Build an army of friends. To change society, you have to play a social role in it. Your friends become your allies.
First I want to clarify the kind of friendship I mean. I mean the sort of friendship where one can offer support, while also being able to disagree with someone and criticize them. Not everyone will accept criticism, but you should still always give it. Give someone chances to learn and adapt, but even when making friends with the goal of influencing them in a good direction, friendships should be a chance for mutual growth and exploration. Not a project where you force yourself to show up each day, or a relationship where you have nothing to gain. If a friendship isn’t working, reject it. The other person can also learn from rejection.
Build friendships in your community
In the case of writing this, I’m thinking about the paraphillia community. We come together a lot of the time seeking peace, and that’s not something we’ve ever really had. Sites rise and fall, bigger platforms ban us simply because we’re disliked. We’re silenced and shoved into dark corners, and in those corners we come together. If you look around, most of us are depressed and unwell. When your whole social life is getting beaten down over and over for something you can’t change, it all gets tiring. Many of us are so caught up in just surviving life that we haven’t unpacked the ways our childhoods or early adulthoods have shaped us. It all gets added to the pile of things we don’t have energy for.
A weak community can’t fight for itself. A community full of people who have given up can’t create change. Don’t let yourself be defeated.
In order to come together and work towards our shared goal of acceptance, we need to be strong enough to stand up for ourselves and each other. The first step to that is believing in your ability to create positive changes, which hinges on realizing the value of your own company, insight, and being. The next step is participating, sharing your inherent value by making friends and offering authentic insights. Many people want friends, people want to feel cared about. If someone’s in the same dark corner as you are, why not get to know each other? Offer curiosity and compassion. By pointing out each other’s problems, we can help each other grow. If we pick each other up, we can get stronger together.
Forming healthy relationships with your community is good for you and good for others. I use the Fediverse, I recommend mapsupport.de and NNIA.space for finding other paraphiles online. There’s also MSC and Virtuous Pedophiles. Kink positive spaces are also good for finding people who won’t judge you for your sexuality. There are always bad characters in every space, so remember to take care of yourself.
Find friends outside, and bring them in
For those brave and well enough to handle it, this is about making friends with normies, proship people, antis and bigots in general.
People really aren’t as complicated and as hard to reach as we tell ourselves; most of us just pick the paths of least resistance. Many of us care about looking right more than doing the right thing. People are animals, and that our personalities are built from a collection of experiences that have shaped us into who we are. There’s also a mental health crisis, among other problems. People are tired, and many of us move through life in a haze. Miserable people won’t feel inclined to think about the suffering of groups they know little or nothing about. Experiences that are common in our circles are not common to the mainstream; our stories are hushed whispers. We’re just the boogeyman to them.
Getting someone on your side isn’t too complicated, if you offer something they need. People need friends. Most people don’t have many others they can confide everything in – the thoughts they fear society would judge them for, the opinions they shouldn’t hold (whether true or false), the scary forbidden desires they feel. Encourage your friends that they can discuss anything, and you might disagree, but you wont judge, hate or attack them in any way. One relationship of true connection can topple the weight of many more shallow relationships. By caring a lot about a person, you will naturally care more about the issues in their life, because you rely on them to fulfill some of that need for connection. This approach is sometimes used to harm or isolate others – But it can also be used as a way to help someone break out of a cage of their own making.
To change someone’s mind, first that person needs to feel capable of changing their opinion. Maybe they’re reluctant for hidden personal reasons, or maybe they’re surrounded by people who share the same opinion. Many people will believe opinions more if its a commonality in their lives. Changing one’s mind can also make people afraid of losing their entire social network. If someone thinks they’ll lose all their friends and family if they change their mind about something socially condemned, they’re less likely to entertain challenging those beliefs. The more real friends someone makes, the more likely someone will be to leave behind toxic relationships.
Pick potential friends based on social behaviours you can tolerate/are mostly comfortable with. Try to lead by example, remind them (and yourself) it’s okay to be wrong, and make an effort of acknowledging you’re wrong when you are. Most people won’t miss a bad friend, but will listen to a good one who they know they can safely talk to. Tell some things about yourself (not identifying) to make the process of sharing things easier, but hold back on the more sensitive information until you feel you matter as a person to them. Making friends with people you know you can’t trust (at least yet) can be risky, and I recommend only doing it online. I also recommend practicing good OPSEC in general. Those things being in place, the worst someone can do is reject you. Even getting rejected from entire spaces doesn’t ultimately matter – there are more spaces. Rejection hurts, but it’s inevitable if you want to make a difference. People will resist change.
Rather than looking at it as just rejection, you can also see it as someone reaching the threshold of their courage.
Any social minority can present facts to back up the bigotry they face – real studies done by experts in respective fields. But as a minority, opinions favouring us or even treating us objectively are often ignored. You might give someone a study about MAPs, evidence that shows stigma is harmful, or maybe you’ll present them with the fact that most MAPs discover their attractions at 14. Maybe they’ll respond with conversion therapy, and you can provide facts against it. If after all that, someone denies the information and refuses to accept MAP issues as real issues, this person has reached the limits of their courage. They’re either afraid to stand beside you or they bury that fear under resentment. Or at worst, they don’t care and just want an excuse to hurt people. It takes guts to be a MAP, it takes guts to be the most rejected of the rejects. It takes courage to even stand beside us. Some people will buckle under pressure. Those people can’t be allies in their current state, and aren’t worth sacrificing your comfort/wellbeing.
Move on to the next target, make more friends. Maybe in time, someone who wouldn’t change before will change their mind. Keep moving forward.
