Say, for the sake of argument, there’s this guy… Theseus. We’ll get to him in a minute. People who know this story, please don’t spoil the ending. Imagine you’re bouncing around Twitter –a damn fool thing to do, but who am I to judge?– and you come across someone claiming “[Public Figure X] doxxed me.” You’re thinking, “Oh no. I’m a fan of Public Figure X! I find their work very inspiring.” So you look a little deeper into the story, and you come to understand a few things. First, it turns out, by “Public Figure X” they mean… an employee of "Public Figure X". Well, employees are often acting on behalf of their employers; if your campaign staff meets with Russians, it’s reasonable to say that… you are in contact with Russia, so maybe this is something like that. Also, it turns out that, by “employee” they mean a contractor that "Public Figure X" hired several years ago. Well, OK, if a contractor does something on behalf of a client, that’s basically the same as an employee doing it. And, apparently, by “doxxed” they don’t mean Public Figure X –or Public Figure X’s contractor– personally hacked anyone’s computer, they mean Public Figure X’s people shared information that had been acquired by someone else. Well, that’s fair, if someone posts your home address on a forum and then the forum spreads it all over the internet, it’s reasonable to say… the Forum doxxed you. Oh, but it wasn’t a home address or a private email, it was the person’s name. Well, if you’re anonymous for safety reasons, having your name revealed can lead to threats or silencing, so, depending on why you’re anonymous, having your name leaked can be a kind of doxxing. Oh, and by “leaked my name,” they mean… liked a tweet that had the name in it. Hmm. OK, now say you’re bumming around Facebook –which, maybe you shouldn’t, but I do it, too– and someone posts an article saying: "All pornography is coercive." You’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a pretty sweeping statement! I’ve gotta investigate this.” So you read the article, and it seems there’s a school of thought that, since in porn, the product is usually images of women’s bodies, women tend to be socially pressured or financially incentivized to do things with their bodies that people like to see but they aren’t necessarily comfortable with. Since that consent is not freely given… "All pornography is coercive." And you think: “Well, what about worker-owned porn collectives, or amateur porn that’s just exhibitionists who don’t monetize their videos?” And, after digging around the author’s work, you find, buried in a footnote in another article, that, in their opinion… "if it's worker-owned or unmonetized, it isn't porn, it's erotica" …okay. Now say you’ve ambled into the wildlands of Tumblr -- woe betide the ones who travel too far from their dahboards -- and you come across the claim that "Activist Y is a bigot." You’re thinking, “Ah jeez, first Public Figure X and now this?” So you read a number of other posts on the subject, and eventually piece together that, by “bigot,” the people making this claim mean “anti-sex worker” –which, no question, that is a bigotry– and by “anti-sex worker” they mean “anti-sex” –which, OK, that’s kind of a stretch– and by “anti-sex” they mean “prudish” –which is definitely a stretch– and by “prudish” they mean “is critical of the sexual objectification of women in fantasy imagery because they believe it drives women away from the community.” Let’s bring back our buddy Theseus. So Theseus –or, more specifically, his boat– is the subject of a famous thought experiment: The Ship of Theseus. It goes like this: If you were in possession of the ship of Theseus, and one day you were to replace a single board with a fresh one, and the next day you replaced another, and the next day another, and the next day another, one by one until not a single stick of the original remained… Would it still be the same boat ? If so, what is the essence of boatness that remains even when all the materials have changed? If not, when did it become a different boat? When the last board was replaced? When half were replaced? Three quarters? Now, don’t worry, it’s a thought experiment; there’s no right answer, just a lot of philosophy. But the corollary I’m making here is: What happens when you ship-of-theseus a statement ? These are arguments where words and bits of rhetoric have been replaced, piece by piece, until until very little of the original sentence remains. How many words can you change in an argument until it's not the same argument anymore ? There are a few different aims when somebody does this: One is making the unacceptable acceptable The statement: "activist Y is against sexual objectification" is not controversial among progressives. If you go after Activist Y for that belief, you’re going to make progressive enemies. But if you redefine this as “anti-sex,” and “anti-sex” as “a bigot,” now it’s Activist Y who has the enemies, and you’ve just smuggled an anti-feminist argument into feminist language. Two is making the unremarkable remarkable. "Some pornography is coercive" is not the kind of take that sells magazine subscriptions. But if you’ve got a private definition of “pornography” that excludes sexually explicit material that isn’t coercive, well, that’s a provocative headline, especially since, at first glance, nobody knows you’re using a nonstandard definition of the word. Now, it is true that… At it worst, the porn industry is a misogynist hellscape of unregulated capitalism, but there are a lot of people ready to blame that on… this bit rather than… this bit and this bit and are hungry for articles that tell them being anti-porn is progressive, rather than anti-woman and anti-worker. Any acknowledgement that ethical porn exists would make that perception fail, so, of course, it’s transmuted out of the conversation. Three is cutting people off from their communities. The statement: "someone who used to work with Public Figure X liked like a tweet that had my name in it" gets converted into: "Public Figure X doxxed me" for the purpose of turning Public Figure X’s community against them, with the added benefit of gaining favor with anyone who already hates them. It’s a standard abusive boyfriend tactic: if you want to mistreat someone, first you cut them off from their friends. In the case of someone who is embraced by the progressive community, you slander them using something that community cares about. A lot of progressives are acclimated to getting burned, to finding out the gay activist harasses his employees, that the race activist exploits the labor of women, and that puts a lot of people on edge. And, frankly, it’s warranted. But when folks feel like they’re just waiting to be betrayed again, they can be a little too willing to believe horror stories about their allies. I wouldn’t say this is chronic, but it does happen, more than a little, and people will take advantage of it. The rhetorical Ship of Theseus is a devilish maneuver because it relies on the kinds of substitutions that are, in a vacuum, defensible. Yes, a person who spreads private information is just as much a doxxer as the person who acquired it; yes, a person who is anti-sex worker is typically operating in a sex-negative attitude. Many of these substitutions will work in context, but The Ship of Theseus is about making an inordinate number of substitutions and then burying the context. One can make the - already dubious - argument that this isn’t technically a lie, but it’s meant to form a picture in your mind of something that didn’t happen: Public Figure X personally releasing private information
but it’s meant to form a picture in your mind of something that didn’t happen: Public Figure X personally releasing private information as an act of directed harassment. The necessary context that describes what actually happened is only provided when the statement is challenged, usually in the form of lawyerly hairsplitting: “We can cite precedent that in the case of twitter personality Q v. neoGAF, the leaking of twitter personality Q’s name was considered doxxing, so, it stands to reason. This gets you mired in the truthfulness of individual claims, debating technicalities of a statement blatantly meant to deceive. You’re never given a chance to articulate the original statement, before its transformation. Its final form sits there, pristine and shareable, at the top of your enormous Twitter argument, and we’ve already discussed the power of statements that are short, quippy, and wrong. More than most things I’ve covered in this series, these are tactics I’ve seen across the entire political spectrum, most especially Number Three. Liberal, conservative, progressive, reactionary; this is a thing bad people do, even on the Left. Someone with good politics isn’t necessarily a good person, who won’t use the rhetoric of social justice to rationalize shitty behavior. The rhetoric is specifically designed to combat this, but it’s not airtight, and there’s nothing so special about progressivism that makes us immune to abusers and opportunists. The main difference is that, when the Right does this, it does it to the Left, and, when the Left does this, it does it to itself. The Far Right is perfectly happy converting an attack or a bad argument into whatever they think progressive language sounds like, and bigots on the Left are perfectly happy sneaking transphobic arguments into feminism, but the Left, by and large, will not touch conservative language. We don’t try to isolate a member of the Alt-Right by telling his community he’s a race traitor or secretly gay. We don’t often smuggle environmental messages into militaristic language (though some people who are not me think we should). The closest we come is when we run centrist candidates who present themselves as the best of the Right and the Left, but the Right doesn’t buy it. Even when we call someone on the Right racist, homophobe, antisemite –which the Right will claim is a Ship of Theseus– it doesn’t serve the same purpose. People can disagree with me on whether the Left is
it doesn’t serve the same purpose. People can disagree with me on whether the Left is disingenuous when it talks like this but they can’t argue this is hurting the Right. I mean, when’s the last time a Republican lost a job for being too homophobic? They’re more likely to lose the job for being queer. And we can call Republicans racist until the castle rises above the clouds, but their constituency is made up of people who either cannot be convinced that one of their own is a racist, or can but don’t care. (Or they prefer it that way.) Discussing bigotry on the Right is mostly so the Left knows what it’s up against. There’s no real solution to The Ship of Theseus other than to memorize what the dummy words are; to know, when a TERF says “child abuse,” they mean… calling trans kids by the correct pronouns when a SWERF says “rape,” they mean… consensual sex work I can’t give you a comprehensive list because I don’t know all the words that would be on it, and it would be outdated as soon as I gave it to you. But, with practice, you can get a sense of when an argument sounds fishy and which people tend to give fishy arguments. Usually, with a bit of googling, you can find all the buried context has already been dug up by someone. (People tend to be pretty quick about this.) Learning to spot the Ship of Theseus when you come across it is useful not just so you don’t repeat hearsay you haven’t verified, but because it tells you something about the person using it. The Ship of Theseus is a kind of… elaborate euphemism. What language they use reveals what they think we care about. What language they won’t use reveals what they can and can’t say. It’s a temperature check for where we are as a society: what things do horrible people feel they can get away with and what things do they have to disguise ? But no disguise is perfect. And, if you do the fact-checking, it will show you where they’re weak. People will try to contort the truth but the truth leaves an essence behind. Writing, directing, editing, and all original content by Ian Danskin Copyrighted content protected under Fair Use Outro music : Cologne, by Trans Am
I am so glad that my only explosure to all this toxic shit directed at Natalie is this subreddit. How the fuck anyone can take her work and genuinely argue it’s problematic in any significant manner is beyond me.
By all means, add it to a list of reasons to remember she is just a person who isn’t without fault, but for fucks sake people, let’s not act like this is where we need to be expending energy to enact positive change for underserved and diminished members of society.
It feels like this will continue to be relevant for a long time- I don't see any signs of change. :-/
We wind up posting and discussing so much of Ian's works -- he needs MORE PATREONS
Please go give him money.
Innuendo makes me regret not taking some philosophy classes as I do enjoy Natalie and Innuendo's videos and uses of philosophy. The biggest problem is how well the alt right have become at using half truths, lies and rumor to attack their enemies. One misstep and they are ready to pounce.
Hit the nail on the head with this, I’ve been saying this for so long. I’m the furthest thing from a centrist but my own comrades will come out and call me a centrist(or some other thing) for pointing this out.
Heads up to the best youtuber out there, I loev you Ian pls marry me
This video series is the one I share almost as often as contrapoints.
How did you just cross-post from this sub back into this sub?
The problem with presumption of guilt culture is that it attracts grifters, on the other hand left is an alliance of people who are used to their trauma being denied, so it's hard to avoid.