bi, fly, and ready to cry

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

When the detail that the writer was a trans woman (and a specific one people knew) had filtered into common knowledge, the consensus of the vocal detractors was that she had done Nazi actions equivalent to being a Nazi that hurt every trans woman, and it was their responsibility to terrorize her. When she ended up suicidal and swore off writing, that was viewed as a great victory against an enemy of trans women. (Not dissimilar from people harassing Jewish actress Aya Cash for portraying a Nazi on The Boys.)

Also, people like to single out N.K. Jemisin for participating, but she was pretty much doing what people expect of an ally: following the leading voices of the relevant minority, repeating their messages, and using her social capital to boost theirs. The problem was the trans women leading the mob. I find the presence of trans woman author Alexandra Erin more objectionable because she was run off Tumblr for being into vore and bondage and because she liked a post from a black submissive woman showing off a collar, which was framed as her wanting to enslave black people, so you would think she'd be sympathetic to a trans woman author stigmatized for being into edgy humor. Instead, she likened the story to firing randomly in the air and hoping only bad people would be hurt, when it should be clear innocents would likely be hurt, making the whole endeavor harmful. (Like being open about liking controversial fetishes on Tumblr?)

Edgy humor sets off mainstream leftists like Daleks sighting an enemy.

Like, how many times can we see a marginalized creator get torn to bloody shreds by other marginalized people and well intended “Allies” who never actually looked at the evidence themselves and just went off what “the affected group” was saying? The queer experience is subjective as hell, and I can’t imagine any other marginalized experience is different. Maybe we should stop mob harassing people for making something without looking at the thing ourselves.

Because there was little biographical information available about its author, the debate hinged on one question: Who was Isabel Fall? And that question ate her alive. When she emerged from the hospital a few weeks later, the world had moved on, but she was still scarred by what had happened. She decided on something drastic: She would no longer be Isabel Fall. As a trans woman early in transition, Fall had the option of retreating to the relative safety of her legal, masculine identity. That’s what she did, staying out of the limelight and growing ever more frustrated by what had happened to her. She bristles when I ask her in an email if she’s stopped transitioning, but it’s the only phrase I can think of to describe how the situation appears. Isabel Fall was on a path to becoming herself, and then she wasn’t — and all because she published a short story. And then her life fell apart.

...

After she checked out of the hospital, Isabel Fall ceased to be Isabel Fall. “I had a few other stories in the works on similar themes, and I withdrew them; that is the most concrete thing I can say that I stopped doing,” Fall says. “More abstractly, more emotionally, I have stopped trying to believe I am a woman or to work towards womanness. If other people want to put markings on my gender-sphere and decide what I am, fine, let them. It’s not worth fighting.”

That makes me so fucking angry every time I think about it that I want to spit or cry.

I have not been the subject of the level of intense, sudden, overwhelming attention that she has; I have been the target of a lower-volume, sustained campaign, and there is a reason that I call it "the acid fire hose." That shit will strip the fucking flesh from your bones.

So yeah. Of course indie authors flinch.

I remembered that google maps has an option to also go through the older street view footage, and while the place looks a lot different now, in 2009 this spot looking towards my childhood home looked just as I remembered it being when I was 5 years old. Painted from this streetview screenshot:

Calling this one "should've never smoked that shit, why am I in an impressionist painting". From this shot, also from 2009:

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

Interviewer: There is something stereotypically masculine about the kind of chest-pumping, overly stylish translations of your predecessors.

Wilson: I’m really skeptical about any gender essentialism on that. Other women have published translations of Homer into Italian and into other languages I can’t read. I’ve read some of the French translation by Anne Dacier from the 17th century, and it’s fairly loquacious. Could you pick the translations of The Odyssey by a woman out of a lineup? Absolutely not. But journalists wanted it to be about that. I get that you’re trying to create a story, but I just don’t believe it.

Interviewer: Have you followed the online discourse about the film so far?

Wilson: It’s made-up controversy. Nobody’s seen this movie. It’s just the usual triggers about race and gender, and I just find it very tedious.

Interviewer: curious about what it would look like to make a feminist version of The Odyssey. It seems that could be a helpful framework to have ahead of Nolan’s movie.

Wilson: I’ve been watching a lot of Nolan movies in preparation for all of this, and it seems to me that we don’t know what the script’s going to be like. If it’s the usual Nolan plot of “A guy is on a quest far from home and struggling to get back to an objectified female character,” then I’m not sure I see that plot as inherently particularly feminist.

Interviewer: Looking at those two changes, it seems to me that your translation has a feminist function, whether it’s intentional or not.

Wilson: I think the bar should be higher for feminist translation. There are people whose project that is.