Feeling increasingly disillusioned with where 'development' is taking humanity, I recently visited another very poor country. Unsurprisingly, it was not all perfume and roses there. Many people clearly struggled with basic necessities like food. There were a number of people begging, of all ages, which was not a pleasant sight to behold.

While my first thoughts were of pity, the situation also got me thinking about the natural role of MAPs. In a place like that, a well-meaning MAP would really be helpful to children and their families, and it's sad to acknowledge that even platonic expressions would potentially come under scrutiny.

In modern societies, a MAP's natural role would take the form of being a teacher like me, a neighbor befriending lonely children, or maybe a sports coach. Essentially, one would act as a mentor or a friend.

In more traditional societies, however, the role of a MAP might be to help provide food and shelter, to offer childcare when parents were deceased, or to help fulfill whatever other basic need was required.

There are many children in wealthy countries who are desperately in need of a mentor, and there are quite obviously children in very poor countries whose absolute basic needs are not being met. The latter is more pressing; the former should still not be ignored.

And yet, the fear of MAPs prevents many of us from fulfilling our natural role of mentorship or caring for children. Men in particular are seen as untrustworthy when getting too close to children, and that goes doubly or triply for men who wish to spend time with girls. Now, I'm quite aware that some non-MAP readers here will be screaming, red in the face, about how severely a MAP presence would endanger children. To that, I would say two things.

Firstly, people do possess self-control. The whole "you shouldn't put yourself in that position" thing is silly; regular men constantly put themselves in positions where they could hypothetically rape women, and yet they don't! Even if you believe that consensual AMSC is rape, you still can't logically reason that MAPs being around children is a terrible idea unless you're also arguing that MAPs are predisposed to poor levels of self-control, or that men shouldn't be alone with women who hadn't already consented to sex at that moment.

Secondly, consensual AMSC is not necessarily harmful. "Children can't consent" is more or less a meme, ultimately derived from the same movements that labeled gay sex a sin. Harm is dependent on circumstances, not on how old the two partners are. So even if the adult and the young person did enjoy a consensual relationship... so what? It probably wouldn't be a big deal without the crushing response of societal scorn.

There are no doubt people who will interpret these comments cynically, suggesting that I believe any help should be transactional, with sexual contact being an implicit or even explicit requirement for receiving aid or support. To be clear, I do not believe that at all. However, I don't think all sexual contact resulting from a supportive relationship would necessarily be harmful. It could be harmful, as could a sexual relationship between consenting adults, but that does not eliminate the possibility of it being a positive experience. Detractors will cry out in horror that AMSC must necessarily mean an adult imposing themself on a child, but that is not how it always goes. I know from anecdotal reports that, in the case of boylovers at least, a lot of people end up in prison because boys start sexual games, involve their MAP friend, and then loose lips seal the fate of the hapless but harmless man. The fact that people find it gross doesn't make it harmful.

MAPs have a lot to give to the world. The motivation may not be entirely saintly, but it's also not as grotesquely sinister as most people imagine. And yet, MAPs face constant roadblocks because everyone has decided that an 'evil pedophile' being around a child would lead to disaster. The risk of a sexual relationship possibly developing is considered worse than chronic loneliness, the threat of familial abuse, or even extreme suffering and the real possibility of literal starvation. It is incredibly sad that many people believe a child would be better off dead than encountering a MAP. It also reveals a core truth... that MAP detractors don't really give a fuck about children.