Similar to gay rights, but also different.

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Outis
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Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by 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?
Last edited by Outis on Wed Feb 05, 2025 10:10 am, edited 2 times in total.
Keep every stone they throw at you. You've got castles to build.
The power of the people is stronger than the people in power.

To endaavor to domineer over conscience, is to invade the citadel of heaven.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
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FairBlueLove
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by FairBlueLove »

This is a great analysis.
Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am 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.
Squinting helps filtering the noise and seeing the underlying pattern.
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Lennon72
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by 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
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Riva »

Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am - 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
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Outis »

FairBlueLove wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 6:02 pm This is a great analysis.
Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am 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.
Lennon72 wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 12:36 am
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.
Riva wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 9:44 am
Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am - 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.
Keep every stone they throw at you. You've got castles to build.
The power of the people is stronger than the people in power.

To endaavor to domineer over conscience, is to invade the citadel of heaven.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
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Lennon72
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Lennon72 »

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.

Don't you mean the 1960s?
Liana Lial
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Liana Lial »

Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am - 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.
I would argue that this isn't true. The prominence of lesbian feminists of the time seems to suggest that feminists were always a potential ally. It may have still been a difficult thing to manage - allying in full with another movement is complicated at best - but that's really no different than our situation as youth-lovers. Arguably, we have even less allies in practice, due to just the pure volume of pressure against anyone who associates.
Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am 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?
Yes. I maintain that it is absurd to analyze the plight of youth-love without discussing ageism. At its core, the discrimination against youth-lovers is discrimination based on age. It is the denial of a youth's ability to consent, to practice their autonomy, and a punishment for those who do not believe youth lack agency. (Note that it is less important what the individual youth-lover believes as what broader society thinks us to believe.) That we could possibly seek to advance our own cause while ignoring the glaring question of youth autonomy is absurd.
"For you, I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine, I walk the line"

- Johnny Cash
Outis
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Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Outis »

Lennon72 wrote: Sat Feb 08, 2025 4:05 am
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.

Don't you mean the 1960s?
No, I meant the war which is well documented. Of course the 60s did to a greater extend, but citizens who hadn't travelled far from their homes were suddenly moved to foreign lands in close proximity to people they wouldn't ordinarily have encountered. Soldiers from across the country, from across the commonwealth, allies from other countries. People encountered many cultural differences and yes that included people who were more open about different relationship types including gay people. And when you're in a trench living so close to these people, forming deep friendships, old prejudices and ideas become a secondary concern to staying alive. So when these people returned to their towns and villages they had broadened ideas.

It's a little ironic that there are British and American people who have very narrow minds about foreign people, filled with distrust, talking about petriotism and often boasting about their armed histories and what it means to be a patriotic Brit or American, when those true heroes from are darkest times in history would be ashamed and disgusted of their xenophobic attitudes. True patriotism to me means being more like those heroes who died for us, being honerable to friends and allies.
Liana Lial wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2025 8:43 pm I would argue that this isn't true. The prominence of lesbian feminists of the time seems to suggest that feminists were always a potential ally. It may have still been a difficult thing to manage - allying in full with another movement is complicated at best - but that's really no different than our situation as youth-lovers. Arguably, we have even less allies in practice, due to just the pure volume of pressure against anyone who associates.
It's a fair point and I don't know what impact that had. From what I understand, in Britain lesbian acts were never criminalised but were marginalised and looked at in a negative way. There was a report early in the 20th century that said the reason it wouldn't be criminalised was because this could encourage more women to do it. I've no idea why that would be the case but then when has the arguments behind legislation every made sense?

The first lesbian organisation formed in 1963, so quite late but then it wasn't criminalised before then so it was just something that went on behind closed doors with the only risk being social embarassment.

So you could be right that the gay rights movement could likely have had natural allies in the feminist lesbian community, arguing for legal equality.
Outis wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:38 am Yes. I maintain that it is absurd to analyze the plight of youth-love without discussing ageism. At its core, the discrimination against youth-lovers is discrimination based on age. It is the denial of a youth's ability to consent, to practice their autonomy, and a punishment for those who do not believe youth lack agency. (Note that it is less important what the individual youth-lover believes as what broader society thinks us to believe.) That we could possibly seek to advance our own cause while ignoring the glaring question of youth autonomy is absurd.
That makes good sense. It is an ageism question and a case can be built around that far easier than building a case for map rights.
Keep every stone they throw at you. You've got castles to build.
The power of the people is stronger than the people in power.

To endaavor to domineer over conscience, is to invade the citadel of heaven.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Liana Lial
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Joined: Thu Feb 06, 2025 6:02 am

Re: Similar to gay rights, but also different.

Post by Liana Lial »

Outis wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2025 10:27 am It's a fair point and I don't know what impact that had. From what I understand, in Britain lesbian acts were never criminalised but were marginalised and looked at in a negative way. There was a report early in the 20th century that said the reason it wouldn't be criminalised was because this could encourage more women to do it. I've no idea why that would be the case but then when has the arguments behind legislation every made sense?

The first lesbian organisation formed in 1963, so quite late but then it wasn't criminalised before then so it was just something that went on behind closed doors with the only risk being social embarassment.

So you could be right that the gay rights movement could likely have had natural allies in the feminist lesbian community, arguing for legal equality.
I admit that it's something that can be a tad hard to parse. These interactions quickly get messy. For example, I recall reading in Martin Duberman's "Has the Gay Movement Failed" that many lesbians felt excluded by the sexism within the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). The lesbian separatist movement did sprout out of this, and of course, lesbians faced exclusion within feminist circles of the time. However, it is also the case that the GLF did intend to subvert sexism and gender roles (even if there were complications with this in practice.) These goals were very in-line with feminists, and GLF did utilize the 'consciousness-raising' that feminist groups popularized.

Hell, even a group that you would not think would see itself as a natural ally to the gay movement of the time, The Black Panther Party, had its co-founder Huey P. Newton speak on the necessity of forging a connection with the burgeoning women's liberation and the gay liberation movement. It's rank and file membership, though, did tend towards homophobia.

As I see it, minority groups always have ties worthy of building friendship with other groups. The problem is more practice - can these groups successfully make these ties? Can these groups show up in solidarity for each other, with sufficient organizational work? How easy, or difficult, is the connection to make? The fact that many individuals within a minority group may be prejudiced against another so heavily, means these connections require overcoming a lot of mental and social barriers.
"For you, I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine, I walk the line"

- Johnny Cash
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