Prostasia Foundation
The Prostasia Foundation (Prostasia) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2018 to take "an evidence-based, prevention-focused approach to protecting children.".[1]The organization partnered with the Internet Society in 2020 to launch its Global Encryption Coalition.[2]The foundation's activities include, but are not limited to the provision of public forums and funding/promotion of private chats for minor attracted people, the provision of child abuse prevention training and consultancy services to corporate and other clients, and grants for researchers. Prostasia Foundation has also been seen to carry out awareness-raising activities in the form of numerous public media and social media engagement campaigns.
Since its inception, Prostasia has attracted a lot of attention throughout social media due to its sometimes bizarrely angled anti-CSA messaging. The idea that Prostasia may be in some way designed to stimulate adverse publicity (a so-called "psy-op") has been raised numerous times. These concerns usually focus on the following topics:
- The choice of Noah Berlatsky as Communications Spokesman - A Social Justice Warrior, Anti-Gamergater and Jewish journalist, who is likely to trigger visceral reactions among the alternative-right.
- His and others general reactions in video productions, described as "fake empathy" and "hand wringing".
- General confusion in their messaging as to whether minors are separated from adults in MAP Support Club's online chats (the projects have a very close codependency relationship).
- Publicity concerning campaigns in favor of sex doll use among MAPs.
- Bizarre, "sex positive" messaging, somehow incorporating kink, BDSM and Sex Worker rights into their anti-abuse platform.
- The name "Prostasia" (protection), and its subliminal evocation of prostatic hyperplasia (Prostate Enlargement).
- The choice of an elephant as a mascot, and various branded online merchandise.
- Various rules of engagement for online fora - effectively demanding complete abstinence from even hypothetical dissent against the CSA narrative of universal harm.
Prostasia receives funding through crowd finance, memberships and anonymous donations (Bitcoin and Monero are options according to their website). They have also supposedly received money from an institutional investor.[3] Ultimately, with anonymous donation a possibility, there is no way of telling who their critical benefactors are, at this point.
MAP Support Club
Prostasia is in public partnership with MAP Support Club[4], an online chat for MAPs who are committed to a non-offending lifestyle (NOMAPs). In October 2021, a member reported on Boychat.org, that chats were visited by 3-10 users at most times of day. A group administrator then clarified that MAP Support Club had over 100 active users.[5] MAP Support Club has posted a series of strict rules for participation. While most of these were said to act as a deterrent, the user did confirm there is a strict prohibition against advocacy for age of consent reform. Some of the rules follow:
- 4. No talk about lowering Age of Consent (AoC), whatever it is where you live.
- 5. No talk about adult-child sex being fundamentally OK and only harmful due to societal attitudes and reactions to its discovery, nor discussions of the topic. There are other places on the internet to have these discussions. This is not one of them.
- 11. No images or videos of children if they would be arousing to an average pedophile (shirtless, swimsuit, underwear).
- 12. No images or videos of children for the sake of sharing “cute” or “hot” kids. If relevant to an ongoing discussion, an occasional image will be allowed as long as it doesn't violate rule #11.
Rule #5 appears to be a prohibition against pro-c viewpoints, and could even be used against some clearly stated consequentialist anti-contact positions. However, what seems more realistic, is that topics such as consent reform are just deemed irrelevant and not discussed.
Commentary
Within the usual protocols (use Tor, VPNs, Pseudonyms), we see nothing dangerous about taking part in any of the projects supported by this organization - if their sanitized level of discussion is your kind of thing. They also host a useful library of research on a range of topics relevant to MAP activism. When assessing the type of organization we have before us, the term "big grift" would certainly be one of the most apt. We must ask ourselves, considering the unusual collection of journalists, academics and educators involved in Prostasia, would either it, or its platform have arisen "organically", without the critical impetus of a big whale donor? The answer to that is probably "no". It is highly likely that the publicity surrounding Prostasia is the primary reason for its existence and continued funding. On the positive side, this will have the effect of bringing MAPs into the limelight - something we will likely benefit from, and should seek to take advantage of through our own media campaigns. [6]
See Also
- Virtuous Pedophiles
- James Cantor
- A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity (book)
