It's not the end of the world

Sproutinghalo, it's good to see you again. I know it's tempting to run from the community screaming after PJ outed you, because that is exactly what they want you to do. They want you to go into hiding, to act as if you are ashamed of being an MAA, and to avoid engaging in public discourse because the more they can eliminate our voices (one by one, as their Wikisposure project seems to be trying to do) and drive us into the shadows, the more their gossip and rhetoric will be seen as "correct" and we will be seen as shameful liars who do not stand up and defend ourselves. I know why most of us need to stay anonymous right now, and I'm sorry that your outing has caused you so many problems. And all you did was look at pictures. You were a political prisoner, whether you knew it or not. You didn't let the sex offender programs break you and cause you to hate who you are, so I'm sure you will bounce back from any attempt by PJ to hurt you. It's becoming very clear that these people are simply out to hurt us for reasons relating to hatred and bigotry, not by any attempt to "protect" anyone.

I put my full support behind Michael's program. Clearly the PJer's want the public to continue to hate us and fear us and continue to see our attraction bases (both pedophilia and hebephilia) as pathological. It's good that we are finally getting some mental health specialists to revise their opinion, to stop treating our orientations as diseases, and to stop considering it our foregone destiny to hurt kids in our respective AoA's.

I understand why you and others think the name needs to be changed. I am perfectly capable of keeping my behavior within the limits set by the law. Once we get more mental health specialists to see us as human beings who simply have an unpopular orientation, we can work to stop society's respect for the hate groups who currently try to sadistically destroy our lives and expect everyone, from our families to our employers, to just give up on us. They clearly want us to be subjected to vigilante "justice" or to find ourselves with nowhere to go other than suicide. What else do they hope to accomplish by considering us evil simply because we do not reject our attraction bases? And to think these people tell us that our feelings of being persecuted by them is a mere "delusion." What else do you call it when people continuously stalk us, post our names/addresses/phone numbers online, lie about us, and try to destroy our relationships with our parents and our jobs?

I would like to attend one of these meetings in the future, but I don't have the finances to travel right now. I know that we have to start working for change NOW, and to not be deterred from it simply because we have some girls in our lives and don't particularly care about the rest of the community or just because we realize that we are not likely to see the full effects of any change in our lifetimes. We have to consider EVERYONE in the community and we have to consider what can happen after PJ outs us.

I'm glad you're hanging in there and thank you for representing us GLer's at the meeting. Please continue to hang in there. Being "out" isn't the end of the world, even though PJ would like you to think that it is.