A Person-Centered Approach to MAP Relations

Nothing fosters cooperation like a mutual opponent.  Our MAP community has many opponents.  When they harass us en masse, we collectively sound the alarm.  Our attention shifts to rebutting them, trolling them, or protecting our Twitter accounts.  During these times, we focus on outside adversity.

How about when outside adversity feels reduced?  Our attention returns to within our community.  We casually discuss concepts, joke around, et cetera.  Yet it is not all peaceful.  Disengaged from outside adversity, we return to our own quarrels.  Most are fleeting.

However, one quarrel endures.  What was a spectrum we have oversimplified into a binary.  ‘Pro-contact’ and ‘anti-contact’ factions now bifurcate our community.

I am not arguing a contact position.  Rather, I write this piece to show how to handle MAPs having different contact positions.  After all, ideas are distinct from the people who have them.  Our community is first and foremost one of people, who happen to have ideas.

To illustrate the separation of people from ideas, I present the example of United States Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-).  They usually disagreed on cases.  And their views were of great consequence, since the Court’s rulings greatly impact people’s livelihoods and liberties.

Thus, it may surprise one to know Ginsburg and Scalia were close friends outside their duties on the Court.  They had the closest friendship of any of the Justices!  They vacationed together, attended opera together, and got together with their spouses.

In a 2008 interview with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, Scalia remarked, “I attack ideas.  I don’t attack people.  And some very good people have some very bad ideas.  And if you can’t separate the two, you gotta get another day job.  You don’t want to be a judge.  At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.”

In 2016, at the Justice Scalia Memorial Service, Ginsburg eulogized him.  She reminisced their interactions regarding the 1996 case United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515.  Informally called “the VMI case,” it would determine whether public military training institutions could refuse to admit women.

For the VMI case, Ginsburg was writing the majority opinion, while Scalia was writing the dissent.  Scalia presented her with his penultimate draft.  She deemed it “a zinger” and adjusted her own draft to address his arguments.  She eulogized, “My final draft was much improved, thanks to Justice Scalia’s searing criticism” (emphasis hers).

While their views strongly opposed each other, they enjoyed each other.  They knew they were not their views.

It’s fine if not all MAPs befriend each other.  We’re not a panel of judges, either.  I describe the dynamic between Scalia and Ginsburg only to emphasize the separation of ideas from people.

Labels create targets.  When we assume a MAP’s nuanced views from a vague, binary label, we lose sight of the MAP behind the label.  ‘Anti-contact’ and ‘pro-contact’ mean different things to everyone who uses them.  Again, our MAP community is first and foremost one of people, who happen to have ideas.

What is our main purpose for having a MAP community?  Here are some options:

• To gain acceptance from society
• To support each other’s wellbeing
• To convince fellow MAPs to change their views
• To keep each other from offending
• To have a venue for joking or edgelording

Any given MAP may have any combination of these goals.  Do they all feel equally important?  If you’re a MAP, ask yourself, “What do I most desire with our community?”  Two or more goals may tie for first place.  While I can’t predict your main goal, I am suggesting one.

What helps me narrow it down is asking, “What can the MAP community do that no other group can, or better than any other group?  What can we get from the MAP community, or offer to it, that we can’t get or offer anywhere else?”

To me, the answer is clear: supporting each other’s wellbeing.  Nobody understands us as well as we do.

There are many venues for social activism, within or without a community context.  Many organizations work to prevent child sexual abuse.  Plenty of informational and persuasive sources are directed at MAPs.  The Internet has countless outlets for jokes and edgelording.  All these interests matter, but our community’s uniqueness lies in our ability to understand and support each other.  I can only hope you agree.

Some MAPs, regardless of views, want or need therapy to keep from offending.  In the current social climate, all MAPs need therapy to help handle stigma.  A MAP’s contact stance has no bearing on their innate value as a person deserving therapy, support, and validation. There may be valid criticisms of various contact stances, but these are already stated often enough.  What all MAPs need now is unconditional acceptance for who we are.  We must not allow criticism of views to obscure people who have views.

Discourse on MAPs revolves too much around behavior.  MAPs in some circles hear, “You are valid and accepted, and it’s okay to do X with minors.”  MAPs in other circles hear, “You are valid and accepted, but don’t do X with minors.”  Even though these messages are from opposing perspectives, they both emphasize behaviors.

MAPs need a message that is immutable regardless of behavior.  We need unconditional acceptance.  We need to hear simply, “You are valid and accepted,” without qualification.

Beyond the idea-centered contact quarrel, or the behavior-centered encouragements not to offend, we need this person-centered approach to MAP relations.

Update on September 1, 2022: Perhaps due in part to my whiteness, I overemphasized the role of therapy. MAPs who feel no need for therapy to handle stigma are valid. It is also worth noting that conventional western psychotherapy, while helpful, is a relatively new invention in human history.