Why the MAP Community Exists

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By shocu
Telegram: @shocu7

The following image perfectly exemplifies just why it is that there is a MAP community. It encapsulates the nightmare young MAPs have to go through as they discover their attraction. It presents the hostility and harassment we have to face by virtue of simply existing:

For those who may be having issues viewing the above image, here is a transcript:

[Tweet from cindy]

cindy: “This is why MAP twitter is important. This is a 16yo MAP and a CSA survivor. Never hurt anyone, was just born with an attraction he can’t change. He shouldn’t have to see his own mom wish death upon him. This is why the hate needs to stop. This is not ok.”

[Screenshots of cindy’s direct messages]

[Image 1]

Boy: “yeah… help”

cindy: “help?”

Boy: “im fucking terrified… my hearts pounding… im so scared / i get on twitter to check my favorite artists… and… all of them are saying terrible things about… us… / i felt so… targeted… like i was pinned to a cross like jesus…”

cindy: “oh sweetie I’m so sorry to hear that :<”

Boy: “i scrambled to talk to SOMEONE like me”

[Image 2]

cindy: “what are you afraid of?”

Boy: “my whole family… / everyone around me… / i was with my mom one day and she was on facebook… she saw a picture of a dog getting a lethal injection… and it said / ‘we put down dogs that are mentally doomed… we should do the same to pedophiles’ / she fucking reposted it and sent it to everyone… even me / she doesn’t know… / if she did… i’d be in insane asylum”

[Image 3]

Boy: “if she did… i’d be in insane asylum”

cindy: “I know how tough that can be / it sucks that people are allowed to talk about killing us so freely / human beings are capable of some truly disgusting behavior / but you have to remember where it comes from / the fear / your mom isn’t thinking about you when she says ‘pedophiles’ / she’s thinking about some middle aged, fat, balding man doing unspeakable things to YOU / her hatred, actually comes from her love for YOU / i know it’s hard to see it that way, but it’s true”

[Replies to cindy’s tweet]

Jake: “Poor mother, no one deserves to have a kid who’s a pedo”

Tard Destroyers Inc©: “vruh they should be in a mental hospital, that is not okay, find help IMMEDIATLY children cannot consent you pedophile, both of you should be put down with a twelve gauge straight to your brain”

Scabby_Cat: “Pedos/maps are better off dead than abusing children and traumatizing them forever. Sorry not sorry”

🔪🩸🌹: “bash his head in with a goddamn brick and make him suffer”

WiseAurelius: “the only way to end that attraction he ‘can’t change’ is to beat it out of his senseless. CSA or not is not a excuse to act immoral. Stop defending something as disgusting as this you absolute sick fuck.”

bratmobile: “his mom made some points”

MarioX128: “kill yourself or I’ll murder you / I’m so happy that guy got molested, he isn’t a person”

Linnie: “DISGUSTING. YOU. AND. YOUR. KIND. ARE. DISGUSTING. GOT IT? DISTURBING, DISGUSTING”

Dreadeye19616: “That’s fucking hilarious I hope his mom strangles him to death while he sleeps lmao what a faggot”

[End of transcript]

A Scared and Confused Kid

This 16-year-old boy is scared and confused. He has come to realize that he may be attracted to minors and is frightened by the implications. What’s more, this image demonstrates how seemingly hopeless a MAP may feel upon discovering their attraction, as everywhere they turn to, they only find hate.

It starts with the people he looks up to. His favorite artists say horrible things about people like him, making him feel hated and targeted by the people he admires. His mother likes and shares a Facebook post about putting people attracted to minors to sleep, and sends it to him. She doesn’t realize she sent this message to one such minor-attracted person: her son. She doesn’t realize she is wishing death upon her son right in front of him.

People often assume no one close to them may be a MAP. They see such people as something “beneath them,” like people they would never associate with in the first place. But the reality is that anyone may be a MAP. It is not something dependent on lifestyle or on how one is raised. When people talk about killing or torturing MAPs, they’d do well to remember that that could well include close friends, relatives, or even their own children, and the use of such language only contributes to their anxiety and sense of hopelessness. Knowing that even their own mother wants them dead simply for being born will not at all help a MAP with their situation. It will only add to their confusion and fear, and will discourage them from ever bringing it up, allowing that confusion and fear to build up over time. Not being able to turn to those closest to you for support leads one to feel hopeless and alone, and is one of the main reasons people with this attraction often develop depression, which unfortunately ends up driving many to suicide. What’s more, they are too afraid to even talk about it.

They can’t turn to their own family for support, and it can all make them feel that them becoming a monster is an inevitability. This boy is desperately trying to reach out to someone like him because he has nowhere else to go.

Now imagine this boy going online to see if there’s anybody out there that can help him, and he gets exposed to this. He sees Jake saying that his mother doesn’t deserve him. Next he sees Tard Destroyers Inc© saying he should be placed in a mental hospital, accusing him of believing that children can consent despite no such statement ever being made (being attracted to minors does not necessarily mean that one believes that sex with minors is okay, not to mention that the boy in question is a minor himself). They also claim that this confused 16-year-old should be shot in the head. Now the boy sees Scabby_Cat assuming he will end up abusing a child no matter what he does, regardless of his actions. Meanwhile, the user with “🔪🩸🌹” as their name wishes to kill this young boy with a brick and make him suffer.

WiseAurelius says his parents should beat him to “cure” his sexual attraction, something that would obviously only serve to traumatize him. They also accuse him of “acting immoral,” even though this boy has done nothing but exist. People do not choose their attraction, and to suggest that one acts immorally simply for being a MAP is saying people can be immoral for factors beyond their control and that they cannot do anything about it. WiseAurelius’s use of quotation marks around “can’t change” also implies that they believe one can simply alter an “undesired” sexual attraction, insinuating that people with non-normative attractions should go to something like conversion therapy in order to “get it fixed,” something that has proven time and time again to be a fruitless practice that only serves to scar the “patient.” To top it off, they refer to the boy’s existence as “disgusting.”

bratmobile simply agrees with the boy’s mother, implying that they would like to euthanize this 16-year-old boy just for existing, perpetuating everything discussed above.

MarioX128 encourages this boy to commit suicide (suicide-baiting), and threatens him with murder. What’s more, they also state quite possibly the most hypocritical thing in this whole thread: that this abuse victim deserved to be molested. This comment is noteworthy because it captures how much of the hostility towards MAPs is fueled not out of a genuine concern to protect children from abuse, but rather out of simple hatred towards us, regardless of what we do or who we are. If it weren’t, then what this person is arguing is that children should be protected from sexual abuse except for the ones who “deserve it,” and the ones who deserve it warrant that abuse essentially for being born.

Linnie simply calls MAPs disgusting for something they cannot control, for something inborn and immutable. Dreadeye19616, meanwhile, finds this minor’s misery and abuse amusing, and delights in the thought of the boy’s own mother strangling him.

Imagine what reading all this does to a 16-year-old, especially one who’s already so confused about what their attraction means.

What Fuels the MAP Community

This image epitomizes the reason I write these essays, the reason the MAP community exists at all. This boy is experiencing something all too common among MAPs. I remember the confusion and anxiety I felt when I started to realize I had this attraction during my adolescence. The fact that everywhere I looked I could only find these types of hateful comments made me feel forlorn, like I was destined to be ostracized no matter what I did. This boy is going through a similar ordeal. He is discovering his own sexuality and is terribly confused. He fears his own mother and desperately reaches out for help online, yet what he finds is anything but help, only people supposedly trying to protect minors by wishing death and misery upon a minor.

The very thing that has fueled me to write these essays is a desire for young MAPs to not have to live through this nightmare for committing the sin of existing. I lived through it as a teen, and I want no one else to have to suffer through that. I want MAPs to be able to understand their own attraction and not feel as if they’re doomed. I want teens such as this one to be able to talk to their family members and close friends without feeling like their lives could end. I want people who are just realizing they have this attraction to have available resources that can help them understand what this is and what this isn’t, to have people they can talk to, to help them realize that having this attraction does not mean they’re doomed to be abusers.

This is the reason why the MAP community is so persistent in its activism. We want to fight misinformation, we want to show MAPs that they are not doomed to be offenders, that their attraction does not define them morally. And more to the point, we want young MAPs like this one to not feel so alone.