Kids Can't Consent

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A Case For Rehabilitation

My older sister and I were inseparable until I found out that she was a child molester. Content warning for child sexual abuse, pedophilia, suicide, and substance abuse My sister had been living with my brother, his wife, and their young children, often filling the role of a babysitter. One day, they’d kicked her out of the house. Apparently, she said, their personalities just didn’t mesh. “But there’s something else, too,” my sister explained. “You’re not going to believe this. They accused me of touching Kaylie.” Kaylie is my brother’s youngest daughter. At the time, she was three years old. I stared. “They said what ?” I asked, not believing what I was hearing. “They said I touched her inappropriately,” my sister continued. “They have Kaylie on camera explaining what I supposedly did. Here, I’ll show you.” She angled her phone towards me. I could see a video of Kaylie, tiny and adorable, matter-of-factly explaining how my sister had supposedl

Being Transage is Valid

Content warning for suicide and sexual abuse You may have heard of transage people: people who feel that they are internally a different age than their physical, chronological age. When I first heard that some people were calling themselves transage, I was skeptical, to say the least. The entire concept seemed to be brimming with transphobia. How could anyone compare the multifaceted experience of being transgender to simply feeling like they were a different age? However, I knew that it was valid that some people could feel like they were a different age than they were physically – after all, it had happened to me. I went through an almost unbelievable amount of trauma when I turned 21. To begin with, I’d transferred colleges, lost most of my friends, and started failing classes because I didn’t have the energy to show up to them. I’d suddenly developed debilitating depression so bad that I could barely get out of bed, as well as chronic pain so severe that I began thinking abou

Are Queer Maps Part of the LGBTQIA+ Community?

Content warning: mention of sex, genitals, and pedophilia I’ve shared a lot of very personal things on this blog over the years, and today I’m going to share another personal piece of news: I’m intersex. Most people think that there is a rigid binary between people who are born with vaginas and people who are born with penises, but the truth is that there are a lot of people who have genitals that just don’t fit into this binary. There are also people who don’t have the expected corresponding internal organs, hormones, and/or chromosomes that generally fit with their genitalia. The truth is that I don’t know much about being intersex. I’m in my 30s, and I just now found out that I’m intersex. At the risk of being TMI: my genitals aren’t that different than those of a dyadic (or non-intersex), cisgender (or non-transgender) woman. At least, they never seemed like that to me. I was an early bloomer. I started having sex as a very young teenager, when I was ignorant about what typic

Urge Surfing for Maps

Some maps talk about having the urge to offend. Others are troubled by their thoughts, although they know that they won't offend. A technique called "urge surfing" might help prevent offending and help maps to accept their thoughts. "Urge surfing" is a mindfulness practice that promotes "surfing" urges -- staying aware of the ebbs and flows of your urges -- instead of suppressing them. When you have urges or troubling thoughts, "surfing" the waves of them may help, rather than trying to suppress them. Suppressing urges often makes them worse. Instead, urge surfing encourages people to stay present with their urges non-judgmentally. How do I know this will help? My therapist at first encouraged me to try to suppress my map-related sexual thoughts, which just ended up making them more prevalent. Instead, what has helped me is my therapist's assurance that there is nothing wrong with my thoughts and that I should accept them. Urge surfing is

When Pro-Shippers Turn on MAPs

Like many people on the internet, I enjoy writing fanfiction and participating in fandom. Besides writing fanfiction, I’m mainly a lurker. I like to follow people who create content for my fandoms, and quietly retweet their posts, gifsets, and other fandom content. There’s one problem: I’m also a paraphiliac, specifically a minor-attracted person (map). I’m also anti-contact, meaning I am very opposed to the idea of adults having sex or romantic relationships with minors. What this all means is that while I find a few minors attractive, I’m never going to act on it. I’m non-exclusive and am mostly attracted to adults. In a perfect world, my paraphilia wouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, maps are incredibly stigmatized and stereotyped. The word “map” sends the average twitter user into a moral panic, invoking visions of pedophilic zealots who prey on and groom young children over the internet. Anyone who has had any interaction with the map community would know that this is

Exhibitionism and Paraphilia

I’ll always remember the morning that my ex-boyfriend knocked on my door, crying, telling me that he’d just come from the police station. He’d been held overnight at the station for exposing himself to a woman, and it was far from the first time he’d indulged his exhibitionism paraphilia. My first experience with paraphilia had happened long before this. I’ve been interested in exhibitionism since puberty, although unlike my ex, I don’t act on it in any non-consensual ways. The idea of exposing my body to willing strangers has always given me a thrill. When I was younger, I used to record myself stripping on my webcam, but I would delete the video afterwards instead of uploading it anywhere. It’s more the idea of exhibitionism that excites me than actually doing it, although I sometimes have fun with strangers on webcam now that I’m an adult. My ex, however, did act on his paraphilia. On that morning that I learned that he’d been exposing himself to women, my ex opened up to me compl