Honesty as a spiritual principle and political strategy

On the repression of my speech

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I have received so much punishment for my speech. My need to tell the truth about my experiences, emotions, opinions, ideas, values, desires, and limits has frequently been met with punishment, coercion, and vigorous attempts to get me to shut up. This was (and is) true in my family of origin, where I am the scapegoat — punished, blamed, and exiled for speaking the truth it is forbidden to acknowledge: My family is a family of incestuous sexual abuse, rage, repression, denial, and profound neglect. My family has done everything they can think to keep me quiet: As a child my father screamed at me and called me selfish, disrespectful, and ungrateful. As a teenager I was locked in psych wards — the cutting that replaced my forbidden speech was also forbidden. I was locked up until I agreed to be quiet even with my body. As an adult my mother accused me of being mentally ill, delusional, bipolar, and suggested that my partner is abusing me and had planted these ideas in my head. She called anti-feminist and mother-blaming for trying to tell her about sexual abuse in my family. When I wrote about that abuse, she threatened to sue me.

Speech is central to the experience of being an incest survivor. Our ability to speak the truth is part of what is attacked through sexual abuse. The truth is forbidden and we are made, through coercion, force, humiliation, threats, terror, or shame that does not belong to us, to be quiet and accept what is being done to us. Even as we grow up and escape the abuse we are not allowed to talk about it. Any attempts to talk about it are met with accusations, exasperation, minimization, and rage. Our speech is treated as the problem, not the sexual abuse we experienced. As Dorothée Dussy has explained: the real taboo in our culture is not perpetrating incest, but talking about incest. In order to recover my speech as an incest survivor I had to develop ways of thinking and writing where the truth could escape the heavy bars of censorship locking it in. I had to find a way to let the truth leave my fingertips without it getting caught in the submission to silence that I have been so rigorously trained in. I fought for my voice in the most insane ways possible, literally drunk out of my mind on a street corner screaming about incest. I fought with everything I am, and almost died, trying to find a way to speak the truth.

In my midtwenties I became increasingly aware of a dynamic in the left-ish / queer / activist scenes I call home that was disturbingly similar to the enforced silence of my childhood. This dynamic is called cancel culture. Cancel culture is a culture of dehumanization, punishment, and exile, but, importantly, cancel culture is also a culture of extreme censorship and repression. Cancel culture enforces silence. Cancel culture reduces political debate and discourse to the memorization and recitation of orthodoxy. Dissident thinkers are punished and exiled. Those who ask too many questions are warned (threatened) and pushed back into line. The public spectacles of cancellation campaigns are a coercive force that enforces the silence of everyone who witnesses them. No one wants to step out of line and be targeted. Therefore we have given up the work of thinking seriously and critically about a great many things, because it is simply not allowed. While cancellers self-describe as crusaders against abuse, bravely running abusers out of our communities, they themselves are abusive — stalking, harassing, and dehumanizing people, often people they don’t even know over accusations that are vague, refuted, and unverified.

In 2020 I was cancelled and then cancelled again for really stupid “reasons.” Being cancelled set me free. Since my greatest fear (total social annihilation) had already happened I used it as an opportunity to free myself from the enforced silence of the political culture I found myself in. Just like when I finally realized that no matter how silent and compliant I was my parents would never step up and be parents, I finally realized that my silence and compliance were not going to protect me from my bloodthirsty peers — when my time came, my time came, the fact that I was deep in a practice of hypervigilant self-censorship did not save me. Not only did my silence not protect me from the dehumanizing attacks of my scapegoat-hungry peers, it blunted my thinking, made me politically irresponsible, damaged my writing (my most sacred work), made real intimacy impossible, and prevented me from being authentic and telling the truth. Cancel culture, in its more overt forms and in its most subtle forms, is completely out of alignment with my most fundamental value: speaking the truth.

In the five years since I was cancelled I have become a well known writer and public political / philosophical thinker. I have a huge audience who engages with my work because of my commitment to honesty and my willingness to think deeply and seriously, even about topics the social justice orthodoxy has deemed forbidden — resulting in many forbidden and therefore “controversial” or “problematic” conclusions. I have experienced a huge amount of punishment, censorship, and repression of my political speech. People don’t actually attack me because I am cancelled (no one can even say for sure what they think I am accused of) as much as they attack me for being honest about what cancel culture is and how it functions. People don’t even remember “why” I was originally cancelled. The reason they constantly make up stories about me is because they want to discredit my political speech, justify my exclusion from political spaces, and silence my testimony which actually challenges them and their abusive culture.

Along with the dehumanizing and ever-proliferating fanfiction my haters disseminate about me, anonymous cancellers have slashed my tires and poured shit into the air vents of my car, approached my table at a zine fair in full black bloc and poured a cup of coffee over all my writing before running away, and put up posters with my face on them around the local anarchist bookfair, slandering me and threatening me so that I will not feel safe entering the bookfair. These are all presumably different cancellers (two of these things happened in Montreal and one happened in Portland) and I sincerely doubt I have ever met any of them. I am a 5’1 woman with an extensive trauma history that everyone knows about. People accuse me of making spaces “unsafe” even though I am a physically tiny, traumatized woman who is not threatening, attacking, stalking, or dehumanizing anyone. It is obviously not “me” that makes spaces “unsafe” — it is my political writing. My political writing challenges the orthodoxy. My political writing challenges the self-proclaimed authority of the self-selected vigilantes who keep our communities “safe” by dehumanizing and exiling whoever they want.

When I tell people about the intensity of the attacks against me people respond with suspicion. Surely I must be saying or doing something really fucked up if I am treated like this. Surely my writing must be pretty harmful if it needs to be so aggressively censored. Yet a quick inventory of the “accusations” against me reveal that they don’t make any sense. And a quick survey of my work reveals my deep commitment to defending the dignity of all living beings. Over and over again I defend those who are subjected to attacks on their personhood, dignity, and autonomy. There is nothing “harmful” about my ideas. When I critique cancel culture, neoliberal identitarianism, and other dysfunctional behaviours that have replaced and derailed the left, I do so only in service of building a functional and effective left in order to end capitalism and start meeting the needs of the living world and all her inhabitants. I am a socialist, a feminist, a vegan, and a proponent of total liberation politics where every life matters and no one is subjected to violence and cruelty. I oppose all forms of racism, xenophobia, and bigotry that strip people of their specificity, dignity, and personhood. These are the ideas that are met with such violent censorship and repression.

I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I can and cannot say. I had to fight for my voice and come up against enormous powers in order to tell the truth. I will never surrender my voice due to the threats, punishment, guilt trips, condemnation, or coercion of others. Even the terrifying and threatening stalking behaviours of my cancellers will not silence me. I am a writer and my entire life is built on my commitment to finding ways to speak what it is forbidden to acknowledge. My entire life is fuelled by and grounded in the power of my voice. My voice is the thing that has always been denied to me. My voice is what has been most punished and attacked. My voice is fundamental to the expression of my personhood: my ability to speak honestly and clearly about what I know, to defend myself and others against injustice, to stand up for my own dignity and the dignity of others. I refuse to relinquish it to anyone for any reason.

When I was early in my recovery from trauma, and one of its expressions — addiction — I joined AA and heard over and over again that recovery relies on the practice of rigorous honesty. We must tell the truth, to ourselves, and to each other, if we wish to recover. As an incest survivor, this resonated deeply. I understood that incest functions in the realm of unreality. Incest is fundamentally a culture of extreme dishonesty within the family, in which the most heinous acts are presented as normal, and in which what is happening is collectively agreed upon to not be happening. The survivor, the truth teller, is the one who is pathologized, punished, and blamed. In order for me to recover from incest, I had to begin to tell the truth about what happened to me, regardless of how emotionally difficult this truth is for my family to hear. In order for us to overcome incest, other forms of child abuse, and other forms of violence generally, we must begin to collectively tell the truth about these experiences. Honesty, truth telling, is a fundamental spiritual principle of mine; it is also a political strategy. Nothing we refuse to face, name, and tell the truth about will be transformed.

I think some people are confused about how my commitment to honesty and my opposition to cancel culture align. Cancellers position themselves as brave truth tellers. But cancellers don’t tell the truth. The truth is actually much more complex and nuanced than the dehumanizing and scapegoating rhetoric of cancellers. For one thing, cancellers are frequently literally lying and regularly spread misinformation. Many of the people they dehumanize and abuse did not do the things they were accused of. Bizarre and outlandish accusations, with zero evidence or verification, spread like wildfire (take for example the bizarre and frequently repeated idea that I am a member of the NXIM sex trafficking cult). Cancellers feel no qualms repeating and signal boosting serious accusations that will have life changing consequences without even knowing the source of the accusations. Additionally, cancellers often help abusers in their stalking and domestic violence campaigns. Once the accusation has been made and the role of “victim” and “abuser” have been assigned, any and all treatment of the “abuser” is allowed and any questioning of the “victim” is forbidden. In this way, within cancelly subcultures, it is very easy to claim victim status and get a free pass to abuse (a common example — someone being polyamorous does not mean they are an abuser, and their ex is not entitled to control their social and sexual life going forward).

Beyond the prevalence of false accusations, cancellers do not tell the truth even in situations of actual abuse. When we dehumanize someone, we are not telling the truth. Cancellers actually enforce and maintain the fundamental dissociation that underlies the protection of incest and other forms of abuse: either this person is a full complex human being who is loved OR they are an abuser — it can’t be both. One side of this coin is the denial that abuse is happening or has happened and the other is acknowledging the abuse but stripping away the personhood of the abuser. This is presented as a “pro survivor” stance but is totally trauma illiterate. Survivors of incest and domestic violence often have complex and ambivalent feelings toward their perpetrators. For many survivors, knowing that telling the truth will result in the dehumanization of their perpetrator can make them fear telling the truth. This is why, for example, child sexual abuse prevention educators advise that you never tell a child that someone who hurts them will be punished or go to jail. The child may stay silent to protect the abuser. Cancellers also refuse to engage with the reality that abuse is a cycle and that most, if not all, abusers were once victims. The rapist they advise us to kill was once a sexually abused child who received no help, no support, and no resources.

A commitment to honesty does not mean that we should not have boundaries or privacy. It does not mean we must confess all our secrets and worst mistakes to the internet. It does not mean incriminating ourselves to those who wish to hurt us (whether that be cops or cancellers). Honesty does not mean that every single thing must be discussed in the public sphere. The decision of which things should be discussed publicly and which should be discussed privately is a fraught and complex one that does not have easy answers. What I will say though is that cancel culture makes it dangerous to tell the truth in public. If we lived in a culture where it was truly possible for people to admit that they have been abusive without putting themselves in danger, I think more people would be willing to face the truth and tell the truth. As it currently stands, publicly admitting to having been abusive risks dehumaization, exile, and violence, so it does not surprise me that so many people insist that they were not abusive even when they were.

Recently, a friend of mine was “called out” for being friends with me, and she responded to this by putting pressure on me not to say certain things in my political writing. Despite being my friend for years, knowing the whole time who I am and what I do, the first time she experienced heat for being my friend she joined the censorship committee. She told me that, unless I was willing to stop talking about certain topics in my writing, she would no longer be willing to be my friend “online” because she does not want to suffer consequences for my “problematic” opinions. I ended my relationship with her because I refuse to be anyone’s “secret friend” and because I refuse to be coerced into censoring my political ideas. I have already lost way too much in defence of my right to be honest, and I refuse to stop now, for her, or for anyone.

My friend argued with me about my political ideas in order to justify her belief that I should censor them. Her argument boiled down to this: while the things I say in my writing may be true, I should not say them because some people will find these truths emotionally difficult to hear and will therefore feel alienated from the left. Her argument is that we must be strategic and it isn’t always strategic to be honest. She is, of course, free to think this, and I am, of course, free to disagree with her (or at least I should be). And I do disagree with her. I believe that honesty is not only a spiritual principle, it is an effective political strategy. We are living in a post-literacy, post-reality reality in which AI, algorithms, and billionaire-owned media lie to us and spread misinformation. We are living at a time when genocide is livestreamed and simultaneously denied. Our attention spans are badly eroded from social media, people have very little media literacy, and a great many people literally can’t read. People are used to be lied to, condescended to, and dismissed. And while people aren’t always good at telling when they are being lied to, they definitely feel angry when they sense they are being condescended to. A left that holds back the truth because we think people can’t “handle it” is condescending as fuck.

The truth matters. The truth is often difficult, nuanced, and complex. I still believe we can and should tell the truth with respect and clarity. In fact, I think one of the most important things the left should be doing is working on our communication skills so that we can speak plainly and honestly on complex political and ethical issues, and still be understood. I have been doing this work for years: writing and speaking as clearly as I can on complex political topics that are emotionally charged and difficult. It is true that many people are very angry at me for this. It is also true that a great many people trust me and respect me specifically because I am honest even when it is unpopular to be. I believe that people begin to step into their responsibility when they are treated with respect and like they are capable of doing so. If we manage and manipulate people they will never trust us. We don’t need to lie to people in order to make the left attractive and welcoming. What we need to do is show people that the left is working for their interests.

I think a beautiful example of the effectiveness of honesty as a political strategy is Zohran Mamdani’s campaign to lead the Democratic party in New York City. Zohran Mamdani, a vocal socialist and Muslim immigrant who openly called for Netanyahu’s arrest beat Andrew Cuomo, a billionaire backed establishment favourite who attacked Mamdani every step of the way with racism and slander. Turns out, when the left actually speaks to the needs of working people it is very difficult to seduce working people with scapegoating and slander. I’m sure people advised Mamdani to be less honest about certain things because people weren’t “ready” to hear it. Mamdani chose to trust his constituents. He chose to believe that people will choose free child care, free buses, a raised minimum wage, cheaper rent, and cheaper groceries over scapegoats and protection from difficult truths. He was right.

My commitment to honesty even about difficult truths is not something I take lightly. This is not a stance I come to randomly. It would be fair to say that fighting the repression of my speech has been the defining experience of my life. I am exhausted from the intensity of repression I face and have faced throughout my life. I will not be silent. I stand with all others facing repression and punishment for speaking the truth. I call on the left to grow up, move away from scapegoating and censorship, and find a way to speak the truth that will make sense to working people. We will not win through manipulation and dishonesty. We will win through courage and integrity.