Since I published this I've received several pieces of feedback and further discussion disconnected from my immediate influence, I separate these into three categories which I will respond to respectively: Criticism from Tara, criticism from readers, and criticism from myself.
First, the criticism from Tara has come primarily in the form of a response article on substack titled "the Poverty of Algorithmic Feminism" in which she accuses me of not understanding marxism. I will be straightforward, I have not read it and I do not currently plan to. Perhaps sometime in the future, but I have very little to no interest in a back-and-forth argument litigating minor points when it is already clear to me that she herself does not understand marxism. The discussion encouraged by this format is not one I think would be productive. If I do engage, it will be on my own terms, looking at my own criticizism of my article from a marxist perspective, and outlining her prior misuses of marxism which are plentiful enough to make getting into petty squabbles entirely unnecessary.
Additionally, as per the title, I think it is worth noting that the accusation of my work being inferior due to "algorithmic feminism" is quite ridiculous on its face. I have only shared my article in discord servers and tumblr which I use purely on a following-page basis. It is not my fault if others use algorithms to find it, but I did not intend that and I have built no following through algorithms, it had no determining effect on my writing. Initially I did not even want to respond to the discussion due to the "drama" surrounding it. This was not a response written to capitalize on hype, but because I saw people hurting, and felt someone needed to step in when it became clear Tara did not understand the harm she was doing, and continuing to double down on. Tara has not expressed the same restraint, and has in fact intentionally stoked drama to fuel her essays popularity. She has far more of a following than I do across every platform, including instagram primarily, which is based on algorithmic content.
Second, There are several critiques coming from others, primarily the following
Why did you ignore the sexual coercion? / You think people should stay with their abusers.
Your article lacks empathy / You are contributing to the social disposability of trans women.
To the first, I do not believe I have ignored it, and I have certainly not advocated for letting yourself be abused. I spoke several times in my article on abuse and coercion, applying boundaries on the part of the caretaker and on the part of the puppygirl, not pushing others to love you out of guilt. I explicitly stated that if the story is true, breaking up is genuinely a win for the narrator, only caveated that it does not stop the problem from replicating itself for others. It is worth noting however, that accusations of sexual misconduct, especially alongside transmisogynistic ideas of "putting on a costume of femininity" have long since been used to silence trans women and paint us as harmful caricatures. As such, the use of such accusations in this fictionalized article warrants some degree of interrogation. To this end, I believe the following perspective is worth consideration, as it sums up a significant portion of my reasoning for not addressing the issue more explicitly by name.
To the second complaint, I don't believe writings can have empathy, only writers. I think writings can be kind, or nice, but not empathetic. On the question of my empathy as an author, I would ask: Empathy for who? I do not think empathy has any absolute moral character, but that it depends how and where it is directed. That said, I do experience a significant degree of empathy towards Knight, and had no plans to write an article on this ordeal initially. I only wrote the response after seeing how she continued to press on in her ableist lines and make fun of disabled people on social media for being upset with her writing. I wrote my article for the people she hurt, not for her. and to that end, I think it is fair to say my article was not nice to Tara, but I think it is more important to be truly kind than nice, and for me, that means caring for those most maligned by society, over superficial niceities in wording.
In the wider context, I have very intentionally and purposefully refrained from involving Tara's personal issues or any of the several abhorrent things she has said on public social media since, whether towards me or my friends. I specifically addressed her article and not personal issues with Knight herself. I also address the article with the intent of offering something better, rather than dragging the whole community down even further. I believe I succeeded in this, as I've received several messages thanking me for my analysis helping them understand themselves and their situations better, reducing their suicidal thoughts, allowing them to sleep again when Knight's article had made them sleepless, and so on.
I think some readers coming to this issue without larger context may have a somewhat skewed view of what degree of niceties are warranted in the situations. Without understanding how she has conducted herself publicly towards many in the community or how harsh others have been towards her comparatively, it may appear that I am being hard on a poorly written article, but her article was not simply a mistake, and she had several opportunities to back down from her position and continues to have them now. Knight's article and her larger actions have several violent implications, and she expresses no concern for this, which merits serious and sharp criticism. If you would like to see an essay which gets more into the details of how this failure is more than a simple misstep but emblematic of a larger trend in her writing which deserves pushback, as well as demonstrating a more directly confrontational approach towards Tara herself, you can view the writing No the puppygirl is not Capitalism. In other words, by Tara's own formulation: she has crossed the invariant line.
Lastly, to address my own self criticism:
The goal of my article was to show transparently how Tara's analysis was harmful, but more than that: it was to show something better as possible. My goal was to shift thinking of readers towards actual long term solutions in the political sphere, which will one day liberate all of us. This was always my concern far more than any confrontation with Knight herself was. To this end, I focused pretty significantly on simple and easily imaginable methods for change, to help encourage the use of political muscles and build a connection between personal suffering and political struggle. Because this was my goal, I left many of the political solutions offered very standard and easy to imagine. I also argued for them largely rhetorically, in part to match Tara's writing style, but also for agitation. Again, this seems to have been somewhat successful and I'm happy for that, but I'm not satisfied with stopping here.
My own criticism then, is that I fell short of a truly revolutionary analysis. I encourage others to get involved in political struggle itself, and I made sure to make clear that I advocate for revolution, but the details of how to actually carry out revolution and the basis for its necessity are largely absent. This is something I would like to resolve in future writings, detailing why revolution is necessary, and how it actually occurs historically. Using hard data to back this up.
While I am tempted to start this analysis now as a follow-up essay on substack, I leave it for later. If I respond to any self criticism immediately without time to sit on it and ponder how to move forward, I will both be robbing myself of the reflection needed to truly do better, and limiting myself to a single spiral ever correcting my own works and mistakes. I have other writing projects which I would like to tend to first and foremost, and perhaps in time I will return to this one, and any other shortcomings I notice in the process.
If I do ever respond to Knights critique article, this will likely be how I do it. Not through arguing with her to prove my knowledge of Marxism through the aforementioned petty squabbles, but through doing a thorough self critique and showing my prowess with Marxism through producing thoughtful, coherent, and informed analysis on its basis. In other words, I aim to lead by example.
I hope that Knight doesn't make any further follow-ups necessary, as she has threatened to through directing blackmail at several in the community. If she does, perhaps I will respond more directly to her character, but for now, I do not wish anyone to be harmed, and only want to create a better world as I have advocated for with On the puppygirl question, apparently.
