The term MAP – short for Minor Attracted Person – refers to beings who are romantically or sexually attracted to beings who are below the age of 18. This includes adults, but can also include minors attracted to younger minors. Current research strongly indicates that age-based attractions are innate and can’t be “cured”, similar to gender-based attractions. A number of MAPs, usually ones who are intersectional with other queer identities (though not always), consider age-based attractions to be another, less recognized type of orientation.
Importantly, this only refers to attractions, without implying harmful or illegal actions – most MAPs are law-abiding and don’t want to harm anyone any more than non-MAPs do. However, due to intense social stigma, the overwhelming majority of these MAPs remain closeted, and are never known to be MAPs unless involuntarily outed. This lack of visibility is what allows harmful misconceptions and stereotypes to persist.
The first usage of the term “minor attracted person” is attributed to Heather Elizabeth Peterson in 1998, proposed as an alternative to “minor attracted adult” that would be inclusive of teens attracted to children; “minor attracted adult”, itself, being used to sidestep debate about the definition of “child”. Likewise, nonprofit mental health organization B4U-ACT first began using MAP in 2007 as acknowledgement of the fact that most MAPs discover their attractions before they’re adults.
The popularity of the term has increased significantly since 2021, but still remains relatively obscure due to the fact that MAP advocacy – even when solely focused on destigmatization and countering stereotypes – is almost ubiquitously censored by social media, and so suffers from low discoverability. However, this low discoverability is an unwanted side effect of censorship, and the term MAP is not meant to conceal what is being referred to as is often claimed – though given that the word “pedophile” has drifted in popular usage to refer primarily to beings who engage in harmful actions, avoiding unintended ambiguity is also beneficial.