Thank you, @iwakan , for sharing this with me. https://www.uryourstory.org/index.php/social-criticism/188-positive-memories

(This is from my perspective as a YAP, but I imagine this applies to other "harmful" paraphilias as well.)

I'm on another Fediverse instance (which I will not name because I know the moderator goes out of their way to seek out and slander people badmouthing them and their instance) under a different username and the constant militantly anti contact rhetoric I see on there is exhausting. It's all "children can't consent" and "if you're pro contact you're a predator and we want nothing to do with you" and a whole lot of pathologization of pedophilia. I, of course, stay quiet about it on there, and I only put up with it because they also host a lot of kodo/kodocon (they say it's okay if it's purely fictional) and I haven't found a better instance to migrate to. (Also, the mod is extremely ageist in general; they are extremely adamant about keeping minors off of their instance, and they don't even try to say it's just for legal reasons, they legitimately think minors shouldn't be looking at porn.)

Yes, child sexual abuse is bad, but it's not predatory to acknowledge that "minors" (I hate that term, it feels very dehumanizing) have sexual desires – not just teenagers but prepubescent children as well – or to suggest that they should be able to explore their sexuality with other people if they so choose. I don't want to force myself on a child who isn't interested in sex or romance (either in general or with adults). Many youth won't be interested – as is their right. But that is not indicative of all youth, and I believe that if a child or teenager wants to enter a relationship with an adult, they should be able to do so.

When do these people think people should have sexual autonomy? When they turn 18? What's so magical about that age that turns people from pure, innocent, sexless babies who don't deserve autonomy "for their own protection" to fully fledged adults who are predators if they so much as eye a slightly younger friend wrong?

Also, someone tried to use a screenshot of the MAP wiki's page for "pro contact" (which I don't feel like looking up ATM but to paraphrase it said "pro contact people believe that sexual and romantic contact between minors and significantly older adults are not inherently harmful or predatory and should be permissible") as a gotcha to say "if you're defending pro contact MAPs this is what you're defending, don't lie about what 'contact' means!" Though I suppose maybe some people were saying that "contact" in that situation means "any kind of social contact, not necessarily romantic or sexual" and in that case that is an incorrect definition of "contact," but it still seems absurd to me on some level.

I remember playing Omega Ruby shortly after it came out and being vaguely aroused by the male Tubers (pictured here). It came out in 2014, so I would have been at least starting puberty by then, and I was definitely old enough that my attraction to him would have been seen as aberrant. My sex education was surprisingly comprehensive for a Mormon, as I was told about the mechanics of PIV sex, but I didn't fully made the connection that my arousal for the Tuber was sexual in nature. (My hydrophilia was also involved somehow, so that probably confused things.) To be fair, I wasn't having fantasies about sticking my dick in him or anything, it was, again, just vague feelings of arousal. I don't think I even started having overtly sexual fantasies until my later years of high school. (Which I chalk up to a combination of being autistic and acespec and classic Mormon sexual repression.)

I'm not sure how to elaborate on this lol

This was originally a comment on a different post, but I think this is worth fleshing out into its own post. And I apologize in advance for the length of this post, I hope I am making my position clear.

I think one reason many people are turned off from youth liberation is that they conflate it with MAP activism, and MAPs are, in popular opinion, abusive monsters that need to be ostracized from society, if not outright exterminated. The blatant falsehood of this statement and of this conflation aside, one thing that anti MAPs fail to recognize is that the sexual liberation of children is only one aspect of their liberation. Children deserve to be liberated from the shackles of the nuclear family paradigm, from the prison that is compulsory state (or state approved) schooling, from the bigotry directed towards them for no other reason than them being children.

That being said, in my opinion, sexual liberation of youth is an indispensable aspect of their total liberation, and this is something that, in my experience, many youth liberationists balk at.

Children deserve autonomy and respect in all aspects of their life. Yet when we say that this includes their ability to engage in sexual activity with whomever they wish, including adults, many people will revert right back to making patriarchal statements about how youth are too innocent and naive to consent to sex, or pull out the same pseudoscience about brain development that they otherwise condemn in order to suggest that children are too immature and stupid to consent to sexual activity with anyone other than perhaps their peers. This, to me, belies both an incomplete view of liberation and a worldview still tainted by puritanical Christian ideas about sex.

Now, I think it goes without saying that sexual abuse of children is reprehensible. But so is the sexual abuse of adults, and adults are not broadly desexualized because some of them suffer from sexual abuse. And other forms of abuse against children are also reprehensible, but I have not seen youth liberationists suggest that children should be segregated from adults in any other contexts besides sexual ones.

It is hypocrisy to say "youth should be liberated and treated as equals to adults in all respects" them turn around and say that they cannot truly consent to sex except in particular circumstances. This, to me, echos how radical feminists often suggest that women are incapable of consenting to sex with men.

I will once again state: this is still only one aspect of youth liberation, and matters like deconstructing the power of the nuclear family and the current "education" system, and generally taking steps to ensure that youth have greater legal, social, and political autonomy are also critical. But their sexual liberation cannot be neglected or dismissed.

(Edits were just for formatting to make the post easier to read.)

I think we should have a space to discuss youth liberation independent of MAP/AAM issues. Not that those aren't important and don't have a lot of overlap, but there are many youth liberation issues that do not directly pertain to sexual matters, and I think we should have a space here to discuss such topics. And for the discussions in which there is overlap, if I'm not mistaken, it is fairly easy to crosspost discussions to both communities. As for why I am talking about it and not making the community myself, I do not feel personally qualified to make it. I feel like my knowledge is too lacking and I do not think I could serve well as an administrator in such a community, neither from a technical perspective (the actual nuts and bolts of running the community on this platform, especially given my current living situation) nor from a rhetorical perspective (being responsible for facilitating or moderating discussions on a topic I do not feel sufficiently familiar with).