malaiseaise

In the 10 years that I have worked on sharing queer history, I have never been attacked as intentionally and with as much consistency as I have in 2026. Most regularly, I'm called a groomer or harassed for mentioning Palestine.

I joke about it to my friends, because I don't actually have anyone in my life under the age of 20, how could I possibly be a groomer? It is easier to cope with all of it when I can laugh with people. No one finds it funny anymore, not even me.

When the first waves came calling me an anti-Semite, I felt compelled to ask some of the Jewish people in my life whether there was something I wasn't seeing. They assured me that I was doing nothing wrong, and I dug further into my studies. The further I got into researching the accusations levied against me, the more I was harassed for the moments I shared of my journey.

As a 29 year old adult, when I share that I read queer (often specifically trans) books, the comments are predictable. When I share that some of the books I read include sex, things get worse. When I post a book that discusses the experiences of queer Jewish people during the holocaust, I know that there will be immediate backlash, and there is. Then I am asked to edit a book synopsis to remove mentions of genocide from a poetry book about Palestine.

All of this to say, I have experience in what upsets these people and it is books that are being targeted. It is reading, readers, and anyone who encourages literacy that activates the worst people to respond. Which is why I HAVE to keep pushing you to read more. Read widely, read anything, read books that disagree with you, read porn, read queerly, read physically, read ebooks, read audiobooks, and fight the book bans sweeping North America.

perhaps check out our first person point and click game striatum. it's about getting ready to leave for a party in under ten minutes, over and over. it's our first commercial game and is so special to us.

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I'll add smth here cos I learned after posting this on IG that people still aren't entirely understanding how scary and dangerous this is. Ppl kept saying to me 'I can still buy your book in shops though' or 'Its okay, I'll order your book into my library!'

I dont give af about my book lol No one outside of Ace ppl ever read it, its yearly sales don't even cover a month of expenses for me.

The thing you should all be concerned about is that a totally benign unheard of book about someone's every day life is being banned. And those laws listed above are passing through US government right now. One of those laws would make it so that any teacher/librarian in the US could lose their job/go to prison for simply sharing 'ideology'- and I don't mean only lgbtq folk, these laws are attacking black history, civil rights history, disability rep in books. Just talking about these things will now legally be considered a 'dangerous ideology'.

And once that's set into law, the US government has backing via law to go ahead and say 'if these books aren't legally allowed in schools, then they shouldn't be allowed in shops, either.' And from there it sets up a great argument for 'The dangerous content in these books is lawfully being removed from public, shouldn't we be lawfully removing the people living out/promoting this ideology too?'

I can see why ppl don't fully understand how dangerous book bannings are, if they're not familiar with the history of fascism. If you're interested, there are plenty of graphic novels that share this history via first hand accounts- Maus, Persepolis, Banned Book Club.

But guess what? You're on limited time to get these via libraries...cos all three of these books are on banned lists too, and they got nothing to do with lgbtq rep, and everything to do with warning ppl about fascism.

And the US government knows it can get away with this, because they are passing these laws as we speak and barely anyone is doing anything about it or talking about it. I've been trying to talk about it for years and no one does anything except say to me 'don't worry, I'll buy your book!' or say its a badge of honour that I have a banned book.

I don't give a shit if me being a weird furry online loses me any job prospects or if people talk or whatever- maybe it's fucked up that we hold something as minor and meaningless as that over someone's head, that we give it weight it doesn't deserve, you ever thought of that? Maybe I see the culture of belittling a person as "cringe" for having interests counter to the norms as a failure of society, and I'm gonna throw myself onto the damn pyre and fight to my last breath against it, ever considered that?

I'm not just being cute and funny when I say "live your truth no matter how weird it is," because you know what?

If you're not hurting anyone in a real and tangible way, if you're respecting the rights and comfort of others, nobody- NOBODY has the moral grounds to stand against you, and to hell with them if they try.

Please get weirder. Please stop being afraid of being your truest self for the sake of judgemental dorks online.

What you put into the world as a weirder, louder, more interesting person also enriches the people who read your work, see your art, take inspiration from your style or your courage, and from them it also enriches the people who reap THEIR increased and improved output.