Here, I fixed that for you!

Since being trans and passing (whether out of an emotional need or a need to pass to avoid physical violence being enacted upon you) is so heavily based in appearance, uh, yeah, it’s a bit different when you sit there, talking about the girl with the broad shoulders and the big nose or the boy with the big hips and tiny shoe size.

(Obviously not my view of trans men and women since the appearances of men and women vary wildly, but using common images conjured by bigots to make a point)

Yes, realizing it’s a problem and doing something about it

Being attracted to children and being proud of it is not okay.

Being nonbinary or trans and proud of it is okay.

Being attracted to children and actively searching for help is good.

So, you hate MAPs. Okay. I’m not going to attack you, or yell at you. I’m not going to spam you with hate. I’d simply like to sit down with you and have a civil conversation about why you hate MAPs. 

Let’s do a little exercise. I’d like you to close your eyes, and picture a MAP.

Have you done that? Good.

Most of you probably have a very specific image in your head. Most likely, you all have the same one. Most of you probably pictured a cishet caucasian man, middle-aged or older, probably balding. Most of you probably pictured a man behind a computer posing as a teenager to get young girls to trust him, so he can prey on them, sweaty palmed from watching child porn. Most of you probably pictured a child predator, and a stereotypical one at that.

I want you to think for a moment, about why you saw that image. No hate if you did, just think about it. Why is that the image that comes into your head when most of you think about MAPs?

The reason you pictured that is stigma. 

The stigma around MAPs leads society to believe that all MAPs look a certain way, act a certain way, are a certain way.

Are some MAPs like that? Yeah, probably. Most stereotypes do have a grain of truth to them. But are all MAPs like that? No.

MAPs come in all different shapes and sizes, genders, sexualities, ages, races, mental/physical abilities, economies and ethnic backgrounds. A MAP can be anyone you can think of.

A MAP can be a middle aged man behind a computer, but they can also be the 16-year-old girl you met in the park.

A MAP can be your genderqueer online friend who draws stars on their math homework.

A MAP can be the guy next door who’s really good at basketball.

A MAP can be your trans gay best friend or your black lesbian babysitter.

A MAP can be your nonbinary sibling who has blue hair and plays in a rock band.

A MAP can be literally anyone, anyone can be a MAP.

MAP simply means Minor Attracted Person. It does not necessarily mean pedophile. It does not necessarily mean child molester. It does not necessarily mean middle-aged man.

I want you, again, to close your eyes and picture a MAP.

Hopefully, the image has changed.

MAPs are just people, like you and like me. While there are some MAPs out there who are bad people, that does not mean all MAPs are bad. There are bad people in every group. There are bad black people, bad white people, bad Muslims, bad lgbt+ people. But that doesn’t mean that all black/white/Muslim/lgbt+ people are bad, now, doesn’t? 

It doesn’t mean all MAPs are bad, either.

Hating them does nothing, and telling the good ones to kill themselves won’t make the bad ones go away.

MAPs are just people, like anybody else.

“Sitting” a survivor down and offering a “civil conversation about why they hate people who are attracted to kiddos” as if it’s some wild irrational kind of person to hate is just absolutely unthinkable.

You are trying to tell kids who have been groomed, abused, molested and raped by pedophiles that maybe they should stop hating pedophiles, who are inherently attracted to innocent people who can’t consent to the sort of thing a pedophile wants. They are attracted to people who, if they acted on that attraction, it would be rape absolutely 100% of the time.

Because, let’s be honest with ourselves, antis are not “tyrannical teenagers who have never experienced TRUE PTSD!1!1″, they are kids who have survived the abuse of pedophiles. All of the stereotypical “worst traits” associated with antis (ex: attacking, suicide baiting and calling someone a pedophile based off of a false rumor, for example) are textbook hypervigilance. They have every right to despise pedophiles and I think we all know that - it’s just people like you, OP, who want to gaslight them and deny them their rightful anger and hatred.

OP, I think YOU are the one who needs to sit down after this bullshit. Go in the time-out corner. Think about what you’ve done.

Yes, realizing it’s a problem and doing something about it

Being attracted to children and being proud of it is not okay.

Being nonbinary or trans and proud of it is okay.

Being attracted to children and actively searching for help is good.

A fandom mom is not just any woman over 25 who we’re attacking for absolutely no reason but the fact that they’re a woman??

A fandom mom is some aceywacey fujoshi who lusts over the just-legal characters in usually already problematic media, and makes all the minors uncomfortable. That’s why we have a term for them in the first place!!

“ACEYWACEY”? We’re trying to define a group of predators by how EPIC CRINGE ACE they are? Yeah, nice try, OP. - Sincerely, a CSA/grooming survivor largely via fandom moms.

They lust over “JUST legal” characters? Yeah, try fictional and IRL minors.

“Usually already problematic media”? You just described everyone’s interests. If you think you’re only into unproblematic things, you’re kidding yourself LOL.

Fandom moms, at least when I was a kid, didn’t make anyone uncomfortable. That’s kind of the way they got you, they wormed their way into your trust and seemed nice and safe and nurturing. Defining them as anything but manipulative monsters who seem completely harmless and loving is just irresponsible.

Fandom moms are women usually over 25 who have no concept of boundaries, and who want to simultaneously mother minors and also talk about/do sexual things with them. They prey on minors who don’t seem to fit in, on minors with parental issues (including abuse), and then they use those minors as some kind of mother-child fantasy tool while also simultaneously sexualizing those minors, and talking about personal kink details about themselves.

When faced with boundaries and the “fandom child” growing a sense of self-respect, and realizing what proper adults do and do not do, the typical fandom mom has a crying fit and pretends she’s being betrayed and abused.

A fandom mom is not just any woman over 25 who we’re attacking for absolutely no reason but the fact that they’re a woman??

A fandom mom is some aceywacey fujoshi who lusts over the just-legal characters in usually already problematic media, and makes all the minors uncomfortable. That’s why we have a term for them in the first place!!

“ACEYWACEY”? We’re trying to define a group of predators by how EPIC CRINGE ACE they are? Yeah, nice try, OP. - Sincerely, a CSA/grooming survivor largely via fandom moms.

They lust over “JUST legal” characters? Yeah, try fictional and IRL minors.

“Usually already problematic media”? You just described everyone’s interests. If you think you’re only into unproblematic things, you’re kidding yourself LOL.

Fandom moms, at least when I was a kid, didn’t make anyone uncomfortable. That’s kind of the way they got you, they wormed their way into your trust and seemed nice and safe and nurturing. Defining them as anything but manipulative monsters who seem completely harmless and loving is just irresponsible.

Fandom moms are women usually over 25 who have no concept of boundaries, and who want to simultaneously mother minors and also talk about/do sexual things with them. They prey on minors who don’t seem to fit in, on minors with parental issues (including abuse), and then they use those minors as some kind of mother-child fantasy tool while also simultaneously sexualizing those minors, and talking about personal kink details about themselves.

When faced with boundaries and the “fandom child” growing a sense of self-respect, and realizing what proper adults do and do not do, the typical fandom mom has a crying fit and pretends she’s being betrayed and abused.

Like, look at it

It looks like a sunset

just

What good would it do anyone if, say, a Black Widow film was made, but it sucked? It would be a negative experience for everyone, ESPECIALLY the feminists who wanted to see it.

Because one, they wanted to see a good movie led by a woman.

Two, the anti-feminists would use a hypothetically shitty Black Widow movie to justify their beliefs that gender doesn’t matter in film, and that wanting more female representation leads to bad movies, which it just factually does not.

You manage to miss the entire point that this dude is making which is: his, and other male nerds’, head wouldn’t explode if someone wanted more women-led films. You then treat this rather benign message as an attack on feminism. It’s a very bold and tired assumption that everyone that disagrees with something you support must be an anti-feminist.

Also, the new Ghostbusters was shit, so even if he was doing what you say he was doing, it isn’t as if people haven’t made totally shit movies whose only selling point is representation before.

you: omg I’m so tired of people making assumptions that people who want representation in movies want to produce bad movies [4 paragraph rant]

me: ok, that’s not what the guy said. you missed the point of the post you replied to though, let me try to explain it.

you: what does this have to do with my post? you’re dumb!

me: [looks into the camera like Jim from The Office]

OP: (a joke, and we all know it is a joke - if you don’t think it’s a good one, then okay, but I know it is a joke more than it is an eloquently worded political argument.)

Second guy: Sounds like, from this strawman joke you made (yes, logically it is a strawman joke) you care about the gender of a character more than the quality of a film. (Basically the actual words this guy typed, that allegedly I don’t grasp?)

Me: But consider, why can’t we care about both? Why does a character not being male imply that the movie they’re in would pay less attention to quality of plot and character interaction?

You: What? He didn’t say what he literally just typed. It’s a benign message. You think a thing that happens all the time actually happens? You just think men hate women.

Me: When did I say that?

You: (The Office Meme xddd)

Well… By and large, it happens a lot! I think you’re assuming that women exaggerate how much it happens (which, in itself, is an interestingly misogynist sentiment, that women are incapable of processing their own reality), but you gotta consider the following.

I know for a fact not every single male nerd who has ever lived on planet Earth virulently hates women, or crap their pants at the sight of a female-led movie. Crazy, I know. So do most feminists. I know male nerds who are pretty cool about gender issues. Why would I believe every single man is a violent misogynist?

What I do believe is that misogyny, like all forms of bigotry, is so subtly ingrained into society that it often goes unnoticed.

So… I guess what confuses me is this. You read “Just the kind of straw man someone who cares more about the sex of a fictional character in a film than the actual quality of the film would build,” and you decide that what it REALLY means is this. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.

“This joke is unfair and paints all men as virulent female-haters. Most male nerds care more about the quality of films than of the gender of characters.”

Which brings up the following questions for me.

1.) Why do we ignore the flat-out accusation that people who are excited for female-led movies don’t care about the quality of movies as much as male critics do?

2.) Why do we assume that it’s fair to be inherently skeptical of the quality of female-led/female-focused movies, considering most classic, celebrated films are male-led and male-focused? If you were to tell me “Twelve Angry Men” had no women in its major important cast, and was built almost exclusively on a societally typical male narrative for its time period, and I were to tell you right off the bat, “Nnnghhh, I dunno about this, sounds like pandering to MRAs…”, wouldn’t I sound ridiculous?

(No, you can’t just insist that doesn’t ever happen the other way around, or not happens rarely. It happens quite a bit, whether you like it or not, whether you personally decide that is justified or not.

That is exactly what, sorry to generalize, a LOT of male nerds were doing when the all-female Ghostbusters came out, which, controversial opinion: it was not a cinematic masterpiece, but it was cute and fun and was important for what it was, it depicted women as more than romantic girls next door’s, mothers and sex kittens, which is surprisingly rarely even today!)

This dude’s statement is like “I would expect someone in a BMW to cut me off in traffic”, and you’re accusing him of making the generalization that women drive BMWs. It does not follow.

You’re the one trying to find something deeper here, not me. Somewhere in that guy’s sentence, you are trying desperately to find the statement that “wanting women led movies and making good movies are mutually exclusive”, and it ain’t in there.

The dude says that people who care more about the sex of characters than whether a movie is good behave a certain way.

You’re trying to turn an accusation of one person into a generalization of a group of people.

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Ya sure dropped some anvils! A temporary account deactivation that was rectified very quickly is LITERALLY THE SAME THING as THE THIRD REICH! It’s the SAME THING! Don’t you SEE?! It’s OPPRESSION! It’s LITERALLY NAZIS!

Since you openly admit you don’t know what it means, even with a kind of strange and self-righteous tone, I can explain it.

“Facts n’ logic culture” is a simplified way of referring to the point in time when everyone opposing those they deemed “SJWs” (that is, anyone slightly left of center at this point) demanded an impossible level of “rational” discourse from leftists, that even the most civil of civil could not reach. They claimed to only listen to arguments built on “facts n’ logic,” rather than feelings, which allegedly all far leftism is built on, and not facts ever. Supposedly.

They demanded cold, hard facts when they themselves could not provide these facts. When given cold, hard facts, they backpedaled and insisted academia is not factual anymore, and is infiltrated by SJWs who want to abuse and brainwash white men into hating themselves through race/gender studies classes. They demanded arguments free of emotion, when they themselves were highly emotional.

What good would it do anyone if, say, a Black Widow film was made, but it sucked? It would be a negative experience for everyone, ESPECIALLY the feminists who wanted to see it.

Because one, they wanted to see a good movie led by a woman.

Two, the anti-feminists would use a hypothetically shitty Black Widow movie to justify their beliefs that gender doesn’t matter in film, and that wanting more female representation leads to bad movies, which it just factually does not.

You manage to miss the entire point that this dude is making which is: his, and other male nerds’, head wouldn’t explode if someone wanted more women-led films. You then treat this rather benign message as an attack on feminism. It’s a very bold and tired assumption that everyone that disagrees with something you support must be an anti-feminist.

Also, the new Ghostbusters was shit, so even if he was doing what you say he was doing, it isn’t as if people haven’t made totally shit movies whose only selling point is representation before.

you: omg I’m so tired of people making assumptions that people who want representation in movies want to produce bad movies [4 paragraph rant]

me: ok, that’s not what the guy said. you missed the point of the post you replied to though, let me try to explain it.

you: what does this have to do with my post? you’re dumb!

me: [looks into the camera like Jim from The Office]

OP: (a joke, and we all know it is a joke - if you don’t think it’s a good one, then okay, but I know it is a joke more than it is an eloquently worded political argument.)

Second guy: Sounds like, from this strawman joke you made (yes, logically it is a strawman joke) you care about the gender of a character more than the quality of a film. (Basically the actual words this guy typed, that allegedly I don’t grasp?)

Me: But consider, why can’t we care about both? Why does a character not being male imply that the movie they’re in would pay less attention to quality of plot and character interaction?

You: What? He didn’t say what he literally just typed. It’s a benign message. You think a thing that happens all the time actually happens? You just think men hate women.

Me: When did I say that?

You: (The Office Meme xddd)

Well... By and large, it happens a lot! I think you’re assuming that women exaggerate how much it happens (which, in itself, is an interestingly misogynist sentiment, that women are incapable of processing their own reality), but you gotta consider the following.

I know for a fact not every single male nerd who has ever lived on planet Earth virulently hates women, or crap their pants at the sight of a female-led movie. Crazy, I know. So do most feminists. I know male nerds who are pretty cool about gender issues. Why would I believe every single man is a violent misogynist?

What I do believe is that misogyny, like all forms of bigotry, is so subtly ingrained into society that it often goes unnoticed.

So... I guess what confuses me is this. You read “Just the kind of straw man someone who cares more about the sex of a fictional character in a film than the actual quality of the film would build,” and you decide that what it REALLY means is this. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.

“This joke is unfair and paints all men as virulent female-haters. Most male nerds care more about the quality of films than of the gender of characters.”

Which brings up the following questions for me.

1.) Why do we ignore the flat-out accusation that people who are excited for female-led movies don’t care about the quality of movies as much as male critics do?

2.) Why do we assume that it’s fair to be inherently skeptical of the quality of female-led/female-focused movies, considering most classic, celebrated films are male-led and male-focused? If you were to tell me “Twelve Angry Men” had no women in its major important cast, and was built almost exclusively on a societally typical male narrative for its time period, and I were to tell you right off the bat, “Nnnghhh, I dunno about this, sounds like pandering to MRAs...”, wouldn’t I sound ridiculous?

(No, you can’t just insist that doesn’t ever happen the other way around, or not happens rarely. It happens quite a bit, whether you like it or not, whether you personally decide that is justified or not.

That is exactly what, sorry to generalize, a LOT of male nerds were doing when the all-female Ghostbusters came out, which, controversial opinion: it was not a cinematic masterpiece, but it was cute and fun and was important for what it was, it depicted women as more than romantic girls next door’s, mothers and sex kittens, which is surprisingly rarely even today!)