As noted in a previous post, the hatred we MAPs have experienced for decades since we first formed communities of mutual support and discussion continues unabated. We routinely hear people we love or admire, both in real life and from the realm of greater-in-number-than-ever online influencers of every imaginable political affiliation, speak about us in the worst ways imaginable. Even though, as Butterfly Kisses noted to me on the board recently, there are more MAP groups than ever before, the hatred continues like always.

As I've noted for years, it can take a very long period of time for societal attitudes to change. And, the thing is, our society has yet to recover from the present phase of moral panics begun in the 1980s. Youth liberation received a crushing blow when this occurred, and its attempts to revive itself in this particular political climate at the advent of the Internet ultimately went bust. Why? Because it's extremely difficult for such a political liberation movement to navigate this moral climate. The pedo panic remains a powerful cudgel to batter back the proponents of the movement, and this resulted in moderates and radicals within the movement forming an uneasy balance. But when ASFAR, the biggest and most important radical youth lib org went bust for largely financial reasons, the biggest moderate group, NYRA, lost its neutrality on the topic of youth sexual rights sans that balance.

Consequently, the moderates became so sensitive to the "pedo" accusations that they decided to make a very destructive attempt to incorporate the moral panics within the liberation movement itself. The result was as tragic and disillusioning as it was predictable. NYRA and other moderate youth lib orgs became semi-open partners of pedo hunters, thinking that "cleansing" MAPs from the organization would give the orgs a better rep among the public. Of course, what it actually did was turn the movement over to protectionists who sanitized it, making the moderates pull back even on tenets of the movement that were considered essential but no controversial. Specifically, the decision to never pursue lowering the voting age below 16 and incorporating a lot of protectionist rhetoric.

This failed to consider the pedo hunters are not exactly sane and are willing to do most anything for their agenda. A virtue shield is a good cover for being bullies and moral crusaders who have an agenda that is far more sweeping than simply "keeping kids safe from predators." It's to preserve the type of society as we know it in almost all aspects, with one of the few tweaks being giving power to mob justice led by such crusaders so that the law never becomes an impediment to their crusades.

It also failed to consider that pedo hunters, like all protectionists and "child advocates", are against youth liberation on principle. The mindless hatred and overwrought fears of the moderates in the youth rights movement caused them to compromise the entire movement and turn it into a shadow of the old Ann Arbor crew from the 70's. And it more or less put paid to the latest phase of the movement. It simply could not survive the current climate, at least not it failed to maintain a strong radical faction that bring counter to the moderate faction. The latter faction wasn't a factor in the 70's, but it was unavoidable when the movement attempted its first revival in the 1990s.

That also served to further silence the AAMs and mesophiles of legal age in the movement, who were now completely ignored or dismissed. And the younger among them were endangering their own freedom by revealing themselves in an org now heavily infiltrated by pedo hunters and other protectionists.

And those moral panics keep finding new manifestations, the latest being the Epstein thing. Many people of every political stripe find such panics emotionally compelling and readily get caught up in it because it validates their frankly bizarre psychological need to believe that there are billionaire pedos monsters in control of the world who are "everywhere" and have preyed upon literally thousands of youths a variety of creatively horrific ways. Yes, not just "regular" sexual abuse, but everything from cannibalism, murder, ritual sacrifice, forced consumption of blood, and even scientific experimentation are thrown into the mix. This feeds on the myth that MAPs are hideously devoid of any erg of conscience and anything resembling decency in their hearts. If it's evil, the pervasive social myths claim, we're into it like fleas on fur. And no villain is feared so heavily unless it's believed to be powerful, hence the claim that any hated despot or fascist or corrupt leader etc. must be one of us. It's so much easier to condemn someone you hate if they also happen to be a "pedo," and if there isn't sufficient evidence that's okay, because you can always simply create an entire mythology of selective interpretation of email correspondence et al. to claim otherwise.