Life Being Doxxed

It's not usual for me to post more than once a month, but someone on my org's Tumblr sent an anonymous ask wanting to know what it was like being doxxed and how it's affected my life, and it didn't seem appropriate to post there so I figured I'd post it here, since it seemed interesting to write about and it could provide a utility to those in the same situation.

Let's start from the beginning. In 2022 I started my journey into the MAP community. I joined the online community known as VirPed, a space for anti-contact MAPs. I had questioned being a MAP for years at that point, so I decided to bite the bullet and talk to other MAPs to see if I could learn more about myself and the type of person I was. In my search for online communities VirPed came up as a site that advertised itself as being for "virtuous pedophiles", which I have opinions about now, but the important part is that for someone who was still questioning I wasn't quite ready to dive into pro-contact spaces where everyone was talking about sex all the time and stuff.

After spending some time there I learned about VoA in 2023. I had heard some good things about it, and I wanted to diversify the MAP spaces I was in, so I decided to join. Being a girllover myself I wanted to see what other GLs had to say about girls and being a MAP. From here I started to become more pro-contact, but that is beside the point. (These days I don't like to identify with contact stance labels.)

On VoA I had interacted with a member named Katie Cruz, and I later, through online searches, learned about MAP Merch Shop, the e-commerce website she runs that sells, well, merchandise representing MAP pride. From there I applied to be a vendor on the site, and through the MMS group chats I learned about an internet sphere known as the "pediverse". Curious about what that was, I was told it was social media for MAPs, so I decided to join.

Now a member of the pediverse, I quickly gained traction on the site. (I posted some pretty wild stuff in retrospect.) At the same time in my life I had met a young girl who I started to befriend and catch feelings for, and being a recent member of MAP social media, I decided to broadcast these feelings. (You can probably see where this is headed at this point.)

Sometime within a month or so, someone by the name of Seara Adair had started taking notice of my posts. Adair was a TikTok user who "exposed predators" such as myself, and had made videos about Cruz. She had prepared a few videos about me and my online presence, and published them on TikTok, therefore doxxing me.

The videos had my address on them, my full legal name, pictures of me, my workplaces, and usernames that I used online. She had gotten in contact with my family in order to get them to spread the info to my friends (this is just a theory), and people who came across the video spammed calls to both of my jobs to "warn" them about me.

Being doxxed got me fired. It got me kicked out of my apartment because my roommate found out (they had known I was a MAP but I had previously told them I was anti-contact). It lost me most of my friends, only three of them staying by my side. I had a Discord community at the time that was thriving that I deleted. I had recently been broken up with by my girlfriend due to being a MAP, and getting doxxed caused her to block me. And I was still posting on pedi for a bit, mostly unphased, but in my state of trying to make myself invincible I made a fool out of myself by acting like I was doing super, and posting repeatedly about the dox, afterwards deleting my account and taking a short hiatus from pedi. In short, being doxxed changed my entire life. 

(Editing note, I forgot to put it in but my neighbors called the cops on me. I didn't do anything illegal though so nothing much came of it. A cop did show up to my apartment but they just let me off with a warning.)

I got a new job, that wasn't hard. I had to move in with my family again, which was very rough. I had a hard time making friends because I was constantly scared about how they'd feel if they found out who I really was. And it made my entrance back to social media a tumultuous one. Things had blown up, but they were quickly calming down. Antis stopped harassing me shortly after moving (probably partially because I deleted some of the accounts they were harassing me on, but I never liked Facebook anyways.)

But behind all the agony, the nights I cried myself to sleep, and the dreams that followed of me being with my friends again, I had... Hope. I had an idea.

Being doxxed was terrible, I would not recommend it, but it took seeing how terrible doxxing was first hand it made me really realize that we needed to live in a world where people wouldn't be scared of getting doxxed. In the same way that a gay person wouldn't be scared of getting doxxed, cuz if they did it wouldn't really change anything. MAPs and other radqueers needed to fight.

This wasn't my first time wanting to do activism. Like I said, I was previously a vendor on MAP Merch Shop, and I had dreams of opening an in-person radqueer retail store. But for the first time I truly saw how important activism was, the only question that remained was "how?"

How did someone "do activism", what did activism really mean? I saw a lot of people online call themselves activists, but I felt dissatisfied at the idea of only doing what they were. For a while I ran a few websites just to do something. I became more involved in the transid (trans identity) community as well, and had visions beyond MAP acceptance. 

This was my first bout of activism. I had a philosophy that if something didn't exist, then it needed to, and if needed to, then someone had to do it, and if no one else was going to, then I would. That was the logic behind launching websites such as rqd2.net and radqueer.net. They were the first of their kind, and I felt a sense of pride in having done that. But I knew that wasn't the only thing I could do. In between days of going to work, moderating Discord servers, and fixing site bugs, I started to brainstorm for ways to help the radqueer community in real life... Yes, I'm talking about Beyond the Plus.

I am unsure if I would've ever done Bt+ if I hadn't been doxxed, all I know is that being doxxed set of a chain of events that led to its inception. The idea was simple, just take what people had done online, create communities and offer resources, and do that in-person instead, the only issue was that that was a lot for one person to do by themself. And I didn't live in the big city, I lived with my mom up north. I had a dream and I had a plan, but following that plan would depend on more than I could do by myself. Rent ain't cheap.

Around that time I set my sights on my next creative project, running a panel at Sakura-con about loli and shota. It wasn't quite MAPtivism, but it sounded fun, and I wanted to put myself out there. Once again this was something I couldn't do myself, so having already been doxxed I decided it wouldn't be a bad thing to put myself out there, so I let pedi know that I was looking for assistance in Seattle, someone to volunteer time towards an activism effort of mine.

Long story short it all went well. We met up, shared a hotel room, attended con, did the panel, got a couple people who extended appreciation towards us for talking about a taboo topic, and... Existed together. I saw for the first time that night just how much it meant to just... Exist with another radqueer. For all I knew, before that, I was completely alone in this world. But for three days I saw proof otherwise. There were others like me, and they were struggling too.

I cried our last night together. I didn't want to go back to how things were, being lonely, and not being able to trust anyone like I could another radqueer. To be frank the whole thing changed my life, it was another eye opening experience that showed me how important activism was.

After I got back home I expected to just be alone again forever, but was actually happened was quite different. See, word got around that I was doing meetups, so other radqueers in WA started reaching out to me to hang out. The first was someone by the name of Violet Rose.

It turns out we actually had lived fairly close before I moved. It had thought about reaching out when I got doxxed, but it ended up not doing so for reasons I can't quite remember. But when it heard I was "doing meetups", it couldn't refuse an opportunity to meet me.

So we met up, we hung out, and we, to my surprise, hit it off. (Spoiler alert, we're married now.) It took a while for my feelings to bloom, but this was my first time experiencing love with another MAP. Just a month ago I cried thinking I'd never see a radqueer ever again, but after a couple months I was coming over once a week to hang out, make love, and stay the night. It was a complete change in my life.

And it only got more from there. For the next several months I was meeting up with new people all the time. It filled me with a sense of determination. I got a good feeling inside when I met someone, because it meant suddenly their world got a little less lonely, and so did mine. It had gotten so frequent I actually used to keep a list of who I met and when, just because it was so special to me. Funny to think that now there's no purpose in that, now that I'm the one that helps radqueers meet each other. 

This was around 2024, so time had surely passed. The two years had gone by incredibly fast, but my life had changed a lot. I started making new friends, and suddenly I saw the people who left my life before for who they really were: fake friends. 

I never forgot about Beyond the Plus. Violet and I had started talking about our plans for it together, and soon we met the final piece of the puzzle, Annette. Once we met her, after some time had passed, suddenly we had a team. I shared my ideas, we had meetings, we did brainstorming, and we were all on the same page: let's create an organization to serve the wider queer community. Let's bring radqueers together in real life.

Fast forward about a year, and this month will be Beyond the Plus' second monthly socials. We're gaining new members all the time, and every time I meet them I feel that feeling. The feeling of determination in doing good, but it had morphed. Suddenly I wasn't introducing myself to one person, I was introducing a whole group of people to each other. Some people there had never met a radqueer before, ever. And at the end of the day their connections were in the double digits. That feeling of determination was about much more than just me now, it was about what I had been dreaming of for years: building community.

It's been three years since my dox now, and I don't think about it very often. It was one event that happened in my life, and it made quite a big change, but I have friends again, I have a home, I have a wife, and everything else I need in life. It's something that came and went, and it changed my life for the better in the end. I've been redoxxed a couple times since then, but that's what happens when you're the president of a radqueer organization. And at this point I use my real name, real location, and real picture online, so what is there to even dox about me at this point? Antis can't dox you if you dox yourself first. That being said, I'll never post my actual address, where I work, or anything other than essential information about me, cuz getting fired, blacklisted, and having people show up at my home are very real possibilities that shouldn't be messed around with. But I haven't been put in danger yet, and likely never will be. In reality it's quite rare, especially in a leftist city like Seattle, to get hatecrimed for being a niche radqueer activist, and that risk goes down even further for people who aren't public activists.

... This post ended up being a lot longer than I intended it to be, I just got swept up in it. (I very much enjoy writing.) I think I strayed quite a bit from the original prompt, but my goal was to create something inspiring. To show how a nobody getting doxxed can go on to create an organization promoting radqueer community. 

I leave you with this. Being doxxed is scary, it's probably one of the scariest things that can happen in your life, and you can never really live it down, but should you try to? When you're given an opportunity to take the mask off, to be able to tell people where you live so you can make new friends, so you can filter out all the fake friends who wouldn't really care about you if they knew who you were, wouldn't you take that opportunity? Being doxxed was terrible, but I can confidently say that if if never happened I probably wouldn't be where I am right now. 

I want to live in a world where people like us don't have to be scared of being doxxed. So that when it happens it's not so different from just a non-rad queer getting doxxed. That's not the world we live in today, and it's gonna take a long time to get there, but for the time being there's a way to meet in the middle.

When I got doxxed what did I lose? Jobs, friends, lovers, and my home. But I beg the question, if I had been a part of an in-person radqueer community at the time, what would have changed? If I got kicked out, a friend could take me in. If I couldn't pay my bills, they could lend me some money. I wouldn't even lose friends or partners because they'd still be there to support me.

This is why in-person community is so important. Online friends can only help so much, but what even is the threat of doxxing when you're protected by your community? Suddenly a very scary threat becomes a minor inconvenience. We've all been fired before, it's not that hard to find a new job. Losing your home is tough, but if you room with other radqueers then suddenly that risk goes way down.

I'm rambling again, but it's because I have a lot to say on the topic. At this point I don't have a single take away, I just hope think makes you think. Think about why in-person community is so important, why doxxing is the threat that is, but also why it's not some lifelong curse, sometimes it may even be a blessing in disguise. 

I used to think that everything happened for a reason... And I still do. There's a bright side to everything. I cried myself to sleep over what I lost, but there were times I was able to think about what I'd gained. I think that's an important skill to have, I'm not so sure I'd be alive today if I wasn't able to do that. But I am, and that's what's important. 

My dox happened for a reason, and that reason was to teach me. It taught me about why community is important, it taught me why activism is needed, it taught me who my fake and real friends were. But I still wouldn't recommend being doxxed, which may sound confusing as I've been seemingly playing it up for a while.

I think that because you can reap the benefits of being doxxed without experiencing the trauma of it. Being doxxed isn't the only way to find out who your fake friends are. It's not the only way to come out to your friends and family, or to find local community. You can do that yourself. Putting yourself out there is scary, but we're all going to need to do it someday, otherwise we'll live our whole lives wearing skin that isn't ours. 

I won't say it isn't dangerous. Everyday the threat of fascism gets more extreme, and every so often you'll hear of terrible things that happen to MAPs, which is why I think it's important to protect yourself. I always carry pepper gel, and I've made an effort to not let my current address leak or to get redoxxed, because yes, having your full address out there is a safety concern (albeit an extremely low risk one). But the fact of the matter is that fascists want you to be scared, they want you to be alone. We need to fight back, not by not being scared, but by being brave. Otherwise we're just playing into their hand.

You can make a positive change in your life. Just like I had the power to see my dreams come true, if you dream of a day where you can be out, you can make that dream come true as well, and anything else you put your mind to.