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| Maps have been organizing and meeting online for several decades. Online map communities are at risk of censorship - mass bans and deletion - so the history of internet map activism is full of blank spots.
| | '''Nomap''' is an abbreviation that means "non offending minor attracted person". It denotes a map who did not commit a sexual offense against a child, in a very broad understanding of an offense.</br> |
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| == Maps on mainstream social media ==
| | Used to combat the stereotypes that linked minor attraction to [[Child sexual abuse|CSA]], it was especially popular with the maps of Tumblr. |
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| === Tumblr === | | == Controversy Of Usage == |
| Map community presence since early 2010s to the autumn of 2018. Contrary to the popular belief, the map purge did not coincide with the porn ban, but was ongoing since the beginning of the year and completed one-two months before it. The maximal number of active map accounts at the peak was approximately 150-180. The Tumblr map community was the birthplace of the [[map flag]]. After 2018 the bulk of the community integrated with Twitter.
| | The nomap identity first had a brief surge of popularity and then started going out of use by the end of 2010s. |
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| === Twitter === | | === Legalism Accusations === |
| Twitter had probably the largest map community of all normative social media, with the maximum of active accounts at around 500 or even more. Open map presence on the platform has been steadily decreasing since 2020, when Twitter introduced new terms of service, prohibiting discussing minor attraction as an orientation. One of the signature features of the Twitter map community used to be open communication with mental health professionals who study mapness and also have Twitter accounts.
| | While "offense" is a legal term with different definitions in local laws, for a long time the word "nomap" was divorced from its legal implications. The Tumblr map community, which consisted largely of young people and those for who English was a second language, understood it as "someone who hasn't harmed children", as opposed to "someone who hasn't broken a law". Receiving more information about what an offense is and how it may vary from country to country was one of the reasons the word fell out of favor.</br> |
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| === Discord ===
| | However, a cultural clash with non-Tumblr maps (especially [[pro-contact]] Twitter bloggers) has resulted in a rumor that Tumblr anti-contacts value legality above ethics and support police. The [[MAP flag|map flag]], called "the nomap flag" by its maker, is a frequent target of such slander. |
| Discord used to be a popular chat service among maps, and a former home of [[Map Support Club]]. The purges started in the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, and now only small and private map servers exist on this platform.
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| === Instagram === | | === Undesirable Outcomes === |
| Initially Instagram was discovered by Tumblr maps in early 2018, after antis created several pseudo map troll accounts on that platform. It has been implementing ongoing, slow bans since the very beginning and did not become a very popular place, yet the number of map accounts stays stable.
| | # An unwanted dichotomy "maps and nomaps" entered the discourse. Since there wasn’t any word to denote an offending map, some people assumed "map" meant an offender. |
| | #There was never a clear definition of what an offense is. Defining it through legal terms would lead to identical acts being classified differently, depending on where the person lives. Some American maps' insistence on using their laws as a universal measure has exposed a problem of national supremacy in the map community. |
| | #There did not exist a place for rehabilitated ex offenders. Including people who have committed CSA in the past as nomaps was counterintuitive to the purpose of the label, and alienating them contradicted the goals of rehabilitation.<br> |
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| === Dreamwidth ===
| | Possibly one of the strongest arguments against this word’s usage is that it creates an artificial division of violent acts into "sexual abuse of a child" and "everything else". However, some people still find the term useful, and in 2019 a figure known as Rainbow made up a word "acnomap", attaching [[anti-contact]] views to the old label. |
| This site, known for its freedom of expression policies, has been discussed as a possible map platform by Tumblr refugees in 2018. Yet its inconvenient mobile interface made most maps who moved there to abandon their accounts. There exists a DW map group, currently not used<ref>[https://here-there-be-dragons.dreamwidth.org/profile Here There Be Dragons], Dreamwidth.org.</ref>.
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| === Vent ===
| | [[Category:Terminology]] |
| Briefly used by Tumblr refugees in 2018, immediate bans.
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| === Medium ===
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| This site used to be one of the main blogging platforms for large text pieces, the old home of “Pedophiles About Pedophilia”<ref>[https://archive.ph/8RcnS Pedophiles About Pedophilia via Archive.today], note: you may not be able to click on the articles to view the content, but copying article links and pasting them back in the archive's search engine brings results.</ref> (currently available here<ref>[https://aboutpedophilia.com/ Pedophiles About Pedophilia], new site.</ref>). Map accounts were mass banned in late 2018.
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| === WordPress ===
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| After Medium suspensions this site has become a replacement and is still popular as such. Infrequent bans occur, seemingly at random.
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| === Element ===
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| This chat platform has functionally replaced Discord in early 2019. There is a history of bans, connected to matrix.org, but the number of map accounts on other homeservers is growing.
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| === Telegram ===
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| More popular with Twitter maps than anyone else, frequently regarded as a security risk and not used for anything long term. The site has a history of banning maps and child protection experts who support them.<ref>https://prostasia.org/blog/tumblr-is-censoring-prevention-messages-and-amplifying-harmful-ones/</ref>
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| === Reddit ===
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| Similar to Instagram in its attitude to maps, this site bans map accounts steadily, but slowly. Dedicated map subreddits are typically suspended very fast, however, and that is why this place is not widely used.
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| === Quora ===
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| Quora is an inflexible platform, geared towards a solely question-answer form of communication. It attracts maps who want to share their experiences with questioning people.
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| === Wikipedia ===
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| Wikipedia has maintained a longstanding policy to falsely label maps as a danger to other members and ban them on the basis of attractions, regardless of their actions or the quality of their contributions to the website.<ref>https://archive.ph/oxJIC#selection-1527.407-1539.13</ref>
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| In 2023, a number of detailed articles related to maps, sexual abuse prevention, and similar topics appeared on Wikipedia, largely due to the efforts of 2 editors. While it's unknown if these editors were maps or even map allies, the resulting coordinated effort by Wikipedia admins to censor all content created by these users<ref>https://archive.ph/pCvKg#selection-26319.0-26319.58</ref> and ban some users who objected to the deletions<ref>https://archive.ph/27amZ</ref><ref>https://archive.ph/6e9o4</ref> made it clear that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information about maps, child protection, and related topics.
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| === YouTube ===
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| This platform has always been less popular than text-based ones due to privacy concerns and is used only occasionally. Probably the most known map YouTube channel is Todd Nickerson's channel<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbRLA13BQkqDJKMYfyvUEw Todd Nickerson's YouTube channel].</ref>. He is publicly out as a map.
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| == Self hosted map spaces ==
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| === Virtuous Pedophiles ===
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| [[Virtuous Pedophiles]] is a private forum for anti contact maps, founded in 2012.
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| === Map Support Club ===
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| [[Map Support Club]] is a private group chat for anti contact maps.
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| === Pedofilie.nl ===
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| A dutch-speaking community for anti contact maps<ref>[https://www.pedofilie.nl/ Pedofilie.nl].</ref>. Founded in 2004, it changed platforms several times.
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| === Open Map Community ===
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| Open Map Community<ref>[https://www.mapcommunity.org/ OMC].</ref> is an alternative to MSC, also hosted on RocketChat, but open to all contact stances. They maintain their own list of online map communities and resources<ref>[https://blog.mapcommunity.org/omc/map-communities OMC's map communities list].</ref>.
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| === BoyChat ===
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| BoyChat<ref>[https://boychat.org/ BoyChat].</ref> is a site for boylovers. It is one of the oldest map spaces online, founded in 1995, and it has set many map discourse trends pretty early on<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20001119103800/http://www.ivan.net/bc/history/bchistory.html A History of BoyChat by Alexis], via Wayback Machine.</ref>.
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| === GirlChat ===
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| GirlChat<ref>[https://annabelleigh.net/ GirlChat].</ref> is a site for girllovers, and one of the oldest GL platforms to exist (since 2000).
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| === Visions Of Alice ===
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| Visions of Alice<ref>[https://visionsofalice.net/ Visions of Alice].</ref> is a site for girllovers.
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| === Dorian_in_chains ===
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| D0rian_in_chains (stylised to Dorian_in_chains in 2005) was an privatley owned and moderated anti contact MAP server and forum. Starting out on Yahoo forums in 2003 under the name Dorians_friends, the server grew to around 100 active members by the end of the year, at which point it was moved to a privately owned server coded by head moderator UB0ss. Primarily, it was a space for anti contact MAPs to discuss their friendships, crushes and the day to day realities of living in a MAP-miasmic society. At it's peak the website ran around 150 active users, although only around 75 of them were in the 'core userbase'. DIC was mainly used by Boylovers, and the majority of the moderating team identified as such, however there was a small core group of Girllovers who also enjoyed sharing their experiences on the forum, the most well known being Al1ce_Rube. The forum's firm anti-contact stance, which prohibited any and all sexual discussion caused controversy during it's time online, with many members later leaving the forum, citing the fact the firm anti-sexual contact or discussion rule was "censorship" and left them unable to communicate their experiences. DIC was eventually taken offline at the end of 2006 due to a number of factors - decreased server traffic, the expenses of running a private server, the rise of contemporary social media and the Internet 2.0 and safety concerns towards those involved all led to the website being rendered unusable on Dec 31st 2006. Prior to this, the moderation team did host a small in-forum thread encouraging people to share any alternative forms of social media they could be contacted on, but this was wholly unsuccessful.<ref>This text is written by one of the moderators of this forum.</ref>
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| === Map fediverse instances ===
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| Fediverse is a network of self hosted social media sites, vaguely Twitter-like in looks. After Twitter suspensions many maps moved to fediverse. Nnia.space<ref>[https://nnia.space/about/ Nnia.space].</ref> was created in May 2020, freak.university<ref>[https://freak.university/about Freak.university].</ref> and youjo.love<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20230703132231/https://youjo.love/about Youjo.love], via Wayback Machine.</ref> followed. A special mention for phenomenal.masto.host, currently inactive. This fediverse instance was the first map instance that we know about (launched in 2019) and inspired nnia’s creation.
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| === RocketChat ===
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| Yet another Discord replacement, the current home of [[Map Support Club]] and [[Open MAP Community]]. One needs more IT knowledge than average in order to set up a RocketChat server, so this platform is not as popular as Element.
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| == References ==
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| [[Category:Original pages]] | | [[Category:Original pages]] |
Nomap is an abbreviation that means "non offending minor attracted person". It denotes a map who did not commit a sexual offense against a child, in a very broad understanding of an offense.
Used to combat the stereotypes that linked minor attraction to CSA, it was especially popular with the maps of Tumblr.
Controversy Of Usage
The nomap identity first had a brief surge of popularity and then started going out of use by the end of 2010s.
Legalism Accusations
While "offense" is a legal term with different definitions in local laws, for a long time the word "nomap" was divorced from its legal implications. The Tumblr map community, which consisted largely of young people and those for who English was a second language, understood it as "someone who hasn't harmed children", as opposed to "someone who hasn't broken a law". Receiving more information about what an offense is and how it may vary from country to country was one of the reasons the word fell out of favor.
However, a cultural clash with non-Tumblr maps (especially pro-contact Twitter bloggers) has resulted in a rumor that Tumblr anti-contacts value legality above ethics and support police. The map flag, called "the nomap flag" by its maker, is a frequent target of such slander.
Undesirable Outcomes
- An unwanted dichotomy "maps and nomaps" entered the discourse. Since there wasn’t any word to denote an offending map, some people assumed "map" meant an offender.
- There was never a clear definition of what an offense is. Defining it through legal terms would lead to identical acts being classified differently, depending on where the person lives. Some American maps' insistence on using their laws as a universal measure has exposed a problem of national supremacy in the map community.
- There did not exist a place for rehabilitated ex offenders. Including people who have committed CSA in the past as nomaps was counterintuitive to the purpose of the label, and alienating them contradicted the goals of rehabilitation.
Possibly one of the strongest arguments against this word’s usage is that it creates an artificial division of violent acts into "sexual abuse of a child" and "everything else". However, some people still find the term useful, and in 2019 a figure known as Rainbow made up a word "acnomap", attaching anti-contact views to the old label.
