Scottish police use Minor Attracted Person instead of 'paedophile' in report

[pattihews]

Chief Constable Iain Livingstone has used the acronym MAP (minor attracted Person) in an annual assessment of the force's work with a European project.

We've all wondered what the + is in LGB and TQIA+ haven't we? Well perhaps now we know. As the Telegraph says:

The term MAP is contentious because child abusers are trying to escape the stigma attached to paedophilia and maintain they should be regarded as a niche group alongside the LGBT community.

As a member of the LGB community I object. Archived link from the Telegraph:
archive.today/e9DCa

Paedophilia is not ‘old terminology’ - it’s correct terminology. The insidious reframing of perfectly accurate terminology in order to suit the self-identified male agenda is noted and challenged.

Depressing to see the paedohile minimisers on this thread - although unsurprising to see who some of them are.

Entirely agree. The term has been clearly chosen because it sounds vaguely benign. Problem for the apologists is that it refers to children

Why is that a red flag? People self identify as MAPs. MAP gets listed as a criminal offence. Then it is openly acknowledged that MAP is a very bad thing. Protesting against it being openly acknowledged as a criminal offence is brushing it under the carpet imho.

Onnabugeisha · Today 14:50
For what it’s worth, I am a CSA survivor who was assaulted for years by an actual paedophile

(And the rest of your post makes clear that means you were a very young child, before puberty.) I am very very sorry that happened to you💐

Really? Explain please

This is not good, obviously.

Is it deliberate, I don't know.

One of the problems with the constant policing and changing of what words it's ok to use is that a lot of people, and organizations, are now pretty focused on picking up what the right-on terminology is. They aren't stopping to think about it, what it means or why it's supposedly necessary.

They are just afraid of using the wrong language and have become completely at the mercy of the people who set these kinds of trends.

Yes, it's the language which is being used to obscure what it actually means -
The term 'minor attracted person' stripped down to its meaning is really -

Child attracted adult

It sounds a lot less vague and benign when it's put like that, which is entirely the intention.

Ah, I see they have actually resisted the term - that's good.

Though it raises the question of why the other organizations used it.

I understand where you are coming from, and FWIW I think it's important to differentiate attraction to pre-pubescent children from what is really a biologically normal attraction to post-pubescent minors. These things are different and more importantly need to be managed differently from a cultural perspective.

But there are words that exist to describe these kinds of things without using MAP. Map has been very carefully adopted by groups who want to advocate for allowing adult-child sexual relationships, mainly because it makes it seem very similar to the idea of accepting a different sexuality, and also because "minor" is a legal term without a lot of emotional content. Some people are pushing for minors to get the vote, so it makes it seem more like an expansion of the legal rights of adolescents.

Still criminal, though

I don’t think MAP sounds “benign” at all.

Paedophile is more benign when you strip it back to denotation imho as it literally means “lover of children”. There is no love in what they do though.

At least Minor attracted person has the word “attracted” indicating sexual attraction with no love.

It’s only because we have connected “paedophile” to the crimes of prepubescent child sex assault that the connotation is not benign.

Connotation is purely in our control. It’s not dictated by denotation.

Well, as I say, it’s to our advantage to appropriate MAP from them and give it the meaning and connotation it should have instead of letting them own the term and dress it up however they want to.

We won’t be a beacon of hope if the Labour Party win the next election.

It certainly sounds more benign than

Child attracted adult.

If the use of the term MAP's was dropped in official documents, such as the document referred to in the OP, and the more straightforward, less obscuring term Child Attracted Adult was used, it would be interesting to see how the connotations are viewed and what pushback there would be from those who have chosen the term MAPs.

There does appear to be quite a few in the overlapping section of the Venn diagram. The most charitable explanation I can put is that they have sworn an unbreakable vow to defend the SNP (Sturgeon's Nonces and Perverts some are calling the latter) no matter what the SNP does next.

I don’t like the common usage tbh. I feel it minimises paedophilia to conflate it with having sex with late teenaged children.

Given that the push to change the terms in use came first from the deviants themselves, we can be sure that the motivation for trying to change the common term is not a good one.. Their motivations are never good. But we didn’t drop paedophile as a term when activists like this then called themselves PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) which was active in the 1970s. We instead used the term repeatedly in the context of horrific CSA..drowning out any hopes they had of it being a benign term.

These debates about terminology so often act against the interests & safety of children with endless attempts to obfuscate and minimise. How was it that Breslaw was able to place himself at the heart of Mermaids? Because the paedophile activity and interests he focussed on were obscured by a word salad to the extent that a University ignored the reality of what he was involved in.

I'm acutely aware that paedophiles & predators target Mumsnet & I've an inbuilt wariness of anyone appearing over invested in exploring the language of paedophilia. Along with posts that may unintentionally give predators justification / encouragement that Mumsnet is a "safe space" for them to discuss paedophile apologism. It's the one thing I'm hashtag no debate about.

So my apologies to anyone who felt I may have unfairly implicated them in my previous comment. I know I'll continue to react with suspicion to those wanting to "debate" paedophile terminology - MNHQ regularly reminds us We always ask users to remember that not everyone on the internet is who they say they are which means we can only judge people by their words.

I also object to the word 'person' as it is almost an exclusive male crime.

A spokesman for the force stressed that MAPs is not a term they routinely use to describe child abusers and said that its use in the report had to be understood in context.

I don't Fucking care.

No one should use MAP for PAEDOPHILE. NO ONE.

I wasn't raped by a minor attracted person I was raped by a paedophile.

So they can take their weasily words and

FUCK OFF

I completely agree @Boiledbeetle MAP is a vanilla acronym that no-one gets to hide behind.

Paedophilia is the term to describe these deviants.

I think the main difference here is that paedophile was an accepted technical word. Whereas MAP has been developed and pushed mainly by activists of a certain stripe.

And actually I think it's to the point that most of those are not people interested in teenagers, especially older teens. They are mostly, in fact, paedophiles. They are now trying to disassociate from that word and would very much like people to think about 16 year olds when they see MAP.

It's not that it would be impossible to claim the word and brand it as negative, as you suggest. I suspect they'd just move on to something else then, and it would take time and effort, which would have to be repeated as a new word came along.

But the organizations that have adopted it in this instance haven't, IMO, done it for the reasons you think. They've adopted it because they are seeing it around a lot used by certain organizations and people, and they think this is now the word they are supposed to use. At best, they are being very naive. And they need to be aware of what these people are trying to do.