“Weaponized Subjectivity: How Personal Perceptions Are Turned into Tools of Manipulation”
In today’s world, subjectivity—the way we experience and interpret the world through our personal lens—has become a double-edged sword. While our individual perspectives are crucial for understanding diverse experiences and fostering empathy, subjectivity is increasingly being weaponized. This occurs when personal opinions, emotions, or interpretations are strategically manipulated to serve a particular agenda, often at the expense of truth, justice, or fairness.
Weaponized subjectivity is used in various harmful ways, including gaslighting, trolling, epistemic injustice, and the spread of misinformation. These tactics manipulate perceptions, skew facts, and create confusion, weakening the foundation of shared reality. Let’s break down how weaponized subjectivity manifests in different contexts.
1. Gaslighting and Subjectivity
Gaslighting is a prime example of weaponized subjectivity. It’s a psychological manipulation tactic in which one person denies the reality of another, leading the victim to question their own perceptions. By leveraging subjectivity, the gaslighter manipulates the victim’s sense of reality, often framing the victim’s emotions or experiences as irrational or invalid.
• Example: A person may repeatedly invalidate a colleague’s or partner’s concerns by dismissing them as “overreactions” or “being too sensitive.” Over time, the victim begins to doubt their own feelings or understanding of situations.
2. Epistemic Injustice
Epistemic injustice refers to the ways certain groups or individuals are systematically discredited or denied credibility in their knowledge or experiences. Weaponized subjectivity comes into play when those in positions of power use their own perspectives to invalidate others’ lived realities, especially those of marginalized people.
• Example: When women, people of color, individuals share experiences of discrimination or inequality, their accounts may be dismissed or minimised by those in dominant positions of power. The dominant group’s subjective perspective becomes the accepted “truth,” while the experiences of others are deemed irrelevant or unreliable.
3. Trolling and Emotional Manipulation
In online spaces, trolling often involves weaponizing subjectivity by provoking emotional responses. Trolls exploit personal opinions and feelings to stir up conflict, disrupt discourse, or mock and undermine others. By manipulating subjectivity, trolls target people’s vulnerabilities, eroding meaningful discussions and spreading hostility.
• Example: A troll might attack someone advocating for social justice by downplaying their argument and reducing their stance to “just being overly emotional.” This dismisses the genuine concerns of the person while shifting the conversation into emotionally charged territory.
4. Unequal Justice and Subjectivity
In legal and social systems, subjective biases can lead to unequal justice. Weaponized subjectivity occurs when legal decisions or policies are based on personal biases or selective interpretations of law rather than objective standards of fairness. This can perpetuate systemic discrimination against marginalized groups.
• Example: A judge might subjectively view a defendant’s background (e.g., their race or socioeconomic status) as making them more “dangerous” or “untrustworthy.” This perception, influenced by personal bias, leads to harsher sentencing for people of color compared to their white counterparts, despite similar crimes.
5. Misinformation and Subjective Narratives
In the digital age, subjectivity is frequently weaponized to spread misinformation. Personal interpretations of events or selective presentation of facts are shared as “truth,” often overriding objective evidence. This tactic creates confusion, divides communities, and destabilizes the shared understanding of reality.
• Example: A subjective and emotionally charged narrative about a political event might be spread on social media, despite being factually incorrect. Followers may amplify this misinformation because it aligns with their personal views or emotions, blurring the line between fact and opinion.
How to Counter Weaponized Subjectivity
While it’s impossible to remove subjectivity from human interactions, we can develop strategies to recognize and resist its weaponization:
1. Critical Thinking: Develop the habit of questioning subjective interpretations, especially when they dismiss or undermine the experiences of others. This involves recognizing emotional manipulation and separating fact from opinion.
2. Empathy and Listening: Create spaces where diverse perspectives are valued. Listening to others without invalidating their experiences fosters a deeper understanding and helps prevent epistemic injustice.
3. Digital Literacy: Equip yourself and others with the skills to navigate misinformation. Understanding how narratives are crafted online can help people discern between objective facts and weaponized subjectivity.
4. Systemic Reform: In legal and social institutions, objective standards must be applied consistently to prevent the subjectivity of those in power from leading to unequal justice.
Conclusion
Weaponized subjectivity is a potent form of manipulation that undermines truth, justice, and meaningful dialogue. By recognizing how personal perceptions are distorted and used to attack others—whether through gaslighting, trolling, epistemic injustice, or misinformation—we can take steps to foster more honest, empathetic, and fair conversations. Whether we are part of the Greatest Generation or Gen Z, we all have a role to play in resisting the weaponization of our own and others’ subjectivity.