Similar to gay rights, but also different.

[Outis]

I generally look towards the gay movement as a reference for how we should be operating to bring about change but recently I questioned whether this really makes sense, since our situation is different to where the gay movement started.

Let me elaborate.
The gay movement was in a very similar place to the map movement today.
Gays were considered in many western societies as the worst people in existance, worse than pedophiles. In the UK for example for many decades, being gay was considered disgusting and something only the worst degenerates engaged in. It was sick and if you were gay you were shunned by society, you might face chemical castration, if you were found to have committed a gay act you would be imprisoned. Gays hid their identities out of fear of society, the state and the law. If anyone found out they were gay they could lose everything.

Sounds the same as being a map today which is why I look at the gay movement since it was able to flip their situation completely within a lifetime.

But then there are differences as well.

- Gays had no potential allies. No one related to gays, no one cared about the gay movement.
- The only way forward for the gay movement was to focus on gay rights. Many small victories, try to nibble at the edge of society and the law to make slow inroads until it's safe enough to be more bold.

But being a map we have two options and maybe the other option is a more effective option.

Option 1
Campaign for map rights in the same way as the gay movement did. Small victories, if someone is refused service for being a map, loses their job for being a map, is attacked for being a map, is criminalized unfairly for being a map etc. Small victories moving the needle until it's safe to fight more boldly. I do believe that will work and within a lifetime.

Option 2.
Focus on the highly privileged position of children.
Society has worked hard to place children in a highly privileged position where anything involving children can be construed as abuse, and any act of an adult that impacts a child as potential abuse. Not just physical abuse but mental also. Talking to a child is grooming, not respecting a child is mental abuse, not listening to a child is abuse, not empowering a child is abuse and so on. In schools and other places kids are encouraged to speak and be heard, it's all about children expressing themselves and being able to be themselves.

But there's a cognitive dissonance in society where while this is universally true, that children are truthful, innocent and must be listened to and respected, there's a movement to silence kids who speak out anything that challenges society. Kids can speak and must be listened to but they must not stray from the script. I would argue that pressuring, threatening or using fear or coerce a child to say something he or she didn't at first feel or express is abuse and people who do this are child abusers.

Children have no vote or any way to speak out. The argument is that children are not developed enough to have an opinion, but I would argue that many adults are not mentally developed or educated enough to have an opinion, and yet they do have a vote because intellect isn't a barrier to having a voice. Kids have feelings, they have fears and wants. A kid knows right from wrong, they might not fully understand the lies spun out by politicians or the nuance of the economy, but that applies to many adults to.

Kids are routinely ignored, punished, pushed and pulled by groups in society while being silenced from speaking out. Kids are routinely abused by these groups.

So option 2 is to focus on the rights of kids. On the rights of kids to speak out anonymously about their lives, without fear of judgement or punishment, without a script and without a filter. Kids should have the right to vote on the grounds that they are members of society and to deny kids the right to vote is child abuse, it's silencing kids and telling them they can not speak out if the state wants to do something to harm a child. It's the state holding the right to abuse kids and removing the right of kids to speak out.

Empower kids to win more equality. Is this an easier and safer battle since kids already hold a special position where anything against a child is potentially abuse. So challenging restrictions placed on kids is going with the flow of society, it's standing up to abuse and giving kids a voice.

What has this to do with maps?
Well, if kids have a free voice and a vote and real power and autonomy, and they speak out about abuse from that position, then we know that the abuse is real and there there is a real problem, that it isn't just kids being coerced to follow a script. In that world, a world where the evidence could be trusted because it came from victims then I would believe it and be the first to stand alongside kids to fight abuse.

But if kids are on an even footing with adults, with a real voice, with votes, with actual rights that are not censored by handlers/owners/parents/state, and if kids are talking about their rights then it naturally includes rights to relationships, to love, to sex lives including with partners of their choice, and their right to speak out against abuse where there is abuse but to consent to relationships where it's what they want and have a right to.

From this position, does the map rights argument become much easier since criminalising adults for having relationships with kids is stripping away the rights of children and abusing children?


So my question is, should there be more of a focus on childrens rights in society?
If so, should that be the primary focus or should map rights and childrens rights be equally fought for?
Do other differences between gay and map campaigning create opportunities that should be worked more, such as finding allies such as people in the gay rights movement or academics?

[FairBlueLove]

This is a great analysis.

Kids should have the right to vote on the grounds that they are members of society

Many would argue that kids - and we should specify some age range, no? - can be easily tricked into voting this or that. So I think it all boils down to demonstrate that the ratio between the percentage of kids which can be easily influenced into some political view and the same percentage for adults is close to 1. How to proceed with that?

This of course doesn't only apply to voting, but to autonomy in general.

[Lennon72]

Option 1
Campaign for map rights in the same way as the gay movement did. Small victories, if someone is refused service for being a map, loses their job for being a map, is attacked for being a map, is criminalized unfairly for being a map etc. Small victories moving the needle until it's safe to fight more boldly. I do believe that will work and within a lifetime.

So are you saying that the first option involves speaking out against MAP discrimination? What are you implying with option 1?

[Riva]

- Gays had no potential allies. No one related to gays, no one cared about the gay movement.
- The only way forward for the gay movement was to focus on gay rights. Many small victories, try to nibble at the edge of society and the law to make slow inroads until it's safe enough to be more bold.

This definitely doesn't describe gay rights like, at all. Like gay rights mostly happened as a movement after man sex was already legal.

[Outis]

This is a great analysis.

Kids should have the right to vote on the grounds that they are members of society

Many would argue that kids - and we should specify some age range, no? - can be easily tricked into voting this or that. So I think it all boils down to demonstrate that the ratio between the percentage of kids which can be easily influenced into some political view and the same percentage for adults is close to 1. How to proceed with that?

This of course doesn't only apply to voting, but to autonomy in general.

This is true and is an argument often used against giving kids a vote, that they will be influenced by their parents and friends for example.
But adults are influenced by their peers as well and speaking as a parent myself, my kids have no problem taking different views to me on many subjects, especially where subjects are debated at school for instance. My kids will engage with me in debate, sometimes they will agree with me, sometimes they won't. One of my older kids will go as far as pulling together evidence to support their view and will change my view as often as I will change her view. Younger kids are more easily influenced but that doesn't have to be a blocker since debate groups in school or out of school for instance would become a part of education, learning to think critically and have the confidence to vote. It would even build out self confidence in general and reaffirm that kids do have a voice that is heard. For the anti's out there it could be argued that it would encourage kids to feel able to speak out about abuse because they are being listened to but of course it also means kids can feel empowered to take unpopular views.

On another note I read that many laws that have been created against maps use terminology that can unfairly impact other marginalized groups such as the disabled and LGBTQ groups. It has to be worth someone's time to look at whether this is true and how, to see if this provides an opportunity to challenge laws and form coalitions.

Option 1
Campaign for map rights in the same way as the gay movement did. Small victories, if someone is refused service for being a map, loses their job for being a map, is attacked for being a map, is criminalized unfairly for being a map etc. Small victories moving the needle until it's safe to fight more boldly. I do believe that will work and within a lifetime.

So are you saying that the first option involves speaking out against MAP discrimination? What are you implying with option 1?

No, option 1 is just to focus on map rights rather than childrens rights. So build alliances, collect evidence to support the map argument for improved rights, focus on challenging the law and society whereever maps are treated unfairly.

- Gays had no potential allies. No one related to gays, no one cared about the gay movement.
- The only way forward for the gay movement was to focus on gay rights. Many small victories, try to nibble at the edge of society and the law to make slow inroads until it's safe enough to be more bold.

This definitely doesn't describe gay rights like, at all. Like gay rights mostly happened as a movement after man sex was already legal.

That's not the case. As early as the 1940s there were homophile organizations forming in the UK to work towards law reform. Oral sex was a capital offence and had been since 1533 and anal sex got you a prison sentence up to 7 years, a law introduced in 1388.

The police enforced an environment of fear over the gay community with clandestine survellance and undercover operations and frequent raids and arrests. Just holding hands in public could land you a two year prison sentence. Imagery and writing would be used to build cases of gross indecency, just look at Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for his writing, and there were artists arrested for producing depictions of gay acts.

If you were gay there was conversion therapy and there was the mental health stigma since gay people were often labelled mentally ill and so unfit to work, not so unlike maps today being treated as mentally ill and unfit to work in many professions. All this led to gay people to often live isolated lives in fear of society and the law.

WW2 changed many social attitutudes as soldiers had been exposed to new experiences and ideas overseas, but it was the counterculture movement in the 1950s that emboldened gay people to talk about individual freedom, nonconformity and gay rights. It was this shift by the gay community at a time of change that ultimately led to the Wolfenden Report that finally recommended decriminalizing gay acts, but it was a full decade until laws started to change.

I put it to you that if those early organisations hadn't formed, if the counterculture movement hadn't happened, if gay groups hadn't started to come out of hiding and push for more, would the Wolfenden Report have recommended changing the law and if there hadn't been a decade of continued pressure on the government to change the law, would the law have actually changed?

I don't believe it would have changed and the gay movement would today be in the same situation we are in today.