Stigma removal service
All the despised groups should have euphemisms, all of them. Murderers should be re-branded as population controllers and rapists should be called admirers of women. Jo Bartosch at spiked:
Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Police Scotland were blasted for referring to those who abuse children as ‘minor-attracted people’, or ‘MAP’, in a report for a European Commission project.
As euphemisms go, that’s a pretty terrible one, because of course the issue isn’t attraction, it’s abuse. The issue with rapists isn’t attraction, it’s rape, and it works the same way with the rape or molestation of children.
After an online backlash, Police Scotland were quick to point out that the phrase ‘minor-attracted people’ was a quote from the EU’s proposals for the project, which was set up to tackle child abuse. In a statement, Police Scotland said that it had lobbied against the use of the term MAP at a meeting of European partners in September 2022.
Notably, MAP is the word preferred by groups who campaign to remove the ‘stigma’ associated with adults who want to sexually abuse children. It is a term often used by dangerous people who believe they have been victimised by a hostile society
See, some kinds of stigma exist for good reasons and should not be removed.
Who exactly advised the European Commission to adopt this kind of language remains a mystery, but there are several organisations that push it.
The US-based group B4U-ACT, which was founded by convicted child molester Michael Melsheimer, describes itself as helping professionals to ‘learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma and fear’.
Notice that it doesn’t describe itself as “helping professionals to ‘learn more about wanting to fuck minors’.” When in a tight spot always deploy the euphemisms.
B4U-ACT is not the only such group to have links to academics. California-based Prostasia, which advertises itself as a ‘child-protection organisation’, runs a ‘support club’ for ‘MAPs’. In its 2021 annual review, Prostasia says it acts ‘as a watchdog on extremism in the cause of child protection’ to address ‘the human-rights impacts of child-protection laws and policies’. Prostasia works with several universities, including Nottingham Trent in the UK.
Libertarianism run mad again – “extremism in the cause of child protection” is a real gem. Tucker Carlson crossed with Jimmy Savile.
There’s a legitimate purpose for groups of people who are tempted to abuse children, sexually or otherwise. Like other abstention groups like AA, NA, or Secular Sobriety, the purpose is to help addicts refrain from acting on desires or impulses. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the rationale for B4U-ACT’s “support groups” for “minor-attracted persons,” i.e., pedophiliacs.
‘Stigma’ is in general a boo-word, associated with attitudes like racism and sexism which mire their would-be justifiers in endless controversy. But the laws include the idea of ‘age of consent’ for good reason, based on the wide gulf of age, experience, and above all, power involved in adult-child relationships. The ‘paedophiles,’ child-molesters, perverts; call them what you will, have an interest in hiding that fact. But no smokescreen they try to set up is thick enough to cover them.
Better ten perverts get banged up for life than one innocent child’s life be ruined. (As I believe my own father’s was; though he never talked of it. He just manifested it in other ways.)
Omar: In my adulthood, I’ve had to come to grips with the idea that ethical noncognitivists are right. Most people really do just mean “yay this” and “boo that” when they say that this is good and that is bad. Any moral justifications offered are post hoc rationalizations of their nebulous, nascent intuitions. Hence the sense of right and wrong.
Many narrative tropes are built on this. My favorite (read: most loathed) is the hero who loses his emotions and therefore loses the ability to distinguish good from evil. This never made sense to me until I
gave up on humanityaccepted emotivism as a good description of normal moral “reasoning”.As a victim of a “MAP” (when I was six was the first time), I do not wish to see any removal of the stigma. If a person does not abuse another, they should be left alone, just like someone who goes into murderous rages should be left alone if no one is ever hurt by him.
That has its limitations, of course, because we need to act to protect potential victims BEFORE they abuse another person, whether child or adult. Mr. Murderous Rage guy might need to be watched for the good of those around him; Mr. MAP might need to be watched for the good of those around him. Therapy might not be a bad idea, either.
I hate the movement to pretend that sexual abuse of children isn’t really abuse if they consent, and that it doesn’t harm the child unless we convince them it does. That is a disgusting point of view, and I tend to view anyone who holds it with a measure of supicious wariness appropriate for the situation.
I’m on board with de-stagmatising attraction… for those that do not act on the attraction and have not been convicted of abuse. So, not the ones populating the crime statistics.
Nullius @#3:
My own view is that morality can only rest on the (possibly distinctly human) ability to empathise; to project oneself into the shoes of another. Children are commonly asked: “how would you feel if someone did that to you?”
Without empathy, we all take up residence in an Ayn Randist world of ‘everyone for theirself and the Devil take the hindmost.’
The first known publication of what became known as The Golden Rule that I am aware of came from Confucius, circa 550 BCE, and was in the (arguably superior) negative form of “do not do to others what you would not have others do to you.” But by the time it had made its way down the Great Silk Road to Palestine and became known to Yeshua bar Joseph (aka Jesus Christ) it had been converted to the (arguably inferior) positive form of “do unto others what you would have others do to you.”
It makes civilisation as we know it possible, even if it is beyond the Genghis Khans of the world. My observations of animals both in the wild and ‘domesticated’ lead me to the conclusion that they are ever on guard (as were the Japanese samurai) and ever-ready to move themselves upwards in their social pecking-order, inevitably involving the descent therein of their rivals.
I’m not, in this case. There’s no way to reliably tell the two groups apart, and no way to tell if/when someone who has not acted on the attraction, will. I don’t see anything to be gained from normalizing this sort of attraction that would outweigh the potential costs of doing so.
@Nullius in Verba
#3
But what are the facts of ethics that one could cognize in the first place?
We provide anger management classes and counseling for people who feel they might lose control and kill someone. We don’t confuse potential murderers with actual murderers. We don’t normalize these murderous feelings, nor should we, but we nonetheless don’t confuse desire with action.
There are two separate demands being confused in regard to the “MAP” term: not confusing desire with action, and normalizing the desire. I’d be in favor of the first but not the second.