Re: Analogy not necessary.

Lucky, this was a good post, but I do want to respond to something here:

I am a firm believer in the theory that Girl Lovers need to be around girls. We need girls in our life to be happy and complete, it's just that simple. Of course we cannot be anything other than friends with these girls, but we should not be keeping ourselves away from them.

In real life, I have no teen girls in my life and I am just fine. I don't know if I would use the words "happy" or "complete," as I wish I could have all the teen girls in my life who wanted to be a part of it, but there is something that I need to consider here. I am "out" to most people I know in real life. Hence, I cannot afford to have teen girls in my life as platonic friends. Though I have total faith in my self-control, the problem is, many in the general public are conditioned by the media to believe that MAA's lack self-control. The antis who frequent this site and engage in quote mining to twist our words out of context in order to make us look as bad as possible to the general public all believe that most of us are routinely having sexual contact with girls in our respective AoA, and this is the message they spread to their audience. As such, if I was to make friends with teen girls in RL, it's inevitable that I would be accused of having, or trying to have, sexual contact with one or more of these girls. Many would believe that the only reason I was friends with these girls in the first place was to try and lure them into a sexual encounter. Even an innocent hug of support could be interpreted by someone as an attempt to "cop a feel" and engage in sexual contact. If I ever became particularly close to any of these girls, their parents would be paranoid every single time I spoke to one of them on the phone, our of fear that I will try to drag the conversation into sexual territory, or try to have phone sex with their daughter. And I could never have any of them over my house when their parents weren't present to watch movies, play video games, share a pizza, etc., because it would always be presumed that I would try to seduce them if their parents weren't around to "keep an eye" on me.

Also, there is another consideration. Some people DO NOT like to have to constantly bottle up their true feelings. If I was actively making platonic friends with teen girls, there is a good chance I will be attracted to one or more of them. And I would always have to suppress my feelings and act like a "big brother" or as just a friend. That is upsetting to me. I have frequently played that role to someone I was attracted to (even when a relationship would have been legal) and I can tell you how much I didn't like being in that position. I don't want to constantly put myself in such a position because it doesn't have any benefits for my emotional well-being. I once had a little sister that I adopted and I greatly enjoyed it (there were NO sexual feelings), but I would not like to have to play such a role for a girl I was attracted to (and my little sister was strictly an online relationship anyway).

I have had some people in this community call me a coward for not having teen girls as platonic friends, and I have even been told that I'm actually being cruel to several unnamed AG's by so depriving them of my friendship. But even though it's not entirely politically correct to say this, I think I should point out that I don't think we should ONLY be considering how much we would benefit from having these girls in our lives, and by how much THEY would benefit from our friendship. We must also consider our own best interests, and this is NOT being selfish...our self-respect demands that we consider how this will effect us. I want to keep myself both free of legal trouble and free of situations where I must stifle my true feelings, and for me this means avoiding friendships with teen girls in RL. I should also note the fact that regardless of how anyone in this community feels about this, all of my Non friends believe that it's WISE of me to avoid platonic friendships with underage girls in my AoA.

Since I don't want to be accused of trying to engage in illegal sexual contact, and since I also don't want to be in a situation where I must bury my true feelings at all times (which I think is NOT emotionally healthy for me) I avoid having teen girls in my life outside of cyberspace.

I'm not saying that ALL of us should do this. However, I do think it's something that should be considered. I always explain to enquiring Non minds that I trust myself implicitely to be alone with a teen girl and that I have no problem with self-control (my lack of a criminal record attests to this), and that this is NOT the reason why I avoid friendships with adolescent girls. Nevertheless, I do think it prudent to avoid such friendships for all the reasons I mentioned above, especially since I am "out."