The earliest online instance of the flag appears to be this Tumblr page, archived by US fact-checking website Snopes, which called the initiative a troll experiment. One user of the online platform for visual content presented the flag on a thread dedicated to acceptance of MAPs, “Support NOMAPS” (for non-offending minor attracted persons). “The NOMAP community doesn’t really have a pride flag, so in honor of pride month I designed a NOMAP pride flag,” the self-proclaimed flag designer wrote, before going in detail over the meaning of each colour. Screenshot of a Twitter account on July 11, 2019ĭetermining the difference between real MAPs who embrace or refuse the flag and trolls posing as MAPs is complicated by the anonymity provided by pseudonyms and aliases used online. Russell Dick told AFP, “We think there may be some anti-MAPs posing as MAPs and doing various things to create and maintain a very negative picture and understanding of MAPs. So it is hard to tell what’s really happening!”
“The flag has nothing to do with normalizing pedophiles or an attempt to make pedophilia a part of the LGBTQ movement,” Candice Christiansen, founder of The Global Prevention Project, told AFP.Ĭhristiansen, who has received criticism for her work in the past because it was interpreted as an attempt at normalizing pedophilia, said she was targeted because of the flag.