I figured I would share some insights with the crew that I picked up during my "away time" (save for comments and periodic guest articles on Tom O'Carroll's TOC Heretic blog).
So, what progress, if any, for the community since I began participating in it back in 1999 and specifically here at GC in the fall of 2000? I have said for years this was going to be a long journey, as the moral panics begun in the 1980s, albeit with the seeds planted in the late 70's, has had a lot of staying power. And as each one loses fuel and gets discredited, another pops up in its place and mass numbers of people of every political stripe embrace it wholeheartedly. The current trending one is the notorious "Epstein Files" which appears to be one of the very few things all political affiliations in this very polarized era seem to agree is absolutely true. Every hated politician, no matter how much they genuinely may (or may not) deserve to be hated are denounced as "pedophiles" to make them look even worse. Lack of evidence is usually the order of the day, but as I've always said, emotion trumps reality any day of the year.
People want the "pedo threat" to be real. They want us to be committing monstrous deeds that need to put all society on full alert, to justify depriving youths of agency and keep them firmly under adult control, and to have the censorship button available no matter how much they may boast about the sacred nature of the 1st Amendment. No, the moral propriety of youth will always be more sacred still, and as such, we remain the dragons everyone seeking a virtue badge seeks to snuff out. And to declare themselves inherently virtuous simply by not being one of us.
It seemed that during the mid-2000s and early 2010s there was a bit of forward progress. We voices, while still hated, began appearing in more places. We got more interview time in various online locales with a few prominent among us out of the toybox and having sacrificed a lot to do so. B4U-ACT was established and doing well - it's still there, but I have largely abandoned it after it largely if unofficially abandoned its important position of neutrality on the more controversial issues due to fear of the non-choice researchers slowly coming to dominate saying all the usual stuff to the usual sources and thus effectively becoming Virtuous Pedophiles Junior. And the youth lib movement was also making important baby steps forward, until ASFAR - the main radical org - went down for good and the moderate NYRA likewise abandoned its official position of neutrality, declared war on pedophilia and "pedos" within its ranks, and allied itself with "pedo hunters" and protectionists who effectively sanitized it and all but destroyed the Second Phase of the movement.
So, currently, things are now as bad as they were during the late 1990's. We have no voice at all, youths have virtually no voice, and mesophiles in general have not stepped up outside of the handful who are lone voices in the cyber-wilderness who quickly get banned from social media just as open MAPs do. Does this mean we are without hope? No. As I've always mentioned, all emancipation movements have occurred in phases and setbacks have always occurred. We are now in the midst of one as one silly moral panic is replaced by another faster than they can get discredited. However, society has not succeeded in eliminating us from existence, nor have they killed our "significant other" side, the mesophiles (and AAMs among them). Youth lib will eventually emerge in a Third Phase. Things have to change first. Will they? Yes, because change is the rule of history. Some of us will not see these changes, but we need to keep on truckin' forward for the generations to follow us who will.