If you subscribe to our newsletter, you probably already know that Prostasia has been undergoing a wave of bad publicity since this weekend. Stemming from a Twitter call-out against one of our staff members, the criticisms that we continue to receive range from the serious (claims that supporting a prevention-focused peer support group for minor-attracted adolescents is putting them at risk), to the silly (that our mascot Effie wears no pants).

The most gleeful in their attempts to takedown Prostasia have included some of the worst people on the Internet. For example, Laila Mickelwait who posted CSAM to Twitter as part of her anti-sexworker hate campaign; Michael Salter, the Satanic Ritual Abuse conspiracy proponent who supported the Childs Play sex abuse website being left online for 11 months by Australian police; Anna Slatz, the proud TERF who published a Nazi manifesto; and Collective Shout, the Australian purity brigade whose major advocacy campaign is to have adult fetish gear removed from Etsy.

It's easy to dismiss criticisms from these long-time Prostasia opponents; not because everything that they are saying about us is untrue (although a lot of it is), but because what they object to most include positions that we proudly admit to. For example, we are accused of defending the legality of cartoon pornography and sex toys: hell yes, we do! With a backlog of real child sexual abuse cases going unprosecuted, the diversion of enforcement resources into prosecuting people over fantasy outlets is absolutely shameful and does harm real children, irrespective of the separate prevention benefits that these outlets may have.

However, these extremists are not our only critics. There are some who are otherwise politically aligned with Prostasia, but who criticize us for our approach. One of the most common such good-faith criticisms is over our advocacy to dismantle the stigma that attaches to accurately discussing pedophilia and child sexual abuse, and promoting help-seeking behaviors by those who are committed to not offending. For some, this is misunderstood as a tolerance for pedophilia. But these are absolutely mainstream positions among public health professionals, that are not at all controversial in that field. Our views align, for example, with those of major public health institutions such as the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Our critics may not like the fact that  preventing child sexual abuse involves working with MAPs—many people didn't like that preventing COVID involved wearing masks—but that’s simply how things are, and we make no apology for taking an expert-led approach to these difficult issues.

The most nuanced takes among our critics are those that don't criticize us for our public health approach, nor for our advocacy for sex-positive communities, but for our approach to tackling both problems at once, and thereby tainting each cause by association with the other. A typical Twitter criticism along these lines reads “why is an org that brands itself as primarily about child protection more invested in making sure adults can watch ageplay porn than in anything to do with actually protecting kids?”

It's not true that we're more invested in associated human rights causes—we would never champion a human rights cause that conflicted with our primary mission of child protection—but yes, we do champion human rights that are put at risk by extremism in the child protection movement, simultaneously with our advocacy for prevention-based approaches. That's always been the case, and contrary to some of the claims being made against us, we've been very open about it from the outset.

That's not to say that our decision to walk this tightrope hasn't been contentious. During our original formation discussions, one of our co-founders suggested that we should either be a watchdog on the child protection sector or a child protection group, but not attempt to be both. However our reasoning for ultimately deciding to combine these missions was that the causes are complementary.

Child protection must—legally and ethically—be conducted within the bounds of international human rights law. And human rights advocacy must be not only trauma-informed, but also prevention-informed. The reason why the digital rights movement failed to prevent FOSTA/SESTA was because rights groups don't have a credible voice when it comes to offering non-carceral solutions to the problem of child sexual abuse. Through our positive prevention mission, Prostasia does. So while others may disagree with our hybrid approach, it was made both consciously and strategically. 

Although we stand by our decision, it may now be time to revisit it with our stakeholders and experts. We'll shortly be holding a meeting of our Board to discuss whether restructuring Prostasia would make it more effective. Whatever decisions are made and whatever lessons will have been learned, we remain proud and unrepentant for attempting something that had never been done before: to demonstrate that an organization devoted to child protection doesn't also have to be one that stands by or is complicit in the abuse of human rights.

That's why despite the personal and professional pain that the current controversy continues to exact upon our staff, volunteers, and allies, we still regard it as representing a significant and historically important success. Without us, the current discourse around child sexual abuse and human rights would never have been sparked. Sifting through the current discourse, one can find experts unaffiliated with Prostasia (and some of them remaining critical of us for our mis-steps) who are amplifying our core messages: that thoughts shouldn't be equated with abuse, that support and education achieves more than stigmatization, and that child sexual abuse isn't committed by unknowable monsters, but by human beings who can be convinced to make a different choice. The fact is that we brought these important conversations into the mainstream—something that no other group had managed to do—and we are immensely proud of that.

As a subscriber to our newsletter (and may we hope, a paying member?) you have been an important contributor towards this success. Thank you for staying with us and supporting us, and rest assured—we won't be going away. 

It's been a rollercoaster month for adult content creators, who faced the news on August 19 that OnlyFans would be banning sexually explicit content from its platform starting in October, only to have OnlyFans reverse that decision a week later. OnlyFans’ original decision had been made to comply with demands from its banking partners. Not least of these demands was Mastercard's introduction in April of more stringent content rules, including a complete ban on livestreamed adult content without prior review. These changes had been made under pressure from sex work prohibitionist groups such as Exodus Cry and NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media), who claimed credit for OnlyFans’ move.

Before the OnlyFans news dropped, Prostasia Foundation and our partners had already planned our response: to bring together platforms, the payment industry, academics, sex educators, sex workers, and other experts at a Multi-stakeholder Dialogue on Consent and Safety in Adult Content Distribution on September 17. In light of the current social media controversy in which we are engulfed, Prostasia has decided to withdraw as a co-organizer of the event in order to avoid this controversy becoming a distraction. However, the event will be continuing under the able joint leadership of its other co-organizing organizations.

This virtual event aims to mobilize sex-positive communities to develop and share their own best practices for the elimination of image-based sexual abuse, that also uphold the rights and freedoms of marginalized content creators. The background paper for the Multi-stakeholder Dialogue explains further:

Our society’s War on Sex has painted a target on the back of its most marginalized communities, such as sex workers and LGBTQ+ people. Not only are these communities disproportionately deplatformed and censored, but they are also stigmatized and scapegoated for problems of image-based sexual abuse.

Yet the reality is that 18+ communities are fierce and effective champions of consent and safety in adult content distribution. From advocating for (and providing) comprehensive sex education, to holding tube websites accountable for non-consensual content, to developing frameworks for negotiating and recording consent, these communities have deep experience in abuse prevention. … 

Nevertheless, while payment companies and platforms have been introducing new restrictions on the distribution of adult content online, the wisdom of these 18+ communities has been ignored, and their rights have been sacrificed. This doesn’t serve survivors of image-based sexual abuse, but only makes solving the problem harder. 

Although the OnlyFans news makes this event even more timely, the moral war on adult content online didn't start with OnlyFans, and it won't end there. Prohibitionist groups’ previous success against Pornhub provided a template for their attack on OnlyFans, even down to making the same claims that the platform tolerated underage content. The reversal of its explicit content ban may signal that its new banking partners accept that OnlyFans’ rigorous age and identity verification standards show that it actually doesn't tolerate such content. But the same care isn't taken by some other platforms; Twitter, for example, may be the next to crack down on adult content in the face of the heat that it is taking over sex trafficking claims.

Similarly, we can expect the rest of the payment processing industry to fall in line behind Mastercard's new rules. Although Visa originally rebuffed NCOSE's attempt to impose financial censorship saying, "we do not believe Visa should be in the position of imposing restrictions on the sale of lawful goods or services", that was before stigmatizing media commentary added powerful new allies to the pro-censorship camp.

But all is not lost. Although morals campaigners have been emboldened to think that they can get away with anything simply by invoking the trauma of child sexual abuse, OnlyFans’ about-face shows that this isn't true. Other hopeful signs include the backlash against Exodus Cry's Laila Mickelwait for posting actual CSAM in support of her anti-pornography campaign, the unprecedented international censure of Australian police for operating a CSAM website, the unexpected pushback against Apple for its spyware rollout (see elsewhere in this issue), and the defeat of CSAM surveillance tools in the European Parliament. Could we at last be seeing the limits of extremism in the fight against image-based abuse?

While morality campaigners lose credibility, 18+ communities themselves are stepping up to provide actionable solutions to image-based sexual abuse. At the Multi-stakeholder Dialogue on Consent and Safety in Adult Content Distribution, participants with a range of perspectives will deliberate as equals, with the aim of developing a consensus around solutions to the shared problem of non-consensual content being distributed online. Following the event, participants will be invited to continue to work online to refine its outcomes into a series of best practice recommendations, which will be presented at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Poland on December 7.

Registration for the Multi-stakeholder Dialogue is open now, and free tickets are available. Please help spread the word about the event, which will highlight evidence-based best practices that respect the rights of those whom pro-censorship morality groups marginalize and stigmatize. We invite you to join the organizers on September 17, to help demonstrate that 18+ communities aren't part of the problem of image-based abuse, they are part of the solution.

by Timothy N. Frode

Apple's choice to add spyware to its mobile devices has sparked significant backlash. The policy sounds good, in principle. Using technology to detect images of child sexual abuse and ensuring they are not stored on Apple’s cloud or visible to children sounds like a wonderful thing. However, this is at its core a reactive solution to the major public health problem of sexually harmful imagery. What is needed instead is prevention.

Most criticism of Apple's choice has come on the technical side. Two weeks after Apple's announcement, users found out that they were in fact already including the code in iOS releases. Experts pointed out that the tool creates major privacy concerns. Apple is also in the news for trying to prevent security researchers from researching their products. Combined, this spells trouble for consumers of Apple’s product, who are being asked to purchase technology which could compromise their privacy and which cannot be vetted by third party experts.

Apple’s approach raises major privacy and civil rights issues.  Innocuous but system-triggering images could spark a dangerous and potentially life-ruining investigation into innocent people. At best, strangers may end up viewing your family pictures because some database misidentified it as child sexual abuse. 

Worst of all, Apple's approach will fail to prevent child sexual abuse. The company has taken advice from only one segment of the child protection sector—the police and censorship groups whose approach revolves around enforcement. They have not consulted with those harmed by that approach. Nor have they listened to clinicians and researchers involved in prevention.

What happens on Apple devices?

Sharing sexually harmful imagery of children does not happen as frequently on Apple's iCloud as it does on dedicated forums of image offenders on the dark web. What happens more frequently on cloud services such as iCloud is that children upload images of themselves and share them with people. One of the new features of Apple's spyware rollout is to detect such sharing and report it to the child's parents. They can be tricked into sharing them with adults, yes, and that is of course exploitation.

However, part of this issue is that children share imagery of their bodies with other children their own age. This is technically against the law. It is also relatively normal, exploratory behavior. Shaming them for it—or worse, having their phone rat them out to their parents—is heavily unproductive and does not teach children the potential dangers of this behavior and how their imagery can be exploited. In fact, in some abusive households, alerting parents to perfectly normal behavior can put the child in physical danger from the very people meant to protect them.

Reaction vs. prevention

So Apple phones will often identify innocent people, either through false positive results, or through flagging youth engaged in normal sexual exploration with peers. Even in case where Apple does find adults exploiting child sexual imagery, though, this approach is still not really helpful in preventing harm. After all, once the sexual imagery is created and exploited, much of the harm is already done.

 We like to see people arrested. We like to see children saved from horrific abuse. It is harder for us, as humans, to measure or believe in the quiet, more subtle approach of preventing such violence in the first place.

The scale of image-based sexual abuse is not in doubt. In fact, we simply do not have the space for those who commit image offenses in jails or prisons if we chose to use the reactive approach. We cannot arrest our way out of a public health crisis. The better approach is to support people who are tempted to view this material so they do not view it in the first place. This reduces the number of people in harmful dark web imagery-sharing communities and ensures people have the tools to make better choices. These people are not irreparably broken, they simply struggle in a way most people cannot relate to and are disgusted by. Helping them is a fight that we do have the knowledge and capacity for.

These people are not all pedophiles. We know that because we have done research on child pornography offenders and done testing and therapy on them to see if they have an ongoing sexual attraction to children or if they do not have pedophilic attraction. While that research is still in its early stages, a landmark study done in 2006 showed that roughly 40% of child pornography offenders are not pedophilic. That matters and has implications for preventing sexual violence.

Too many concerns

Instead of embracing a law enforcement and surveillance approach, Apple should have listened to those whose voices are absent from this noisy chorus: prevention practitioners, educators, public health and child development experts, and the minority groups who are the inevitable casualties of a reactive approach. They could have shown Apple the importance of  ensuring that people have access to better sex education materials, more supportive peer communities, and online and offline support for mental health and abuse prevention. Talking with prevention experts could also have helped Apple realize the limitations of what tech companies can do to solve this problem.

We are looking for volunteers to represent Prostasia Foundation on every major social media network.  Are you a Twitch streamer? TikTok famous? An Instagram influencer? Is Discord your domain? Whatever your platform, we want you to represent us and build a presence for us there.

With training in how to speak on behalf of Prostasia and answer or find answers to questions, you’ll be tasked with creating awareness in your online communities with the ultimate goal of fundraising. Fundraising can take many forms, everything from live events to regular posting about donations and memberships. You will be responsible for at least one event, structured for your platform, specifically for fundraising with an optimistic goal of $2000+

Receive more information and apply to become a Prostasia Ambassador here.

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Prostasia Foundation is the only child protection organization committed to fighting the abuse of human rights in the name of children, while promoting a unique positive agenda for child sexual abuse prevention. A philanthropic donor recently withdrew their commitment to fund us through to the end of the year, leaving us in a hole. We’re depending on you to donate $10,000 between now and November 30 as we gear up to fight our biggest-ever battles. Equip us to win the war against child sexual abuse, bigotry, and unchecked government surveillance.

Sometimes a book is well written, compelling, and factual, but lacks an obvious audience. There are definitely people that need this information but most of them will reject this book without even reading the blurb. Many will call this book pandering or sympathizing, but it appears to me to be an honest and good faith effort to represent a heavily stigmatized group of people in a more truthful light.  A Long, Dark Shadow—Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity by Allyn Walker is a really important read if you believe in a holistic approach to preventing CSA.

Why won’t people read this book? Mostly because they have been programmed to believe that terms like “minor-attracted person/people” and “MAP” are an attempt at “sugarcoating” or “normalizing” pedophilia. One reason there is a disconnect is that people apply the term“pedophile/pedophilia” to all people who are attracted to minors of a range of ages. MAPs is a more accurate term in that it is broader, but even the suggestion that such specificity is needed results in backlash. An even more serious problem is that many people believe all people attracted to children are child sexual abusers and vice versa. Any change in terminology is seen as an effort to provide cover for abusers.

The most logical audience for this book would be clinicians looking to work in the field of minor-attraction and/or child sexual abuse prevention. It is a good training tool for anyone looking to work in CSA prevention. I would actually go so far as to suggest this book for standard reading for volunteers and staff working for child protection non-profits. The subject matter is taboo because of stigma but it’s something we need to be discussing out in the open.

The book itself is about minor-attracted persons, MAPs, and their experiences in discovering their attractions, learning to live with them, and the risks, rewards, and fallout associated with coming out to people in their lives. The case studies involved are compelling and paint a picture, not of monsters, as some feel they are, but of extremely human individuals who are doing what’s needed to protect themselves and others.

Over and over again, it seems every story told leads back to societal stigma and the damage that comes with it. Many are open to admitting to minor-attraction but uncomfortable identifying with terms like “pedophile” because of the societal insistence that all pedophiles are offenders. Many suffer in silence, knowing that coming out could be the end of the world for them. Jobs and relationships are threatened and sometimes law enforcement is needlessly involved, further compounding trauma for non-offending MAPs. Stigma heavily impacts mental health and relationships are lost over something that is unchosen and unchangeable.

I don’t like to speak for MAPs so I will just say that I think this text might be a welcome and refreshing read in some ways. Perhaps even validating in that it explores the lives and experiences of several MAPs and highlights the differences in their individual journeys as well as the connections. It’s an ultimately supportive and informative message.

At the end of the day, it’s well worth getting past any kneejerk reactions to the subject matter. To those who would condemn the book without reading it, I contend that it might actually be comforting to read that MAPs are not, in fact, “ticking time bombs” or “monsters.” Most MAPs understand that they cannot act on their attraction and why. Walker ends the book with a hearty thanks to the MAPs who helped move their research along, as well as a message of hope for change and respect for those heavily burdened with societal stigma.

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