MAPocalypse

The "MAPocalypse" or in layman's terms, the normalization of pedophilia refers to a predicted rapid series of events bringing about critical mass for the acceptance of Minor Attracted People as a "valid" identity. Various prophecies have been made since roughly the 1990s - usually starting off among "moral majority" conservatives, sometimes infecting liberal-progressive and professional circles in the form of paranoia concerning supposed MAP > LGBT entryism, "pedophilia advocacy" in the sciences, and other strategies. These prophecies follow the pattern of long-standing fears centering on the "recruitment" of youths within the early Gay Movement.

The most commonly suggested time for this event is the 2020s, 2030s and following decades, in which MAPs are projected to become more visible in the mainstream media/public conscience, becoming a contentious topic in and of their own right. In some countries, parliamentarians occasionally support the right of minors to consent to sex, and to refuse it. Brazil and Peru are two South American countries in which there has been a largely unbroken general trend towards reducing the Age of Consent.

Predictions past and present

As the LGBT movement gained ground in the post-AIDS assimilationist struggles of the 80s and 90s, the right's focus moved away from recruitment of youth among the gay movement, to the threat of "pedophilia" - a "new evil" or "folk devil". This later infected the mainstream, as memories of LGBT activism's history with MAPs faded. Predictions of a new dawn for the "normalization of pedophilia" among American Conservatives increased markedly in velocity from the mid-late 10s, as Virtuous Pedophiles gained exposure in the liberal media and pedophile conspiracy theories ushered in the culture wars of the Trump Era:

• 1970s-90s: Various predictions from moral entrepreneurs such as Judith Reisman concerning the aims of the Kinsey Institute. "As early as 1977, author Judith A. Reisman says she learned of the existence of an "international academic pedophile movement" influenced by Kinsey's teachings."
• "In 1994, as gay freedom was becoming a mainstream cause, the head of the right-leaning Rutherford Institute claimed that "the logical implication of American acceptance of homosexuality is the acceptance of pedophilia as simply another form of 'sexual orientation.'""
• 1995: ""I started saying seven years ago [in 1995] that there was a movement to make pedophilia an alternative lifestyle, and my colleagues looked at me like I was crazy," said Mrs. Reeves, who founded MASA after discovering that a relative had been sexually abused. "Here we are seven years later and that is exactly what's happening.""
• 2002: "Some people view children as the next sexual frontier" (Stephanie Dallam, quoted in Washington Times)
• "In 2004, with gay marriage a central issue in the year's elections, the head of Liberty Counsel wrote that "Once the same-sex marriage barrier is broken, a wide range of sexual paraphilia rights are sure to follow, including, but not limited to, pedophilia.""
• 2011: "Normalizing the "last taboo" Pedophilia - sex between adults and children - is the goal of a conference in Baltimore" (Beliefnet)
• 2014: "Using the same tactics used by “gay” rights activists, pedophiles have begun to seek similar status arguing their desire for children is a sexual orientation no different than heterosexual or homosexuals."
• 2014: "Once considered taboo, psychologists are beginning to walk down the same path LGBT activists established more than 50 years ago, insisting that pedophilia is an inborn "sexual orientation," not a learned sexual behavior."
• 2015/6: "What’s going to happen with that is that ultimately things like bestiality is going to be approved and especially pedophilia,” [...] “Because like I said, how the progressives are attacking these issues in multiple ways. I really predict that in the next few years even pedophilia is going to be more and more accepted because two things are happening. One, we are saying any sexual urge is valid. So pedophilia, why is that any different than any other form of love? Love is love, right?" (Jenna Ellis - Conservative Policy figurehead)
• 2019: "Pedophilia: The Next Frontier for Leftist Acceptance Ideology" (American Spectator)
• 2020: "Q-Anon and other Trump-aligned movements serve as a perfect foil to begin turning universal moral opposition to abusing kids into another controlled culture war conflict the right is bound to lose." (National Justice - anti-Jewish publisher)
• 2023: "Everyone knows that pedophilia is the next deviant behavior the Left will seek to normalize. Everyone knows it’s coming. It’s the next progression from birth control to the sexual revolution to normalization of homosexuality to gay marriage to transgenderism. It’s pedophilia and then it’s bestiality after that."

Realization of the panic from 2020-2023

Numerous, social and mainstream media-driven controversies have taken place in 2021, 2022 and 2023 - owing to concerns about the "normalization" of Minor Attracted People. Early precedents such as the 1998-2001 Rind Report controversy, 2015 Salon articles had been seen, and more recent events detailed in grooming (including the massacre of 5 people) are also left out of our list. Instead, we focus on examples where "normalization" of MAPs or "pedophilia" was a predominant concern. These gathered pace following the 2018 and 2019 MAP Flag controversies, and exploded in 2022, when "Minor Attracted Person" began to trend well ahead of NAMBLA on most social media:

• Throughout the first half of 2020, social media was lit up with controversy surrounding the film The Trouble with Being Born, which depicts a man's relationship with a prepubescent android girl who resembles his missing daughter. Similar controversy had been seen the year before, concerning a "love has no age" Snapchat filter. Later in 2020, #CancelNetflix began to trend, in response to the movie Cuties, now considered a timeless masterpiece of pedophilia normalization "rated fresh" with 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, but slated on IMDb.
• In July 2021, San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus were involved in a gay-recruitment/grooming type controversy. Normalization of pedophilia was frequently invoked by their mainly conservative opponents. A further controversy in the UK concerned a council's recruitment of a man in a rainbow monkey fursuit with an erect prosthetic phallus, in an attempt to educate children at a public library.
• In late August 2021, Noah Berlatsky roused the ire of conservatives (Andy Ngo chiefly among them) and some liberals on social media, following his appointment as communications director at Prostasia Foundation.
• In November, 2021, Allyn Walker faced widespread social media and mainstream media outrage after participating in an interview with Prostasia, advocating for humane treatment for people with an attraction to minors, and using the term "Minor Attracted Person" to that effect.
• In January 2022, the media outlet USA Today was the subject of their own social media controversy, following an article many conservatives felt attempted to "justify pedophilia".
• In February, 2022, Stephen Kershnar attracted wide opprobrium on social media after appearing to defend minor-adult sex as not being inherently wrong outside a moral framework. Regressive-conservative Twitter influencer, LibsofTikTok was particularly important in amplifying this story, although it appears that her target was himself a libertarian.
• In April of 2022, David Finkelhor was involved in a similar LibsofTikTok-enabled social media controversy over comments made during a video forum the previous month.
• In June 2022, Nelson Maatman (a MAP Activist) was arrested in Mexico, leading to widespread media and social media coverage. NGOs such as Operation Underground Railroad began to interact with the MAP Movement.
• In August, 2022, Karl Andersson (a publisher and academic) was involved in a social media outrage with Twitter conservatives and radical feminists, surrounding a peer reviewed journal article, written for Qualitative Research. This article concerned the topic of Shotacon, or drawn images of boys in sexual situations.
• Almost simultaneously, and as documented in Minor Attracted Person, a controversy erupted surrounding a video made by Miranda Galbreath, a licensed Sex Therapist who was attempting to challenge the stigma on MAPs (and using the term herself).
• Also in August, Radical Conservative Feminists inspired a social media controversy centering on Virtuous Pedophiles and their newly-recruited social-media manager's claim to have been leaving written letters in UK libraries. This eventually led to the organization's banning from Twitter.
• In mid-September, 2022, as detailed in Minor Attracted Person, the Texas High School Teacher Amber Parker, went viral on social media after she was filmed appearing to defend the idea of "MAPs" (as opposed to pedophiles - see our Press Release on the subject). This incident was amplified on Twitter by Gays Against Groomers (a conservative radical feminist front group), TX Governor Greg Abbott and Matthew Kolken among others. The comments were said by students, parents, Parker's husband and a school administrator to have been taken out of context. She was later fired from her job.
• In mid-September, London's Newham Council was slated on social media for allowing a leaflet advertising a queer hangout event for 9-25 year olds.
• In late September, Spanish parliamentarian, Irene Montero stated that children "have the right to know that they can love or have sexual relations with whoever they want. Based, yes, on consent", leading to outcry on social media. An AP fact check straightened out... not much at all by establishing that "Montero’s comments make clear that she said unwanted sexual contact between children and adults amounts to violence".
• In early October, 2022, Jacob Breslow appeared to survive a social media and mainstream media firestorm over positions advocated in his academic works and his position as a trustee of Mermaids, a charity for transgender youth. This included his use of the term "Minor Attracted Person", and even caught the attention of J.K. Rowling.
• In late October, 2022, James Cantor was removed from the list of witnesses at a hearing on "gender-affirming care" for trans youth. The justification used (this time by liberals on Twitter) was his advocacy for pedophilia.
• If the previous controversies weren't enough, in late November 2022, Balenciaga (a fashion brand owned by Kering) were caught in a further such rumpus following adverts that featured a BDSM-gear-festooned teddy bear and a small child, along with allusions to the relaxation of child pornography laws.
• In December of that year, French cartoonist Bastien Vivès faced a petition of 100,000 signatures calling on the prestigious Angoulême International Comics Festival to revoke his invitation to participate the gathering. Among the criticisms were "displaying incestuous and pedophile images and scenes" and the promotion of "rape culture". The festival announced that it was forced to cancel his appearance, citing "physical threats" online against Vivès that could put both the cartoonist and festival goers at risk, as reported by Le Figaro. Much of the criticism was left-"progressive" slanted, focusing on the artist's supposedly reactionary background.
• In January 2023, Police Scotland and the European Union were hauled before the court of public opinion, after what appeared to be sympathetic use of the term "Minor Attracted Person" in official materials. Despite the "standard" nature of this outrage, the story, and response from Police Scotland were viewed around 10 million times on Twitter alone.
• A further controversy took place in Spain, concerning a TV series depicting an intergenerational relationship involving a 15-year-old girl. The Christian Lawyers Foundation insisted that the series be pulled.
• Throughout the preceding years, it has been a common taunt of Russian media and state officials, that "the west" is "normalizing pedophilia". In February 2023, President Vladimir Putin repeated these accusations in a rambling speech, one assumes, in a provocative attempt to force his opponents to defend initiatives such as the EU-funded 2PS project and B4U-ACT, that has at times received state funding.
• The Dutch Democratic Party (D66) and their youth wing, were embroiled in a further Feb 2023 controversy, when English-speaking social media users unearthed resolutions deemed to be sympathetic to "pedophiles".
• In March 2023, two students associated with the University of Chile (Leonardo Arce Vidal and '''Mauricio Quiroz Muñoz''') whose respective MA and BA theses problematized the figure of the pedophile and the notion of intrinsic harm in relation to age-disparate sex, were (along with their supervisors) subject to university investigation. The familiar right-wing twitter storm had preceded and provoked these investigations, also leading to condemnation by university officials and organizations which speak on behalf of minors/youth. The university both condemned the works and pointed out the works were "purely theoretical nature, which do not report intervention on human populations, and which, even taking into account how debatable their content turns out to be, met the requirements of the academic evaluation process".
• In the same month, conservative pundits attempted but failed to generate enough attention to scandalize historian Rachel Hope Cleves for using "intergenerational sex" in her treatment of Norman Douglas. Social media conservatives were outraged at clips from a book-launch interview that had been in the public domain for 3 years.
• April's controversy centered on the UN, following the publication of new legal principles problematizing the idea that adolescents are inherently unable to consent, including to sex. American conservatives reacted by circulating the theory that such opinions represent an attempt to "soften up" the public prior to the release of supposedly "damning" information concerning Jeffrey Epstein's high-profile visitors.
• Later in April, a Twitter user posted another MAP Flag concept, causing outrage on Alice Day. The event made the mainstream media and drew Elon Musk's condemnation.
• In early May 2023, the United Kingdom Royal Family member Prince Andrew, aged 63, was made the subject of multiple hostile dramatic documentaries shown on national television in the lead up to his older brother King Charles III's coronation. Prince Andrew was accused by Virginia Giuffre, of having sex with her when she was 17-years-old after she was brought (“trafficked”) to meet Andrew by Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre had filed a civil lawsuit over sexual assault in the State of New York, which was settled out of court in February 2022 in an agreement which admits no guilt on Andrew's part. In 2019, after Andrew spoke candidly about and refused to disavow his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein for BBC Newsnight, the ensuing media firestorm saw Andrew denying any wrongdoing and withdrawing from public roles in May 2020, with many of his military/royal titles being removed by the late Queen Elizabeth II in January 2022. This interview was used to openly mock Andrew on national television in the comedy special Prince Andrew: The Musical (Dec 2022), reviewed here,. Earlier in 2022, the TV network ITV aired Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile, with media scrutiny re-intensifying by May 2023 with the Channel 4 TV network aired the 2 episode series Andrew: The Problem Prince and comedian Frankie Boyle’s Farewell To The Monarchy which also disparages Andrew.
• In the same month, controversy arose around Hissam Hussein Dehaini, the Mayor of Araucaria, Brazil, aged 65, and a 16-year-old Teen beauty queen Kauane Rode Camargo, who proudly shared photos of their marriage online. Reportedly, Brazilian media is more concerned about the mayor's potential corruption than the couple's marriage, where 16 is the legal age for marriage with parental consent. The wedding took place 4 days after the bride turned 16, on Wednesday, the 12th of April, and the couple have publicly defended their relationship, as noted in news articles such as "16-year-old beauty queen defends marrying 65-year-old millionaire". As the article notes, the bride reportedly shared a photo to social media with the caption: "What matters, honestly... It's just that we don't care!" And the Mayor Dehaini, responding to attacks on their relationship, said "We are happy. She does me good, and I do her good, and together we are not doing anyone any harm." Although the Mayor Dehaini is a wealthy businessman, his livelihood was impacted after his political party disowned him following media scrutiny of his personal life. He has since announced his departure from the Citizenship Party.

Opinions among MAPs

Predictions of significant social change have ranged from 5-50 years or so. However, it is generally agreed that social are hinting at a "fourth moral panic" taking place following similar scares in the Victorian and Postwar eras and then the 70s onwards. The new panic, as we identified in 2021, appears to concern "normalization of pedophilia", and has snowballed since.

Softening of liberal opposition towards minor attraction

Since the late 00s, but particularly in the 20s, it has been observed that mainstream American Liberals are realizing child erotic symbolism and pedophile demonology can be used against them and their allies. The 2009 Hate Crimes Prevention Act is an often cited example in anti-pedophile conspiratorial circles. Democrats defeated an attempt by Republicans to exclude Pedophilia from the act. As Alcee Hastings famously put it:

This bill addresses our resolve to end violence based on prejudice and to guarantee that all Americans, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability or all of these ‘philias’ and fetishes and ‘isms’ that were put forward need not live in fear because of who they are. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule.

In 2023, Minnesota Democrats similarly pushed to have language excluding attraction to minors from anti discrimination laws altered.

The tone of mainstream and conservative media

The tone of conservative-identifying media is an important barometer, given that “liberal-progressive” corporations such as Google are arbiters of what is deemed to be acceptable conservatism. This control is exerted via algorithm changes and YouTube censorship for example. In gauging the tone of outlets such Glenn Beck’s YouTube-dependent TheBlaze network, we can see what Google deems to be the last bastion of acceptable conservatism in the Post-Trump era. In this case, when Beck’s (mainly very young) acolytes cover the familiar topic of trans children, minors' exposure to sexual content, MAPs, or any form of “degeneracy”, the tone tends to be either laughter, mocking or disbelief as opposed to the sharp moral/religious condemnation typical of the old "moral majority". This might indicate an openness in Silicon Valley towards the idea of immersing wider culture in sexual taboo topics. The result of this would be general desensitisation towards gay and trans politics, clearing the ground for MAPs to be used as the next contentious pawns in a binary culture war. The perpetuation of culture wars to divide and distract, is a tried and tested long-term strategy of establishments engaged in financial malpractice and corruption. Potential scandals such as the deliberate pursuit of inflationary policies, have the potential to unite both sides of the political spectrum against power elites, and thus need to be shut down with distractions.

MAPs' arguable progress in the "battle to prevent the battle"

By percolating into mainstream and social media, the politics and terminology of MAPs set forth in the mid-late 00s, appears to have achieved basic visibility in the late 10s and onward. Panic is visible inside the LGBTQ+ community, who are frantically informing one another not to engage with MAPs lest they attempt to become part of their wider umbrella group again. MAP terminology is now widely visible in academia, and established culture war hobbyhorses such as the trans issue are starting to look tired, or are otherwise stimulating hot button MAP/Youth-Rights-adjacent themes such as a child’s right to choose hormone blockers or gender transition surgery. At the same time, alternative-right trolls are pointing to the MAP topic as proof of moral relativism’s inevitable conclusion, and liberalism’s “next frontier”. Various alternative-right social media trolls have successfully adopted the strategy of goading liberals and SJWs to accept MAPs as the next persecuted minority – asserting that it would only be consistent with their long-held principles. We have observed in-situ, some alternative-right trolls who are more thoroughly MAP-literate than some MAPs themselves!

The coming years

So, in summary, social conservatives and regressive have for a long time predicted for MAPs, the same kind of discursive shift/visibility that took place around homosexuality in the postwar period. One possible implication of this theory, is that any publicity raising the awareness of MAPs (good or bad), might have a positive effect by accelerating this discursive breakout. For example, MAPs might benefit from posing as concerned citizens, distributing hysterical and implausible black propaganda leaflets and internet memes warning of MAP attempts to legitimize “child rape”. Similarly, they might benefit from having moles within the LGBTQ+ movement itself, circulating pro-MAP information from a purportedly pro-LGBTQ+ perspective, or simply asking peers for opinions on MAPs.

Alternative names

• P(a)edogeddon (probably coined in 2001 by the British satirist, Christopher Morris).