Minor attracted neologisms

Part of NewgonWiki's series on minor-attracted identities
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Category: Minor-attracted people
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Some people more or less involved in the minor attracted community have coined neologisms for attractions between adults and younger people. The primary intention of such coinages is to avoid the negative connotations of the term "pedophile", and also its misuse.

The terms see limited use in on-line communities, websites and literature, including academia.

2nd wave (2007 onward, or ongoing long term use)

Kinderfolk (Kind) Flag - Unadopted idea proposed by Steve Diamond - 2019

• Minor-attracted is a popular predominantly social-political, gender-neutral term with some popular variations as used in academia and on websites such as this one. Since it has been around in some form since 1998 - it is not really a neologism, but continues to produce new forks. Critics have noted that these obvious terms may serve to draw more, not less, attention to the negative connotations they seek to avoid. There is also debate around the use of "minor", with some seeing it as belittling to youth and others seeing it as a self-critiquing legal term, carrying little-to no naturalistic prejudice (as opposed to "child").

• Minor Attracted Person (abbreviated MAP) - A generic/inclusive term first utilized in early 2007 by British MAP Activists for anybody who is sexually attracted to legal minors. The term draws meaning from legal statutes as well as personal feelings, and is therefore excellent for social-political uses but a poor specifier. For these reasons the term is currently in use by the groups B4U-ACT and Newgon.

• Non-Offending Minor Attracted Person (NOMAP) - An identity that places emphasis on socially acceptable conduct - some of these individuals feel they need to use drawn erotica or sex dolls. Sometimes extended to Anti-Contact Non-Offending Minor Attracted Person (ACNOMAP), or alternatively ACMAP, which MAP Wiki identifies with Instagram.

• Adult Attracted Minor (abbreviated AAM) - The term has been in use since the early 00s, and was also used by Californian MAP activist, Rookiee. AAM appears to have become more popular in online social media communities around 2018-20, at the same time MAP was more widely used.

• Minor Attracted Adult (abbreviated MAA) - A term that was sometimes used as a social/clinical concept in academia (e.g. Sarah Goode), prior to the better-known MAP variant. Critics had argued that the term excluded many younger persons who aren't yet adults and also does not accurately describe people in places where the age of majority is quite low. ANU therefore started to use Minor Attracted Person as an alternative, as did others.

• Cartographer is a play on the term "MAP", and sometimes features on social media and online chats.

• Youth Attracted Person was seen in 2022 and 2023, when it featured in a controversy involving Elon Musk.

• Youthlove is used by some people as an extra-legal alternative to MAP. Whereas youthlove refers to the love of youth, the term youthlover refers to a person who loves youth. While some do use it within their circles, there is no evidence of widespread public-facing use.

• Kind was a term (equivalent to MAP) with translingual appeal, promoted by the Irish author Thomas O'Carroll. Attached graphic was a development of the idea by Steve D.

• Neophile has been suggested as another MAP equivalent. It appears to have already been used for other purposes.

• Enbylove entered use in 2019, describing attractions to gender non-binary youth.

Early 2nd wave (2000-2007)

• Childlove - A unifying term that was particularly popular in the early online communities (pre-2010) of minor attracted people - even among some early second-wave MAP Activists. This term still sees some use, but is usually confined to peer support communities due to its reading as non-objective. It has been used in various forms as shorthand for boylove/girllove or an anglicized version of pedophilia, so may in a stricter sense go back to the 1st-wave era - 80s, or earlier.

• Responsible Boylove - A term invented by the late American MAP author David Riegel, who felt strongly that the term "boylover" was employed by "irresponsible" men, who sometimes intended harm to boys. Leading the charge for responsible boylove via a number of pioneering 00s networking websites, Riegel intended to distinguish himself and his followers from other boy-attracted males. Critics of this term alleged that it implied boylove was somehow inherently irresponsible. Others have described the term as a "laughably naive oxymoron", as it appears to make the assumption that true love may be at all responsible.

• Puersexual - A recoinage of "pedophile" using the Latinate root for "boy." Critics note that this term suffers from many of the same problems as "pedosexual" in addition to being more obscure.

• Amaros, Amarso, Amarsi - Identifying that "[m]any have pointed out that there is no terminology that refers collectively to both the younger and older parties in an adult-minor relationship.", AP has proposed Attraction between Minors and Adults that is Romantic Or Sexual and Adult or Minor Attracted Romantically or Sexually to the Other. The plural of Amarso is Amarsi. Both terms are closely related to the verb “to love”. In Spanish, amar is the infinitive of the verb “to love”, whilst amaros means “to love one another” in Spanish. Amarsi has the same meaning in Italian. See Puellula.

1st Wave (pre-00s)

• Regardless of their debatable origins, Boylove and Girllove became considerably more popular due to the bastardization of pedophilia by mainstream media, officials and politicians in the 1980s and 1990s. We classify these as 1st-wave, because while they were popularized considerably via the internet, they existed well before that era - for example in scans of old magazines (see Archive).

• Pedosexual - An attempt to standardize pedophilia as a sexual preference or orientation, coined by analogy with the terms heterosexual and homosexual. Has existed since at least the 80s, but appears to have been co-opted by 4Chan trolls. Critics of this term note that neologisms tend to alienate readers and listeners, and the obvious resonance with the term "pedophile" does not succeed in redefining the connotation. Where the term "sexuality" is assumed to refer exclusively to gender, the term also suffers in the same way as Zoosexuality. Similarly, commenters often try to remind MAPs that, chronophilia (animals or age ranges are not sexes).

• Heteroped/Hetped - A self-explanatory term that has fallen out of use in the internet era.

See also

• Transage - Not a MAP Neologism, but shows considerable overlap in terms of the community.

External links

• MAP-Wiki - Some less heard of examples.