Attraction ≠ Action

Attraction ≠ Action (Attraction is not [equivalent, or equal to] action) is a slogan emanating from Asexual and anti-contact MAP activism in the 10s. As a broader talking point, it has been used by MAPs roughly since the second-wave of the MAP Movement in the 00s.

Similarly Lolicons and proshippers have argued that "fiction ≠ reality".

Attraction is not Intention

A finer point that is sometimes made by pro-c MAPs in response to charges that they want to engage in sex with a minor, or will so inevitably, is that one's attraction or inclination is not equivalent to intention.

Here, it is stressed that like other orientations, hebephilia and pedophilia are preferential patterns of erotic and romantic attraction that may involve or exclude other factors such as personality traits.

Simply being a pedophile or hebephile does not mean that an individual is irresistibly driven towards engaging any child or minor in "sex acts", when he or she comes into contact with them. No more so than a teleiophile is uncontrollable around all young adults.

Relevance

The speed at which Westerners and Antis ascribe behavior or intention to MAPs, in constructing a demonology of "Pedophiles", has been seen as curious by MAPs themselves, for some time.

Some MAPs and other authors have suggested that this phenomenon is of relevance to psychological reaction-formation. In other words, parents (for example), who experience feelings of attraction toward their own children, have a need to distinguish these attractions from socially stigmatized forms of attraction such as pedophilia. Therefore, their psychological defense mechanism is to ascribe behavior, intention and malign motive to the "typical" pedophile.