If you're a map, an ally, or just a very attentive and unbiased person, you must have noticed that maps actually are a heavily oppressed group. Map-specific oppression has been strawmanned by trolls, who aim to paint it as if any complaint about unfair attitude is a complaint about legal consequences of CSA. But maps are oppressed because it's unsafe for them to be open about their identity, they're exposed only to strongly mapmisiac narrative since the earliest childhood, and any attempt to connect and support each other is seen as suspicious. This viral screenshot is a heartbreaking example.
People who do this to maps do not understand one single thing: maps, just like any other human being, by default are innocent. Dehumanization of maps has gone far enough for people to believe maps are an exception from the presumption of innocence. Some mapmisiacs consider themselves generous by leaving a loophole for a “truly nonoffending map”. This hypothetical map is supposed to be in conversion therapy, hate their attractions and ideally themselves, come out to everyone they need to intreaxt with, not have any social media accounts, not interact with and not look at children, not indulge in any unusual sexual thoughts and not be interested in any children oriented media. This is a standard nobody can live up to, this is a blatant disregard of safety and privacy. But it makes sense to people who are used to seeing a typical map as guilty, and the life goal of a map as constant proving of innocence.
Maps, in order to live healthy and full lives, need two things – an ability to keep their attraction to themselves, or be open about it, and be safe in both cases. Mapmisiacs brand closeted maps as secretly preying, and open maps as prideful, leaving no possible way to peacefully exist.
The same people who oppress maps are the most passionate deniers of this oppression. What's worthy of a mention is that they also often belong to oppressed categories, LGBT+, mentally ill, POC... When shown similarities between the attitudes they're struggling with in daily life and the attitudes they're giving to maps, they react aggressively, and claim that they're suffering oppression by mistake, while bad treatment of maps is justified. Yet there's something they don't understand – their oppressors too believe oppression is justified.
Let's imagine a transgender person who is casually mapmisiac and says they're right to do so, while trans oppression is wrong. In online spaces they're probably stalked and harassed by TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists, a group of women, mostly lesbians, very violent towards trans people). TERFs do not hurt them the with full understanding of how evil it is, they believe trans people need to be stopped, since according to TERF views trans people adopt new gender identities to prey on lesbians and gay men and to convert them into becoming straight. TERFs themselves, since they're mostly women and homosexual, suffer from misogyny and homophobia. Their oppressors also don't think what they're doing is evil, they believe they restore traditions and try to make the society better by combating perversions. This is a very ugly and horrible pyramid of oppression, where each participant takes the punch, then turns around and hits whoever is below them. All believe what's being done to them is unfair, but what they're doing is fair.
As a person who believes that maps don't deserve safe spaces, who makes or supports fake accounts intruding such spaces, who attacks doctors for posting about therapy, you aren't the exception. You're thinking and acting exactly how people who've hurt you are thinking and acting. Your fight isn't just and you behavior has victims, innocent people, teenagers, abuse survivors. If you can look at that Reddit post and say “serves him right”, you are adding to the world pyramid of oppression and you're continuing the cycle of abuse. I encourage you to think about it and become self aware. Nobody deserves to be in so much pain, and least of all people who never brought pain onto others.
This post is slightly more pressuring and harsh than I usually allow myself, but I need to make it such, because it's aimed at those who are here to hurt. I'm writing now in a lot of pain too. This has to stop, and we're here to stop it.
