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Earlier this year, I was keeping an eye on a certain individual in the MAP community who had also joined Mastodon in mid-2022 with a long history of questionable behavior, who was carrying out ongoing harm. I felt distressed and stifled seeing him gaining clout and seeing community members have friendly, casual interactions with him, as if they had no idea who he was or what harm was being enabled by allowing him a platform. I mostly confined my venting to DMs with friends, and also passed on the information about him to various other people in private if they were newer to the community and seemed to be unaware but might appreciate or at least consider changing their behavior upon knowing. I also occasionally screenshotted bigoted or abuse-apologist posts by him and complained about or dissected them, and referenced his past with relative indirectness. On February 17, I was casually discussing some new posts in DMs with a person whom I was friends with at the time. I wasn’t exactly venting or suffering; we rolled our eyes, and I thought that would be that. I mentioned being unable to talk like this in public. The person said that I should actually try doing that. After some time considering the idea and deliberating with myself, I decided to actually do it, and posted a thread.
In response to drama surrounding the thread, Liminal made a statement on February 18. After reading Liminal’s post, I realized that I had remembered some of my referenced pre-2021 timeline (mostly things I had heard other people talking about a long time ago) inaccurately. The following summarizes the history of and explains the problems with the individual’s behavior fairly well:
I had made my thread in relative haste; after looking over it again afterward, I saw a few mild errors (I was unable to edit posts at the time), and I was also receiving significant backlash for a link I had included in it, which I have now removed. I deleted my thread, but I am reproducing it here (with some minor corrections and updated information so it is more convenient to read):
I woke up the next morning to a surprising (and very heartwarming) flood of agreement and support—but also, as I soon observed, a massive barrage of hate.
Among other things, the following thread was made:
Many pro-c’s observing the incident defended Wayne on various grounds. Some claimed that it was unreasonable to attack him because he had served his time and so his CSA of his daughter shouldn’t be held against him or brought up anymore. Some claimed that actually he hadn’t done anything wrong at all in the first place because he said it was consensual and she’d said she hadn’t known it was wrong until she grew older so it wasn’t abuse at all. (Nevermind that Wayne himself had spent years saying he had perpetrated abuse, that he knew it was wrong now, he was redeemed, etc.) One or two anti-c’s also argued that although his actions were wrong, so was sharing the article, because it violated his right to privacy / would cause inevitable blowback on MAPs/civil liberties in general / was unreasonable/unnecessary/harmful, and isn’t Iris always going on overkill against predators anyway?
(It was fascinating to observe the rapid about-face made by numerous pediverse pro-c’s the moment a sexually abusive father came up. Many who just a second ago were claiming to be the most radical of all the radical youth liberationists, total nuclear family abolitionists, Very Anarchic Anarchists (unlike those sex-hating, prudish, repressive Fake Anarchists), the only ones who Truly Care about the violence of hegemonic parental power and normalized parental abuse and exploitation, the best and only defenders of children and children’s rights, suddenly decided that they had to go to bat for an accused father and erase his survivor’s voice, to cast her as too powerful or even reverse-abusive, to claim that any youth liberationists trying to put constraints on a parent’s free exercise of power was Going Too Far and Extremist and Looking Too Much Into Innocuous Behavior and part of some modern (feminist, SJW) trend of terrible moral degeneration and just taking any children claiming abuse at their word instead of worrying about false accusations like they should.) (I believe this is part of the same phenomenon which I described here, in which some pro-c’s, especially more modern ones post-’80s feminist anti-CSA activism, try to claim that they are distinct from Real Child Molestation advocates and Adultist CSA supporters because they advocate for liberating children from the chains of the nuclear family through transgressive adult-child sex, presumably with an adult who is not a family member and who is opposed to the child’s parents. However, as we see in practice, “child liberationist” pro-contactism and nuclear family values are rarely as far from each other as they initially claim.)
(There is an additional dimension to this with how some pro-c’s focus on man-boy [CSA] exclusively, claiming to only support contact with boys while opposing contact with girls because “studies show” that “girls are harmed while boys are not.” They follow in the tradition of, e.g., Rind et al., and similar and adjacent intellectual and activist milieus, arguing that feminist claims about the universal abusiveness/harmfulness of CSA are biased and unreliable, especially because they rely exclusively on the “feminist incest model” of CSA, which describes adult male relatives/familial authority figures sexually abusing young girls. They claim that their [CSA] is so much more enlightened and superior because it only involves boys and/or non-relatives, and thus would not be inherently nonconsensual in the way men sexually abusing girls and/or their own children more “obviously” is. Yet if you trace back the roots of their activism, you will find many of the same people who were significant players in advocacy for CSA of girls as well, and the same rhetorical strategies which were used to defend fathers abusing daughters are now being re-applied to extrafamilial “mentors”/“friends” and the like abusing boys after feminist successes delegitimized the former. Likewise, many pediverse pro-c’s who claimed to support only “actually consensual” adult-child sexual relationships which did not exploit structural power differentials and/or emphasized boys-aren’t-harmed-though-so-your-studies-are-invalid abandoned such stances for the situation with Wayne.) (One would do well to remember that Rind himself has defended parent-child incest too, as well as nonsexual parental consent violations/coercion.) (This mirrors a general trend of misogynists/adultists assuming that feminists are never youth liberationists in general, only care about girls, only care about some subsets of issues, have or have generally had no idea how to analyze issues outside of a singular model e.g. extrafamilial CSA, and have no idea how to address abuse of boys, when that is entirely untrue; many feminists did develop and utilize models for other forms of CSA as well and are the strongest supporters of abused boys; antifeminists are the ones who tend to be more adultist and pro-child abuse including toward boys; their disingenuous claims of being champions of boys are more reflective of a masculinist idealization and coercive sentiments than any genuine care.) (Many such pro-c’s draw inspiration from ancient Greek models of pederasty. They would do well to remember their roots more properly—in Greece, the institution of pederasty existed side-by-side with paternal authority, the institution of marriage, and sexual exploitation of girls, and in fact reinforced heterosexism and the family.)
The discourse followed from (and continued, and re-intensified) a longer debate which often occurred throughout the fediverse side of the community regarding appropriate responses to accused abusers and predators, the nature and ethical status of violence, and its relevance to marginalized status and anti-oppression politics. Especially strong throughout more normative sides of the MAP community, mirroring discourses occurring right now in other marginalized and anti-oppression communities, is a common thread of certain ideals which could be summed up as “liberalism”—various beliefs in pacifism, community cohesion above autonomy, civility/politeness above hard truths, always seeing the best in (more normal/respectable) people, and so on. In particular, there is an emphasis on not being perceived as “punitive” or “retributive” with regards to certain sets of circumstances perceived to indicate alignment with the carceral state. (That school of thought saying we need to focus on “rehabilitating” rapists and child molesters and abusers, and if you have different priorities then you are literally a cop.) I was especially annoyed with the constant accusations lobbed at me of being “carceral” because, as I have made clear throughout my online presence, I am a police and prison abolitionist myself; meanwhile, Wayne has argued in multiple fedi threads against people saying ACAB, thinks not all cops are bad (and actually most are great harmless people), thinks prisons should continue to exist and that incarceration is good and necessary for crimes (though he has been less consistent when arguing this; sometimes imprisoning abusers is fair and sometimes it’s literally oppression), makes racist commentary on Twitter, wants the state to curb immigration in the UK, etc. I don’t see him getting labeled “carceral,” though he literally fits the most basic definition of the term.
(Ironically, another thing which got me labeled problematic, carceral, and “vigilantist” was that instead of calling the police the moment I saw or thought I saw a child predator, I attempted smaller-scale, community-appropriate grassroots action, which apparently is categorically problematic to liberals. Another part of the argument was that if an adult is really bad/has really done CSA, I would have evidence and would report it, and my failure or disinclination to report thus indicated that my accusations must be false. This same claim has been (independently) replicated by different people to attack me as a “vigilante” during other dramas too.)
It is also contradictory to claim that he is somehow more pro-MAP than we are or that we are secretly or by adjacency mapmisic or assimilationist for being anti-c, for drawing hard lines regarding contact politics or abusers, for strongly opposing CSA, for supporting direct action against CSA, or for attacking him. He has consistently shown that he takes issue with radical MAP politics. He has made negative posts about fediverse MAP activists who use aggressive slogans regarding antis or call for action against/want to harm antis. He dismissed their rejection of liberalism/pacifism as a product of immaturity/childishness, although these younger MAPs are like this precisely because have generally experienced more mapmisic violence and abuse from antis, often intersecting with ageism/adultism, and are responding to their own trauma, advocating for necessarily self-defense which they had been denied in the past.
Regarding another point of complaint against me: for a long time, many people have also taken issue with me blocking people. I block a lot of people because it is important for me to be able to set boundaries against people or interactions I am uncomfortable with, something I was denied throughout childhood because of abusers and their entitlements. I am disabled and have limited physical, mental, and emotional energy. I do not want to sink any more time than I already have into relationships which are lost causes or wastes of time/energy for me. Furthermore, I am a marginalized person and tend to be disproportionately targeted for harassment, abuse, and hate. I have had multiple bad experiences on fedi where giving someone the benefit of the doubt instead of just blocking them and forgetting about them outright led to terrible consequences for me. I have learned over time that I need to always be on guard, because there are many bigots and abuse supporters online, and often they are not so 24/7 whenever they post, and it’s easier to get rid of them once than to have to keep track of everyone’s issues. I struggle with paranoia and trauma, including from these incidents, and I have various random triggers which mean I need to block certain keywords and types of accounts for my own peace of mind. But I don’t see anyone showing sympathy for my struggles. All the sympathy is on the poor blocked bigots/abuse apologists who were denied interaction with Iris (what a frigid bitch) as if they are somehow automatically entitled to controlling how I spend my time in the first place? As if authoritarian social norms which can force people into interactions they don’t want are not a literal fucking foundation of all abuse cultures? I remain astonished at the naivety of so many people on pedi who truly believe that Absolute Free Speech and No Restrictions At All Costs are somehow liberatory and more important than safety, self-defense, and genuinely anti-oppressive values, as if they can’t predict what will inevitably result from such a toxic and coercive environment. But certainly it’s easier to make fun of a demonized survivor, pathologize me, and cast my actions as unreasonable and “unhinged” (hysterical?) and deserving of disdain and envision a caricature of me rather than actually engage with what I might actually think.
(It seems that my instincts are good. So far I have yet to see a single person whom I blocked for political reasons who was actually redeemable. All of them inevitably escalate and engage in even worse rhetoric/behavior. Always retroactively vindicated. Lol.)
The discourse also followed from older accusations of me supposedly “doxxing” MAPs I supposedly mistakenly perceived as sexually predatory toward minors. These claims, which originated in 2021, although they had mostly died down throughout 2022 and early 2023 as I ignored the initial instigators and the instigators took hiatuses or decreased their activity on fedi, paved the way for pro-c’s to cast me as particularly malicious, evil, hysterical/overreaching, vindictive, punitive, antimap-like or an antimap myself, out to get any pro-c MAP unfortunate enough to cross my path, ready (and able) to doxx random bystanders willy-nilly, putting Everyone in the community At Risk. I have no interest in going over the specifics of these past events, which have already been re-hashed in threads ad nauseam; I mention them here to give context to a particular phenomenon relevant to the situation with Wayne. I was accused of “doxxing” him by linking a news article about his past CSA and conviction because it stated his first and last name and the names of his daughter and ex-wife. What he and the many other pro-c’s claiming I “doxxed” him like to conveniently ignore is that he was already going by Wayne and expecting people to call him that on fedi. He waved around his city in posts. He gave out the name of his daughter. I did a simple Google search with his first name + her first name + “sexual abuse” + “father” and got that article as the very first result. That’s “doxxing” now? Really?
I bring this up now not because I have some sort of “vendetta” against him or think angry thoughts about him while he’s no longer relevant, or want to vindictively attach his name to malicious smears or Ruin His New Life and Disturb The Peace, or anything of the sort. As people know, I have major emotional and object impermanence, and I can hardly remember people if I’m not actively interacting with them. I barely think about past acquaintances at all. I had already planned on writing this post because I wanted a record of my NNIA thread to be available somewhere as I’ve deleted the original posts, and I would prefer for these events to be recorded for transparency and organization, to inform my readers, and to serve as a jumping off point for some broader political points I have to make. Especially since the topic was reopened about a month ago when Lecter mentioned it again (I’m not sure if it was in response to some other posts or spontaneous), saying it was absurd that people had panicked that they might be “next” in line to be “doxxed” as if there were no meaningful differences between themselves and actual sexual abusers. This kickstarted a whole new, very long thread in which various people argued furiously and tried to re-litigate the events of February. I was uninterested in getting too directly involved there because I didn’t really see the issue as posing an immediate threat or in need of immediate resolution anymore, trying to argue over it again would not accomplish anything concrete, and it would only end poorly for me to jump back into the fray (as I would only feel nervous and threatened/insecure throughout and my detractors would only find new reasons to attack me). There didn’t seem to be much point in people starting such a fight again (unless someone wanted to retroactively punish me for my role in the events). The same old points were made (doxxing, mean/bad, what about his rights, can’t set a precedent, he’s a MAP so he should get special treatment, etc.).
I addressed some of the points going around in a separate thread, noting, among other things, that:
This year, the main instigator of the most prevalent “doxxing” accusations against me returned to pedi, her circle of supporters grew, and efforts against me escalated. I received an ask questioning me about whether I had actually ever doxxed anyone. I have actually done things which might be considered “doxxing” or “spreading doxxes” before, and I did not want to give a technically false answer which might be used against me later to paint me as deceptive/hiding things that wouldn’t make me look good or a liar, so I said yes. This was in reference to a few anti-MAPs and an anti-c non-MAP ally who were actively engaging in abuse of MAPs/allies, as an effort to help stop them from abusing and protect their victims. I have also done mundane everyday leftist things like retweeting/reblogging exposés of Nazis by antifascists on social media. I do not think this was very remarkable. The mob, however, eagerly jumped onto any shred of evidence that could be construed as indicating guilt, claimed this was some sort of “confession” on my part of having doxxed MAPs or doxxed pro-c’s, and took this as an excuse to triple their efforts and call for my total removal from all MAP spaces. It wasn’t just that one time; they misinterpret my words constantly, often in very far-fetched ways, to stack up more and more evidence that I am politically problematic, abusive, predatory, a villain, etc. It is especially hard when I’m autistic and tend to communicate in a direct and literal manner, and tend to assume others are doing so too, and have a tendency to take people at face value, and sometimes feel confused when people twist my words and seem completely impervious to any clarification. I do not believe their constant nitpicking and misinterpretations are an accident; I am far from the only person they do this to. (When I tried to fight back against the harassment and brought up the scenarios of doxxing antis/abusers/Nazis, I got many pro-c’s to spontaneously admit that yes, they do in fact find it wrong for people to doxx antimaps, abusive nonmaps, and Nazis too, also on moral grounds and for fear of it trickling down to harm MAPs/leftists somehow. So it’s not really about MAP rights/liberation here, is it?)
In all of this, it is quite evident that there are major double standards in play here. Who, exactly, is “punitive” culture hurting most? Consistently, pro-contactism is more socially elevated, valued, profitable, and protected, while survivors and our allies are treated with cruelty, harassed, and yes, punished. Both-sides’ing/relativizing contact discourse to favor giving more benefit of the doubt to pro-c’s is basically the status quo, while few think twice before making generalizations and condemnations of anti-c’s. It is widely believed that it is Very Important And Necessary to Stop perceiving pro-c’s as Bad Evil People because apparently Everyone overwhelmingly and irrationally holds negative and false beliefs about pro-c’s. But in practice, this is not even actually true (everyone just loves giving them extra chances). It feels much, much easier to claim that pro-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed than to claim that anti-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed without being cast as insane for thinking that. This benefit-of-the-doubt just leads to more of the Overton Window being ceded to pro-contactism, while the exasperatingly naive liberals/centrists are played for fools.
Whose past, exactly, is being dug up unnecessarily and/or lied about to malign them? I’m not allowed to be complain that people keep mentioning over and over again completely irrelevant moderate wrongs with little actual impact I had done years ago in ignorance and while under significant abusive pressure, which I have consistently disavowed for years and which I do not even have anywhere near the means to replicate now, to spin a fairytale of deliberate malice and villainy attached to them with numerous wildly false claims (which have expanded, as of now, into claims that I run a giant network of Discord servers dedicated to doxxing MAPs, that I’ve invited informants into NNIA to spy on other MAPs, that I control NNIA, that I run a cult and everyone listens to and automatically agrees with everything I say and if I write a Callout on someone I consider Problematic then they will immediately be Cancelled By Everyone With No Recourse and I have massive social influence over NNIA (absolutely not true! I’m one of the most unpopular and deliberately ignored people on the entire site), that I was a top informant for various antis I have never talked to in my entire life, that I (while being a minor, having little money, being disabled and very socially anxious and so busy all the time that I’m already constantly overwhelmed, and having no methods of independent travel) am capable of attacking remote people IRL, that I’m laundering funds/have secret dark money for our projects, that I have fed connections, that every time a pro-c instance goes down it must be my fault, and so on and so forth). But if I mention someone else’s past when they (all evidence considered) have never been publicly criticized or held accountable for their actions, do not particularly care that they did it and do not understand that it was wrong, pose a significant present threat, and intend to cause harm again/are harming again right now, even if they have done things orders of magnitude worse than anything I ever even considered attempting, even if they have frequently informed on MAPs to literal antis and been mapmisic/done antimap activism themselves, that’s problematically punitive and unforgiving and not-letting-their-pasts-just-be-forgotten-like-they-want and replicating prison-logic?
(What’s that they say—“every accusation is a confession”?)
It seems that people see violence as casually acceptable when done to me/my comrades and only problematic when hinted at from us to them, whenever it is resistance to abuse rather than furthering abuse. They can talk a big game about kindness and pacifism and not-wanting-to-hurt-anyone and can’t-we-all-just-be-friends but only, it seems, when the target is on their side or on the side of oppression. Not once have I seen any of that crowd giving any regard to what I might be feeling with what they do to/about me, but the potential feelings of violent misogynists, adultists, abusers, and sexual predators are automatically elevated to tantamount importance, treated like some sort of fragile glass that needs to maximum protection 24/7. Meanwhile, it seems like it’s perfectly fine, for them, if I’m hurting or experiencing bigotry or having my life ruined. (Sometimes it does seem like they just forget entirely that I am a real actual person with actual feelings and subjectivity who has their own point of view and internal experiences, who might be more than just a cardboard-cutout prop to project onto and objectify and enact their mob justice on.)
It is depressingly noticeable how easy it was to get me banned/defederated from multiple instances, but we had to move heaven and earth to even attain an inch of progress against an admitted serial child sexual abuser engaging in ongoing victimization, and even then the tiniest actions taken against him were widely questioned and disparaged, while there is nearly no break in the consensus at all that I deserve to be mass-ostracized from every part of the community and should be attacked and harassed. (When I brought this up several weeks ago, on a private post no less, a harasser who did not even follow me stole access to the post, screenshotted it, shared it publicly, and falsely claimed that I was actually referring to them and was therefore making a false predator accusation and therefore doing evil things, collaborating with antis, always wrong/mistaken about everything, maliciously targeting them, etc. etc. etc.)
During the Wayne drama in February, the admin of FU had also made a post linking to the article with his name in it. For that, she was viciously dogpiled and labeled a “doxxer” too. She deleted the post, recanted, apologized profusely, and has since consistently claimed regret for her actions and aggressively disavowed any such article-linking as “doxxing” too. She even capitulated to the mob recently, freezing my and Lecter’s FU accounts, limiting our NNIA accounts from FU, and banning Lecter’s FUA. (Lecter had been tainted with guilt-by-association when he had refused to ban me from NNIA for “doxxing” and had sanctioned the accuser for harassing me and having a long history of being a bad actor in 2021, prompting her to demand that the entire NNIA instance be defederated from everywhere else for justice. He was roped into personal “doxxing” accusations as well when he mentioned the individual’s past screen name in clarifying events and trying to hold her accountable several months ago.) This didn’t protect the FU admin, however; more recently, she herself was accused (again) of “doxxing” and running a “doxxing server” and putting MAPs at risk, just like I had been—because people dug up screenshots of private chats from months ago in which she had considered having people try to doxx a certain violent, transmisogynistic, serially abusive and life-ruining anti, and they misinterpreted an offhanded joke from her (again, from months ago) in an extremely exaggerated manner. Now they want her gone too.
Another pro-c MAP now ostracized from the community was accused of “doxxing” for some similar actions related to those events. My anti-c MAP friend was accused of “doxxing” in 2021 by the same person spearheading the accusations against me now, because of their shared involvement in the 2021 situation, and was successfully harassed/threatened and traumatized out of participating in the pediverse community (although pro-c’s continue to gloat about this cruelty and revictimize them even now).
Furthermore, an anti-CSA MAP ally has also been falsely accused of “doxxing” a MAP, but in a very different context: the claims about her actions were 100% fabricated out of thin air, not just wildly distorted from a relatively innocuous that did actually happen, and the aggrieved party is anti-c. This occurred as a part of a prolonged abusive situation which included community social sabotage, although those abuse enablers are not present in the same circles as the current pediverse. Nevertheless, it is significant that such disparate groups of abusers and social capitalists throughout the MAP community would happen upon the same DARVO tactic, with surprising success in demonizing and prolonging the victimization of abuse survivors and particularly marginalized community members. (If anything’s a “witch-hunt,” it’s this. “Look, they’re a DOXXER!!” “Look, she’s a WITCH!” Pitchfork them all.)
Here are some examples of the rhetoric flung at me which my harassers have felt comfortable saying out loud:
(My detractors from pro-c communities love misgendering me. I have been misgendered as “he” and “she” at various times by different people; I have also been gaslit for criticizing them or requesting correction. Nowadays it’s almost rarer to find someone who uses the correct pronouns for me than those who use binary ones. We might get called “punitive” for attacking transphobia and ableism, but at least none of us have ever used misgendering to punish someone else, or weaponized someone else’s disability or mental illness against them.)
Did these individuals get “cancelled” or face any repercussions for publicly calling for my death/murder? (Predictably, nope.) If I ever said anything like this about a pro-c, you can be certain that I would immediately face vicious retribution. Only one person (who wasn’t even anti-c) in the entire Wayne drama had expressed any violent wishes toward him. But we still bore the brunt of the backlash.
The various accusations of “doxxing” have become especially potent and inflammatory as Newgon came into play in later 2021 and started targeting me in particular this year, picking up existing attacks on me (and other NNIA members) as well as pushing forward various attacks of their own and powering harassers whenever they come up. As Lecter has noted, they in particular are mobilizing these accusations and smear campaigns to take down their political opponents (and keep roping in previously-unrelated people to join in on the smear campaign, e.g. with this guest post hosted on Tom O’Carroll’s blog, written by Newgon’s Strategist a few days ago, in which he repeats slanderous claims about me and tries to make a case for why rape fetishists are worse than Nazis). It is notable that all the victims of false “doxxing” accusations by pro-c’s so far have been politically inconvenient to the pro-c project in some way, either by being anti-c and too loud about it, by sympathizing with anti-c’s and disagreeing with pro-c’s with more social capital, or by running afoul of the reactionary norms of the space. In common with the accusation by anti-c’s not particularly affiliated with the pediverse, all victims of false doxxing accusations within the MAP community in these past few years were being punished for rejecting authority and resisting abuse or abusive norms in spaces, with moral panic incited as a tool to keep them in line and prevent social change. This has been especially applied for minors and youth liberationist allies calling out adultism.
It might seem surprising that such a hyper-specific, arguably random accusation would have such consistent, immediate, destructive impact. It would be almost comical if it weren’t so devastating and cruel. But the absurd and seemingly arbitrary are precisely where abusers and oppressors often prefer to stake their territory. Regardless of how niche the issue is, the fact remains that here is where key points of conflict lie; reactionaries are leveraging it to build their power base in the community, and we would do well to analyze the phenomenon.
The pro-c’s speak of “doxxing” in a way similar to how we would speak of abuse or sexual violence: almost as a sort of informal statutory offense, and moreover a deadly assault, threatening the integrity of our communities, one which requires immediate mass mobilization to guard against. What I have noticed is that their “doxxing” accusations almost mirror the form of accusations of abuse, sexual violence, bigotry, or oppressive behavior which we would use. One could say that if abuse or oppressive violence were to us the “archetypal” wrong or offense, then “doxxing" to them approaches their view of the “archetypal” crime. I believe this is analogous to how other rightwing communities conceptualize a quasi-judicial “crime” of “false accusation,” “false reporting,” “defamation,” “reputational damage,” “gold-digging,” etc., deemed more offensive and threatening than abuse or sexual assault itself.
What is interesting here is that the MAP community is relatively insulated from the outside, much more so than many other communities. Thus, there are some rather unique opportunities both for bad actors within the community to create and exploit internal power dynamics, and for us to observe an arena in which abuser-vs.-survivor political conflicts and cultural norms are being produced in real time, in an especially “isolated” or “contained” strain, and thus in a clearer form to extract social analyses from. What we see here now is a very particular, literal manifestation of anti-survivor retaliation and patriarchal retrenchment. Our small subcultural space is certainly niche, but we do reflect and to some degree filter over into the dynamics of the outside political battles as well. In this current era of explosive new opportunities for anti-sexual-violence activism, increasingly radical youth liberationist and feminist consciousness, as well as anti-#MeToo backlash and the threat of encroaching fascism, capitalism-in-crisis brings hostilities, internal and external contradictions to a head; micro-scale political dynamics become part of larger systems and movements, and right now we down here have unique opportunities to either lose a lot or gain a lot as well.
Why, exactly, did the reactionaries of this community choose “doxxing” as their point of fixation? I believe it is because this particular crime (or “crime”) suits the MAP community atmosphere especially well. MAPs are marginalized and face significant risk from being found out IRL as MAPs; anonymity is strongly emphasized and prized in online MAP communities, while doxxing oneself/going public as a MAP activist is seen as a sort of “point of no return,” the ultimate gamble putting your life on the line, reserved only for activist-heroes or the unfortunate. Many are almost paranoid about OPSEC. Some even chide others for perceived security/info-protection failures. Doxxing a MAP, especially by/to one’s IRL abusers, is a major threat wielded by antis against their targets, and mapmisic MAPs who have collaborated with/snitched to antis have tended to focus on giving out IRL-identifying information. However, at the same time, fear of doxxing for some people might align with a fear of being found out for past abusive or predatory behavior that they are trying to run from so that they can continue to avoid accountability, leave their survivors in the dust, and deceptively accumulate power to abuse again. Anonymity is both a last protection for the oppressed and a deadly weapon oppressors’ arsenal, and this ambiguity in usage makes it easy to confuse and exploit. As such, “doxxing,” which sits at an unusual intersection of both these associations, becomes a particularly contentious and volatile weapon, and thus a prime item for reactionaries to manipulate and utilize to produce effective moral panics.
But look at what is actually going on behind the smokescreens: who, for example, is actually behind the pushes from each side? We just want to be left the fuck alone (and to defend others’ right to be left the fuck alone); they want to needle and harass unwilling participants they know are powerless and struggling to defend themselves. We don’t seem to have many (or any?) rightwingers, perpetrators of bigoted harassment, serial abusers, etc. Meanwhile, the lineup of the attackers reveals numerous Nazis and other violent bigots, rape apologists, CSA apologists, abuse apologists and enablers, chronic harassers and consent-violators, reactionaries, people I remember even if they’d rather we forget that they have (or so rumor says) long strings of victims behind them, people I’ve spoken to in private who are still triggered by the sounds of some of those people’s names or mention of certain years or events in which awful trauma took place and/or are afraid to speak about their experiences because of the quiet social threats in place and their own lack of power, or people who have been accused over the grapevine of very alarming crimes which somehow disappear from public discussion and it doesn’t really look so good now, does it? It may have been buried and it may be impolite and disruptive and risky to speak of it now and certainly it’s easier to keep up that good ol’ policy of open secrets, missing stairs, going unacknowledged, used to being unquestioned and unquestionable, used to enforcing reactionary norms and casual abuse culture as a requirement/bar/precondition to participating in this community—like I’ve experienced from the liberal anti-c MAP community—like I’ve experienced from antis—like I’ve experienced from oppressive communities everywhere, overall—but times are changing, aren’t they? We’ve scored some pretty decent wins in this year alone—the ice is broken; the uncriticizable are now up for critique; older members of the community panic that our radical strategy is hindering their long-accepted unimaginative uninformed strategies; the momentum builds.
Whispers remain whispers now, but—do you think you can hold on to everything forever?
In response to drama surrounding the thread, Liminal made a statement on February 18. After reading Liminal’s post, I realized that I had remembered some of my referenced pre-2021 timeline (mostly things I had heard other people talking about a long time ago) inaccurately. The following summarizes the history of and explains the problems with the individual’s behavior fairly well:
Here’s the timeline of events surrounding Valiumboy/Wayne/OffenderX and my involvement.(Note: Liminal is also a violent adultist and has been (non-sexually) abusive to minors; he should not be cited as an unproblematic source for anything either.)
- 2017-2018 Valium has been around the Twitter MAP community since like the Enderphile days, I never liked him because I had seen screenshots of him saying gross shit about sexually assaulting his daughter on Amos Yee’s community, pretty much bragging about it, he has a long history of doing this, what he did on F.U Ask isn’t new.
- 2018-2019 All old-school people from Virpeds keep repeatedly giving him a chance and he was allowed to walk freely around the community, I thought this dude was a lost cause but ok “second chances” and all so I never said anything
- 2019 Gets called out by a minor for sexually harassing them and as result gets banned from all MAP communities at the time
- 2020 Minor ally reaches out to me in DM’s and tells me Valium is sexually harassing them and I made a call out post about it to expose him. During all of this one of his dedicated hunters reaches out to me in DMs and tell me this dude has an even darker history and shared a news article about him which I shared with everyone else so we could get rid of him and we did for some time. (Of course he’s not saying anything about how all the shitshow only started because he was being a fucking creep to minor allies and only wants to paint it as me working with antis or something, I never had any interaction with his hunters besides saying “thanks” for the new article)
- 2021 He keeps showing up around Twitter, since I know he has a long history of being a creep to minors in the community I keep calling him out.
- 2022 I see him getting a F.U account and I decided to say nothing about it, I decided to let him be because he has proven to be a roach very hard to kill and I didn’t have the mental stamina to deal with any of it again, if he behaves that’s good, if he misbehaves well it’s the problem of F.U’s admins not mine.
- 2023 See your timeline
I had made my thread in relative haste; after looking over it again afterward, I saw a few mild errors (I was unable to edit posts at the time), and I was also receiving significant backlash for a link I had included in it, which I have now removed. I deleted my thread, but I am reproducing it here (with some minor corrections and updated information so it is more convenient to read):
I hadn’t thought much of this thread at the time of writing. I didn’t think it was particularly different from any other thread I had made dunking on him before. I thought enough people already knew what the context was. I was not looking for any particular positive responses; I expected no results, and expected that things would go on as normal afterward. I mentioned his past in more detail than usual only because I felt that for this particular occasion, it would be easier to understand my thread if it was contextualized with that information. I went offline for the rest of the day and mostly forgot about it.[screenshot of an ask on FUA by OffenderX: Why are lots of people blocking me on mastadon [sic]?It’s “weird” (as in relatively rare, and also socially stigmatized/counter-hegemonic) to set boundaries with abusive, bigoted, oppressive people who harm you, will harm you, or use their platforms to harm others. Normative society shames people for choosing to not go through uncomfortable or dangerous interactions. Normative society pressures people into excusing harm and picking perps over survivors because Not That Bad, well what about The CommunityTM.
answer by Katie: I dunno. People are weird.]
[screenshot of a post by @OffenderX@freak.university on February 16, 2023: It’s weird I’m blocked by people I’ve never even talked with.]
It’s normal, sure, and it’s weird right now to break away from that. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or unreasonable, or impossible to understand the motivations for.
Sometimes people block other people just because they’re annoyed by seeing certain types of content on their social media feed, or dislike someone else’s aesthetics, or have an OCD trigger around some username/words, or have trauma from parental abuse and can’t emotionally safely interact with any parents even if non-bigoted/abusive so they just preemptively block any parents they see, or any other case in which someone decides to not be around someone else while not judging the other person as unethical. And that’s fine, actually—coercive neurotypical social norms (“must interact with people even if you don’t want to”) are bad, even when there is no victimization occurring.
Though that’s not really what we’re talking about here, is it—ethics have been explicitly added in as part of the discussion throughout. (Note: One person I had contacted with information about his past in private beforehand said that they would like to be able to block him, but they felt significant pressure from their surroundings to keep themself open to him and not block anyone, and were afraid of social censure and moral condemnation from their friends if they tried. This person self-identified as a feminist.)
Valiumboy/OffenderX/Wayne is a transphobe. A few months back, he made a post sneering at “pronouns” and made transphobic commentary at people who argued with him. (He also frequently sneers at other paraphiles on fedi whom he views as excessively microlabeling/weird, fakeclaims their identities, the usual anti-“SJW” cringe-culture -type bigotry.)
Now, it should be obvious why a trans person, for example, might block Wayne preemptively instead of sitting around waiting for him to invalidate their identity and mock the way they choose to present themself/exist. That sucks to experience and a lot of people like to practice this thing called “self-care.” Or even just self-defense.
And, also, a cis person who cares about trans people might look on and go, oh, that’s shitty. And feel that even if they wouldn’t have their pronouns/gender mocked in an interaction with him, it’s unfair that they’d be safe around him while others are not safe, so they choose to not cash in on their privilege, they don’t want those cancerous practices around them either, they want to show solidarity with their trans friends/comrades and want to work towards social norms where transphobia is not platformed so they block him too.
As most people around here probably know by now, Wayne is also someone who sexually assaulted his daughter when she was a young child for years; he’s spent several more recent years putting up an image of repentance/reform/regret and presenting himself as a sort of “voice for ex-offenders”; he was removed from a MAP space a few years ago for making fetishizing commentary about the sexual abuse he perpetrated; his Twitter feed (@Valiumboy2) is full of misogynistic content feeding into the rightwing moral panic that there is somehow an epidemic of “false accusations” and “false reporting” of assault and abuse among children regarding their fathers, or among women regarding cis men, and tweets and retweets and replies advocating for policies to further trap age- and gender-oppressed victims of domestic violence with their abusers (i.e. “father’s rights” family-court lobbying).
Since at least a few months ago he’s made posts about how his interactions with his daughter were actually “consensual” / that she had “falsely accused” him to “ruin his life” and that she had been “brainwashed” “into believing he abused her.” He has continued making sexualizing and trivializing commentary about her and what he did to her. He made a post romanticizing their relationship, posted her IRL (first) name, and reminisced about “loving” her and naming her as a child. Many of us here are survivors of parental abuse, survivors of sexual violence as children, or experiencing ongoing abuse and violence right now and it’s not only triggering to see all this bullshit, and see people joining in on his disgusting threads and agreeing with him and carrying water for him; we also can spot immediately how that—his actions, his casual treatment of what we know was years of oppressive control and traumatic violence, his unapologetic attitude and stances, his refusal to respect clear boundaries that any truly “reformed” abuser would have the ethical awareness to not break—were/are obvious disrespect and consent violations which further the harm he has already done, trying to keep a hold on his power and all the fucked-up shit that has wrought.
On top of comments mocking other sexual violence survivors and a history of allegedly harassing other CSA survivors and minors (note: I now remember that I had gotten this allegation, of “harassing CSA survivors and minors,” from the bio of a Twitter account dedicated to calling him out. I am unsure whether this was MAP-community-related or not, and I cannot verify which particular incidents the Twitter user was referring to) and abusing other children/young teenagers from online platforms (note: I had gotten this accusation from intracommunity discussions I had heard before about his sexual harassment of minor MAPs/allies, as well as from a Tumblr thread alleging that “ex offender map” “darkmap9/valium” had “just got caught flirting with a 12 year old” and that “When it came out that he did that, the entire [MAP] community rejected him”) and comments he has made on his Freak University account admitting to perpetrating other abuse/sexual assaults that have not yet surfaced in public or in the criminal justice system (note: this was posted on January 2, 2023: “Back in the eighties I dated a 14 year old I was in my twentys [sic]. I took her in my local pub no one batredyan eye lid [sic]. Some even said your [sic] a lucky bugger”), he’s just fucking unpleasant to be around in general, even when the person interacting with him is one of his apologists who are fine with his past and ongoing actions—he’s made numerous replies here and there even to his friends that test boundaries/outright disrespect boundaries/consent—he doesn’t see anything wrong with any of this, clearly. (Note: As this whole drama went down, a trans girl who defended me from Wayne’s apologists also stated that there had been an incident where he’d made unsolicited sexualized commentary about her, and that it was indicative of his objectifying worldview which “saw the women and girls in his life as fuckmeat.” I think this is a relevant example of the way he was casually disrespectful, entitled, and toxic in social interactions.)
Additional note: Some of this could be chalked up to the general atmosphere of the pro-c pediverse, which is overwhelmingly dominated by rightwingers who hold and practice social norms such as denigration of perceived “cringiness” or “weakness,” not valuing consent or boundaries, believing that saying “no” to requests regarding social interaction or expressing discomfort/pain/distress is indicative of weakness/inferior character, and regularly crossing the boundaries/comfort zones of or behaving in casually toxic ways with their friends around them, as well as (and especially) opponents, including with sexual harassment, and which tends to foster such practices among its members and people in proximity. (Lecter has covered the issues with this in some recent blog posts.) However, Wayne certainly did have patterns of questionable behavior in casual contexts before he ever joined fedi. For example, in 2021, we interacted in Twitter DMs. Several times during that conversation, he out of the blue made bizarre and inappropriate comments at me with what he assumed about my sexuality.)
A lot of us know personally how fucking terrifying and devastating it is to experience that kind of prolonged control, theft of autonomy, attacks on our bodies/persons, and total powerlessness and lack of consideration. A lot of us have also thought through this stuff a lot (you kind of have to, when you’re on the receiving end of abuse/oppression), and we can recognize the dynamics of authoritarianism/interpersonal control that follow from and are enabled by “lesser” violations and apologist sentiments like his adult supremacist comments, or his support for police/policing, or any of the other bigotry he’s espoused. And we also know from experience and from extensive studying that abusers and oppressors heavily rely on platforms and social connections to carry out their violence without being able to be stopped. We all know how this shit works. Abusers control the flow of information and discourse. They keep up social and material and ideological support for years because they are believed and cared about and victims are not. A lot of people on this corner of fedi are leftists and fucking angry at this miserable fucking status quo and we’re tired of the bullshit, we’re tired of the privileged interpreting the lives and experiences and conditions of the marginalized, we’re ready to fuck shit up and put social capital and moral comfort on the line to break down institutions of power (both formalized and informal) and these injustices upon injustices and the lack of awareness of and care for people like us and that means not tolerating bullshit like this and taking back the narrative.
Wayne and his circle of apologists make complaints day in and day out about how he’s being “unfairly ostracized,” “unreasonably silenced,” “ignored,” “censored,” “cancelled” as much as the average far-right pundit complains day in day out about how they’re being silenced/censored/cancelled by the Woke Mob and their Cancel CultureTM—and his complaints hold as little water, people choosing to not be around you (without even much social pressuring, by the way, because even now adult supremacy and misogyny still are socially incentivized a lot) because you are genuinely toxic (along with harmful) to be near is not you being CensoredTM. Sure you can talk. And people are going to talk back and tell you you’re wrong or tell you to shut up because your talk is harmful and also bullshit. People will curate their own online experiences, including not giving a mic to every toxic mf around the area who wants to preach abuse apologia.
You fucked around. Now you’re finding out.
I woke up the next morning to a surprising (and very heartwarming) flood of agreement and support—but also, as I soon observed, a massive barrage of hate.
Among other things, the following thread was made:
I was disappointed by the almost quasi-bureaucratic procedures I encountered when I had tried to bring up the issue more formally. It took a full four weeks after I reported the issue to a server before the moderators were done “discussing” it internally and willing to defederate Wayne’s account. I initially had no hope that a process against Wayne from FU (Freak University) itself would be successful, but the positive response from some to my thread made me feel like it was possible; nevertheless, there was a lot of controversy and infighting, and in the end we only succeeded in getting the admin to ban his FUA (Freak University Ask) account and freeze his FU account, rather than fully suspending it. His abusive posts have not been deleted. The admin said that it was over his transphobia, with no mention of the CSEM, his revictimizing commentary/behavior regarding his survivor, his doxxing of her, or his CSA apologia (as another pedi user pointed out, almost certainly an excuse to ban him, as she knew he should be, while stirring up less controversy/taking a less politically risky route). In the end, our efforts were moderately successful in effect; we did get him to shut up on FU, and while he was invited by a reactionary admin of a different pro-c instance to move there, few people have followed his new account, even fewer have interacted with him, and he hasn’t posted on it since March.@OffenderX@freak.university: [screenshot showing that Lecter blocked him on FUA]
Let’s all block the bad sex offenders because we are so righteous and non [sic] of us would ever ever offend we don’t even think about fucking kids in fact we are whiter than white and only dream about cute bunny wabbits@Sp@ghetti.monster: Don’t care about Lecter, his group is the worst@OffenderX@freak.university: I’ve known him for years he is not even a paedophile or map but people think he us [sic] king if [sic] the paedophiles he has not even got the balls to tell me why he blocked me like most on here.@Dean@freak.university: It’s the boosting sexualised and/or borderline pornographic images of minors that’s led many to block you or instances to de-federate you. Some may just not like you of course but that’s their right and they don’t have to explain their reasons.@OffenderX@freak.university: Paedophiles attracted to children’s body’s [sic] block another paedophile for boosting images they find a turn on sounds about right. Don’t lecture me on anything when this instance is prepared to doxx me and plaster pictures of my daughter as a teen all over a paedophile forum. I’m the honest one here you lot are most liars [sic] hiding behind a nomap screen.@Dean@freak.university: Not trying to lecture you, just attempting to clarify why you may have been de-federated and blocked by some. Some just don’t want to see that, we have all sorts here including those with PD who might be distressed by seeing those kinds of images; instances want to be careful about who they federate with to avoid trouble which might take them offline.I’ve been doxxed before (as you may well know, we were mutuals on Twitter back then) and I know very well it sucks. I had no part in it nor do I intend to ever have any part in doxxing anyone MAP or otherwise, offending or not, I didn’t see it nor would I look at it if I ever did, if you see a doxx on here report it/let me know and it’ll be deleted. Revealing someone’s personal information without their consent for any reason is not acceptable.@Liminal@youjo.love: Just ban him already please@Sp@ghetti.monster: For what@Himorasikata@lolison.top: rule 3 under technicality@Liminal@youjo.love: also several violations of rule 4@OffenderX@freak.university: What’s rule 4 King nomap no dick.@Liminal@youjo.love: “Being transphobic, homophobic, paraphile-phobic, racist, ableist, fascist, or supporting any oppressions in general” being transphobic is one of the main reason [sic] why Kay and others had a problem with you even before you started saying gross shit about your daughter.@Himorasikata@lolison.top: on the topic of banning why did i get banned for locking someone’s account but liminal isn’t banned for associating with antistwo faced [racial slur] fuck @Administrator@youjo.love@OffenderX@freak.university: Liminal is a fragile nomap who gets mad at reality.@Liminal@youjo.love: If you think I have wronged you so badly why were you trying to befriend me for the past 2 months or so? I had nothing to do with you getting exposed this time but you want to make me the central piece of this for some reason.@OffenderX@freak.university: Because I was trying to be nice and I saw you were in distress. I agree you did not start this this time but you were the origin of the original doxx and you never saw it as wrong. I have done nothing wrong on freak except for some minor incursion that happened because I am not well l up on freaks [sic] rules. I am not trans phobic… you know my account on twitter because I follow u. I’m sick of my past being dragged up by paedophile hunters and now maps. Either accept me warts and all or block me any of you who think I’m a monster that’s your own preducices [sic] seeping through. Stop being exoffenderphobic and leave me in peace and ill [sic] stop attacking back.@Liminal@youjo.love: You were being a sex creep to minors in the community, why aren’t you open about it and keep avoiding it? Why don’t you come clean about why you got banned from MSC?@OffenderX@freak.university: Wrong I fell for some bait account like loads of other (nomaps) did at the time it was because of the influx of so called aams into the community which you embraced. 99% of aamsyare [sic] bait accounts and the only reason any of you want them in the community it [sic] to be lewd with themyadmit [sic] that truth iris.@Liminal@youjo.love: What a sneaky piece of trash you are, none of those people were baits and none of them ever behaved inappropriately with anyone, this is why posting the link to get rid of you was a good thing and under the same circumstance I would do it again a billion times.I didn’t do it this time though so stop getting me involved in this bullshit.
Many pro-c’s observing the incident defended Wayne on various grounds. Some claimed that it was unreasonable to attack him because he had served his time and so his CSA of his daughter shouldn’t be held against him or brought up anymore. Some claimed that actually he hadn’t done anything wrong at all in the first place because he said it was consensual and she’d said she hadn’t known it was wrong until she grew older so it wasn’t abuse at all. (Nevermind that Wayne himself had spent years saying he had perpetrated abuse, that he knew it was wrong now, he was redeemed, etc.) One or two anti-c’s also argued that although his actions were wrong, so was sharing the article, because it violated his right to privacy / would cause inevitable blowback on MAPs/civil liberties in general / was unreasonable/unnecessary/harmful, and isn’t Iris always going on overkill against predators anyway?
(It was fascinating to observe the rapid about-face made by numerous pediverse pro-c’s the moment a sexually abusive father came up. Many who just a second ago were claiming to be the most radical of all the radical youth liberationists, total nuclear family abolitionists, Very Anarchic Anarchists (unlike those sex-hating, prudish, repressive Fake Anarchists), the only ones who Truly Care about the violence of hegemonic parental power and normalized parental abuse and exploitation, the best and only defenders of children and children’s rights, suddenly decided that they had to go to bat for an accused father and erase his survivor’s voice, to cast her as too powerful or even reverse-abusive, to claim that any youth liberationists trying to put constraints on a parent’s free exercise of power was Going Too Far and Extremist and Looking Too Much Into Innocuous Behavior and part of some modern (feminist, SJW) trend of terrible moral degeneration and just taking any children claiming abuse at their word instead of worrying about false accusations like they should.) (I believe this is part of the same phenomenon which I described here, in which some pro-c’s, especially more modern ones post-’80s feminist anti-CSA activism, try to claim that they are distinct from Real Child Molestation advocates and Adultist CSA supporters because they advocate for liberating children from the chains of the nuclear family through transgressive adult-child sex, presumably with an adult who is not a family member and who is opposed to the child’s parents. However, as we see in practice, “child liberationist” pro-contactism and nuclear family values are rarely as far from each other as they initially claim.)
(There is an additional dimension to this with how some pro-c’s focus on man-boy [CSA] exclusively, claiming to only support contact with boys while opposing contact with girls because “studies show” that “girls are harmed while boys are not.” They follow in the tradition of, e.g., Rind et al., and similar and adjacent intellectual and activist milieus, arguing that feminist claims about the universal abusiveness/harmfulness of CSA are biased and unreliable, especially because they rely exclusively on the “feminist incest model” of CSA, which describes adult male relatives/familial authority figures sexually abusing young girls. They claim that their [CSA] is so much more enlightened and superior because it only involves boys and/or non-relatives, and thus would not be inherently nonconsensual in the way men sexually abusing girls and/or their own children more “obviously” is. Yet if you trace back the roots of their activism, you will find many of the same people who were significant players in advocacy for CSA of girls as well, and the same rhetorical strategies which were used to defend fathers abusing daughters are now being re-applied to extrafamilial “mentors”/“friends” and the like abusing boys after feminist successes delegitimized the former. Likewise, many pediverse pro-c’s who claimed to support only “actually consensual” adult-child sexual relationships which did not exploit structural power differentials and/or emphasized boys-aren’t-harmed-though-so-your-studies-are-invalid abandoned such stances for the situation with Wayne.) (One would do well to remember that Rind himself has defended parent-child incest too, as well as nonsexual parental consent violations/coercion.) (This mirrors a general trend of misogynists/adultists assuming that feminists are never youth liberationists in general, only care about girls, only care about some subsets of issues, have or have generally had no idea how to analyze issues outside of a singular model e.g. extrafamilial CSA, and have no idea how to address abuse of boys, when that is entirely untrue; many feminists did develop and utilize models for other forms of CSA as well and are the strongest supporters of abused boys; antifeminists are the ones who tend to be more adultist and pro-child abuse including toward boys; their disingenuous claims of being champions of boys are more reflective of a masculinist idealization and coercive sentiments than any genuine care.) (Many such pro-c’s draw inspiration from ancient Greek models of pederasty. They would do well to remember their roots more properly—in Greece, the institution of pederasty existed side-by-side with paternal authority, the institution of marriage, and sexual exploitation of girls, and in fact reinforced heterosexism and the family.)
The discourse followed from (and continued, and re-intensified) a longer debate which often occurred throughout the fediverse side of the community regarding appropriate responses to accused abusers and predators, the nature and ethical status of violence, and its relevance to marginalized status and anti-oppression politics. Especially strong throughout more normative sides of the MAP community, mirroring discourses occurring right now in other marginalized and anti-oppression communities, is a common thread of certain ideals which could be summed up as “liberalism”—various beliefs in pacifism, community cohesion above autonomy, civility/politeness above hard truths, always seeing the best in (more normal/respectable) people, and so on. In particular, there is an emphasis on not being perceived as “punitive” or “retributive” with regards to certain sets of circumstances perceived to indicate alignment with the carceral state. (That school of thought saying we need to focus on “rehabilitating” rapists and child molesters and abusers, and if you have different priorities then you are literally a cop.) I was especially annoyed with the constant accusations lobbed at me of being “carceral” because, as I have made clear throughout my online presence, I am a police and prison abolitionist myself; meanwhile, Wayne has argued in multiple fedi threads against people saying ACAB, thinks not all cops are bad (and actually most are great harmless people), thinks prisons should continue to exist and that incarceration is good and necessary for crimes (though he has been less consistent when arguing this; sometimes imprisoning abusers is fair and sometimes it’s literally oppression), makes racist commentary on Twitter, wants the state to curb immigration in the UK, etc. I don’t see him getting labeled “carceral,” though he literally fits the most basic definition of the term.
(Ironically, another thing which got me labeled problematic, carceral, and “vigilantist” was that instead of calling the police the moment I saw or thought I saw a child predator, I attempted smaller-scale, community-appropriate grassroots action, which apparently is categorically problematic to liberals. Another part of the argument was that if an adult is really bad/has really done CSA, I would have evidence and would report it, and my failure or disinclination to report thus indicated that my accusations must be false. This same claim has been (independently) replicated by different people to attack me as a “vigilante” during other dramas too.)
It is also contradictory to claim that he is somehow more pro-MAP than we are or that we are secretly or by adjacency mapmisic or assimilationist for being anti-c, for drawing hard lines regarding contact politics or abusers, for strongly opposing CSA, for supporting direct action against CSA, or for attacking him. He has consistently shown that he takes issue with radical MAP politics. He has made negative posts about fediverse MAP activists who use aggressive slogans regarding antis or call for action against/want to harm antis. He dismissed their rejection of liberalism/pacifism as a product of immaturity/childishness, although these younger MAPs are like this precisely because have generally experienced more mapmisic violence and abuse from antis, often intersecting with ageism/adultism, and are responding to their own trauma, advocating for necessarily self-defense which they had been denied in the past.
Regarding another point of complaint against me: for a long time, many people have also taken issue with me blocking people. I block a lot of people because it is important for me to be able to set boundaries against people or interactions I am uncomfortable with, something I was denied throughout childhood because of abusers and their entitlements. I am disabled and have limited physical, mental, and emotional energy. I do not want to sink any more time than I already have into relationships which are lost causes or wastes of time/energy for me. Furthermore, I am a marginalized person and tend to be disproportionately targeted for harassment, abuse, and hate. I have had multiple bad experiences on fedi where giving someone the benefit of the doubt instead of just blocking them and forgetting about them outright led to terrible consequences for me. I have learned over time that I need to always be on guard, because there are many bigots and abuse supporters online, and often they are not so 24/7 whenever they post, and it’s easier to get rid of them once than to have to keep track of everyone’s issues. I struggle with paranoia and trauma, including from these incidents, and I have various random triggers which mean I need to block certain keywords and types of accounts for my own peace of mind. But I don’t see anyone showing sympathy for my struggles. All the sympathy is on the poor blocked bigots/abuse apologists who were denied interaction with Iris (what a frigid bitch) as if they are somehow automatically entitled to controlling how I spend my time in the first place? As if authoritarian social norms which can force people into interactions they don’t want are not a literal fucking foundation of all abuse cultures? I remain astonished at the naivety of so many people on pedi who truly believe that Absolute Free Speech and No Restrictions At All Costs are somehow liberatory and more important than safety, self-defense, and genuinely anti-oppressive values, as if they can’t predict what will inevitably result from such a toxic and coercive environment. But certainly it’s easier to make fun of a demonized survivor, pathologize me, and cast my actions as unreasonable and “unhinged” (hysterical?) and deserving of disdain and envision a caricature of me rather than actually engage with what I might actually think.
(It seems that my instincts are good. So far I have yet to see a single person whom I blocked for political reasons who was actually redeemable. All of them inevitably escalate and engage in even worse rhetoric/behavior. Always retroactively vindicated. Lol.)
The discourse also followed from older accusations of me supposedly “doxxing” MAPs I supposedly mistakenly perceived as sexually predatory toward minors. These claims, which originated in 2021, although they had mostly died down throughout 2022 and early 2023 as I ignored the initial instigators and the instigators took hiatuses or decreased their activity on fedi, paved the way for pro-c’s to cast me as particularly malicious, evil, hysterical/overreaching, vindictive, punitive, antimap-like or an antimap myself, out to get any pro-c MAP unfortunate enough to cross my path, ready (and able) to doxx random bystanders willy-nilly, putting Everyone in the community At Risk. I have no interest in going over the specifics of these past events, which have already been re-hashed in threads ad nauseam; I mention them here to give context to a particular phenomenon relevant to the situation with Wayne. I was accused of “doxxing” him by linking a news article about his past CSA and conviction because it stated his first and last name and the names of his daughter and ex-wife. What he and the many other pro-c’s claiming I “doxxed” him like to conveniently ignore is that he was already going by Wayne and expecting people to call him that on fedi. He waved around his city in posts. He gave out the name of his daughter. I did a simple Google search with his first name + her first name + “sexual abuse” + “father” and got that article as the very first result. That’s “doxxing” now? Really?
I bring this up now not because I have some sort of “vendetta” against him or think angry thoughts about him while he’s no longer relevant, or want to vindictively attach his name to malicious smears or Ruin His New Life and Disturb The Peace, or anything of the sort. As people know, I have major emotional and object impermanence, and I can hardly remember people if I’m not actively interacting with them. I barely think about past acquaintances at all. I had already planned on writing this post because I wanted a record of my NNIA thread to be available somewhere as I’ve deleted the original posts, and I would prefer for these events to be recorded for transparency and organization, to inform my readers, and to serve as a jumping off point for some broader political points I have to make. Especially since the topic was reopened about a month ago when Lecter mentioned it again (I’m not sure if it was in response to some other posts or spontaneous), saying it was absurd that people had panicked that they might be “next” in line to be “doxxed” as if there were no meaningful differences between themselves and actual sexual abusers. This kickstarted a whole new, very long thread in which various people argued furiously and tried to re-litigate the events of February. I was uninterested in getting too directly involved there because I didn’t really see the issue as posing an immediate threat or in need of immediate resolution anymore, trying to argue over it again would not accomplish anything concrete, and it would only end poorly for me to jump back into the fray (as I would only feel nervous and threatened/insecure throughout and my detractors would only find new reasons to attack me). There didn’t seem to be much point in people starting such a fight again (unless someone wanted to retroactively punish me for my role in the events). The same old points were made (doxxing, mean/bad, what about his rights, can’t set a precedent, he’s a MAP so he should get special treatment, etc.).
I addressed some of the points going around in a separate thread, noting, among other things, that:
- The claim that it was bad for his survivor to bring it up or share the article with her name literally originated with him. Do you think he is an accurate interpreter of her wishes? Do you think you are, working from a paternalistic pacifist blueprint? I think the article itself was pretty clear. She hates him, will hate him forever, will never forgive, wished for a harsher response, and literally waived her legal right to anonymity so that she could tell her story as herself.
- He functionally doxxed her by publicizing her name (and his) along with various other personal details. He wanted to be able to talk about her without her voice ever getting into the mix or him being at risk for any criticism. It is unfair, unreasonable, and oppressive to claim that his voice should be allowed out here (and even unconstrained) while hers is silenced, that he should be able to exploit his past but then complain that people are bringing it up again only when we do so negatively.
- “wEll tEchNiCaLLy” is the refrain of enlightened centrists. Are the oppressed Going Too Far in our violence? Or are patriarchs rushing to constrain any potential violence from us because you know that is what is necessary to uphold the status quo? Does it really matter what we do or don’t do here? You cannot just take events and analyze them in isolation, devoid of all surrounding history, nuances, or context. Might you consider that perhaps levelling these sanctions would be a net loss for liberation, even if we had technically violated some rule in the book?
- It does not matter if an abuser/rapist has X marginalization too. The personal is political; misogynists make great informants; they’re more bigoted/oppressive/harmful to our cause on average than nonabusers/nonrapists are; abuse is abuse, and caring about victims means caring about all victims.
- None of the feared IRL Consequences actually occurred. Regardless of Technicalities, he is, in actuality, totally fine right now. He dug his own grave, he lies in it, stop complaining as if you’re so much better, your objectivity and neutrality aren’t very objective or neutral.
This year, the main instigator of the most prevalent “doxxing” accusations against me returned to pedi, her circle of supporters grew, and efforts against me escalated. I received an ask questioning me about whether I had actually ever doxxed anyone. I have actually done things which might be considered “doxxing” or “spreading doxxes” before, and I did not want to give a technically false answer which might be used against me later to paint me as deceptive/hiding things that wouldn’t make me look good or a liar, so I said yes. This was in reference to a few anti-MAPs and an anti-c non-MAP ally who were actively engaging in abuse of MAPs/allies, as an effort to help stop them from abusing and protect their victims. I have also done mundane everyday leftist things like retweeting/reblogging exposés of Nazis by antifascists on social media. I do not think this was very remarkable. The mob, however, eagerly jumped onto any shred of evidence that could be construed as indicating guilt, claimed this was some sort of “confession” on my part of having doxxed MAPs or doxxed pro-c’s, and took this as an excuse to triple their efforts and call for my total removal from all MAP spaces. It wasn’t just that one time; they misinterpret my words constantly, often in very far-fetched ways, to stack up more and more evidence that I am politically problematic, abusive, predatory, a villain, etc. It is especially hard when I’m autistic and tend to communicate in a direct and literal manner, and tend to assume others are doing so too, and have a tendency to take people at face value, and sometimes feel confused when people twist my words and seem completely impervious to any clarification. I do not believe their constant nitpicking and misinterpretations are an accident; I am far from the only person they do this to. (When I tried to fight back against the harassment and brought up the scenarios of doxxing antis/abusers/Nazis, I got many pro-c’s to spontaneously admit that yes, they do in fact find it wrong for people to doxx antimaps, abusive nonmaps, and Nazis too, also on moral grounds and for fear of it trickling down to harm MAPs/leftists somehow. So it’s not really about MAP rights/liberation here, is it?)
In all of this, it is quite evident that there are major double standards in play here. Who, exactly, is “punitive” culture hurting most? Consistently, pro-contactism is more socially elevated, valued, profitable, and protected, while survivors and our allies are treated with cruelty, harassed, and yes, punished. Both-sides’ing/relativizing contact discourse to favor giving more benefit of the doubt to pro-c’s is basically the status quo, while few think twice before making generalizations and condemnations of anti-c’s. It is widely believed that it is Very Important And Necessary to Stop perceiving pro-c’s as Bad Evil People because apparently Everyone overwhelmingly and irrationally holds negative and false beliefs about pro-c’s. But in practice, this is not even actually true (everyone just loves giving them extra chances). It feels much, much easier to claim that pro-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed than to claim that anti-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed without being cast as insane for thinking that. This benefit-of-the-doubt just leads to more of the Overton Window being ceded to pro-contactism, while the exasperatingly naive liberals/centrists are played for fools.
Whose past, exactly, is being dug up unnecessarily and/or lied about to malign them? I’m not allowed to be complain that people keep mentioning over and over again completely irrelevant moderate wrongs with little actual impact I had done years ago in ignorance and while under significant abusive pressure, which I have consistently disavowed for years and which I do not even have anywhere near the means to replicate now, to spin a fairytale of deliberate malice and villainy attached to them with numerous wildly false claims (which have expanded, as of now, into claims that I run a giant network of Discord servers dedicated to doxxing MAPs, that I’ve invited informants into NNIA to spy on other MAPs, that I control NNIA, that I run a cult and everyone listens to and automatically agrees with everything I say and if I write a Callout on someone I consider Problematic then they will immediately be Cancelled By Everyone With No Recourse and I have massive social influence over NNIA (absolutely not true! I’m one of the most unpopular and deliberately ignored people on the entire site), that I was a top informant for various antis I have never talked to in my entire life, that I (while being a minor, having little money, being disabled and very socially anxious and so busy all the time that I’m already constantly overwhelmed, and having no methods of independent travel) am capable of attacking remote people IRL, that I’m laundering funds/have secret dark money for our projects, that I have fed connections, that every time a pro-c instance goes down it must be my fault, and so on and so forth). But if I mention someone else’s past when they (all evidence considered) have never been publicly criticized or held accountable for their actions, do not particularly care that they did it and do not understand that it was wrong, pose a significant present threat, and intend to cause harm again/are harming again right now, even if they have done things orders of magnitude worse than anything I ever even considered attempting, even if they have frequently informed on MAPs to literal antis and been mapmisic/done antimap activism themselves, that’s problematically punitive and unforgiving and not-letting-their-pasts-just-be-forgotten-like-they-want and replicating prison-logic?
(What’s that they say—“every accusation is a confession”?)
It seems that people see violence as casually acceptable when done to me/my comrades and only problematic when hinted at from us to them, whenever it is resistance to abuse rather than furthering abuse. They can talk a big game about kindness and pacifism and not-wanting-to-hurt-anyone and can’t-we-all-just-be-friends but only, it seems, when the target is on their side or on the side of oppression. Not once have I seen any of that crowd giving any regard to what I might be feeling with what they do to/about me, but the potential feelings of violent misogynists, adultists, abusers, and sexual predators are automatically elevated to tantamount importance, treated like some sort of fragile glass that needs to maximum protection 24/7. Meanwhile, it seems like it’s perfectly fine, for them, if I’m hurting or experiencing bigotry or having my life ruined. (Sometimes it does seem like they just forget entirely that I am a real actual person with actual feelings and subjectivity who has their own point of view and internal experiences, who might be more than just a cardboard-cutout prop to project onto and objectify and enact their mob justice on.)
It is depressingly noticeable how easy it was to get me banned/defederated from multiple instances, but we had to move heaven and earth to even attain an inch of progress against an admitted serial child sexual abuser engaging in ongoing victimization, and even then the tiniest actions taken against him were widely questioned and disparaged, while there is nearly no break in the consensus at all that I deserve to be mass-ostracized from every part of the community and should be attacked and harassed. (When I brought this up several weeks ago, on a private post no less, a harasser who did not even follow me stole access to the post, screenshotted it, shared it publicly, and falsely claimed that I was actually referring to them and was therefore making a false predator accusation and therefore doing evil things, collaborating with antis, always wrong/mistaken about everything, maliciously targeting them, etc. etc. etc.)
During the Wayne drama in February, the admin of FU had also made a post linking to the article with his name in it. For that, she was viciously dogpiled and labeled a “doxxer” too. She deleted the post, recanted, apologized profusely, and has since consistently claimed regret for her actions and aggressively disavowed any such article-linking as “doxxing” too. She even capitulated to the mob recently, freezing my and Lecter’s FU accounts, limiting our NNIA accounts from FU, and banning Lecter’s FUA. (Lecter had been tainted with guilt-by-association when he had refused to ban me from NNIA for “doxxing” and had sanctioned the accuser for harassing me and having a long history of being a bad actor in 2021, prompting her to demand that the entire NNIA instance be defederated from everywhere else for justice. He was roped into personal “doxxing” accusations as well when he mentioned the individual’s past screen name in clarifying events and trying to hold her accountable several months ago.) This didn’t protect the FU admin, however; more recently, she herself was accused (again) of “doxxing” and running a “doxxing server” and putting MAPs at risk, just like I had been—because people dug up screenshots of private chats from months ago in which she had considered having people try to doxx a certain violent, transmisogynistic, serially abusive and life-ruining anti, and they misinterpreted an offhanded joke from her (again, from months ago) in an extremely exaggerated manner. Now they want her gone too.
Another pro-c MAP now ostracized from the community was accused of “doxxing” for some similar actions related to those events. My anti-c MAP friend was accused of “doxxing” in 2021 by the same person spearheading the accusations against me now, because of their shared involvement in the 2021 situation, and was successfully harassed/threatened and traumatized out of participating in the pediverse community (although pro-c’s continue to gloat about this cruelty and revictimize them even now).
Furthermore, an anti-CSA MAP ally has also been falsely accused of “doxxing” a MAP, but in a very different context: the claims about her actions were 100% fabricated out of thin air, not just wildly distorted from a relatively innocuous that did actually happen, and the aggrieved party is anti-c. This occurred as a part of a prolonged abusive situation which included community social sabotage, although those abuse enablers are not present in the same circles as the current pediverse. Nevertheless, it is significant that such disparate groups of abusers and social capitalists throughout the MAP community would happen upon the same DARVO tactic, with surprising success in demonizing and prolonging the victimization of abuse survivors and particularly marginalized community members. (If anything’s a “witch-hunt,” it’s this. “Look, they’re a DOXXER!!” “Look, she’s a WITCH!” Pitchfork them all.)
Here are some examples of the rhetoric flung at me which my harassers have felt comfortable saying out loud:
(I certainly did not try to “doxx” this individual or get it “attacked by antis” in any way. But the truth doesn’t matter, does it? Propaganda and manufacturing consent for violence are rightwingers’ bread and butter.)@Liminal@youjo.love: … being transphobic is one of the main reason [sic] why Kay and others had a problem with you even before you started saying gross shit about your daughter.“iris” whoever iris hates is my best friend
@Sp@ghetti.monster: Do you have any proof of him doing that
@Liminal@youjo.love: It should all be on Kay’s or Iris profiles [sic].
welcome to the community valium, liminal suck an egg@Liminal@youjo.love: Iris hates me more than anyone else hereiris tried doxxing me and getting me attacked by antis because i told them he was [old, irrelevant drama in which it had gotten me attacked by antis first]
the retarded fuck should either kill himself or get the fuck out of this community (i prefer the former)
(My detractors from pro-c communities love misgendering me. I have been misgendered as “he” and “she” at various times by different people; I have also been gaslit for criticizing them or requesting correction. Nowadays it’s almost rarer to find someone who uses the correct pronouns for me than those who use binary ones. We might get called “punitive” for attacking transphobia and ableism, but at least none of us have ever used misgendering to punish someone else, or weaponized someone else’s disability or mental illness against them.)
(Note: https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/109888833361684251; but also note: their critique wasn’t mainly of Lecter or Liminal, but of me, and my usage of NNIA, for reposting what Liminal had originally posted several years ago independently of NNIA.)@Sp@ghetti.monster: Another nnia LSo why is this coming up now??We know you’re an offenderIt’s in your name@OffenderX@freak.university: Because the bastards have spoken to lecter or liminal who posted my offence on twitter and have now done it here.Doxxers should get the rope
Did these individuals get “cancelled” or face any repercussions for publicly calling for my death/murder? (Predictably, nope.) If I ever said anything like this about a pro-c, you can be certain that I would immediately face vicious retribution. Only one person (who wasn’t even anti-c) in the entire Wayne drama had expressed any violent wishes toward him. But we still bore the brunt of the backlash.
The various accusations of “doxxing” have become especially potent and inflammatory as Newgon came into play in later 2021 and started targeting me in particular this year, picking up existing attacks on me (and other NNIA members) as well as pushing forward various attacks of their own and powering harassers whenever they come up. As Lecter has noted, they in particular are mobilizing these accusations and smear campaigns to take down their political opponents (and keep roping in previously-unrelated people to join in on the smear campaign, e.g. with this guest post hosted on Tom O’Carroll’s blog, written by Newgon’s Strategist a few days ago, in which he repeats slanderous claims about me and tries to make a case for why rape fetishists are worse than Nazis). It is notable that all the victims of false “doxxing” accusations by pro-c’s so far have been politically inconvenient to the pro-c project in some way, either by being anti-c and too loud about it, by sympathizing with anti-c’s and disagreeing with pro-c’s with more social capital, or by running afoul of the reactionary norms of the space. In common with the accusation by anti-c’s not particularly affiliated with the pediverse, all victims of false doxxing accusations within the MAP community in these past few years were being punished for rejecting authority and resisting abuse or abusive norms in spaces, with moral panic incited as a tool to keep them in line and prevent social change. This has been especially applied for minors and youth liberationist allies calling out adultism.
It might seem surprising that such a hyper-specific, arguably random accusation would have such consistent, immediate, destructive impact. It would be almost comical if it weren’t so devastating and cruel. But the absurd and seemingly arbitrary are precisely where abusers and oppressors often prefer to stake their territory. Regardless of how niche the issue is, the fact remains that here is where key points of conflict lie; reactionaries are leveraging it to build their power base in the community, and we would do well to analyze the phenomenon.
The pro-c’s speak of “doxxing” in a way similar to how we would speak of abuse or sexual violence: almost as a sort of informal statutory offense, and moreover a deadly assault, threatening the integrity of our communities, one which requires immediate mass mobilization to guard against. What I have noticed is that their “doxxing” accusations almost mirror the form of accusations of abuse, sexual violence, bigotry, or oppressive behavior which we would use. One could say that if abuse or oppressive violence were to us the “archetypal” wrong or offense, then “doxxing" to them approaches their view of the “archetypal” crime. I believe this is analogous to how other rightwing communities conceptualize a quasi-judicial “crime” of “false accusation,” “false reporting,” “defamation,” “reputational damage,” “gold-digging,” etc., deemed more offensive and threatening than abuse or sexual assault itself.
What is interesting here is that the MAP community is relatively insulated from the outside, much more so than many other communities. Thus, there are some rather unique opportunities both for bad actors within the community to create and exploit internal power dynamics, and for us to observe an arena in which abuser-vs.-survivor political conflicts and cultural norms are being produced in real time, in an especially “isolated” or “contained” strain, and thus in a clearer form to extract social analyses from. What we see here now is a very particular, literal manifestation of anti-survivor retaliation and patriarchal retrenchment. Our small subcultural space is certainly niche, but we do reflect and to some degree filter over into the dynamics of the outside political battles as well. In this current era of explosive new opportunities for anti-sexual-violence activism, increasingly radical youth liberationist and feminist consciousness, as well as anti-#MeToo backlash and the threat of encroaching fascism, capitalism-in-crisis brings hostilities, internal and external contradictions to a head; micro-scale political dynamics become part of larger systems and movements, and right now we down here have unique opportunities to either lose a lot or gain a lot as well.
Why, exactly, did the reactionaries of this community choose “doxxing” as their point of fixation? I believe it is because this particular crime (or “crime”) suits the MAP community atmosphere especially well. MAPs are marginalized and face significant risk from being found out IRL as MAPs; anonymity is strongly emphasized and prized in online MAP communities, while doxxing oneself/going public as a MAP activist is seen as a sort of “point of no return,” the ultimate gamble putting your life on the line, reserved only for activist-heroes or the unfortunate. Many are almost paranoid about OPSEC. Some even chide others for perceived security/info-protection failures. Doxxing a MAP, especially by/to one’s IRL abusers, is a major threat wielded by antis against their targets, and mapmisic MAPs who have collaborated with/snitched to antis have tended to focus on giving out IRL-identifying information. However, at the same time, fear of doxxing for some people might align with a fear of being found out for past abusive or predatory behavior that they are trying to run from so that they can continue to avoid accountability, leave their survivors in the dust, and deceptively accumulate power to abuse again. Anonymity is both a last protection for the oppressed and a deadly weapon oppressors’ arsenal, and this ambiguity in usage makes it easy to confuse and exploit. As such, “doxxing,” which sits at an unusual intersection of both these associations, becomes a particularly contentious and volatile weapon, and thus a prime item for reactionaries to manipulate and utilize to produce effective moral panics.
But look at what is actually going on behind the smokescreens: who, for example, is actually behind the pushes from each side? We just want to be left the fuck alone (and to defend others’ right to be left the fuck alone); they want to needle and harass unwilling participants they know are powerless and struggling to defend themselves. We don’t seem to have many (or any?) rightwingers, perpetrators of bigoted harassment, serial abusers, etc. Meanwhile, the lineup of the attackers reveals numerous Nazis and other violent bigots, rape apologists, CSA apologists, abuse apologists and enablers, chronic harassers and consent-violators, reactionaries, people I remember even if they’d rather we forget that they have (or so rumor says) long strings of victims behind them, people I’ve spoken to in private who are still triggered by the sounds of some of those people’s names or mention of certain years or events in which awful trauma took place and/or are afraid to speak about their experiences because of the quiet social threats in place and their own lack of power, or people who have been accused over the grapevine of very alarming crimes which somehow disappear from public discussion and it doesn’t really look so good now, does it? It may have been buried and it may be impolite and disruptive and risky to speak of it now and certainly it’s easier to keep up that good ol’ policy of open secrets, missing stairs, going unacknowledged, used to being unquestioned and unquestionable, used to enforcing reactionary norms and casual abuse culture as a requirement/bar/precondition to participating in this community—like I’ve experienced from the liberal anti-c MAP community—like I’ve experienced from antis—like I’ve experienced from oppressive communities everywhere, overall—but times are changing, aren’t they? We’ve scored some pretty decent wins in this year alone—the ice is broken; the uncriticizable are now up for critique; older members of the community panic that our radical strategy is hindering their long-accepted unimaginative uninformed strategies; the momentum builds.
Whispers remain whispers now, but—do you think you can hold on to everything forever?
