Minor attracted community

Part of NewgonWiki's series on minor-attracted identities
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Category: Minor-attracted people
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The minor-attracted community is a term that can be applied to a loose affiliation of individuals - mainly MAPs and supporters/allies. Presently, the community exists almost exclusively online, however, real-life friendships are known to exist, as do some membership organizations and support groups. Some organizations (mainly homosexual pedophiles and pederasts) had limited success in the period spanning from the mid-70s to the early 90s - maintaining contact by way of mailing lists and taking part in Gay Pride events/larger LGBT organizations.

The websites the community currently uses are generally small webforums and social networks, plus a few peer groups on larger platforms. The last few years has seen considerable diversification, for example - the use of decentralized social networking. The more established of these online communities tend to go under banners such as boylove and girllove, with others remaining generic. In some cases, relationships forged through these websites have lead to real-life contacts, and even larger scale meetings and events (see IBLD or Ipce, attracting 100+ and around 10 attendees respectively), although such contact has arguably declined over the last two decades. Because of the intense persecution of MAPs and the greater anonymity offered by the Internet, many of them feeling more comfortable finding friends and confidants online than in real life. As such, the online community has grown slowly since around 1997, with sites such as BoyChat establishing themselves as important meeting places.

Internet

Message boards

One of the most popular ways to participate in this online community is through message boards (also known as Bulletin Board System-style, or BBS-style, forums). These are websites (for example, BoyChat, GirlChat and Visions of Alice) in which posters write messages to one another. The messages remain available for long periods of time while other posters read and respond to them. These old-fashioned communities tend to have older users, more freedom of speech, less attention to rules of engagement and the users are often pro-contact in some way. Virped is one exception to that rule.

Fediverse

Decentralized social platforms such as Mastodon and Pleroma have seen very impressive uptake among MAPs, who communicate on shared servers. Participants in decentralized networking may themselves offer up server space. These are noncommercial spaces for shared interests, and often deviate from the mainstream, so while uptake is high, visibility for activists might be poorer in this instance. Activism can still take place, although this would be more in the mold of peer support or community organizing.

Modern Mainstream

Small communities, including some activism have been seen on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Quora and Discord. Members find and follow those who share their interests. On some occasions, activists have supported one another in visibility and awareness raising efforts. Gab is said to have carried out censorship, despite its supposed reputation for freedom of speech.

Video Sharing

YouTube carries out a lot of censorship, but appears to have large numbers of receptive commenters for most alternative points of view. Occasional videos from "normies" have crossed the line and led to controversies and comment thread blow-ups. One YT alternative is FreeSpeechTube, run by Norbert de Jonge, a well known Dutch MAP and civil liberties activist.

Real-time chat

Another common way of interacting with the online community is via real-time chat services such as that offered by websites such as LifeLine, linked to from BoyChat, and MSC - which is supported financially by Prostasia Foundation. These communities have the advantage of permitting instant response and reaction to one's communications, with the disadvantage of being fleetingly ephemeral with regards to their content. IRC, along with Usenet, was the core of the online boylove community before the rise in popularity of BL message boards.

Blogs

Blogging used to be a considerable part of the minor attracted community, but a purge took place in the summer of 2007 after blogging on free platforms was widely adopted. A few individuals including then banded together to form larger groups (such as ours), buying their own bandwidth and starting afresh. Others retreated to Bulletin boards. Some high-profile MAPs such as Thomas O'Carroll continue the blogging tradition.

Phone Messenger apps

Private messenger apps are also used. These messaging apps may have varying levels of decentralization and encryption, meaning that adoption has not been focused on any one platform known at the time of writing.

Email services

Again, these have varying levels of security and may or may not be used with Tor or VPNs.

Usenet

Usenet, often simply referred to as "newsgroups" was arguably the birthplace of the Online MAP community. IRC was also a spawning ground of the movement as we know it today, but Usenet came first and probably had a much larger user base. Newsgroups are essentially threaded collections of messages similar to email. The messages are formatted according the NNTP protocol. Usenet is typically accessed with a specialized "newsreader" although some HTTP sites allow web access to some groups. alt.support.boy-lovers was a somewhat popular newsgroup in the mid 1990s.

Organizations

Various organizations such as the largely dormant NAMBLA have existed or still do, as explained in the activism section of our article on MAPs. B$U-Act sometimes holds conferences for MAPs and Mental Heath Professionals to meet and discuss topics. "Workgroups" for peer-support have been particularly successful in Northern Europe, with many such examples having existed in the Netherlands and Germany. Frans Gieles of Ipce has a personal history of having assisted with these groups, and an excellent knowledge of their history.

See also

• Sites concerning MAPs