the day we really are part of the sexuality rainbow. We’re just a bit different from the other parts in that we can’t ethically act on our attractions with people who we’re attracted to. It would be nice to see LGBT folk support us and show their understanding of our struggles, but at the same time I completely understand why they want nothing to do with us. LGBT folk have dealt with terrible stigma of being associated with pedophiles, and even today you hear accusations of grooming levelled at LGBT activists. It’s understandable why they want to distance themselves from us, as any pedophilia association would hurt their movement.

We have our fight, and they have theirs. Our goals overlap more than people think, but not enough for us to fully join forces.

LGBTQ+. Are we the plus or is it LGBTQP? Too many letters. No I don’t want to be part of it. Simply put, I don’t want to be part of any group that wants me about as much as the plague. I get it. A group that fought like hell for acceptance doesn’t want to lose that acceptance and become known as a bunch of kiddy diddlers, through guilt by association. . I don’t like it but I get it. Many say that since I’m solely attracted to boys, I’m gay. But I’m not. I have gay friends. We think very differently. and they often use language I don’t recognize.

I am a gay man, proud queer and pedophile, so my response comes from that perspective. My question is: Who is calling for us to be included in the LGBTQIA+? It isn’t the queer community and it certainly isn’t us. We are a sexual minority, but I don’t think any of us want to join the rainbow acronym. “Love is love” doesn’t and couldn’t apply to us in the same way.

I’ve seen this leveled against us in lots of online discourse. Because we have a pride flag, because we use the term “MAP”… we are trying to normalize pedophilia and infiltrate the queer rights movement. Lots of people have a pride flag. Disabled people have a pride flag. It doesn’t mean they want to be part of the LGBTQIA+ acronym. MAP is a term that researchers use for us that we find accurate as “pedophile” is too limited.

I may be part of the queer community but that’s in my identity as a gay man, not in my identity as a pedophile. I think that most of us who are queer and also pedophiles would agree.

More pedophiles are heterosexual and cisgender than otherwise so that about settles the question for me.

Sure, there’s an overlap, but as a whole group, pedophiles are not by definition LGBTQ+ nor on the same path as LGBTQ+ people.

Honestly, I don’t have a strong opinion. Other MAPs have strong feelings on this (usually, they don’t want to be included in LGBTQ+), but I am entirely uncommitted. I’d happily be a member of their community if they welcomed me, and I’d just as happily be a part of a separate thing. Most of my friends are queer teleiophiles even though I’m a cishet MAP, so I do get to enjoy the company of the queer community, and feel the warmth of people with a similar, yet different, story to mine.

Whatever happens, I’ll always be an ally to queer people. Humanity is stronger when it is united in its love of humanity.

I’m personally a cis gender heterosexual male attracted to women and girls, and I don’t want my sexuality to ever be considered OK to act upon. I have gay friends and I support them, but I don’t feel as though I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community in any way, nor do I want to be.

I don’t think it would benefit us in any way, better to keep things separate. Their community is already trying to represent too many different groups. In my view we benefit from having a clean slate. Adding LGBTQ culture war issues and infighting into the equation would just harm us.

There are two questions here, one a conceptual question and the other a political one.

Conceptually, we belong with LGB more than the “T” part does. L, G, B, and P are all about what class of people you are attracted to (T is not), and all include something other than the adult hetero norm. When people balk at calling pedophilia a “sexual orientation”, it’s close to the same question, and it’s LGBT folks who have the strongest objections. Though James Cantor, gay man and noted expert on pedophilia, tweeted that for LGBT to turn away pedophiles is a betrayal of the principles that got them their rights – and he got a lot of flak for it.

Politically, “T” belongs with LGB because it’s “unusual stuff about sexuality that we don’t think is beyond the pale”. (I read in a “Slate” article that in 2007 a bill protecting LGB might have passed the US Congress, but not one with “T” in it, and “the LGBT community” chose to have no bill at all rather than exclude the T. Though naturally there was some dissent among LGB.) So politically “P” does not belong because it is a sexuality that is way beyond the pale. I can’t think of any group that wants pedophiles for an ally. Even anti-contact pedophiles are in no position to indignantly demand our rights and be taken seriously.

As I see it, activist pedophiles are in the position of looking for ways to connect with people and get their understanding and sympathy in any way we can. I can see benefit to some private conversations with some LGBT individuals, but not any sort of agitation for inclusion. If some LGBT individual privately concludes that the only reason we’re excluded is political, I would call that progress.

I think we are on a separate path. And I am not sure we are wanted in the larger community.

I think our attraction is not functional. I am trying to be honest, not self-loathing. We cannot act out on our attractions physically in a virtuous way. That puts us in a different camp.

We would benefit from therapy and support as well as acceptance. We are also so much more closeted.

Life is good but life is hard.

I want to start by saying that almost nobody actually wants this. Most of the panic comes from a 2016 4chan troll campaign known as HeartProgress. The campaign was explicitly aimed at making the LGBTQ community look bad, and I have no idea why so many people, including LGBTQ people, continue to believe it’s a real movement.

In terms of the few people who do want this, I think they’re dumb.

2 seconds of research can tell you that almost no LGBTQ people support this. Any amount of time in MAP spaces can tell you that most MAPs feel the same way. If someone wants to help MAPs, they should advocate for something we actually want, like safe access to affordable mental health support.

We’re different communities with different needs and different approaches to advocacy. Stop trying to force us together. We’re support communities, not puzzle pieces.

I don’t see such inclusion as helpful for us or for LGBTQ+ people. Aside from the obvious fact that we would not be welcomed, we aren’t seeking any sort of “sexual rights” involving children. We simply don’t want to be conflated with child molesters, and we want to decrease the stigma surrounding our attractions. Even getting to the point of asking for non-discrimination laws related to our attractions is a long way off.

Personally I don’t think it belongs with the LGBT community. Least not if your anti contact. The messages are very different, with the LGBT community the idea is basically let them do what they wanna do it’s not your concern and their relationships are valid as anyone else’s. With non contact maps the message is that we shouldn’t have sex with children or have the relationships we’d in theory want but that people with our attractions aren’t all child molesters and predators and that we should be able to get support to live our best lives and not offend. I suppose if your pro contact then it’d make some sense to want that but we aren’t here so it doesn’t. Plus the ungodly amount of infighting with our own community and the existing LGBT community would not be remotely worth it.

From both a personal perspective as a pedophile and a practical perspective considering the objectives of each group, I believe conglomerating the LGBTQ+ community with people attracted to minors is counterproductive for both groups. The main purpose of anti contact pedophile communities existing is simply to support each other in keeping ourselves and children from harm and foster some sense of belonging and dignity in our lives. As relationships with those who we find ourselves attracted to will always be harmful, all we wish to achieve is to be able to live our lives without being treated as criminals. Myself and the overwhelming majority of minor attracted people I’ve spoken to do not wish to be jumbled in with LGBTQ+