As discussed in a few articles recently, the French BL forum legarcon.net has made headlines in the mainstream media for... well, reasons that are not entirely clear. In response, fellow LGBTP High Commissioner for Children, Sarah El Hairy, announced that the site would be investigated by a regulator for not performing age verification checks. Admittedly, this was no doubt triggered at least in part by the site's open acceptance of minors, which would alarm a public that pictures balding and morbidly obese pedos foaming at the mouth. In the real world, acceptance of minors is nothing short of a necessity when most MAPs realize they are MAPs as minors themselves. I made my MAP activist debut as a minor, and without the MAP community I could well have ended up going on some crazy killing spree given how angry I was back then.

For those that still insist on such checks for these online support groups, a very relevant question remains. What the hell would an age verification check even look like for a MAP site?

MAPs rightfully do not trust any service that requires them to provide identification, no matter how many assurances are made. Most are using Tor or a VPN, have JavaScript disabled, and register using a throwaway e-mail address. This is not paranoid given how relentlessly MAPs are hunted and how blindly the idiotic public assume criminality by default, something which the recent drama in France has highlighted with crystal clarity. There is not a chance in all hell that the average MAP is going to, or ever should, provide their ID.

Yet as time goes by, governments might succeed in requiring and enforcing age verification checks, especially in totalitarian nations like the UK or oppressive blocs such as the EU.

Where would MAPs go if the lawful sites were literally forced to verify ID? Given that MAPs aren't going to ever stop being attracted to children, will not use their ID to register for a MAP site, and desperately need community in a world where non-MAPs would see them brutally genocided, the answer would no doubt be the darknet. And despite many sites on the darknet likely being illegal, they would still be safer for a MAP than a space that required age verification. Instead of somewhere like Mu's MAP Forum - which prohibits criminalized images, advice on how to have sex with children, and sexual interactions with minors - MAPs would end up on darknet child porn sites, where they'd be able to download videos of AMSC, find detailed advice on how to have sex with kids, and flirt with underage teens posting their own graphic content.

We've seen from the failed prohibition on alcohol, and the catastrophic war on drugs, that excessive regulation only makes problems worse. Still, European countries are falling over themselves to micromanage and overgovern. A particularly pertinent example would be the UK's recent ban on 'looks young' porn, which will treat sex between age-verified but young-looking actors exactly the same as hardcore child porn, no doubt pushing more people toward the 'real deal'.

If France and other countries are serious about going down the age verification road with lawful MAP sites, they'll bring upon themselves the very 'hell' they so excitedly profess to be stamping out. MAPs are not going to disappear, and we'll continue to seek our own spaces until the rest of the world can be a lot damn nicer.