Eva (known on Mu’s MAP Forum as Julia) is a resilient advocate for MAP rights, drawing from her own tumultuous journey through adversity. Growing up as a social outcast in a challenging environment marked by childhood abuse, she faced significant hardships, including substance abuse and mental health challenges, ultimately leading to a diagnosis of CPTSD. At the tender age of 13, Eva got involved in a youth gang and engaged in criminal activities to sustain her drug habit. A survivor of multiple suicide attempts, she has emerged as a passionate voice for understanding and acceptance within the MAP community. With considerable experience as an esteemed community organiser and advocate for various marginalised and oppressed identities, Eva is dedicated to creating a supportive space for others. Now at 29, despite ongoing struggles with substance use, she continues to seek healing and connection while navigating her own path toward peace and belonging.

The Story

In August 2022, I came out on Instagram to about 142,000 followers with an essay aimed at destigmatising attraction to minors. Initially, I hosted the essay on my website, which was linked in my bio. Some antis discovered it and launched a smear campaign against me. They made posts that took excerpts of my essay taken out of context, portraying me as a rapist, and pretending to have "exposed" me. They encouraged their followers to harass me and to warn others about my supposed intentions, even messaging my followers directly. I became aware of this when one of my followers, who had been contacted, called out their bullshit and alerted me.

The original reason for writing this essay was to clarify misconceptions about MAPs to my friends, coming out in the process to help persuade them of my words. Until some time in 2022, I lived in complete denial about my feelings. After coming to terms with myself, I began to notice the intense stigma surrounding minor attraction. I often encountered extremely hateful comments directed at child lovers. During my period of denial, such comments did not bother me; in fact, I would share this kind of hate as a form of overcompensation, projecting my internal conflict onto an abstract group and bombarding it with self-hatred.

Once I accepted myself, these messages were no longer aimed at some abstract group that society encourages one to hate. Suddenly, they were about me. After witnessing a close friend make a hateful post, I felt heartbroken. I wanted to tell her. I wanted all my friends to know that when they wish death upon pedophiles, they wish death upon me. This realisation prompted me to write my essay. I first shared it on my personal Instagram page as a story post using the “close friends” function. I never gave my essay a title, but as I write this, I think I’ll call it “Someone You Love is A Pedophile.”

To summarise, here are the key points I addressed in my essay:

• The term “pedophilia” refers solely to attraction.
• This includes romantic attraction rather than just sexual attraction, and is no different than the attraction people feel towards adults.
• No one chooses whom they feel attracted to.
• Attraction to minors does not inherently lead to sexual assault against them, just as attraction to adults does not lead to sexual assault against adults.
• Most cases of rape are motivated by a desire to overpower rather than attraction.
• Rapists often target vulnerable individuals who cannot defend themselves, which is why minors are frequently victimised, even if the perpetrator is not attracted to them.
• The majority of child sexual offenders are not actually attracted to minors.
• The hate directed at child abusers is mistakenly aimed at MAPs; These are two distinct groups that are unjustly conflated. Stigma prevents people from coming to terms with their feelings or seeking help when needed.
• Repressed feelings can lead to sexual misconduct.
• Social acceptance and open dialogue serve as harm reduction for both MAPs and children. It is crucial to use precise language, avoiding conflation of child molesters with pedophiles.

Initially, I did not intend to make my essay public. There was one friend in particular whom I believed could greatly benefit from it, as she was exhibiting strong denial vibes. However, she reacted with extreme aggression, calling me all sorts of bad things, and even insulting my friends for accepting me. This response significantly motivated me to share the essay publicly. While destigmatising MAPs for my friends was a valuable first step, I yearned to effect real cultural change, to educate the public, and to combat the hatred directed at MAPs. Since most of my friends whom I had come out to understood and accepted me, I felt confident that if I made the essay public, the majority of readers would respond similarly. At the same time, I was also aware of the potential backlash, so I initially chose to post the essay on my website without drawing attention to it. In hindsight, I am grateful that I was compelled to share it on my story, considering how many allies emerged from it.

Responding to the smear campaign by posting my essay on my story felt like the only logical course of action. People were harassing me based on a false image of me and of what I had written, so I thought it best to present as many people as possible with the truth before they could be misled. By that point, I had already lost about 2,000 followers. After I shared my essay on my story, I received an outpouring of support from my followers. They called out the people attacking me in comment sections on both my posts and the smear posts. The essay consisted of ten slides; only one slide was removed, and it was not a particularly important slide. I saved the story posts as a highlight, and the essay remains on my page to this day.

Initially, I was unaware of the smear campaign until a friend informed me. Having received hate for all kinds of silly reasons since joining Instagram, I remained calm. My exact words were “Ah well, if their motivation is that I’m a MAP, then I doubt they’ll be able to accomplish much of anything considering their inability to understand nuance.”

At the worst point, I was receiving harassing messages every five to ten seconds. This continued for a day, gradually decreasing in frequency, but I still received numerous messages in the days that followed. Amidst the harassment, I also received many supportive messages, many of which were quite long and detailed. Some of the supportive messages I received came from fellow CSA survivors and psychotherapists, who affirmed that everything I had said was correct and thanked me for discussing these issues openly. One particularly supportive message came from a well-known and much-respected social psychologist who had been following me for a long time, though I won’t name them here. I also received messages from MAPs who had not yet come to terms with their feelings, expressing immense gratitude and stating that my essay had helped them understand and accept themselves.

The supportive words from my followers were invaluable. They bolstered my confidence in what I was doing. All the information I had when writing my essay came from Wikipedia and personal experience, so hearing from people with high expertise that my points were correct and that it was important to bring this topic into the open was incredibly reassuring. I have always been a very sensitive person, and the constant barrage of hate — people telling me to kill myself and accusing me of wanting to harm children as I had been harmed — took a significant toll on me. My daily life is already riddled with anxiety and depression due to PTSD, and this relentless stream of harassment seriously exacerbated my struggles. All I had to cope with this stress was chain-smoking cannabis, but I was already doing that before all this happened.

I still have over a hundred screenshots of the supportive messages I received, and whenever I read through them, I feel that, despite the toll on my mental health, it was all worth it in the end. Eventually, I became somewhat desensitised to the harassment which lasted for weeks, but the supportive messages truly touched me. I also made it a point to share every supportive message I received anonymously on my story to emphasise the positive feedback.

The story posts garnered tens of thousands of views and countless likes. Once the situation had calmed down again, my follower count had dropped by 20,000, leaving me with 120,000 followers. Had I immediately posted the essay on my story, the number of unfollows would likely have been much smaller, as the smear campaign relied on people not reading the entire essay. After everything that happened, I decided that I would go on to share my story to empower fellow MAPs, to continue educating others, to continue destigmatising our community, and to advocate for recognition and acceptance as a marginalised group. I belong to several marginalised communities, but none are as misunderstood and victimised as MAPs. I dream of the day when MAPs will receive the same level of acceptance as my other communities.

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