Reading social media discussions on sexual attraction to children, you'll inevitably come across arguments that MAPs should be able to access therapy. I agree wholeheartedly! Unfortunately, such arguments are often predicated on the notion that violating the law would still be a gross transgression, or even worse that the MAP must be 'converted' into being attracted only to adults.

One group that offers therapy to MAPs, referred to in anglo media as Project Dunkelfeld, insists that no child (under 18?) would ever want sex with an adult, which is a patently stupid thing to say. Adolescents experiencing desire toward adult celebrities is pretty much universal, something that I doubt many people would deny. Making extreme statements to the contrary of reality is likely to put off MAPs with any degree of independent thought... even when they might need help with certain aspects of their behavior, or with their lives in general.

People will claim that even if wanted, AMSC is fundamentally damaging. But is there really enough evidence to make that claim? As OnionPetal noted in a recent MAP Forum debate, research on AMSC never separates wanted contact from unwanted contact. It doesn't take advanced critical thinking skills to figure that the two are very different, and that conflating their outcomes is muddying the waters more than a little.

While it is not possible under current legal frameworks, from a philosophical perspective I think there would be more merit in a critical and cynical preventionism that steered people away from behavior more likely to cause harm, and toward behavior much less likely to cause harm. For example, a person paying an active child pornography producer might be encouraged to pirate old material. A person who wanted to coerce a child might be told that they should only seek truly consensual encounters.

Of course, this is not going to happen any time soon. Any licensed counselor who attempted it would lose their job at best. Still, in the same vein that MAPs not being able to access any kind of therapy is problematic, so is the inability to access therapy that nudges people toward a more moral form of criminality, even if that may be deemed imperfect. Another case of The Push.