There will always be debate about terminology within the community, but MAP is what has been taken up by sympathetic researchers and that alone is reason to stick to it. I understand that "minor" is a purely legal concept, but that is why MAP matters in the current world. The law doesn't care if your partner is 3, 11 or 15. If they are a minor, it is illegal. That is what matters. MAPs cannot have legal sexual relationships with people that the government has assigned as "minors". In a different world I imagine we'd probably identify more by our chronophilias. I'd call myself a hebephile. Pedophiles would embrace that as their identity. We'd see ourselves as distinct as the children and teens we loved, because we would be. Right now the need for a uniting term is, in part, driven by the very laws that also arbitrarily make "minors". |