Ableism kills

I found myself rather sad last night. Not that the feeling has gone away.

If there’s any truth to the saw of ‘the lesson replays itself until you learn it’, I can definitively say I’ve learnt my lesson.

It’s a human need to interact with others, to socialize, to be an integral part of a group. To belong, to have acceptance. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/self-help/a-brief-history-of-our-need-to-be-social.htm

But when you’re autistic or ADHD or often another form of neurodivergent, you may easily live your life without something allistics and other types of neurotypical people take for granted. Simple social acceptance. A group to belong in.

I highly doubt I’m the only autistic/ADHDer who’s lived a life like mine.

I’m late diagnosed, so in elementary school, I didn’t understand why people didn’t like me. In high-school, the bullying in school and the abuse at home just made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out again. I ended up in an abusive relationship where I was pressured into sex far too young because being in the back seat of my boyfriend’s car (whether I actually wanted to be or not, I didn’t) was safer than anywhere else I could go. It’s one of the reasons it’s imperative to talk frankly with ND kids about our differences, we’re heavily at risk of every kind of abuse.

NT = Neurotypical ND = Neurodivergent

Because we’re sadly still human. We desperately just want to feel like we belong somewhere. That some people on this cursed planet actually want us around.

The things we’re capable of doing to ourselves in the mistaken hope that we’ll eventually find acceptance is pretty awful, to be honest. Humans are social creatures and when you’re prevented from being social… it hurts and harms in so many ways.

I had a brief period of acceptance in university for around 2 years. I joined the SCA and found a lot of other weirdos like me. I had a ttrpg group. I had a coven to practice with. I had people who acted (and were) pleased to see me. I’m no longer in the SCA because of what it’s become, so that time period didn’t last long.

I lost my coven and ttrpg groups when we all graduated over the course of a few years, moved away, and I’ve never found a group to practice my faith or my enjoyment of ttrpg with again. Solitary is lonely. Several of us are still in touch, in a haphazard fashion… but me loathing Facebook makes it harder for me to stay in touch with uni friends.

2 years out of 46. That’s a pretty terrible ratio no matter how you slice it.

It’s common these days in publishing to need to be good at social media to get anywhere. Or so that’s what everyone says. After my experience being harassed off social media, excluded from groups both professional and social repeatedly, I can say I don’t think they mean the advice for people like me.

Social media gave me a voice I’d never had before. It was nice. But it’s always my ‘voice’, my ‘me’, that people end up getting sick of, complaining about, and eventually excluding me over. It’s not like I misrepresent myself. I’m out as autistic/ADHD/mentally ill everywhere online. I’m too… worn out… I guess, to try to hide everything from everyone anymore. There are things I choose not to talk about, due to stigma, but everything I share online is authentic.

I can say with complete honesty that I’ve tried so many times to make friends, to find a group of people who would give a shit if I died. I’ve finally reached the point where I accept that I can’t have that. I can’t have a thing humans need to thrive because of ableism.

Because the intense, lifelong experience and pain of loneliness is better than the painful exclusions, the bullying, the ableism… it gets to the point where we just don’t have it in us to keep trying. I don’t have it in me anymore. I’m scraped clean. This latest exclusion has been not only horrifically painful for me, but it’s also rock-bottom. I can’t do it anymore. Excluding people and freezing them out is a form of bullying, y’know. In this case, it’s a form of cyberbullying.

So many autistic and ADHD folks have similar experiences. We try, and try, and give it far too many ‘last tries’ before we just… realize, I guess, that it’s just a grossly repetitive pattern and we stop trying.

I trusted a friend that the groups they were in were largely made of decent people who were accepting of differences. I don’t blame my friend, they’re a wonderful person and perhaps those groups were accepting of them (friend is ND too). So I tried again. I thought I was accepted too. But in hindsight, I can see I was barely tolerated. Y’know, it would be super helpful to be able to read social context in the moment. But that’s one of the reasons autistic and ADHD people are disabled. Many of us can’t pick up on social clues and we often completely miss social context.

It’s not that we’re trying to be the sand in the oyster. I actually tried to be as unobtrusive as possible in that group while still having a presence there. It didn’t change the fact that people complained about the way I ‘talk’. That is so, so ableist.

I didn’t complain about the many, many times I was hurt, harmed, or insulted in that group. I just did the professional thing and quietly blocked anyone I didn’t want to see.

But people didn’t have the decency to extend to me the same courtesy. Being ND is hard enough without gleeking ill-nurtured ableist coxcombs being utterly nasty. And trust me, if you’ve complained about the way any non-allistic talks/types, or if you’ve penalized one of us for it, (as long as it’s not obviously harmful IE racist, misogynistic etc.) that’s exactly what you are.

Years of supporting others, and of being as professional as I know how to be (I’ve worked fortune 500 corporate, I know how to act professionally even with people I don’t like). I extended them the same professional courtesy I’d hope people would extend to me… all of it gone in a flash with no warning. The reason given was the way I talk (communicate via text). The words used were both inaccurate (I’m an editor and that word was used incorrectly) and deeply insulting. Please understand that judging how a disabled person communicates, and complaining about it, is deeply, wretchedly ableist. I lost people I thought of as friendly acquaintances, professional contacts, and just… other weirdos who do this writing thing. I lost a place I mistakenly thought was a place where I was welcome. People I’d spoken to or read almost every day for years gone. I also lost any opportunities that being part of that group would’ve offered. And no, I can’t reach out to people in the group because I don’t know who or how many were complaining about me. I have a few guesses. Probably pretty accurate ones given my training in psychological forensics (it’s not all dead bodies, y’know). But I don’t have facts.

Those who I term ‘baby NDs’ or ‘unhatched autistics/ADHDers’ are people who may or may not know they’re ND, but who still cling to neurotypical social expectations and behaviors like some sort of ropy, gooey Turner and Hooch-esque slime trail.

I can’t blame them really, I clung to the same concepts for far too long myself. We’re raised, whether we’re NT or ND, to feel that following the social ‘norms’ will work for us.

Except it doesn’t work for autistics and ADHDers. The unhatched often (and full disclosure, I’ve been guilty of it myself… in my 20s when I didn’t know better) harm other ND people (including their own children) in their mistaken belief that if they just try hard enough, if they mask enough, if they entertain enough, if they get rid of the disabled person who talks funny… if they… if they… if they…

Trying to change the unchangeable and masking (autistic masking) has never done me an ounce of long-term good. All its done is break my heart, over and over again. I developed the habit of masking to survive. I used to be so good at masking that people didn’t believe me when I told them I’m autistic/ADHD/mentally ill.

I probably missed a good career as an actor. It’s what I did every second of every day and I paid the cost for it.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact I’ve been a SAHM for 15 years, the pandemic and the required quarantine my immunocompromised family still lives under so we don’t die, or whatever having covid did to my brain, but I can’t mask hardly at all anymore. I can manage it for brief interactions like buying groceries, but even that is just… utterly exhausting.

It’s nigh impossible for me to mask online. I have a social media persona, everyone does. I’m a little more outspoken online than I am in real life. I’ve always communicated better in writing so you’d really think it wouldn’t be an issue for me to find spaces where people like me are accepted, would you?

Except, online groups and social media have turned out to be just as cruel to me as people tend to be IRL.

Any sort of change, but especially unexpected change, is incredibly difficult for autistics. That’s got to be one of the world’s most understated facts.

I don’t know if I can even describe it. It’s similar to the feeling of overwhelm, it has some similarities to how someone feels when everything they’re comfortable with is suddenly gone.

It wrecks our routine, our reality, (routine is so, so, so necessary for many autists). That feels like your world shakes like an 8.0 earthquake and has its resulting destruction.

It’s a bit like how it feels to be gaslit, the questioning of everything you’ve done, said, experienced because obviously, you hadn’t picked up on some social thing that someone else felt was important enough to hurt someone (badly) over.

I’m not entirely sure if this thing autistics/ADHDers do when something goes wrong is innate or a trauma response from a world that makes it very clear we aren’t wanted.

But we tend to replay memories, which are often crystal clear for many of us due to how autistic memory works, trying to figure out what exactly we did wrong and when, so that we don’t do it again.

It’s an exhausting morass of circling, intrusive thoughts and please trust me when I say you don’t want to experience it. It’s certainly not a voluntary process. Things others can brush off as no big deal will often scar an autistic person for life.

I’m still involuntarily replaying memories of when I was 4 years old, for fuck’s sake, so can you imagine what it must be like in our brains?

That “professional” group was the last group I had. Apparently, it’s a time of endings. Because I can’t make myself find new groups to repeat the process with. I’m done. Social media will take a much lower rung on my personal ladder going forward. I’ll be in my own discord group, on Twitter until the wheels come off, and one other platform I haven’t figured out yet. At least I won’t be kicked out of my own group. If you’re interested in writing, reading, editing, art, stories, mental health, autism, ADHD, or are simply another lonely ND person, my group is safe space for NDs, feel free to check it out. As I write, it’s small and not very active because it’s new, but I hope it will become more over time. https://discord.gg/cqF4zKSCwK

Over the past 2 years I’ve thought I’d found welcome… or at least mildly concussed acceptance in 3 groups. They’re all gone now. I left one voluntarily when the mods proved to be disgustingly ableist. One imploded thanks to the behavior of one of those mods and someone who acted about as unprofessional as you can get. And this last one where I was unceremoniously ejected because an ableist twatwaffle complained about the way I talk/type. Or more than one, who knows. I certainly don’t.

Please be kind to people different from you.

If you ever have a problem with someone you know is ND, put on your grownup pants and communicate the problem. I guarantee most of us are appalled when we miss a social cue. And we will miss them. Usually, our brains are literally not wired to pick up on social context well. It’s the most affected portion for me on my diagnosis papers. Social skills/awareness ranked pretty close to zero for me.

No wonder I’ve always preferred dead people to live ones. (Forensic bioanthropologist, not serial killer.) Dead people haven’t ever hurt me. I can’t say the same about living ones.

Allistics love to accuse autistics of ‘not using our words’. But from where I sit… it’s incredibly obvious that the autistics/ADHDers/mentally ill aren’t the problem here. Allistics need to communicate better.

It’s also ableism. Pure and simple. And ableism kills people. How? Most autistic people die around age 36. The leading causes of death are heart attack from the stress of living in an ableist world, and suicide, because we never fit in. No matter how hard we try.

If you enjoy my writing, we’re a family of 4 immunocompromised/autistic/ADHD folks, two are kids, any tips/help is deeply appreciated. We live far under the poverty line.

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Sadness and ableism

I don’t particularly want to go into extreme detail, but I’m sad today. Sad enough that even though I didn’t get to sleep until 2:30 A.M. I’m up again at 8.

I think I was born to teach, sometimes. So I’m taking my personal pain and using it as a teaching lesson about relationships. None of us are taught the skills necessary for forming, caring for, and communicating in relationships. I’ve had to learn it through therapy, because I definitely had nothing like a good role model to base anything on.

I strongly feel that Basic Communication 101 and Basic Relationship Navigation would be two very valuable additions to public school curriculums. How to not be a treacherous bull-pizzle would probably be cool, too.

Some people who called themselves my friends decided to start talking negatively behind my back.

Some folks don’t care about gossip. To me, it’s rank betrayal and pretty damned dishonorable. I don’t let many people get close to me because I’m so freaking head-shy about people doing this exact bullshit move.

If you’ve got a problem with someone, and you’re safe, obviously, you take the problem up with that person.

Running around flapping your pie hole, spreading bad information influenced heavily by personal bias is, to be frank, the act of a coward. Trying to break up friendships over your misunderstandings is a huge red-flag for a toxic, emotionally abusive person.

Some red flags to watch for in relationships.

When they set rules, often times after you “break” them.  If someone begins to set rules on where you can be, who you can hang out with, and how you’re supposed to act, changes the rules just for you, or treats you worse than everyone else, I suggest finding a way to safely escape because what they’re really doing is beginning to take away your free will.

Who you can hang out with: If someone is trying to strong arm you/your friends/anyone into not hanging with someone they feel is a friend, that’s an emotional abuse red flag. It’s shitty behavior too. No one has any right to try to dictate another person’s friendships. I can’t even begin to get into all the reasons this is toxic. Like, there’s whole dissertations written on the subject. It’s fine to express concern to a friend about someone else. It’s not okay to force the issue or bamboozle your friend because they like someone you don’t.

How you use social media: this one is tricky, it’s really freaking common for neurotypical and ablest people to insist neurodivergent and/or mentally ill people confine their speech, thoughts, reactions, selves… in a box that makes them (not the ND person) comfortable.

How you use social media: it can also manifest in a person insisting that others leave or join groups, delete things like facebook/insta/tiktok etc. Huge, huge red flags.

‍They try to isolate you from friends and family: Isolation is how an abuser thrives and they’re so subtle in how they begin to push you away from your loved ones.

  • If you ever get in an argument or fight with a friend or family member, an abuser will turn this into something bigger and try to convince you to remove that “toxic” person from your life
  • They’ll request you spend time with them rather than your other friends or family
  • Alienate you from coworkers by not allowing you to spend time outside of work with them

This is one of the scariest red flags of an abusive relationship because without your connections to the outside world, an abuser is free to treat you how they please because they’ve alienated you from everyone who could help.

Another thing abusers will do is blame you for their abusive behaviour, and tell you it was your fault.

Overly controlling behavior is a common red flag. People that try to control your movements, decisions, or beliefs are more concerned about what they want than what is best for you. 

Emotional, verbal, and mental abuse are often much harder to pick up on than physical, but all types cause trauma and can result in PTSD. No one has the right to use another as a scapegoat for their problems. Those should be dealt with constructively and fairly. Abuse is never an acceptable response to a problem.

An inability to resolve conflict: conflict-avoidant people often think they’re doing the right thing by avoiding conflict, but they aren’t. Without constructive conflict, no relationship can be healthy.

Gaslighting: this is when someone tries to convince you that your lived experience isn’t really what happened. That what they think is correct, and you’re just confused.

It’s an incredibly common abusive tactic. Victims of gaslighting often feel guilty, even if they’ve done nothing wrong. It’s a clear red flag in any relationship. You can provide proof, reasons, explanations as to why they’re wrong to a gaslighter, but they’ll still insist they’re right.

Avoidance mixed with silence is a classic passive-aggressive form of relationship toxicity, one that often gets progressively worse over time.

So what do you do about it? What is healthy, anyway? A healthy relationship involves acknowledging your needs first, and having a self-care plan in place. More importantly, you engage in that self-care.

Communication is so important. It’s at the center of every healthy relationship. And just for the ones in the back of the class? Talking with people other than the one you have a problem with (and a mediator, if needed/wanted) isn’t healthy communication. People can have no clue you have a problem with them. If you don’t communicate, they can’t even decide whether they want or can change their behavior.

Emotional regulation: Communication doesn’t work well when your emotions are in the way. There’s nothing wrong with having and expressing feelings. Feelings are always valid. What one does with those feelings can be healthy or toxic, but the existence of the emotions isn’t a bad thing. It’s just wise, for effective communication and conflict resolution, to wait until you can successfully regulate your emotions before discussion. If you’re talking negatively about someone you know, it’s probably because you’re letting your emotions control you vs dealing with them in an effective and healthy way.

Setting/violation of boundaries: We all need boundaries to protect ourselves and keep our relationships as sustainable as possible. You should clearly state your needs, boundaries, and deal-breakers with a loved one. If you haven’t done that, you’re not communicating well.

Trust: there can be no health to a relationship without trust. Once trust has been violated, it often needs to be earnt back.

And no one owes you an acceptance of your apology. Nobody is required to give you a chance to explain why you broke their trust, or even allow you back into their life.

In the personal realm, I could’ve done better at communicating my boundaries and deal-breakers. Such as, if you talk shit behind my or anyone else’s back, you’re a dishonorable fuck-weasel and I want nothing to do with you.

You don’t need to take my word for it. All the signs of emotional abuse and toxicity in relationships were found on these sites.

Warning Signs of an Abusive Relationship

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/202202/3-red-flags-relationship-turning-toxic

https://www.betterup.com/blog/red-flags-in-a-relationship

I’d never considered some of the people involved friends. I’d long since consigned them to ‘friendly acquaintance I don’t want to be closer to’. The word friend has special meaning to me and because of the amount of abuse I’ve lived through, you have to earn it.

But I didn’t expect them to act in such a dishonorable manner either.

I read psychology dissertations for fun, so it’s not hard to figure the soup and nuts of it. Person X has a personal beef with me stemmed in ableism. Person X decides that *I* am evil incarnate rather than accept they’ve got some pretty severe ableism issues and dealing with those. Person X has heavy, revolting levels of bias against neurodivergent and mentally ill people. So much so that they formed an echo chamber with another in a professional setting not at all appropriate to the conversation. Person X then shit-talks behind my back instead of constructively dealing with their dislike/bias. Person X then tries to convince my friends I’m awful and make them drop me. I didn’t even know they had a problem with me.

Despite their own neurodivergency, they’re still stuck in the part of their journey where they feel that if they just try hard enough, or amuse people enough, they’ll be accepted because their neurodivergency ‘isn’t that bad’. Neurodivergent people can be really ableist too.

Something I’m starting to suspect is that the more autistics and ADHDers mask, the more burn outs we’re likely to experience.

Every time I burn out, I come back less able to do things I could before. Masking is absolutely something I’m losing ability with.

It could also be a factor of age, exhaustion, lack of fvcks left. The point being that we don’t have a lot of research about the aging autistic/ADHDer because they’re always doing studies on how to get rid of us, vs studies that would actually help us.

My hypothesis that it gets harder to mask as we age and deal with the fall-out of being an autistic or ADHDer in this world may prove accurate for many of us. It’s definitely accurate for me.

But what does that mean? If I can’t mask as easily as I once did (for whatever reason) I’m going to slip into autistic speech patterns and excited emphatic language more often. I’m going to meltdown more in places I can’t control. None of that makes me an awful person. But it does make people insisting I control and hide my autistic/ADHD traits ableist.

I’ve rambled enough, so I’ll close with this; nobody is required to like someone else. Everyone has the right to leave an unfulfilling relationship. No one has the right to abuse you or your friends.

And using abusive tactics to justify your desire to leave a relationship is all kinds of messed up. So many people need so much therapy. 🥴

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Shootings and Mental Illness.

Content warning: May 2022 Texas School Shooting

I need to state something unequivocally. Mental illness does not cause mass shootings. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

To say anything else, to imply anything else, to draw any sort of connection between the two is ableist and massively harmful.

Mental Health is a constantly evolving, improving field. Like anything else, you can find things on the internet that will say it does cause them. I will direct you first to the date of the article. Anything pre-2018 will likely have a bad case of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

The Massacre at Columbine in 1999 was poorly reported and based on the panicked reports of children being attacked. It affected many people in North America. 

Unfortunately, that cemented some nasty (untrue) things in the public’s mind. Things like ‘outcasts get revenge’ and ‘bullied kids become mentally ill and snap’.

Neither is true. I’m not going to revisit the wheel, but likely, everything you ‘know’ about how mental illness is, of course, related to violence is at least in part, based on that attack. Here’s the debunk. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/04/19/bullies-black-trench-coats-columbine-shootings-most-dangerous-myths/

Older articles from usually reliable sources will likely be severely flawed, at best. It’s easy to blame Mental Illness and to demonize mentally ill people, so that is what society has done. It’s what medicine has done. We aren’t that far, historically, from women being institutionalized for ‘hysteria’ after all.

Luckily, mental health care is improving, and bias is fading at a glacial rate. Newer studies have proven that the motivations for mass shootings do not have high correlation to most forms of what we term ‘mental illness.’

This article is 50 pages, on the surface, if you just skim it, it appears to support the idea that there’s a huge correlation between mental illness and violence. However, if you actually read it, you’ll find it’s saying the opposite. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/

“surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes. According to Appelbaum,25 less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.26

In short, people diagnosed with mental illness are much less likely than an average person to commit any sort of violence.

Perhaps some definitions are in order. When we say something as imprecise as ‘mental illness’ we’re basically tossing the entire junk drawer of human brain issues into a basket, jumbling it around, then blaming it for everything under the sun.

You can read further about the types of disorders and conditions that fall into that basket in layman’s terms here. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-types-illness#1

I’ll detail a few that are usually the ones people have in mind when they blame mentally ill people for (insert whatever someone wants to blame us with).

Psychotic disorders: Psychotic disorders involve distorted awareness and thinking. Two of the most common symptoms of psychotic disorders are hallucinations — the experience of images or sounds that are not real, such as hearing voices — and delusions, which are false fixed beliefs that the ill person accepts as true, despite evidence to the contrary. Schizophrenia is an example of a psychotic disorder.

Personality disorders: People with personality disorders have extreme and inflexible personality traits that are distressing to the person and/or cause problems in work, school, or social relationships. In addition, the person’s patterns of thinking and behavior significantly differ from the expectations of society and are so rigid that they interfere with the person’s normal functioning. Examples include antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder,and paranoid personality disorder.

The next part is hard for a lot of people. Unless you are a psychologically trained medical professional, you have no business, and no right to be armchair diagnosing anyone with a ‘mental illness’. Least of all a domestic terrorist. 

Why? Because you’re very likely to be wrong. And that increases negative bias. It hurts people. What most people believe and think about the vast amount of mental illness is wrong. It’s based on ‘facts’ like ‘what the press reported’ and ‘my crazy granny had that’ and ‘jimmy down the pub told me about’ and ‘I read/saw/heard it in fiction so, of course, it has to be true!’

Just stop. Please.

Misrepresentation of all forms of mental illness is rife, everywhere. What you believe and think about it is extremely likely to be massively, harmfully, flawed. And trust me, your beliefs, examined or unexamined, come through in so much of what you say and write.

I ramble. I know. Back to why I felt motivated to write this.

I was in a group chatting when the Texas shooting came up, and I was going to respond in group. I want to preface the rest with saying that I’m not angry or anything. I rarely actually get angry, it takes a lot.

I’m heartbroken.

Because I felt on the verge of meltdown, I decided to turn my thoughts into a blog post so it can be useful for others wishing to learn. And hopefully, no one will feel the need to either argue with me about my accurate information or accuse me of … whatever people who reject autistics from groups think we’re doing. (I don’t actually know what that is, if I did, I’d try to stop doing it.) 

In case you don’t know me, I’m Kai. I’m an autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, disabled creator and disability advocate. I’m also a damned good writer and a great editor. I’m a life partner, a parent, a loyal friend, a traumatized and healing person, an irreverent shit, and an over educated pain in the ass. My degrees are in research oriented fields. I know how to do proper research, and how to do it well.

I’m out about some of my mental illnesses. Some I’m not because I get enough harassment just being out about being queer, autistic/adhd, and mentally ill. I’m diagnosed with chronic severe depression, high anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, C-PTSD, and bats in the belfry.

I’ve spent most of my 45 years trying to, somehow, be less autistic, less ADHD. This is impossible because my brain wiring is so different from an allistics. All I’ve ever hoped for was acceptance. It’s a basic human need, social acceptance. To date, there are 3 people I’m not related to who know most of my messy self and still love me, regardless.

I mask instead, since I can’t change my wiring. (Masking, in this usage, means having a socially acceptable persona that we pretend to be to get along in life.) I started intentionally masking my autistic traits when I was 9. So I could have friends who didn’t decide to hate me because they don’t understand me. So I could just… exist.

Masking kills autistic people, did you know that? The average age an autistic person dies is 36 years of age.

The suicide watch for parents of autistic and ADHD kids starts at 9 years old.

What do I mean by that? Wise parents start watching their autistic and ADHD kids closely for severe mental illness and suicidal attempts at the age of 9. (Technically, 9 for boys & AMABS, 11 for girls & AFABS.)

Why do we have to do that? I’ll spare you the terrifying statistics on suicide in autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and people with other forms of neurodivergence. Mostly because I don’t want to look at them again, myself. I have young kids. You’d better believe I watch them.

That’s the point of my work. That’s why, even when I don’t want to stir the shit or when I just don’t want to talk about it… I do anyway.

Bias against neurodivergent people kills us. Mental illness is a form of neurodivergence. Autism and ADHD are too. Bias claiming autistic or mentally ill people are violent is factually untrue and it is killing us.

36 years old. That’s when most of us die. I’m past my expiration date by 9 years and goddess… it feels it. Every day grinds me down further. And that’s why I do the advocacy work I do.

It’s far, far too late for me. The world has broken me into the tiny shards of a kintsugi project, and I don’t have gold to glue myself back together. But I have children. If my advocacy work can make the world see what it’s doing to people like me, if I can help people understand… maybe the world will be kinder to future generations of autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and otherwise neurodivergent people. My kids included.

I’m still working on taking off the mask. I still mask far more than I intend to. And I still, always, get into trouble when I slip into autistic speech patterns.

Autistic folk often get… emphatic, I guess, when we talk about things that matter to us. People can feel overwhelmed when we get going either because we’re excited or we care about the topic. Because… well, it can be a lot, I guess. 

Most of us mask everywhere, which does end up killing us; as most forms of ableism tend to kill someone.

Since we mask, we only end up overwhelming people when we slip into what I call autistic mode. I caught myself before I managed to do it today in group.

I’m not always aware enough to catch myself before I slip. Especially, if I’m excited and enjoying a topic, and think people are also geeking out with me (instead of being overwhelmed). It’s really easy for my socially inept brain to not notice that people want me to shut up… on those occasions, I pay for it. (The fact I shouldn’t have to completely hide myself in order to have some semblance of a social life, because people don’t understand autism & adhd is a whole ‘nother blog post.)

I’m obviously not excited about the shooting in Texas, but the related topic I brought up is one that’s both intensely, personally painful and the focus of much of my advocacy work.

I was afraid that talking in group would result in another experience of ‘Kai slipped into autistic, had social doors slammed in xyr face, melted down, and had to leave the group.’

I’m rather tired of that happening, and I’m still deeply grieving the last group where a person or people made it obvious I wasn’t welcome because I can’t change that I’m autistic/ADHD.

When I’m upset, I can’t talk or respond to more than one person at once, if that. It’s a recipe for a meltdown. Hence, the manuscript/blog post.

I’m not looking for argument, debate, apologies or discussion. This isn’t an easy topic for me. I also wouldn’t be able to meet my gaze in the mirror if I didn’t say something. So.

I’ve been bullied and attacked and driven out of groups I really liked because people rarely stop to ask the intent behind an autistic’s words.

So… I just want to clarify; my only intent here is to educate. This is part of what I do in my advocacy work. It’s also incredibly painful for me, so as soon as I post this I’m getting off the net for a while. I don’t have the wherewithal to discuss this as if it’s not incredibly, personally painful, because it is.

The most recent shooting, today in Texas, is another horrific event and I’m beyond nauseated.

The very first thing many people do when another of these awful occurances happens is look around for a reason. It’s average human behavior. Because of decades of misrepresentation in media of mental illness and autism, (including by writers, which is why accuracy in any kind of representation is so important) the very first culprit people often think of is ‘it had to be someone mentally ill’ or ‘the shooter was obviously autistic or had autistic traits’.

This is almost universally untrue, because both populations are, by far, more likely to be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrator. There are plenty of studies out there about it. If you really want to read them.

Psychologically, it’s natural for humans to want there to be a reason. It’s even natural that we want the reason to be something that makes the perpetrator ‘not like me’. Few people want to believe themselves capable of buying a weapon, walking the halls of an elementary school, and then… I can’t even make myself type it. It’s so beyond horrifying.

That desire, that need, for us to believe we couldn’t do something like that, that ‘good people like me’ (tribalism) couldn’t do that… It makes mentally ill & autistic people easy targets. In the next few days, watch the news, you’ll likely see it.

The reason really does boil down to evil. The definition of evil is ‘profoundly immoral and wicked’.

There have been plenty of papers written on who a domestic terrorist is likely to be. (A cis white male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits between the ages of 16 to 30 is most likely. A cis white male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits between the ages of 45 and 60 is the second. Third is a cis male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits.) Yes, there are studies confirming this.

There are several things that play into this. Toxic masculinity is one. Radicalization is another. White nationalism, forced birthing, the list goes on and on. We want the answer and the culprit to be easy.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. That desire for an easy excuse harms people like me. It. Kills. Kids.

And it is not okay.

If anyone wants to read studies on this, the information is out there.

Mental illness has very little, if anything, to do with radicalization. To say it does is discrimination, and it’s ableist. There’s no proof. None. There’s a lot of information out there about how radicalization happens, too.

Calling for better mental health care when another terrorist shooter attacks may be well meant. We definitely need it, and I’m 100% for better mental health care everywhere. It would help so many people and massively improve society. I’ve always said everyone can use therapy.

And the connotations of shooter = we need better mental health care is painfully obvious.

Mentally ill people are not the ones doing this. While we absolutely need better mental health care, the people guilty of these atrocities aren’t the kinds who would use it.

Radicalized people often think they’re doing the right thing. Many of these acts have been racially motivated. And if the reasons are traced back, it often equals the ‘not enough white babies’ BS. Other motivations have been domestic violence and religious intolerance. None of these are mental illnesses.

It’s easy to say better mental health care would help. It would help a lot of things! Shooters would be in the vast minority. There’s plenty of studies that’ve been done on this topic, too.

The one thing I’d ask people to remember is this. Stop and think before you say anything.

Is your information on what you feel the fix is accurate? Is it fair? Does it unnecessarily demonize innocent people who don’t need more pain while they just try to survive? While we try to survive in a world that hates our very existence at worst, and barely tolerates it at best?

Every time another terrorist strikes. Every time. Someone trots out the ‘autistics did it’ or the ‘mentally ill people did it’ and that gets incredibly old, very painful, and exhausting faster than most average people can imagine.

It’s already a minefield, trying to just exist as either an autistic or mentally ill person in this world.

There isn’t a day that goes by that someone like me isn’t harmed by misperceptions or casual off-hand comments or someone harming us in another way.

Do you really need to add to it by either overtly or by connotation accusing autistic or mentally ill people of something so heinous it makes this mentally ill, autistic, ADHD person utterly nauseated? It will sicken most people like me. Autistics particularly usually have a hard wired need to help others.

So it’s particularly cruel to accuse an innocent population of people hard wired to help… with choosing to harm.

The solution to domestic terrorism isn’t in blaming it on people more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator. Studies overwhelmingly support the statistics that autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and other forms of neurodivergent people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

But that’s not what people believe. And it’s certainly not what they say. It will take a multi-faceted approach to solve the problem. Because the problem is so multi-faceted.

Step one has to be acknowledging where the problem actually is.

It’s not with people like me.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

If you have the wherewithal, I’m a disabled creative and my family lives in extreme poverty. My work of words is my only income.

If I made you think, even for a moment, please consider a tip.

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Rebuttal to JK Rowling from an autistic ‘girl’ in black and white

Content Warning: J. K. Rowling, language, genetics, definitions of terms regarding trans issues, transphobia, TERF, TERF rhetoric, domestic violence, mention of rape, facts and figures about suicide, mention of suicide, suicide, hate speech on her part, screenshots of her Twitter account, menstruation, body parts, name-calling on my part

There are spoilers in this for her work. There may be tangents. (You kidding? It’s me, of course there are gonna be tangents.) I got emotional and slung names, I know I shouldn’t have, but omg, I feel revoltingly soiled after reading what that TERF said.

Rowling hasn’t ever been anything except, ‘oh that person who wrote those potter books?’ to me. The books didn’t hit big until I was in mid to late university, I was heavily into cosplay and hanging with my friends when I wasn’t working on human skeletons/cadavers as part of my degree work, so I just… didn’t really notice them. I had my favorite authors that I read, and she just wasn’t one of them.

I decided to read that blog post because I can. It won’t hurt me as badly as it might others in my shoes simply for the fact that Rowling was and is nothing to me. I can give my educated opinion based on both what she says and how she says it, as well as do some research into her claims.

I don’t have a horse in the race as far as my emotions about her worlds/characters go, so I’m choosing to read this and give the gist of the important bits to my readers, so they don’t have to read what I’ve been told is utter hatred.

After reading it, I can state, unequivocally, based on her words and basic google searches that she is pushing forward an agenda of hatred. She uses nothing but TERF rhetoric and ‘oh pity me’ tactics. She is dangerous, hateful, harmful, and just a downright awful human being. I hate to even share a species with someone so hateful.

I’m so, so sorry for her fans, people who really loved her world and work. I hope you can separate the work from the creator and keep some of the joy her worlds and characters gave you. She may have created it, but without you, her fans, it wouldn’t have life. YOU breathed life into her characters and worlds, and if you want to (and can) keep that, I think you should.

So. Who am I?

You can call me Kae. I have a habit of fact-checking authors on things they claim. If you’re in autism circles at all, you may recognize my name from me tearing apart TO SIRI WITH LOVE and AUTISM UNCENSORED. I’ve written for both BUSTLE and The NY OBSERVER. I’m a published author, a reviewer and I make my living as a freelance fiction editor. I’m a parent, a life partner, and a bit of a loudmouth about social justice.

I’m speaking as an autistic disabled activist, a bio-anthropologist/forensic scientist, and as a trans person. I’m trans-non-binary, I’m neither man nor woman, I’m both and neither depending on the day. My thoughts and feelings are mine. My words are based on my understanding of these concepts. I am autistic, there’s no hidden meaning behind my words, I’ve used the words I actually mean. Any twisting of them is on you, not me. Twisting words is an allistic thing. If I fuck up, please let me know as I’m truly not trying to. Email is best, as I don’t have comments on my website and no contact forms thanks to massive harassment. Kaelan.Rhywiol@gmail.com

Structure: I’ve used coloured text to highlight definitions that might be triggering, things I felt needed extra oomph, as well as her actual words. If you’re trans, I highly recommend you just read my words and avoid hers, which are in Burnt Orange. I didn’t have a horse in the race and her words still hurt me.

As far as the definitions and concepts, I’ve posted common definitions and clarification of a couple of concepts for people unfamiliar with terms used in anthropology, biology, and yes, by trans people and our allies. It’s also HERE in case you want to have it up in a different window while you read. If you’ve rarely run into these terms and concepts they can be hella confusing.

These are the definitions and concepts I have learned from others in the trans community and from advanced science classes in university. (As with all communities, there will be some who agree with me, and some who won’t. Neither autistic people nor trans people are a monolith.)

If you’re at all confused about the extreme difference between sex and gender, I suggest you read the definitions.

AGAB – Assigned Gender At Birth

AFAB – Assigned Female At Birth

AMAB – Assigned Male At Birth

Cis – you feel like your AGAB

Trans – you do not feel like your AGAB

TERF – An acronym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist: A social movement focused on excluding trans people from society. They use many methods to gull people onto their side of things with the sole purpose of eradicating any acceptance for trans people in the world.

GENDER – A socio-cultural construct often based on perceived external biological differences but also on social roles within a society, activities, and on unspoken codes and rules: IE Nail polish is only for girls, only boys wear blue (Both of which are patently untrue, men were the first to wear earrings, nail polish, and makeup, high heels, and corsets even, in renaissance Europe. It goes much further back in other cultures. It wasn’t until much later that men let women dress up in all the fancy stuff.)

A June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Source: Smithsonian

Words like woman, man, girl, boy, et cetera refer to gender. They have nothing to do with genetic sex, perceived biological sex, or what functions our body displays. Our genetic sex and the things our bodies do aren’t relevant to our gender. These are two separate and distinct concepts. Anthropologists and other scientists know this. It’s fact. As many people have said, Our Parts Don’t Determine Our Gender.

SEX – genetic sex on the chromosomal level. Whether someone is xy, xx, xxy, xxxx, xyy etc. and how that affects what our bodies can/can’t do. A person can look and feel like a cis male and be xxy. A person can also be a “woman” to everyone’s perception and be xyy. (Not even sex is binary, sorry nonscientists, it just isn’t, 7th-grade biology lied to you. Shocking, I know.) This is the only way in which ‘sex’ matters to anyone, and the only one it matters to is the person who is carrying those genetics, their medical team, and if they have them, their partners. For further reading on this subject here are a couple of twitter threads that make it easy to understand.

GENDER IDENTITY – What one feels inside, their own internal perception of their gender. MANY cultures from all over the world throughout recorded time have always known there’s a distinct difference between gender and perceived biological sex. Scientists in pretty much all fields know it today. It’s only in modern society that people like Rowling have their heads up their rectums about it.

PERCEIVED BIOLOGICAL SEX – What someone looks like to someone else. This is fraught territory because there are butch cis women who look masculine and there are femme looking cis men. The point being, of course, that you cannot tell what someones’ gender or genetic sex is by looking at them. It’s actually impossible.

Utterly impossible, you’d need a compound microscope to see genetic sex/chromosomal sex and I haven’t seen many of those in girls’ bathrooms or boys for that matter. As far as seeing into someone to try to figure out what their gender is? I don’t think we’ve developed telepathy and thought sensing yet, have we? So why don’t we just do the radical thing of believing people are who they say they are with regards to gender? Hmm? Peachy.


I’m a disabled activist. I’m autistic. I’m also trans non-binary, my pronouns are xie/xem/xyr.

Not that many people use them, given what I look like. I doubt I’ll ever be as androgynous as I want to be. I present as (look like) a woman, I’m not one. ‘She/her’ has ALWAYS felt like an itchy, too tight sweater, one that’s likely to cause hives. I loathed being forced to wear dresses, skirts, make-up, and ‘girly shit’ (I had some misogyny to work out) but the only reason I felt that it was ‘girly shit’ is because it was constantly being shoved down my throat. Every time I heard she/her or what is definitely a feminine first (legal/dead, don’t use it even if you know it) name. I cringed. Always.

I remember asking my mom, when I was 4, when I’d get my penis because I was sick of waiting for it. She laughed her ass off, mocked me and I never asked again. It took me until I was 39 to really understand who I am because I didn’t have the language to label it. Now I do. I had to do a lot of internal work to beat back internalized misogyny, massive feminine social indoctrination, trans discomfort, and a whole load of other crap that really isn’t relevant to this post.

Suffice it to say it took me a while to both understand and accept who I am. I’m proud of the work I’ve done to help my true me come out from under the decades of abuse I’ve experienced. My autism played a part in that, but it’s not the part J. K. Rowling wants you to believe. See, the way she talks about it in her post, we poor little autistic girls can’t possibly be trusted to understand our own genders. We need to be protected!

AS an autistic ‘girl’ and the mom of another one, all I have to say about that is if you’ve never tried to make an autistic do anything, you have no idea how very stubborn we can be. We get enough hate, just by being autistic, we’re not likely to add on the trans unless we’re dead sure we are.

Autistics, in general, tend to question everything, so, um, no, Joanne, we don’t need you to protect us poor innocent autistic girls. Fuck. Off. You do not have permission to use my and my daughter’s neurotype as a screen for your bigoted hatred.

I’m AFAB, (Assigned Female At Birth). Some boneheaded doctor looked at my crotch when I was born and told everyone I was a girl. Science knows that even perceived biological sex isn’t a binary. Trust me. I’m not a girl and never was. I’ve always been gender-fluid non-binary. I’m neither or both man and woman. Some days, because I’m fluid, I’m more femme, most days, I’m neither or I’m masc, as I’m definitely masc leaning.

So when it came to light yesterday that J.K. Rowling has once again doubled down on her awfulness against trans people, I tried to ignore it. It’s the same old song and dance from that old culturally appropriating has-been.

She’s stirred up trouble for trans and queer folks for YEARS, the queer community has known about it forever, she retroactively assigned Dumbledore as gay AFTER she wrote the books. Now… if that isn’t reaching for stuff that isn’t hers? I don’t know what is.

It’s not gay if it’s not on the page babe, and honestly, there are queer authors out here who can write it WAY better than you can retcon it. Me included. BUT now she’s getting worldwide attention for being awful to trans people. Katelyn Burns broke down Rowling’s history of transphobia for Vox last year.

So what does she do? The glory hound doubles down and hurts more people with a blog post. Including me. I don’t like her books or her worlds and I never have. I feel they glorify child abuse in an extremely disturbing way. I mean, they KILLED a scared and abused kid at the end of Fantastic Beasts, then went out for tea and it was all done with.

Like, WHAT? How is that… and this is OKAY with people? (And frankly, as an editor, I have no idea how those books got published, they’re extremely poorly written just from a technical standpoint. J.K. Rowling and E.L. James. Two rich and famous authors who can’t write worth beans.)

I’m not generally involved in trans activism for personal reasons.

I am, however, EXTREMELY involved in autistic and disabled activism. So when I heard that freaking glory hound had tried to use autistic girls as a shield for her awful beliefs and words… I knew I had to make myself read that blog post that everyone is talking about.

People don’t think autistic girls exist, did you know that? We’re unicorns. We’re gods damned myths. Except that I’m sitting here with a diagnosis of ASD, (among other things), a vagina/boobs drinking tea, and writing a blog post I don’t really want to write.

I’d rather be playing Animal Crossing.

But no. J. K. Rowling. You do NOT get to use my existence as a way to hurt trans people. There is a HIGH amount of crossover between queer and autistic communities. While I may not have spoken up about trans issues (trans, not trans activist) I absolutely will about autistic ones.

You done fucked up. Bitch.

Dear gods I don’t want to read this.

A note on structure as a reminder: I’ve put Rowling’s actual inflammatory words in BURNT ORANGE. Please don’t read those if you’re trans. You don’t need to see that. I’ve broken down what she said so people can know without having to swim through her sewage.

The blog post, if anyone wants to pollute their eyeballs with it is here. I definitely don’t recommend reading it, it’s really, incredibly painful to read. Go clean your bathroom with your tongue, it’ll be more productive and you’ll honestly probably feel better than if you read that trash. If you do read it, and it sounds logical and reasonable, then you are part of the problem. Please, please educate yourself.

Anyway:

She writes at first that she’s read lots and lots about trans issues. (I guarantee she hasn’t. If she has at all, they’re outdated, falsified, TERF leaning rhetoric.)

She goes on to say:

“On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

Firstly, that’s a lie. There’s been plenty of tweet threads and people proving that she’s got a long history of ‘absent-mindedly’ liking inflammatory tweets. It’s even been referred to by her publicist that it was a ‘middle-age moment’.

I’m middle-aged. I do not ‘like’ things on social media that aren’t anything I actually support. Whether we enjoy it or not, as public figures (authors are) we need to be careful what we like and retweet because a like or retweet or share from us DOES count as supporting it.

Hey, Joanne, guess what you had to do? All you had to do was say, oops, my bad. And no one would’ve said a thing to you.

Aren’t we all, in western society at least, taught that we should say we’re sorry when we fuck up? She didn’t say she was sorry. Instead, she doubled down.

She talks about willfully supporting Maya Forstater, the woman who even an Employment Court of Britain basically labeled a TERF.

Great choice in icons there, Joanne. She talks about knowing that people would hate her for supporting Forstater. Uh, yeah, J.K. people don’t like TERFs much. Shocker, huh? We don’t like Nazis either.

She whines more about the ‘social media abuse’ for fuck’s sake, this reads like a ‘poor little me, the evil trans people are out to get me’ gags.

She talks about supporting Magdalen Burns. Another known TERF. Just a lesbian one.

“to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, “

Have you ever been hated? I mean, truly hated for something you can’t help? I have. I am. It sucks, a lot actually. And yes. It can ACTUALLY kill. (See what I mean? She can’t write.)

“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive.”

(She needs a comma in front of that last and)

Yep. J.K. There are tons of TERFs just like you. Don’t you find that sooooo comforting? asshole. No. Suppurating, hemorrhoidal asshole.

“They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights.”

(comma before the first and)

So, you… a beloved children’s author with MANY queer young people who adore you, decide to side with the TERFs. Having trouble on understanding the logic there J.K., if all you want to do is protect people.

Billionaire white woman plays the ‘oh my mental health’ card. Holy cow. Sucking hard on the social teat there, aren’t you J.K? (You can be rich and mentally ill, and rich people have more resources to get treatment.)

I’m not mocking mentally ill people. I’m mentally ill. I’m mocking the incredibly common and likely habit of white women, when called on their shit, to whine about some aspect of their mental health. Usually anxiety, cause these days, the ‘pretty’ mental illnesses are anxiety and depression.

Oh, yeah, right, she says she only returned to twitter to share a free children’s book during the pandemic.

Let’s see. She’s quite active on May 25th, and I don’t know if that’s a joke, but dang, threatening to steal people’s pets? Great look J.K. Fantastic. Peachy.

So classy, professional even. (My eyes roll any harder I’m gonna have to get up, fetch them from wherever they land when they fall out of my head, dust the damned things off and figure out how to reattach them.)

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Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account, showing her posting and threatening to steal dogs because no one told J.K. Rowling (fucking egotist) she couldn’t on May 25th, 2020 (I *think* it’s meant to be a joke, but I don’t think ‘jokes’ about how you’re above the law are funny.)

And here she is posting in April, she posted frequently enough that Twitter found quite a bit.

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Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account showing her posting in April

March:

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She does seem to have been absent for February. Probably licking her pride from having people tell her she’s wrong about trans folks. Sex, biological sex, is not binary. Scientists know this. Egotist billionaire children’s writer’s who shit on their fans do not. I mean, you should see the love people send her way, and she STILL wants more attention? Disgusting.

Hell, I’d be happy to have even a small percentage of that love for me and my books. :/

Instead, she goes and beats on the trans community again when her free children’s book didn’t get enough attention to suit her.

SO. My little data-mining project into her Twitter account (I really need a shower now) proves that not only is she a TERF, she’s a fucking liar too. Great role model for kids. Fantastic.

Back to that awful blog post. I need wine.

“Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.”

Nooo, Ms. Egotist. Activists didn’t swarm back into your tweets until YOU attacked TRANS PEOPLE with this awful tweet.

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Screenshot of the tweet that started all of this crap up again. It’s a retweet of an opinion column: Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 World for people who menstruate.

Rowling’s words: “People who menstruate.” I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

She’s not only starting it all up again with that tweet, she’s WILLFULLY attacking anyone who, in her view, isn’t a woman.

Which, like, look in the mirror lady, you were born in 1965, unless you’ve discovered what the rest of us haven’t, at 54, you probably don’t menstruate either. It’s called menopause. Pretty sure you probably know what that is by now.

And I’ve just done a data dive into her account, (shudders) so no, there weren’t any activists in her replies/mentions that I saw, not for months after she popped back in early March like a bad case of head lice you just can’t get rid of. Prior to that tweet, she had the usual outpouring of love from kids and their parents who loved her free book. Lots of illustrations from those kids, her responses to them (which were kind, she was kind to kids, I’ll give her that, just not trans kids. No, no kindness for kids like I used to be.)

Then she goes on to bitch about the term TERF and mislabels its source.

“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists.” 

It was actually coined by Trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist blogger Viv Smythe who popularized the term in 2008 as an online shorthand. (Wikipedia)

(Difference is that Smythe is a trans-inclusive blogger, not an activist. Smythe isn’t to my knowledge in that circle.)

Rowling is also incredibly wrong that there are ‘many people labeled TERFS who, waaaah, don’t deserve it’. No, Joanne, honey, you have to earn that title with your behavior. Which you most definitely have. Even if none of the rest of it were true, that ONE tweet, the one mocking people who menstruate, makes you a TERF.

Trans-Exclusionary means you exclude trans people from anything, really. Just like you, Joanne, are excluding trans women from womens’ rights, womens’ spaces, womens’ conversations, and womens’ lives.

Trans women are women. Period. Even science backs that up. A transitioning trans woman’s bones, skin, hair, body all become incredibly similar to a cis woman’s. A trans woman’s brain is more like a cis woman’s than a cis man’s EVEN BEFORE TRANSITIONING. Scientific fact. Same goes for trans men.

Woman is a GENDER IDENTITY DEFINITION. It has nothing to do with body parts and whether or not you bleed from them. Frankly, I know a couple penis owning people who menstruate, and they were born with those things, so like… what are they? Aliens?

“Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).”

I mean, does she know for a fact she’s a ‘biological’ female? She’s had a chromosomal assay done? Wow. Interesting, she’s more committed to her TERFuckery than I thought. And she’s misused ‘literally’ again. Sigh.

Really, REALLY can’t write.

There’s also no such thing as a biological woman. That’s mixing up the definitions of two very different concepts. People may PERCEIVE her as a woman, she may perceive herself as one, which makes her Cis. Also an asshole, but a cis asshole.

Gah, I’m tired of this blog post already and I haven’t even gotten to the ‘using autistics’ part. We’re still in the ‘shitting on trans people’ part.

“So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?”

She says she’s doing it because someone has to defend the poor innocent children.

No, Joanne, you’re ‘speaking up’ with your bad facts and baseless accusations and your bloody lies because you’re a damned egotistical jerk who isn’t getting enough of the attention you feel is your due. And pardon me, but no, I don’t think you’re capable of research, not after appropriating Indigenous culture for your books (AND NEVER APOLOGIZING) and this bullshit about trans gender people.

Why do I feel that way? Because I’m an ACTUAL scientific researcher. My degrees are in Bioanthropology, Forensic Chemistry, World History, and Education. Trust me, in all that, I learned how to do research and to do it well.

All Joanne here has got is her bad attitude, her prejudice about what makes a woman ‘a woman’, and way, way too much ego.

“Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.” 

(Sigh, roles eyes, trans activism isn’t new, she’s just not used to being called on her shit.)

“Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

Trans women’s brains are much more like a cis woman’s brains than a cis man’s. Oh, and there are sooooo many trans people who are the victims of domestic abuse, in prison, and are victims of sexual assault. If you knew anything about MS, you’d actually listen to the Doctors who would tell you that trans women are valid. Next bad point?

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

I’m an ex-teacher too. The only thing hurting trans kids is not being believed, not being able to express their true gender, and later, not having transition care if they need it. It’s foolish to think anyone would or even could ‘make’ a kid trans, or transition. We’re born the way we are.

All of us trans folks, but especially adolescents, already have incredibly high suicide rates, her bullshit is NOT helping.

Joanne my dear, just because you won the author lottery in a big way (we all know it’s not a meritocracy, or you definitely wouldn’t be where you are) doesn’t mean you are the be-all and end-all of things you obviously don’t understand. Just because you have money and can fund a charity… no, just no. You’re utterly HORRIBLE.

My heart bleeds for all those trans kids out there, the ones who thought maybe Harry Potter and Hogwarts had room for them, only to find out that not only does Hogwarts not have room, the author’s heart doesn’t either.

I highly recommend turning to fanfiction. There’s so much wonderful fanfic out there based in her world that you can find exactly what you need without having anything to do with her. There are also a lot of trans authors out here, we write worlds where you are welcome, wanted, and loved. Where you’ll find people similar to you having adventures and joys and happily ever afters. You’ll need to search indie and self-publishing for us because mainstream publishing hates us as much as Joanne does.

“The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.”

You and Trump do make a pair don’t you? Both sharing scientifically disproven bullshit under the guise of caring for someone else when all you want is attention and controversy.

Shame on you, Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Shame. On. You. During the biggest Black Lives Matters worldwide revolution ever, you do this. You’re disgusting.

And again, that’s not hurt talking, I never liked her books, Hogwarts wasn’t ever this special fun place for me, I was in Uni when the books became big, so they just missed me completely. I didn’t lose anything by her being awful.

I feel so horrible for those who did. I’m so sorry my luvs, you’re VALID and her bullshit is exactly that. A steaming stream of grass-fed, medicated cow shit (grass-fed, medicated is looser, wetter, stinkier) splattered across a barn floor. Just toss some hay on that and shovel it out the door. At least cow shit has fertilization usages, her shit is just glorifying her own sad, hateful ignorance.

I can’t even imagine myself being that wealthy so it’s not jealousy either. I mean, hell, she wants to support trans people she can, I’ll happily give her my Paypal address. In the blink of an eye and the click of her finger, she could change the lives of so many trans people if she just bothered.

Most of us have paypals, kofis, many of us have GoFundMes to get out of abusive situations or get our surgeries if we need/want them. Trans creators tend to starve, wither into the unknown, while she in her mighty white rich lady ‘knowledge’ is ‘writing a crime series’ so ‘the topic of trans issues is interesting to her’.

Translation, she’s thinking of stealing a trans author’s place at the publishing table by writing a trans book.

But we all know she won’t do that. She won’t help trans people. She hates us.

Freedom of speech exists, yes. It means you get to say whatever you want unless your government forbids it, yes. It also means you get to take the consequences. Which is people like me loathing you. Knowledge that you’re hurting KIDS, as well as your fans. The people who put you where you are. Your Fans.

I’m an author too, and as I detailed in my thread here, I can’t wrap my head around hurting my fans that badly. Without our fans, we writers are nothing more than extremely odd people in torn t-shirts, messy hair, and skivvies, (if we’re feeling fancy) whispering stories to ourselves in dark rooms.

Without your fans? As an author? You’re nothing but a blowhard. And she’s doing her level best to hurt so many of her fans to stroke her outsized damned ego.

“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

Gods, did she pull that out of her toilet? I think she did. It’s nothing more than TERF rhetoric. Precious fertility, beautiful femininity cow crap. She talks about transition care as if people are passing around pills like at the rave parties in the ’90s.

No. That’s not how transition care works. You have to go through SO MUCH to even be able to access transition care. Psychotherapy is just part of that, it’s not something you do on a whim, like she’s painted there. The rates of people detransitioning are extremely low, because of the barriers in place to prevent whims like she’s describing. No, the ones who detransition? They’re almost always the ones who have to rely on intolerant family members for support.

Hey, Joanne, if you’re so concerned about those who have to detransition, why don’t you go to GoFundme.com and give some of your unearned wealth to those who really need it. The ones who have no choice but to sacrifice their true selves so that they can feed their bodies?

But no. We know you won’t do that either.

Oh, our fertility… boo hoo. Transition care doesn’t do that.

As if fertility is all that. JFC, everything she says is TERF rhetoric. EVERYTHING. And somehow she thinks people transition BECAUSE of homophobic family members? I mean, does she really have no idea how much more abuse trans folks suffer from that very hatred? Obviously not.

“The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

Uh, yeah, there’s A. More people running around earth these days, and B. It’s not quite as unacceptable to be trans as it used to be, so of course, more people are going to be looking for transition care. They just stopped hiding. Duh. Same thing happened when I was a kid and it became less awful to society to be left-handed. (I was taught, violently, to write with my right hand. I’m naturally left-handed.)

As for Autistic girls, unicorns, yeah, there’s HUGE, MASSIVE overlap between queer identities and autism. There’s been a few studies done on it. No, we don’t yet know why, but as an autistic enby, one you’d call a girl, I’ll tell you it’s not because of peer pressure or because I don’t know who I am. I’ve always known who I am. I’ve always been trans. My parents did their level best to turn me into a girl because of my crotch, guess what, I’m not one!

The only confusion I’ve ever suffered about my gender identity? Was thinking I was a girl because I’d been socialized as one. So Fuck Off, Joanne, with that bullshit about autistic girls. You do not have my permission to use people like me and my daughter and so many others as a shield for your TERF actions. Absolutely not.

She mentions in glowing terms a supposed Dr. Lisa Littman who studied ‘growing numbers of youth affected by the echo chambers of social media’. She says the doctor received censure from her colleagues for spreading misinformation.

Now… um, I don’t know about you? But Peer-Reviewed Science is a thing. If that doctor’s peers said she was spreading misinformation and that she needed to be censored? That’s good enough for me and most of the general public. Not TERFs though. Not good enough for the All-Mighty Joanne here. She knows better than all the docs in the US and UK combined! We should really listen to her! Not.

“The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves.”

That’s because they do. You jizz-whistler. Here’s an article from the Human Rights Campaign with facts and figures. It’s not pretty, and guess what you flappy twat, you’ve made it worse.

Here’s one showing that puberty blockers (again, transition care is incredibly hard to get, you have to jump through a LOT of hoops to get it, especially for a kid) REDUCE suicide in trans kids.

Preventing suicide in trans people, by the Trevor Project (I’m pretty sure the Trevor project knows more about trans people than Ms. Fantastic TERF here.)

I could keep going, on, and on, and on, and on with the science. It’s not like I looked into my toilet bowl one morning, figured a particular turd looked nice and decided to smear it all across my Twitter feed like Joanne here did. No, I actually look up resources that are recent, usually peer-reviewed, and relevant.

“In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”

Bullshit. I call bullshit. I bet that guy was MADE to resign because of his bigotry. There have been MANY peer-reviewed, scientific studies on trans people, and transition care. That’s just absolute, utterly foolish, easily disprovable hogwash. A Google search would tell you that!

You see, kids. You can find support for ANY prejudice on the internet. Joanne here found hers in TERF rhetoric, discredited doctors and psychotherapists… and apparently after a bowel movement.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

No. No, no, no, no, no you yeasty, white-livered harpy.

Every trans person I ever met, when I was going through my own journey to acceptance, both back as a teen who never fit in ‘her’ skin and as an adult… EVERY ONE supplied information, websites, places to find more information on what it feels like to be trans. This bullshit of hers also completely erases the struggles of non-binary people and trans men!

Trans folks advised caution, to wait and sit with it to make sure it fit.

We don’t go around trying to convince others to join us like some freakish cult. Thanks for that insult you damned soggy noodle. No, I’ll leave that kind of cultish behavior to you and your TERFy friends.

It’s well known in the queer community that Tumblr especially, but also Reddit are blood-chummed feeding grounds for TERFs looking for young queers to radicalize AGAINST trans people. Including young trans people. It’s awful.

It works too, that’s the sad part. And Joanne’s self-aggrandizing chicken scratch doesn’t help that.

EVERYTHING Joanne here has said as ‘proof’? It’s TERF rhetoric. Here, don’t believe me…

How to spot TERF Ideology, from the University of Cambridge, UK.

“…although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.”

Joanne dear, was it published this century? Did you forget your glasses? You’ve got the numbers backward, darling. Almost exactly backward. 60-90% of trans teens either commit suicide or attempt to commit suicide. They don’t ‘outgrow’ anything, except maybe their asshole parents who didn’t listen to them. If they don’t transition, they tend to do so in adulthood if they can.

Oh, and few of us speak to the parents who denied us who we really are. I certainly don’t.

“Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.”

Another lie, if anything, it’s harder to access transition care now. To my knowledge, trans kids have the exact same transition schedule, if not LONGER than an adult does.

How many of these am I gonna have to debunk before I get to the autistic part? (Note; I had already passed the autistic part, she was just using us as a shield. Dehumanizing our minds and taking possession of our bodies as a way to make herself look good.)

“We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls.”

What a bloody prude. Uh. Nope again. I have a daughter. I see what her life is like. I weigh it against everything I experienced as a kid in the 80s, yes dear, we grew up in the same decade, and no, absolutely no, this generation is far easier on girls than it was on people dubbed ‘girl’ in that time. Just the existence of so much indie porn is a sign that the world is NOT more misogynistic. Female presenting people have more freedom to express themselves in any way they want, including sexually, in this century than ever before.

You’re a fool. Joanne. A dyed in the wool fool. You’ve bought into TERF rhetoric in a big way and you’re too damned egotistical to admit you were wrong and apologize for hurting so many people.

“Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”

Yeah? Do you forget, Joanne dear? It was followed by a backhand in the ’80s. Maybe a belting with dad’s belt if we didn’t conform. Been there, done that, have the godsdamned scars to prove it. You, you… lying bitch.

“The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion (of womanhood) concerns many others just as much.”

Sure. Sure, Joanne, when someone with your reach starts shitting out TERF rhetoric on your Twitter feed, you’re gonna get a lot of TERFs reaching out to you expressing their ‘concern’.

There are A LOT of TERFs, Joanne. You are ignorant, you’re dangerous, and I wish to gods you’d get kicked off Twitter.

“Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”

Sighs forever. I’m reasonably good looking Joanne, I look like a woman, I’m not, but that hasn’t stopped the slurs, the catcalls, the sexual assaults, the rapes. Plural Joanne, Plural. Rapes. Sit with that.

I still use gender-inclusive language and you know what? It’s not only ACCURATE (or aren’t you a woman anymore you post-menopausal crab?) It keeps people from KILLING THEMSELVES.

So a bunch of biddies who never got to do anything in their lives because of sexism don’t like the terms. Sorry not sorry? I’d rather have a few people uncomfy with the changing times than see another single trans kid dead.

You weren’t much to me, I knew your name, saw the Potter movies once cause I was bored, tried to read your awful books to my kids (Kids asked me to stop by the way, I was willing to soldier on for them). Then I saw, over time, some red flags of queer hatred.

Turning Dumbledore gay only after the fact? Not even close to cool. I started to not like you much before this most recent painful mockery, Joanne, but now? I hate you. With every fiber of my being. I wish nothing good for you for the rest of your life.

For someone like you to fall into TERF rhetoric, and then to not only just… quietly believe it… (not good, but sure, you want to believe that shite and keep it to yourself? Whatever. Not on me) but to publicly, as a beloved children’s author, as a Queen’s Companion of Honour, as a billionaire, as a celebrity… my gods, just… my gods. You have no idea of the harm you’ve done and continue to do. The Peter Parker principle applies, with great power comes great responsibility. J.K. Rowling has not only abandoned that responsibility, she’s used her might to support and push forward the beliefs of an awful edge group of so-called feminists who wouldn’t know feminism if it bit them. She’s used her power to HURT.

Realistically, TERFs are quite good at making people believe them, at making all these so-called talking points of yours sound reasonable. They’re not reasonable. It’s hatred, Joanne. You’re spewing hatred on all your fans. Trans and Cis alike. My gods. You’re utterly revolting.

I have no idea how many deaths among the trans community you’ve caused with this egotistical braying, but I guarantee you there have been some. Their blood is on your soul. Pay for it forever through time as far as I’m concerned.

Onwards. I really wish I could drink wine right now. REALLY, REALLY wish I could. This is fucking painful.

This is her last “reason”

“I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.”

So what? What the honest rotating hell does your abuse have to do with you shitting on trans people and causing so much harm?

I was abused too, Joanne. I was beaten, I was sexually assaulted, I was raped as both a child and an adult. I was emotionally abused, gaslighted, harmed in just about every way a human can be harmed, and still fucking survive.

When I tell people, or when I used to tell people because I don’t anymore, about my past, about the things that happened to me… they ALL, Universally, get this look of abject horror on their faces… then they whisper, ‘how, how… are you even alive?’

I earned my unfortunate chops as far as abuse goes and no. It has nothing to do with trans people. It has nothing to do with me being trans. It has nothing to do with your hate. These are entirely separate issues that you are conflating to muddy the waters of your harmful beliefs.

I lived in domestic violence from the time I was born to the time I got away from my parents. YEARS. DECADES of abuse.

Your abuse is irrelevant to your hatred of and abuse of trans people. Period.

“I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”

I suppose I don’t count in that ‘women who have histories like mine’ crap.

Bigot.

Ignorant bigot at that.

Hateful, ignorant bigot.

Sigh. How many people go where they aren’t wanted?

We can tell when we’re not wanted, most of us, right? I mean, even my autistic ass gets it eventually and I utterly SUCK at social skills.

So… does any actually reasonable person think that a trans woman is going to hang around where she’s obviously not wanted? The answer is obvious, it’s a big fat No.

I can’t even get my trans women friends out of their homes half the time to meet up for coffee. (Gee, I wonder why? Massive eye-roll) You honestly think they’re gonna go pollute themselves at your biddie teas? Nope. Enh. Gameshow buzzer noise.

(I’m no longer applying reasonable to old Joanne here, TERFS have her brain in a jar somewhere. Probably behind the toilet where she gets her ideas from.)

Shit, Joanne, you really could’ve warned your readers you were gonna talk about Triggery shit regarding domestic violence. And I’m out of my anti-anxiety meds too. Great.

“If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship.”

No. No, we wouldn’t, Joanne. Because if you can spout words like I’ve seen on your blog page and on your Twitter feed? You have no solidarity for trans people. You have no kinship to offer. You have only hatred, mockery, and nastiness.

I said I hate her already, right?

Good, cause if I hadn’t? This would’ve done it.

“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’.”

Gods, she’s such an asshole.

  1. Triggered is not a contemporary word.
    1. Contemporary: Of or referring to taking place in the present
    2. Triggered was first used in medicine in 1918. (it’s a medical term Joanne, some of us mentally ill people NEED that word to describe certain issues. You using it like that threw us under the bus.) Physicians were trying to deal with figuring out ‘war neurosis’ from WW1. The etymology of Triggered.

“Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown,…”

OMG you liar! I scanned your twitter feed, I saw NOTHING ahead of you posting that awful tweet about people who menstruate. Relentless attacks my right tit! Prior to that, yes you were actually being nice to children. Good for you.

I mean, you do know your Twitter feed is a matter of public record and that anyone with the skills can search through it pretty much at will, right?

“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.”

Yeah. Joanne, that’s how they get you. TERF radicalizing action plan 101. They’re the ones doing the doxxing. They’re the ones making trans people lose their jobs. Their livelihoods. Their lives. They got you, and now you, with all your privilege and power are doing their work for them. Brava, lady. Bra-fucking-va.

I almost feel sorry for you now. But you have hurt too many people.

Arrogant, ignorant, with money and a large following. Why haven’t people de-platformed this wretch yet?

“I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers,…”

Oh, you mean those young gay kids you’ve hurt? Who you’ve made choose between their community and their beloved author? Those young gay kids? (SMDH, they got her good, didn’t they?)

More TERF rhetoric, it’s damned nauseating.

“I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.”

Darling, you couldn’t write an emotionally complex character if someone sent you a starting kit with a paint by number guide, an AI, and a thesaurus.

She meanders off with more TERF rhetoric, and that’s the post.


I have not felt this unclean in a long, long time. (Whole body Shivers).

I saw nothing in that blog post that wasn’t TERF rhetoric. They got J.K. Rowling good, and the sick, sad thing is she doesn’t even know it. Or if she does, she actually believes that shite and doesn’t care who she hurts with it.

It would’ve been bad enough if she’d just quietly believed all that awfulness. In spreading it on her Twitter feed, she’s given TERFs a famous, obscenely rich, utterly ignorant tool to wield against any trans person, but especially trans kids.

And that is utterly reprehensible in so many ways.


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For further reading:

On ‘biological sex’ and why it’s bullshit (Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity by Katherine J. Wu HARVARD)

WHO: Gender and Genetics.

Sex and gender identity by Planned Parenthood

J. K. Rowling’s transphobia isn’t a surprise VOX

Eddie Redmayne criticizes J.K. Rowling over ‘transphobic’ comments

Daniel Radcliffe responds to J.K. Rowling’s tweets on gender identity: ‘Transgender women are women’

TOR: An open letter to J.K. Rowling

Featured

Response to J. K. Rowling on being an autistic ‘girl’ and her hatefulness.

Content Warning: J. K. Rowling, language, genetics, definitions of terms regarding trans issues, transphobia, TERF, TERF rhetoric, domestic violence, mention of rape, facts and figures about suicide, mention of suicide, suicide, hate speech on her part, screenshots of her Twitter account, menstruation, body parts, name-calling on my part

If you need this in black and white without coloured text, click here.

There are spoilers in this for her work. There may be tangents. (You kidding? It’s me, of course there are gonna be tangents.) I got emotional and slung names, I know I shouldn’t have, but omg, I feel revoltingly soiled after reading what that TERF said.

Rowling hasn’t ever been anything except, ‘oh that person who wrote those potter books?’ to me. The books didn’t hit big until I was in mid to late university, I was heavily into cosplay and hanging with my friends when I wasn’t working on human skeletons/cadavers as part of my degree work, so I just… didn’t really notice them. I had my favorite authors that I read, and she just wasn’t one of them.

I decided to read that blog post because I can. It won’t hurt me as badly as it might others in my shoes simply for the fact that Rowling was and is nothing to me. I can give my educated opinion based on both what she says and how she says it, as well as do some research into her claims.

I don’t have a horse in the race as far as my emotions about her worlds/characters go, so I’m choosing to read this and give the gist of the important bits to my readers, so they don’t have to read what I’ve been told is utter hatred.

After reading it, I can state, unequivocally, based on her words and basic google searches that she is pushing forward an agenda of hatred. She uses nothing but TERF rhetoric and ‘oh pity me’ tactics. She is dangerous, hateful, harmful, and just a downright awful human being. I hate to even share a species with someone so hateful.

I’m so, so sorry for her fans, people who really loved her world and work. I hope you can separate the work from the creator and keep some of the joy her worlds and characters gave you. She may have created it, but without you, her fans, it wouldn’t have life. YOU breathed life into her characters and worlds, and if you want to (and can) keep that, I think you should.

So. Who am I?

You can call me Kae. I have a habit of fact-checking authors on things they claim. If you’re in autism circles at all, you may recognize my name from me tearing apart TO SIRI WITH LOVE and AUTISM UNCENSORED. I’ve written for both BUSTLE and The NY OBSERVER. I’m a published author, a reviewer and I make my living as a freelance fiction editor. I’m a parent, a life partner, and a bit of a loudmouth about social justice.

I’m speaking as an autistic disabled activist, a bio-anthropologist/forensic scientist, and as a trans person. I’m trans-non-binary, I’m neither man nor woman, I’m both and neither depending on the day. My thoughts and feelings are mine. My words are based on my understanding of these concepts. I am autistic, there’s no hidden meaning behind my words, I’ve used the words I actually mean. Any twisting of them is on you, not me. Twisting words is an allistic thing. If I fuck up, please let me know as I’m truly not trying to. Email is best, as I don’t have comments on my website and no contact forms thanks to massive harassment. Kaelan.Rhywiol@gmail.com

Structure: I’ve used coloured text to highlight definitions that might be triggering, things I felt needed extra oomph, as well as her actual words. If you’re trans, I highly recommend you just read my words and avoid hers, which are in Burnt Orange. I didn’t have a horse in the race and her words still hurt me.

As far as the definitions and concepts, I’ve posted common definitions and clarification of a couple of concepts for people unfamiliar with terms used in anthropology, biology, and yes, by trans people and our allies. It’s also HERE in case you want to have it up in a different window while you read. If you’ve rarely run into these terms and concepts they can be hella confusing.

These are the definitions and concepts I have learned from others in the trans community and from advanced science classes in university. (As with all communities, there will be some who agree with me, and some who won’t. Neither autistic people nor trans people are a monolith.)

If you’re at all confused about the extreme difference between sex and gender, I suggest you read the definitions.

AGAB – Assigned Gender At Birth

AFAB – Assigned Female At Birth

AMAB – Assigned Male At Birth

Cis – you feel like your AGAB

Trans – you do not feel like your AGAB

TERF – An acronym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist: A social movement focused on excluding trans people from society. They use many methods to gull people onto their side of things with the sole purpose of eradicating any acceptance for trans people in the world.

GENDER – A socio-cultural construct often based on perceived external biological differences but also on social roles within a society, activities, and on unspoken codes and rules: IE Nail polish is only for girls, only boys wear blue (Both of which are patently untrue, men were the first to wear earrings, nail polish, and makeup, high heels, and corsets even, in renaissance Europe. It goes much further back in other cultures. It wasn’t until much later that men let women dress up in all the fancy stuff.)

A June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Source: Smithsonian

Words like woman, man, girl, boy, et cetera refer to gender. They have nothing to do with genetic sex, perceived biological sex, or what functions our body displays. Our genetic sex and the things our bodies do aren’t relevant to our gender. These are two separate and distinct concepts. Anthropologists and other scientists know this. It’s fact. As many people have said, Our Parts Don’t Determine Our Gender.

SEX – genetic sex on the chromosomal level. Whether someone is xy, xx, xxy, xxxx, xyy etc. and how that affects what our bodies can/can’t do. A person can look and feel like a cis male and be xxy. A person can also be a “woman” to everyone’s perception and be xyy. (Not even sex is binary, sorry nonscientists, it just isn’t, 7th-grade biology lied to you. Shocking, I know.) This is the only way in which ‘sex’ matters to anyone, and the only one it matters to is the person who is carrying those genetics, their medical team, and if they have them, their partners. For further reading on this subject here are a couple of twitter threads that make it easy to understand.

GENDER IDENTITY – What one feels inside, their own internal perception of their gender. MANY cultures from all over the world throughout recorded time have always known there’s a distinct difference between gender and perceived biological sex. Scientists in pretty much all fields know it today. It’s only in modern society that people like Rowling have their heads up their rectums about it.

PERCEIVED BIOLOGICAL SEX – What someone looks like to someone else. This is fraught territory because there are butch cis women who look masculine and there are femme looking cis men. The point being, of course, that you cannot tell what someones’ gender or genetic sex is by looking at them. It’s actually impossible.

Utterly impossible, you’d need a compound microscope to see genetic sex/chromosomal sex and I haven’t seen many of those in girls’ bathrooms or boys for that matter. As far as seeing into someone to try to figure out what their gender is? I don’t think we’ve developed telepathy and thought sensing yet, have we? So why don’t we just do the radical thing of believing people are who they say they are with regards to gender? Hmm? Peachy.


I’m a disabled activist. I’m autistic. I’m also trans non-binary, my pronouns are xie/xem/xyr.

Not that many people use them, given what I look like. I doubt I’ll ever be as androgynous as I want to be. I present as (look like) a woman, I’m not one. ‘She/her’ has ALWAYS felt like an itchy, too tight sweater, one that’s likely to cause hives. I loathed being forced to wear dresses, skirts, make-up, and ‘girly shit’ (I had some misogyny to work out) but the only reason I felt that it was ‘girly shit’ is because it was constantly being shoved down my throat. Every time I heard she/her or what is definitely a feminine first (legal/dead, don’t use it even if you know it) name. I cringed. Always.

I remember asking my mom, when I was 4, when I’d get my penis because I was sick of waiting for it. She laughed her ass off, mocked me and I never asked again. It took me until I was 39 to really understand who I am because I didn’t have the language to label it. Now I do. I had to do a lot of internal work to beat back internalized misogyny, massive feminine social indoctrination, trans discomfort, and a whole load of other crap that really isn’t relevant to this post.

Suffice it to say it took me a while to both understand and accept who I am. I’m proud of the work I’ve done to help my true me come out from under the decades of abuse I’ve experienced. My autism played a part in that, but it’s not the part J. K. Rowling wants you to believe. See, the way she talks about it in her post, we poor little autistic girls can’t possibly be trusted to understand our own genders. We need to be protected!

AS an autistic ‘girl’ and the mom of another one, all I have to say about that is if you’ve never tried to make an autistic do anything, you have no idea how very stubborn we can be. We get enough hate, just by being autistic, we’re not likely to add on the trans unless we’re dead sure we are.

Autistics, in general, tend to question everything, so, um, no, Joanne, we don’t need you to protect us poor innocent autistic girls. Fuck. Off. You do not have permission to use my and my daughter’s neurotype as a screen for your bigoted hatred.

I’m AFAB, (Assigned Female At Birth). Some boneheaded doctor looked at my crotch when I was born and told everyone I was a girl. Science knows that even perceived biological sex isn’t a binary. Trust me. I’m not a girl and never was. I’ve always been gender-fluid non-binary. I’m neither or both man and woman. Some days, because I’m fluid, I’m more femme, most days, I’m neither or I’m masc, as I’m definitely masc leaning.

So when it came to light yesterday that J.K. Rowling has once again doubled down on her awfulness against trans people, I tried to ignore it. It’s the same old song and dance from that old culturally appropriating has-been.

She’s stirred up trouble for trans and queer folks for YEARS, the queer community has known about it forever, she retroactively assigned Dumbledore as gay AFTER she wrote the books. Now… if that isn’t reaching for stuff that isn’t hers? I don’t know what is.

It’s not gay if it’s not on the page babe, and honestly, there are queer authors out here who can write it WAY better than you can retcon it. Me included. BUT now she’s getting worldwide attention for being awful to trans people. Katelyn Burns broke down Rowling’s history of transphobia for Vox last year.

So what does she do? The glory hound doubles down and hurts more people with a blog post. Including me. I don’t like her books or her worlds and I never have. I feel they glorify child abuse in an extremely disturbing way. I mean, they KILLED a scared and abused kid at the end of Fantastic Beasts, then went out for tea and it was all done with.

Like, WHAT? How is that… and this is OKAY with people? (And frankly, as an editor, I have no idea how those books got published, they’re extremely poorly written just from a technical standpoint. J.K. Rowling and E.L. James. Two rich and famous authors who can’t write worth beans.)

I’m not generally involved in trans activism for personal reasons.

I am, however, EXTREMELY involved in autistic and disabled activism. So when I heard that freaking glory hound had tried to use autistic girls as a shield for her awful beliefs and words… I knew I had to make myself read that blog post that everyone is talking about.

People don’t think autistic girls exist, did you know that? We’re unicorns. We’re gods damned myths. Except that I’m sitting here with a diagnosis of ASD, (among other things), a vagina/boobs drinking tea, and writing a blog post I don’t really want to write.

I’d rather be playing Animal Crossing.

But no. J. K. Rowling. You do NOT get to use my existence as a way to hurt trans people. There is a HIGH amount of crossover between queer and autistic communities. While I may not have spoken up about trans issues (trans, not trans activist) I absolutely will about autistic ones.

You done fucked up. Bitch.

Dear gods I don’t want to read this.

A note on structure as a reminder: I’ve put Rowling’s actual inflammatory words in BURNT ORANGE. Please don’t read those if you’re trans. You don’t need to see that. I’ve broken down what she said so people can know without having to swim through her sewage.

The blog post, if anyone wants to pollute their eyeballs with it is here. I definitely don’t recommend reading it, it’s really, incredibly painful to read. Go clean your bathroom with your tongue, it’ll be more productive and you’ll honestly probably feel better than if you read that trash. If you do read it, and it sounds logical and reasonable, then you are part of the problem. Please, please educate yourself.

Anyway:

She writes at first that she’s read lots and lots about trans issues. (I guarantee she hasn’t. If she has at all, they’re outdated, falsified, TERF leaning rhetoric.)

She goes on to say:

“On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

Firstly, that’s a lie. There’s been plenty of tweet threads and people proving that she’s got a long history of ‘absent-mindedly’ liking inflammatory tweets. It’s even been referred to by her publicist that it was a ‘middle-age moment’.

I’m middle-aged. I do not ‘like’ things on social media that aren’t anything I actually support. Whether we enjoy it or not, as public figures (authors are) we need to be careful what we like and retweet because a like or retweet or share from us DOES count as supporting it.

Hey, Joanne, guess what you had to do? All you had to do was say, oops, my bad. And no one would’ve said a thing to you.

Aren’t we all, in western society at least, taught that we should say we’re sorry when we fuck up? She didn’t say she was sorry. Instead, she doubled down.

She talks about willfully supporting Maya Forstater, the woman who even an Employment Court of Britain basically labeled a TERF.

Great choice in icons there, Joanne. She talks about knowing that people would hate her for supporting Forstater. Uh, yeah, J.K. people don’t like TERFs much. Shocker, huh? We don’t like Nazis either.

She whines more about the ‘social media abuse’ for fuck’s sake, this reads like a ‘poor little me, the evil trans people are out to get me’ gags.

She talks about supporting Magdalen Burns. Another known TERF. Just a lesbian one.

“to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, “

Have you ever been hated? I mean, truly hated for something you can’t help? I have. I am. It sucks, a lot actually. And yes. It can ACTUALLY kill. (See what I mean? She can’t write.)

“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive.”

(She needs a comma in front of that last and)

Yep. J.K. There are tons of TERFs just like you. Don’t you find that sooooo comforting? asshole. No. Suppurating, hemorrhoidal asshole.

“They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights.”

(comma before the first and)

So, you… a beloved children’s author with MANY queer young people who adore you, decide to side with the TERFs. Having trouble on understanding the logic there J.K., if all you want to do is protect people.

Billionaire white woman plays the ‘oh my mental health’ card. Holy cow. Sucking hard on the social teat there, aren’t you J.K? (You can be rich and mentally ill, and rich people have more resources to get treatment.)

I’m not mocking mentally ill people. I’m mentally ill. I’m mocking the incredibly common and likely habit of white women, when called on their shit, to whine about some aspect of their mental health. Usually anxiety, cause these days, the ‘pretty’ mental illnesses are anxiety and depression.

Oh, yeah, right, she says she only returned to twitter to share a free children’s book during the pandemic.

Let’s see. She’s quite active on May 25th, and I don’t know if that’s a joke, but dang, threatening to steal people’s pets? Great look J.K. Fantastic. Peachy.

So classy, professional even. (My eyes roll any harder I’m gonna have to get up, fetch them from wherever they land when they fall out of my head, dust the damned things off and figure out how to reattach them.)

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Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account, showing her posting and threatening to steal dogs because no one told J.K. Rowling (fucking egotist) she couldn’t on May 25th, 2020 (I *think* it’s meant to be a joke, but I don’t think ‘jokes’ about how you’re above the law are funny.)

And here she is posting in April, she posted frequently enough that Twitter found quite a bit.

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Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account showing her posting in April

March:

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She does seem to have been absent for February. Probably licking her pride from having people tell her she’s wrong about trans folks. Sex, biological sex, is not binary. Scientists know this. Egotist billionaire children’s writer’s who shit on their fans do not. I mean, you should see the love people send her way, and she STILL wants more attention? Disgusting.

Hell, I’d be happy to have even a small percentage of that love for me and my books. :/

Instead, she goes and beats on the trans community again when her free children’s book didn’t get enough attention to suit her.

SO. My little data-mining project into her Twitter account (I really need a shower now) proves that not only is she a TERF, she’s a fucking liar too. Great role model for kids. Fantastic.

Back to that awful blog post. I need wine.

“Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.”

Nooo, Ms. Egotist. Activists didn’t swarm back into your tweets until YOU attacked TRANS PEOPLE with this awful tweet.

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Screenshot of the tweet that started all of this crap up again. It’s a retweet of an opinion column: Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 World for people who menstruate.

Rowling’s words: “People who menstruate.” I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

She’s not only starting it all up again with that tweet, she’s WILLFULLY attacking anyone who, in her view, isn’t a woman.

Which, like, look in the mirror lady, you were born in 1965, unless you’ve discovered what the rest of us haven’t, at 54, you probably don’t menstruate either. It’s called menopause. Pretty sure you probably know what that is by now.

And I’ve just done a data dive into her account, (shudders) so no, there weren’t any activists in her replies/mentions that I saw, not for months after she popped back in early March like a bad case of head lice you just can’t get rid of. Prior to that tweet, she had the usual outpouring of love from kids and their parents who loved her free book. Lots of illustrations from those kids, her responses to them (which were kind, she was kind to kids, I’ll give her that, just not trans kids. No, no kindness for kids like I used to be.)

Then she goes on to bitch about the term TERF and mislabels its source.

“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists.” 

It was actually coined by Trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist blogger Viv Smythe who popularized the term in 2008 as an online shorthand. (Wikipedia)

(Difference is that Smythe is a trans-inclusive blogger, not an activist. Smythe isn’t to my knowledge in that circle.)

Rowling is also incredibly wrong that there are ‘many people labeled TERFS who, waaaah, don’t deserve it’. No, Joanne, honey, you have to earn that title with your behavior. Which you most definitely have. Even if none of the rest of it were true, that ONE tweet, the one mocking people who menstruate, makes you a TERF.

Trans-Exclusionary means you exclude trans people from anything, really. Just like you, Joanne, are excluding trans women from womens’ rights, womens’ spaces, womens’ conversations, and womens’ lives.

Trans women are women. Period. Even science backs that up. A transitioning trans woman’s bones, skin, hair, body all become incredibly similar to a cis woman’s. A trans woman’s brain is more like a cis woman’s than a cis man’s EVEN BEFORE TRANSITIONING. Scientific fact. Same goes for trans men.

Woman is a GENDER IDENTITY DEFINITION. It has nothing to do with body parts and whether or not you bleed from them. Frankly, I know a couple penis owning people who menstruate, and they were born with those things, so like… what are they? Aliens?

“Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).”

I mean, does she know for a fact she’s a ‘biological’ female? She’s had a chromosomal assay done? Wow. Interesting, she’s more committed to her TERFuckery than I thought. And she’s misused ‘literally’ again. Sigh.

Really, REALLY can’t write.

There’s also no such thing as a biological woman. That’s mixing up the definitions of two very different concepts. People may PERCEIVE her as a woman, she may perceive herself as one, which makes her Cis. Also an asshole, but a cis asshole.

Gah, I’m tired of this blog post already and I haven’t even gotten to the ‘using autistics’ part. We’re still in the ‘shitting on trans people’ part.

“So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?”

She says she’s doing it because someone has to defend the poor innocent children.

No, Joanne, you’re ‘speaking up’ with your bad facts and baseless accusations and your bloody lies because you’re a damned egotistical jerk who isn’t getting enough of the attention you feel is your due. And pardon me, but no, I don’t think you’re capable of research, not after appropriating Indigenous culture for your books (AND NEVER APOLOGIZING) and this bullshit about trans gender people.

Why do I feel that way? Because I’m an ACTUAL scientific researcher. My degrees are in Bioanthropology, Forensic Chemistry, World History, and Education. Trust me, in all that, I learned how to do research and to do it well.

All Joanne here has got is her bad attitude, her prejudice about what makes a woman ‘a woman’, and way, way too much ego.

“Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.” 

(Sigh, roles eyes, trans activism isn’t new, she’s just not used to being called on her shit.)

“Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

Trans women’s brains are much more like a cis woman’s brains than a cis man’s. Oh, and there are sooooo many trans people who are the victims of domestic abuse, in prison, and are victims of sexual assault. If you knew anything about MS, you’d actually listen to the Doctors who would tell you that trans women are valid. Next bad point?

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

I’m an ex-teacher too. The only thing hurting trans kids is not being believed, not being able to express their true gender, and later, not having transition care if they need it. It’s foolish to think anyone would or even could ‘make’ a kid trans, or transition. We’re born the way we are.

All of us trans folks, but especially adolescents, already have incredibly high suicide rates, her bullshit is NOT helping.

Joanne my dear, just because you won the author lottery in a big way (we all know it’s not a meritocracy, or you definitely wouldn’t be where you are) doesn’t mean you are the be-all and end-all of things you obviously don’t understand. Just because you have money and can fund a charity… no, just no. You’re utterly HORRIBLE.

My heart bleeds for all those trans kids out there, the ones who thought maybe Harry Potter and Hogwarts had room for them, only to find out that not only does Hogwarts not have room, the author’s heart doesn’t either.

I highly recommend turning to fanfiction. There’s so much wonderful fanfic out there based in her world that you can find exactly what you need without having anything to do with her. There are also a lot of trans authors out here, we write worlds where you are welcome, wanted, and loved. Where you’ll find people similar to you having adventures and joys and happily ever afters. You’ll need to search indie and self-publishing for us because mainstream publishing hates us as much as Joanne does.

“The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.”

You and Trump do make a pair don’t you? Both sharing scientifically disproven bullshit under the guise of caring for someone else when all you want is attention and controversy.

Shame on you, Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Shame. On. You. During the biggest Black Lives Matters worldwide revolution ever, you do this. You’re disgusting.

And again, that’s not hurt talking, I never liked her books, Hogwarts wasn’t ever this special fun place for me, I was in Uni when the books became big, so they just missed me completely. I didn’t lose anything by her being awful.

I feel so horrible for those who did. I’m so sorry my luvs, you’re VALID and her bullshit is exactly that. A steaming stream of grass-fed, medicated cow shit (grass-fed, medicated is looser, wetter, stinkier) splattered across a barn floor. Just toss some hay on that and shovel it out the door. At least cow shit has fertilization usages, her shit is just glorifying her own sad, hateful ignorance.

I can’t even imagine myself being that wealthy so it’s not jealousy either. I mean, hell, she wants to support trans people she can, I’ll happily give her my Paypal address. In the blink of an eye and the click of her finger, she could change the lives of so many trans people if she just bothered.

Most of us have paypals, kofis, many of us have GoFundMes to get out of abusive situations or get our surgeries if we need/want them. Trans creators tend to starve, wither into the unknown, while she in her mighty white rich lady ‘knowledge’ is ‘writing a crime series’ so ‘the topic of trans issues is interesting to her’.

Translation, she’s thinking of stealing a trans author’s place at the publishing table by writing a trans book.

But we all know she won’t do that. She won’t help trans people. She hates us.

Freedom of speech exists, yes. It means you get to say whatever you want unless your government forbids it, yes. It also means you get to take the consequences. Which is people like me loathing you. Knowledge that you’re hurting KIDS, as well as your fans. The people who put you where you are. Your Fans.

I’m an author too, and as I detailed in my thread here, I can’t wrap my head around hurting my fans that badly. Without our fans, we writers are nothing more than extremely odd people in torn t-shirts, messy hair, and skivvies, (if we’re feeling fancy) whispering stories to ourselves in dark rooms.

Without your fans? As an author? You’re nothing but a blowhard. And she’s doing her level best to hurt so many of her fans to stroke her outsized damned ego.

“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

Gods, did she pull that out of her toilet? I think she did. It’s nothing more than TERF rhetoric. Precious fertility, beautiful femininity cow crap. She talks about transition care as if people are passing around pills like at the rave parties in the ’90s.

No. That’s not how transition care works. You have to go through SO MUCH to even be able to access transition care. Psychotherapy is just part of that, it’s not something you do on a whim, like she’s painted there. The rates of people detransitioning are extremely low, because of the barriers in place to prevent whims like she’s describing. No, the ones who detransition? They’re almost always the ones who have to rely on intolerant family members for support.

Hey, Joanne, if you’re so concerned about those who have to detransition, why don’t you go to GoFundme.com and give some of your unearned wealth to those who really need it. The ones who have no choice but to sacrifice their true selves so that they can feed their bodies?

But no. We know you won’t do that either.

Oh, our fertility… boo hoo. Transition care doesn’t do that.

As if fertility is all that. JFC, everything she says is TERF rhetoric. EVERYTHING. And somehow she thinks people transition BECAUSE of homophobic family members? I mean, does she really have no idea how much more abuse trans folks suffer from that very hatred? Obviously not.

“The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

Uh, yeah, there’s A. More people running around earth these days, and B. It’s not quite as unacceptable to be trans as it used to be, so of course, more people are going to be looking for transition care. They just stopped hiding. Duh. Same thing happened when I was a kid and it became less awful to society to be left-handed. (I was taught, violently, to write with my right hand. I’m naturally left-handed.)

As for Autistic girls, unicorns, yeah, there’s HUGE, MASSIVE overlap between queer identities and autism. There’s been a few studies done on it. No, we don’t yet know why, but as an autistic enby, one you’d call a girl, I’ll tell you it’s not because of peer pressure or because I don’t know who I am. I’ve always known who I am. I’ve always been trans. My parents did their level best to turn me into a girl because of my crotch, guess what, I’m not one!

The only confusion I’ve ever suffered about my gender identity? Was thinking I was a girl because I’d been socialized as one. So Fuck Off, Joanne, with that bullshit about autistic girls. You do not have my permission to use people like me and my daughter and so many others as a shield for your TERF actions. Absolutely not.

She mentions in glowing terms a supposed Dr. Lisa Littman who studied ‘growing numbers of youth affected by the echo chambers of social media’. She says the doctor received censure from her colleagues for spreading misinformation.

Now… um, I don’t know about you? But Peer-Reviewed Science is a thing. If that doctor’s peers said she was spreading misinformation and that she needed to be censored? That’s good enough for me and most of the general public. Not TERFs though. Not good enough for the All-Mighty Joanne here. She knows better than all the docs in the US and UK combined! We should really listen to her! Not.

“The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves.”

That’s because they do. You jizz-whistler. Here’s an article from the Human Rights Campaign with facts and figures. It’s not pretty, and guess what you flappy twat, you’ve made it worse.

Here’s one showing that puberty blockers (again, transition care is incredibly hard to get, you have to jump through a LOT of hoops to get it, especially for a kid) REDUCE suicide in trans kids.

Preventing suicide in trans people, by the Trevor Project (I’m pretty sure the Trevor project knows more about trans people than Ms. Fantastic TERF here.)

I could keep going, on, and on, and on, and on with the science. It’s not like I looked into my toilet bowl one morning, figured a particular turd looked nice and decided to smear it all across my Twitter feed like Joanne here did. No, I actually look up resources that are recent, usually peer-reviewed, and relevant.

“In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”

Bullshit. I call bullshit. I bet that guy was MADE to resign because of his bigotry. There have been MANY peer-reviewed, scientific studies on trans people, and transition care. That’s just absolute, utterly foolish, easily disprovable hogwash. A Google search would tell you that!

You see, kids. You can find support for ANY prejudice on the internet. Joanne here found hers in TERF rhetoric, discredited doctors and psychotherapists… and apparently after a bowel movement.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

No. No, no, no, no, no you yeasty, white-livered harpy.

Every trans person I ever met, when I was going through my own journey to acceptance, both back as a teen who never fit in ‘her’ skin and as an adult… EVERY ONE supplied information, websites, places to find more information on what it feels like to be trans. This bullshit of hers also completely erases the struggles of non-binary people and trans men!

Trans folks advised caution, to wait and sit with it to make sure it fit.

We don’t go around trying to convince others to join us like some freakish cult. Thanks for that insult you damned soggy noodle. No, I’ll leave that kind of cultish behavior to you and your TERFy friends.

It’s well known in the queer community that Tumblr especially, but also Reddit are blood-chummed feeding grounds for TERFs looking for young queers to radicalize AGAINST trans people. Including young trans people. It’s awful.

It works too, that’s the sad part. And Joanne’s self-aggrandizing chicken scratch doesn’t help that.

EVERYTHING Joanne here has said as ‘proof’? It’s TERF rhetoric. Here, don’t believe me…

How to spot TERF Ideology, from the University of Cambridge, UK.

“…although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.”

Joanne dear, was it published this century? Did you forget your glasses? You’ve got the numbers backward, darling. Almost exactly backward. 60-90% of trans teens either commit suicide or attempt to commit suicide. They don’t ‘outgrow’ anything, except maybe their asshole parents who didn’t listen to them. If they don’t transition, they tend to do so in adulthood if they can.

Oh, and few of us speak to the parents who denied us who we really are. I certainly don’t.

“Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.”

Another lie, if anything, it’s harder to access transition care now. To my knowledge, trans kids have the exact same transition schedule, if not LONGER than an adult does.

How many of these am I gonna have to debunk before I get to the autistic part? (Note; I had already passed the autistic part, she was just using us as a shield. Dehumanizing our minds and taking possession of our bodies as a way to make herself look good.)

“We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls.”

What a bloody prude. Uh. Nope again. I have a daughter. I see what her life is like. I weigh it against everything I experienced as a kid in the 80s, yes dear, we grew up in the same decade, and no, absolutely no, this generation is far easier on girls than it was on people dubbed ‘girl’ in that time. Just the existence of so much indie porn is a sign that the world is NOT more misogynistic. Female presenting people have more freedom to express themselves in any way they want, including sexually, in this century than ever before.

You’re a fool. Joanne. A dyed in the wool fool. You’ve bought into TERF rhetoric in a big way and you’re too damned egotistical to admit you were wrong and apologize for hurting so many people.

“Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”

Yeah? Do you forget, Joanne dear? It was followed by a backhand in the ’80s. Maybe a belting with dad’s belt if we didn’t conform. Been there, done that, have the godsdamned scars to prove it. You, you… lying bitch.

“The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion (of womanhood) concerns many others just as much.”

Sure. Sure, Joanne, when someone with your reach starts shitting out TERF rhetoric on your Twitter feed, you’re gonna get a lot of TERFs reaching out to you expressing their ‘concern’.

There are A LOT of TERFs, Joanne. You are ignorant, you’re dangerous, and I wish to gods you’d get kicked off Twitter.

“Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”

Sighs forever. I’m reasonably good looking Joanne, I look like a woman, I’m not, but that hasn’t stopped the slurs, the catcalls, the sexual assaults, the rapes. Plural Joanne, Plural. Rapes. Sit with that.

I still use gender-inclusive language and you know what? It’s not only ACCURATE (or aren’t you a woman anymore you post-menopausal crab?) It keeps people from KILLING THEMSELVES.

So a bunch of biddies who never got to do anything in their lives because of sexism don’t like the terms. Sorry not sorry? I’d rather have a few people uncomfy with the changing times than see another single trans kid dead.

You weren’t much to me, I knew your name, saw the Potter movies once cause I was bored, tried to read your awful books to my kids (Kids asked me to stop by the way, I was willing to soldier on for them). Then I saw, over time, some red flags of queer hatred.

Turning Dumbledore gay only after the fact? Not even close to cool. I started to not like you much before this most recent painful mockery, Joanne, but now? I hate you. With every fiber of my being. I wish nothing good for you for the rest of your life.

For someone like you to fall into TERF rhetoric, and then to not only just… quietly believe it… (not good, but sure, you want to believe that shite and keep it to yourself? Whatever. Not on me) but to publicly, as a beloved children’s author, as a Queen’s Companion of Honour, as a billionaire, as a celebrity… my gods, just… my gods. You have no idea of the harm you’ve done and continue to do. The Peter Parker principle applies, with great power comes great responsibility. J.K. Rowling has not only abandoned that responsibility, she’s used her might to support and push forward the beliefs of an awful edge group of so-called feminists who wouldn’t know feminism if it bit them. She’s used her power to HURT.

Realistically, TERFs are quite good at making people believe them, at making all these so-called talking points of yours sound reasonable. They’re not reasonable. It’s hatred, Joanne. You’re spewing hatred on all your fans. Trans and Cis alike. My gods. You’re utterly revolting.

I have no idea how many deaths among the trans community you’ve caused with this egotistical braying, but I guarantee you there have been some. Their blood is on your soul. Pay for it forever through time as far as I’m concerned.

Onwards. I really wish I could drink wine right now. REALLY, REALLY wish I could. This is fucking painful.

This is her last “reason”

“I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.”

So what? What the honest rotating hell does your abuse have to do with you shitting on trans people and causing so much harm?

I was abused too, Joanne. I was beaten, I was sexually assaulted, I was raped as both a child and an adult. I was emotionally abused, gaslighted, harmed in just about every way a human can be harmed, and still fucking survive.

When I tell people, or when I used to tell people because I don’t anymore, about my past, about the things that happened to me… they ALL, Universally, get this look of abject horror on their faces… then they whisper, ‘how, how… are you even alive?’

I earned my unfortunate chops as far as abuse goes and no. It has nothing to do with trans people. It has nothing to do with me being trans. It has nothing to do with your hate. These are entirely separate issues that you are conflating to muddy the waters of your harmful beliefs.

I lived in domestic violence from the time I was born to the time I got away from my parents. YEARS. DECADES of abuse.

Your abuse is irrelevant to your hatred of and abuse of trans people. Period.

“I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”

I suppose I don’t count in that ‘women who have histories like mine’ crap.

Bigot.

Ignorant bigot at that.

Hateful, ignorant bigot.

Sigh. How many people go where they aren’t wanted?

We can tell when we’re not wanted, most of us, right? I mean, even my autistic ass gets it eventually and I utterly SUCK at social skills.

So… does any actually reasonable person think that a trans woman is going to hang around where she’s obviously not wanted? The answer is obvious, it’s a big fat No.

I can’t even get my trans women friends out of their homes half the time to meet up for coffee. (Gee, I wonder why? Massive eye-roll) You honestly think they’re gonna go pollute themselves at your biddie teas? Nope. Enh. Gameshow buzzer noise.

(I’m no longer applying reasonable to old Joanne here, TERFS have her brain in a jar somewhere. Probably behind the toilet where she gets her ideas from.)

Shit, Joanne, you really could’ve warned your readers you were gonna talk about Triggery shit regarding domestic violence. And I’m out of my anti-anxiety meds too. Great.

“If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship.”

No. No, we wouldn’t, Joanne. Because if you can spout words like I’ve seen on your blog page and on your Twitter feed? You have no solidarity for trans people. You have no kinship to offer. You have only hatred, mockery, and nastiness.

I said I hate her already, right?

Good, cause if I hadn’t? This would’ve done it.

“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’.”

Gods, she’s such an asshole.

  1. Triggered is not a contemporary word.
    1. Contemporary: Of or referring to taking place in the present
    2. Triggered was first used in medicine in 1918. (it’s a medical term Joanne, some of us mentally ill people NEED that word to describe certain issues. You using it like that threw us under the bus.) Physicians were trying to deal with figuring out ‘war neurosis’ from WW1. The etymology of Triggered.

“Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown,…”

OMG you liar! I scanned your twitter feed, I saw NOTHING ahead of you posting that awful tweet about people who menstruate. Relentless attacks my right tit! Prior to that, yes you were actually being nice to children. Good for you.

I mean, you do know your Twitter feed is a matter of public record and that anyone with the skills can search through it pretty much at will, right?

“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.”

Yeah. Joanne, that’s how they get you. TERF radicalizing action plan 101. They’re the ones doing the doxxing. They’re the ones making trans people lose their jobs. Their livelihoods. Their lives. They got you, and now you, with all your privilege and power are doing their work for them. Brava, lady. Bra-fucking-va.

I almost feel sorry for you now. But you have hurt too many people.

Arrogant, ignorant, with money and a large following. Why haven’t people de-platformed this wretch yet?

“I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers,…”

Oh, you mean those young gay kids you’ve hurt? Who you’ve made choose between their community and their beloved author? Those young gay kids? (SMDH, they got her good, didn’t they?)

More TERF rhetoric, it’s damned nauseating.

“I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.”

Darling, you couldn’t write an emotionally complex character if someone sent you a starting kit with a paint by number guide, an AI, and a thesaurus.

She meanders off with more TERF rhetoric, and that’s the post.


I have not felt this unclean in a long, long time. (Whole body Shivers).

I saw nothing in that blog post that wasn’t TERF rhetoric. They got J.K. Rowling good, and the sick, sad thing is she doesn’t even know it. Or if she does, she actually believes that shite and doesn’t care who she hurts with it.

It would’ve been bad enough if she’d just quietly believed all that awfulness. In spreading it on her Twitter feed, she’s given TERFs a famous, obscenely rich, utterly ignorant tool to wield against any trans person, but especially trans kids.

And that is utterly reprehensible in so many ways.


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My Amazon Author Site; I write books with queer autistic people like me. I write in the genres of SFF, Paranormal Romance, Historical Romance, and Futuristic Romance as well as erotic vignettes.

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Please also see the twitter hashtag #KaelanRhysRarities for more recent pieces. Etsy charges me to list and maintain a listing, so I put my pieces on the hashtag first to save both me and a potential buyer money.


For further reading:

On ‘biological sex’ and why it’s bullshit (Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity by Katherine J. Wu HARVARD)

WHO: Gender and Genetics.

Sex and gender identity by Planned Parenthood

J. K. Rowling’s transphobia isn’t a surprise VOX

Eddie Redmayne criticizes J.K. Rowling over ‘transphobic’ comments

Daniel Radcliffe responds to J.K. Rowling’s tweets on gender identity: ‘Transgender women are women’

TOR: An open letter to J.K. Rowling

Review: THE BONE WITCH SERIES by Rin Chupeco

Dark Young Adult Fantasy

There is a minor spoiler about the bury your gays trope in this review.

Rated: 5 stars across the board. Each book is so damned good.

I’m breaking my standard review format and doing all three of these as a series, basically because I read them back to back in a gluttonous feast of literary enjoyment!

I saw some chatter about The Bone Witch, book one, when it first came out, but YA books historically don’t move me. I think it’s because I never had anything resembling a decent childhood, so I can rarely connect with the characters. I just sorta sighed and figured it wasn’t for me. While really wishing it was because gosh it sounded good.

When I saw it at the library a week or so ago, I grabbed it, thinking I’d read it for my eldest, who is a reluctant reader. (For someone who doesn’t like YA much, I read an awful lot of it in order to help her find books she WILL love.)

My gods did this series ever suck me in and take over my life. I tore through book one, then immediately bought book two (even though I’d put it on hold at the library, because I didn’t want to wait ’til the next day to pick it up!!). I also lucked out in that the third book was dropping on March 5th, so I preordered that one too.

These books are THAT good. I don’t buy many books because I can’t afford it, these are well worth the cost to me though.

For me to enjoy a YA book/series it really has to be so very dark that adults with my kind of taste in fantasy will enjoy it regardless of the age of the protagonists.

The Bone Witch series delivers on everything I love in fantasy. It’s dark, it’s gothic, the characters are well-meaning but oh man, they will do anything they have to in order to protect the people they love. Best about this series? The entire cast is diverse. I loved that so much!

The things I loved about this series are hard to enumerate, to be honest, because there’s just so MANY.

I love the main character, Tea (pronounced Te-uh), she’s an anti-heroine, someone who wants to do good, but because of her skills, powers, personality and what the world throws at her… well… the good she does and the path she walks tends to be littered with the wrong actions for the right reasons. And maybe more than a few bodies. PERFECT.

Tea is a necromancer, to put it bluntly, but Chupeco has taken that trope, shoved it in a bag and shaken it up so much that it’s new, fresh and enchanting. I’ve never seen quite this take on necromantic powers before and it was just wonderful to sink myself into a story that felt so new.

The setting! The costumes! The world! The mythology! The representation! The magic! The relationships! The mystery! I legitimately can’t find anything I hated about these books, and I’m a picky damned reader so can usually find something I’d improve on.

I loved that, most of all, in the end, this series is about love. Not like a romance is about love, though there is a romance in the series (and such a good one I had to squee about it!). This series is more about the different kinds of love one person can experience. From platonic to sibling to romantic, to the love a student can hold for a mentor… all the kinds of loves. The story is also about the kinds of things a person can be driven to in order to protect their loves. It’s also about letting go. There won’t be more with the main characters after this trilogy. This is a finished trilogy but that’s absolutely okay with how everything ended.

The side characters were so well fleshed out and diverse! I loved them all. I was so thrilled to find that there’s trans rep for a side character in this (a trans girl) and there’s also positive fat rep for a side character, there’s positive rep of gay side characters and bisexual ones. The queer rep was done *exactly* right for an author who I suspect may not be queer herself. The main character wasn’t, her relationships and interests are m/f, but the side characters SHOWED us queer folk, and best yet? None of us died! No bury your gays crap here. Right up ’til the end of the last book I was *terrified* Chupeco was going to break my heart and one of my queer-babies was gonna die. But she held the pace, and my heart, sacred. No queers died here.

The series is also safe for my sex-repulsed ace readers by the way, since I know there’s some of you out there. There is on page kissing, references to sleeping in the same bed (which I found beautifully refreshing to see in YA, more please!) but no on page nooky to drive you away from reading what is probably going to go down as one of my absolute favorite fantasy series of all time.

Something else I really loved about these? It’s the way they were written. The current time vs the past time format of two different characters PoV really worked. Something that could’ve made the series flop worked wonderfully under Chupeco’s masterful pen.

I’ll be buying this series in hardcover (Even though I already bought them in ecopy) just so I can have them on my shelf.

The number of books I do that for these days is minuscule because I’m out of space!

As I was telling a twitter pal recently, these books are some of the quiet ones that you don’t hear all that much about. They don’t make a gargantuan splash, but oh man do they deliver in all the best of ways. I would truly love to see these as a movie on the big screen. No more Harry Potter crap please, develop these instead!

I did catch several editorial oopsies in the first book, (my day job is as a fiction editor) but it wasn’t enough to really throw me out of the story too badly. Books two and three were much better edited and I only caught a couple of glitches.

Hie thee hence to where you get books and get these NOW so I can talk to more people about them! 🙂

CONTENT WARNINGS: There is one section of parental abuse (both emotional and physical) in book two of a queer son by a parent BECAUSE the son is queer. It sorta smacked me in the face, I feel it was necessary to explain a bit of character development, and at just three lines it was something I feel is easy to accept (even though I’ve been rejected by my mother for being queer) IF you know it’s coming. But heads up that it is there.

Other CWs: Abuse, violence, blood and gore (battle scenes), animal/companion animal death (it’s not as bad as it sounds because the critters are technically immortal, they come back) suicidal ideation, kidnapping/imprisonment, death/dying, blood, depiction of mental illness due to spells/poisoning, discriminatory attitudes (towards Tea’s profession and skills), food (mention of)

Take a look at these gorgeous covers! I can’t wait to have them on my shelf. Buy links are under each book:)

The Bone Witch: Book 1

Bone Witch.jpg

Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Young Adult Book of Spring 2017!

In the captivating start to a new, darkly lyrical fantasy series for readers of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir, Tea can raise the dead, but resurrection comes at a price…

Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise. If there’s anything I’ve learned from him in the years since, it’s that the dead hide truths as well as the living.

When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.

In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha—one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice.

Memoirs of a Geisha meets The Name of the Wind in this brilliant new fantasy series by Rin Chupeco!

AMAZON

INDIGO/CHAPTERS/KOBO

GOODREADS

The Heart Forger: Book 2

Heart Forger

In The Bone Witch, Tea mastered resurrection—now she’s after revenge…

No one knows death like Tea. A bone witch who can resurrect the dead, she has the power to take life…and return it. And she is done with her self-imposed exile. Her heart is set on vengeance, and she now possesses all she needs to command the mighty daeva. With the help of these terrifying beasts, she can finally enact revenge against the royals who wronged her—and took the life of her one true love.

But there are those who plot against her, those who would use Tea’s dark power for their own nefarious ends. Because you can’t kill someone who can never die…

War is brewing among the kingdoms, and when dark magic is at play, no one is safe.

AMAZON

INDIGO/CHAPTERS/KOBO

GOODREADS

ShadowGlass: Book 3

Shadow Glass

The dramatic finale to The Bone Witch series! Tea’s dark magic eats away at her, but she must save the one she loves most, even while her life—and the kingdoms—are on the brink of destruction.

In the Eight Kingdoms, none have greater strength or influence than the asha, who hold elemental magic. But only a bone witch has the power to raise the dead. Tea has used this dark magic to breathe life into those she has loved and lost…and those who would join her army against the deceitful royals. But Tea’s quest to conjure a shadowglass, to achieve immortality for the one person she loves most in the world, threatens to consume her.

Tea’s heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. Her work with the monstrous azi, her thirst for retribution, her desire to unmask the Faceless—they all feed the darkrot that is gradually consuming her heartsglass. She is haunted by blackouts and strange visions, and when she wakes with blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater than the elder asha or even her conscience. Tea’s life—and the fate of the kingdoms—hangs in the balance.

“Chupeco delights. Exceptionally written from beginning to end.” —Buzzfeed on The Bone Witch

AMAZON

INDIGO/CHAPTERS/KOBO

GOODREADS

Author’s Website

Author’s Twitter

 

Ghostwriting and employing ghostwriters, right or wrong?

ghostwrite

verb

ghost·​write | \ ˈgōs(t)-ˌrīt  \
ghostwrote\ ˈgōs(t)-​ˌrōt  \ghostwritten\ ˈgōs(t)-​ˌri-​tᵊn  \

Definition of ghostwrite

intransitive verb

to write for and in the name of another

transitive verb

to write (a speech, a book, etc.) for another who is the presumed or credited author

I just got into it with a mutual on Twitter, and as usual, I had no idea someone was getting upset with me until they snapped at me and hurt me. I mean, why do people persist in asking questions and searching for clarification if they don’t want the fucking answers? I’ll never understand that.

Isn’t the point of social media to be social and talk about things? If not, what the fuck is the point of it anyway?

I really suck at social shit. Autistic, yo? and one of those autistics who has a LOT of problem with social shit. It’s my biggest weakness because of my autistic brain. (I still wouldn’t change my brain, I love being autistic.) I will probably NEVER manage to catch on that I’m annoying someone before they either block me or snap at me or subtweet me or whatever.

I’m totally cool with people not agreeing with me, I’m used to it, but if you ask a question, and I’m in the mood, I’ll tell you my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me! Ask me to drop the subject, whatever, I’m fine with that. But I’ll always be hurt by impoliteness. I’ve been abused too much in my life not to be. Politeness, to me, is the very least amount of consideration another person owes someone, and yeah, rudeness can make me cry.

So I’m in tears, there’s that.

I do feel the need to write a bit more clearly and deeply about why I feel ghostwriting fiction or employing a ghostwriter for fiction is so wrong. Since it’s my damned blog you can choose to engage with it or not.

I do feel it’s wrong. I can’t help but feel it’s wrong in fiction with the way it’s done now.

And yes, I’m well aware that a lot of marginalized writers choose to ghostwrite to pay the bills so they can afford to write their stories.

As with anything marginalized people have to do to get by, go for it. It doesn’t change that I feel it’s wrong, (and I’m lucky enough to have the privilege to not be forced to do it myself) but I hope you manage to survive long enough in publishing that we get your actual stories, because those are the ones I desperately want to read.

I’ve even considered ghostwriting fiction myself (for about 30 seconds). I *have* made money ghostwriting non-fiction.

Now… those are two different animals. Non-fiction and fiction, and the expectations of readers are different, too.

For generations, non-fiction has been openly ghostwritten, just because someone is a celebrity or has something to say doesn’t mean they know how to write. It’s a skill, after all. I believe the ghostwriter is often credited in the book somewhere for doing the actual writing. It’s on the up and up, no one is trying to hide anything from anyone. The ghostwriter is often paid a living wage for the work. It doesn’t work that way in fiction.

I don’t know when the switch in fiction happened, sometime in the last century or later part of the 20th century is my guess. I could go do the research to find out when it started, but I don’t want to, it’s not the point for this piece.

But it’s not a time-honored tradition. It’s also not on the up and up.

In fiction, the ghostwriters aren’t paid well, by and large. (I’ve looked at listings for them, 500$ for a full-length novel that I have no rights to is GOOD pay for that kind of service when you’re first starting out. $100 is more average.)

They’re also not credited for their work, and the consumer often has no idea the book is ghostwritten. Lies upon lies. I want my food labeled with the ingredients, why the hell wouldn’t I want my books labeled too? That makes no damned logical sense at all.

I’m, unfortunately perhaps, unable to NOT see it when an author’s voice changes. I buy and read books primarily for the authors voice. It’s my first criteria for a book. I can’t manage to ignore it when the voice changes. It’s just not something I can do.

Something about how my brain and memory works makes it incredibly clear to me when the voice in a series of books changes. That means I’m not, as the consumer, getting what I paid for because I paid for the original author’s voice and words. Not the ghostwriters.

The way it seems to work in traditional publishing is that the author gets big enough with their own writing that there’s more demand for it. They’ve made their readers love their voice, worlds, and characters so much that they desperately want more. Every writer’s dream. But then the author starts getting pressured by corporate publishing to produce books faster and faster. I mean, why would corporate publishing want to bother looking for new authors when they have a sure winner they can just hassle into writing faster?

Several big-name paranormal authors are doing it now. Any of the leaders, I almost guarantee, are probably using ghosts to write their work if they’ve got a fast release schedule.

I’m not demonizing the ghostwriters any more than the authors who hire them. In my unvarnished opinion, they’re both contributing to the fucked up mess that is modern publishing. The real bad guys here are the corporate fat-cats who run publishing, but we’re all of us implicated. From the person who buys books they know are ghostwritten, to the desperate author who can’t keep up with her publication schedule, to the ghostwriters themselves. We all contribute to this mess.

Maybe the ghostwriters have to do it. Like I said, I have the privilege to NOT have to do that. I can quit writing and go get a sales job if I want to. (I don’t. I’d rather shove a fork in my eye, and currently, my partner makes enough money that we can scrimp by, barely, hoping like hope that my books take off enough that I can make a living wage at this. It’s not looking likely folks, and ghostwriting… well, that’s part of the reason why.)

Reasons I hate it, and this is on both the author who hires the ghostwriter and the ghostwriter who does the work. It’s a two-way street.

  1. A) Dishonesty: It’s dishonest to put out the books in a series as being written by THE AUTHOR when they’re written by a ghost. Dishonesty doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people as much as it does me. I’m incredibly bothered by a lie, and that’s what it feels like when the ghostwriter isn’t credited as being the one who did the work. In fiction, they almost never are. It’s treated like a dirty secret. Authors who use ghosts are accused of not being REAL authors. (And I mean, they aren’t, are they?) On those listings advertising for ghostwriting, there’s almost always a DND (Do Not Disclose) meaning you can’t tell anyone, ever, that you wrote the book, not the author in question. Lies.
  2. A) Saturation: It keeps the market saturated. These authors who release a book sometimes as often as every three months… yeahnope. I write incredibly fast. I can easily do a 5k day (write 5000 words in a day) and I’ve had 11 and 18k days. (Most full-length novels are between 80,000 and 120,000 words in romance.) So for me to doubt any author is writing a polished and releasable book that fast has some worth to it. Is it technically possible? Sure. But it’s technically possible for a lot of things to happen, that doesn’t make it bloody likely for EVERY paranormal romance author who are household names to be able to keep to that kind of production schedule. But they all seem to manage it, don’t they? Ever wondered HOW? No? I have.
  3. B) Saturation: Keeps the market saturated. What do you think happens to authors like me, the newer ones who write paranormal romance (or any other saturated genre) and want to break into that? There’s still a demand for it, readers are still buying it, but because the top 4 or 5 big-name authors are releasing books every 3 months or so… (probably ghostwritten by a stable of ghosts who aren’t paid enough and aren’t credited for their work) we don’t have a chance. Paranormal Romance is my ultimate favorite sub-genre, that and SFF Romance. With authors who keep pumping out books every 3 months… newer authors just don’t have a chance in hell. We can’t compete with that, and there’s no demand for our books with that going on. I can’t find an agent for my work, because the books won’t sell, because the market is saturated by these big names. If you think that isn’t playing into the hands of corporate America and capitalism, think again. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with my writing. The industry is broken. If we don’t talk about dirty little secrets like this, how in the world can we ever fix the industry? We can’t. Corporate sure as hell doesn’t want it fixed, I guarantee it. They’ve got a working methodology, they don’t CARE if marginalized writers are hurting and giving up their dreams.
  4. B) Dishonesty: I choose where my book money goes very carefully, because I can’t afford to buy every book I want. As with anything in the world, we choose what we want the world to look like by where we spend our time and our money. The authors I choose to support are the ones I’m hoping will have a chance. I’m saying with my purchase that I want more of THEIR story and THEIR words, THEIR voice. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I buy mostly marginalized people’s work, and it’s often Indie, either from an independent publisher or a self-pubbed book. I’m trying to send the message with my reading choices that no, I don’t want the mass produced ghostwritten stuff that ISN’T as good as the original authors work. I want to support people who don’t use ghostwriters. I want to read ownvoices stories written by the person whose name is on the cover of the book. I don’t feel that’s wrong. I DO feel it’s wrong to lie to me about who is writing the book. I mean, who likes to be lied to? (It also opens me up to the risk of plagiarism, like the recent brouhaha in romancelandia and Cristiane Serruya. She claimed to have used a ghostwriter who plagiarised other authors and that she didn’t know. (Whether I believe that or not is a separate situation, cause I don’t. But it does open me up to the risk that the ghostwriter isn’t honest. It’s MY name on the books, so it’d be me who was guilty of plagiarising, if I’d used a ghostwriter who had.)
  5. Quality: I’ve seen self-professed ghostwriters saying they don’t put the sweat and blood and work into a ghostwritten piece that they would into their own work. Maybe… just maybe, that’s part of the reason the quality of writing in a vast majority of books published these days stinks so badly? Just a thought.
  6. Skewed Expectations: With the schedule of production being releases by ‘the same author’ every 3 to 6 months, readers get the idea that all authors can do that. Let me break down how long it takes me to write a book when I’m on my game, okay? I can draft a full-length novel (first draft, it’s a mess) in 4 to 8 weeks, because I write ridiculously fast. Not all authors can do that. Then, because I care about the quality of what I put out, I let it sit for a week or so before I dive into rewrites and edits. That usually takes several passes to get right. So usually, I’m ready for my critique partners to take a look at it around draft 4 to draft 6, at this point, it’s 4 months into the process. They usually take about a month to get their opinions and suggestions back to me. That’s 5 months. I then go through a couple of more passes to incorporate the suggestions they’ve made that I want to add. That can take up to two months, putting us at 7 months. If I need sensitivity/authenticity readers, I then send it to them. 8 months. 9 to incorporate their suggestions/remove my fuckups. So 7 to 9 months, depending, before the book-baby even goes to my editor at my publisher. Then it enters the publication schedule. At my publisher, that’s 6 to 8 months, so it’ll be another 5 to 7 months before I do another round of edits and we start the cover making process. It’s slightly different if I’m self-pubbing it, but the time is roughly the same. From the moment I put the first word on the page, to the time a reader can buy the book, we’re looking at 14 to 16 MONTHS between books. Not three. And I write fucking FAST. You see why I doubt the every three to six months bullshite so many authors are pulling out of their arses? That’s why. If I wrote slowly it’d be different, maybe I’d find it more believable, but I don’t. I’m one of the fastest writers I know of (not the fastest, I can name several who are faster, but I AM fast.) I can buy that it’s possible to do it if you’re really damned good at juggling edits and drafting and can work on multiple projects. But most writers I know can’t do most of that. We’re either shite at scheduling, or we can’t focus on more than one project, or, or, or…

Sigh.

There’s no such thing as ethical consumption in a capitalist society, but there are shades of grey within that maxim. If I have the choice of buying a struggling, marginalized indie authors work vs a big name who is dishonest about the source of the words published under their name… I’ll always choose the struggling author. I empathize with that too much NOT to.

In doing so, I support that persons’ dream of being an author.

Because ghostwriting isn’t a victimless industry. If you think it is, you’re more naive than I am.

Ghostwriters and those who hire them keep people like me, marginalized authors with ownvoices stories in saturated markets from getting agents and book deals. That’s just the facts of it.

If the big name authors took a year or more to release a book, publishing would be forced to open the door for more, newer authors, thus giving them a chance.

You know the reason I don’t ghostwrite fiction? Other than the fact that it felt yucky to me? It’s because it’s like shooting myself in the damned foot to cave in to that. It really is. I’m exactly the type of author most often taken advantage of by people who hire ghostwriters. I’m fast, I can write well and cleanly, I’m marginalized up the wazoo, I’m desperate to get my stories out there… but I choose not to ghostwrite. (I do have that privilege, and I’m aware that it’s a privilege. Not everyone has that, and I wish we all did.) I choose not to so that I, and other writers like me, MIGHT have a chance to break into this godawful industry. So that we MIGHT have a chance to see our words in a book with our names on it.

No matter how often people want to believe there’s a seat at the table for all of us, there isn’t a seat at the traditionally pubbed and supported table for all of us. Not with the way it works now.

We are lucky enough to be writing in a time period when self-pub, indie publishers and other methods of getting our stories out there EXIST. When I first started writing, if you didn’t have an agent and a traditional deal, you didn’t get published. Period.

But that doesn’t mean the industry is fair to marginalized writers. It just isn’t. So many of those authors I’m almost sure are using ghostwriters are white, cis, not mentally ill and they’re neurotypical. They’re keeping to their schedule of production by taking advantage of often marginalized writers who are struggling to break into the very field they’re hiring the ghostwriter for. They’re not paying the often marginalized ghostwriter a decent wage, they’re certainly not giving them credit for the work…

How in the world can that be right? Where the fuck is the integrity of that? Non-existent is where.

Now, IF an author wanted to be honest about using ghostwriters, give them credit in the books and pay them a living wage, it would be a completely different story. Patterson hasn’t written a book in YEARS, and he’s honest about that. People buy the BRAND more than they buy words they think Patterson himself has written.

But so many people in other genres just treat it as a dirty little secret that no one can speak about or they’ll get crucified for it.

I do kinda get sick of being the one crucified.

Or maybe I’m just a fool for not advertising for a ghostwritten piece, paying $100 dollars for it and sending it on to agents as my own work. Hell, I could have a contemporary romance line if I did that. (I don’t even read contemporary, in general) I could have cis, white, neurotypical characters if I did that. Maybe I could even have a successful career at this, if I did that.

But at the end of the day, I have to be able to meet my children’s eyes and proudly declare that ‘I’m an author’. I have to be able to look in the mirror at my own eyes too, when I finally quit writing and say… hey… at least I tried and I tried it while maintaining my integrity and personal values. I can say to myself then, ‘I was an author’.

Maybe consider buying me a kofi or becoming a patreon? If I can make it to some sort of living wage between my royalties and my patreon before too much longer, I can keep writing. I can keep providing content and being an advocate for people like me who don’t want to speak the words or have the heat on them.

I can keep trying. ‘Cause being disabled? If I have to go back to work out of the house there won’t be enough left of me to keep doing it all. I’ll disappear, me and my stories both, like a tumbleweed in the desert. That’s the cost of ghostwriting peeps. Don’t lie to yourselves and think it isn’t.

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I have limited ways for people to talk to me privately due to months of harassment, unsolicited private body parts pictures and death threats, so if you have something you want to say to me, you’ll have to email.

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Doxxing, authorial behavior and consequences.

Content Warning: Bullying, Harassment, Successful Suicide Mention, Doxxing, Mention of Sex and Kink, Mention of Eating Disorder, Mention of Insomnia, Mention of Vomiting.

Recorded version, if you’d prefer to listen than to read is here.

Now that I’m a bit calmer, and the danger has been removed from the perpetrator’s website, I’ll write a bit about what’s had me in a tizzy for the past 18 hours or so.

Last night, a good friend sent me a DM (direct message) with a link to an author’s blog. Her contact page, specifically, that had a comment on it that outed my legal name and associated it with this pseudonym. The comment had been there for anyone to find since August of 2017. There were massive consequences to this, which I’ll detail later.

Now, I’ve always been scrupulously honest about using pseudos, and my reasons for why. When I made the switch from writing custom kink stories for private clients to writing for publication, a former friend who happened to be a sex worker, and knew I wrote kinky/sexy stories, advised me to use a pseudonym. That made sense to me and I didn’t have a problem with it.

I’ve never been particularly attached to my legal name (I’ve hated it *forever* I’m named after a soap opera star for gods sake and it was the MOST popular name the year I was born. I had 6 people with the exact same name in my class of 30 growing up. We had to go by our last names, like we were in the military, in elementary school.) So I chose a name I really liked and went with that (it’s also a bit of a joke, and a nod to my partner’s Welsh ancestry, very few people, mostly native Welsh speakers get the joke.)

Since coming out as trans, its also become my dead-name, I don’t even use it in real life unless I absolutely have to. The absolutely have to is legal paperwork, I just don’t use it. It has those negative connotations to it too. I can’t afford to change my name, because I’d have to change it in two countries. It’s prohibitively expensive and the process is also terrifying for me. So many gov’t offices, embassies, officials et cetera.

But seeing my legal name still hurts me. Seeing it on this author’s page, one I’d call an enemy, shocked and horrified me. Knowing it had been there for so long made me sick to my stomach. I know, it’s been there for years, why is this bothering me so much now? Right? It’s because of the consequences I mentioned earlier.

Having both my legal name and pseudo also associated with untrue, cruel rumours about me rather sucked.

A few years ago, a young woman was bullied during the lead up to PitchWars, which is a contest for authors to get a mentor and get their work in front of agents. I had nothing to do with the incident except that someone who did happened to respond to both me and the bullying victim. I was a follower of all three of the people involved. This was in my early years on Twitter, and I basically followed anyone who followed me, anyone who was a writer. I figured if you were a writer you were great people and I wanted to know you. It’s what a lot of us writers do when we first find the writing community on Twitter. I’m no longer so indiscriminate in whom I follow/become mutuals with. I can’t be. It’s too dangerous. That’s incredibly clear to me now. So clear.

Later, around the mess with ficfest, (another contest that collapsed under accusations of racism and bullying) I was accused again of having something to do with bullying the victim, who suicided later that same year. I was a ficfest mentor for all of 18 hours. A good friend of mine asked me to co-mentor with her and I jumped at the chance because I wanted to help other writers. 18 hours when I was caring for two vomiting children and coming down with the stomach bug myself because my husband was out of town. So not exactly strolling around on the internet, if you know what I mean. When I was well, I came back online to see that the organizer and some of the former ficfest mentors had bullied the person again.

I was still painted as being part of it, because I was a ficfest mentor. Because I’d wanted, naively, to help other writers and had jumped at the chance to mentor in a bigger contest.

I knew about the suicide within hours of her actions, her friend told me, but the news didn’t hit Twitter for months after and when it did it was a huge mess. Once again, because I’d reached out to the person via a private DM to offer support after the ficfest thing, I was implicated in bullying and in driving her to suicide.

Part of my life mission is to educate people on what bullying is and isn’t. I’ve done hours and hours of Master’s level coursework in education, I have a dual Masters in education and world history. I have all this information on what bullying is and how to prevent it. I was a history teacher in the states, prior to that I was a traveling sexuality educator. It was after I’d gotten out of crime scene investigation, before I became a parent and before we came to Canada. I’ve seen and prevented bullying and I’ve also been bullied most of my life. It’s not anything I would ever be part of.

My brother died from suicide, I would never in a million billion years have something to do with driving someone to make that choice. But it doesn’t stop the rumour mongers. One of the worst of whom is the YA author who had my name on her blog.

To have those two accusations constantly follow me around is particularly cruel. If they could’ve chosen things to label me with that would hurt me most it would be that.

About a year ago, or maybe a little more, I wrote an ill-timed thread on Twitter about author behavior. The thread legitimately had nothing to do with anyone in particular, but because I’d mentioned that someone had soft-blocked me just before writing it, it was associated with being an attack on that person.

Now, I will never understand how allistic people think. To *me* I was talking about authors in general, not anyone in specific, there were no names mentioned, just ‘authors’ but thanks to the same person who hosted my name on her blog for so long, (and others) I was painted as attacking a young woman of colour. This person (the one who had my name on her blog) has a long history of attacking and dragging neurodivergent and/or mentally ill people. She never, ever apologizes for it. Nor, does it seem, does she ever suffer professional consequences for it.

Attacking a young person in general, or anyone of colour is also something I would *never* do. (Aside from it being cruel and bullying and contrary to my very firm sense of honor, I have better things to do with my time, like write books, play games or stare vacantly out of the window at fog, maybe scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush or my tongue.)

I was subtweeted for days, called all sorts of unpleasant things and I received a lot of harassing emails about it. 10 former mutuals (two people who follow one another on social media) didn’t bother to ask me what I’d meant with my thread, they just listened to this other author and blocked me and subtweeted me, and basically made my life a living hell for over a week. Queer people I’d held virtual hands with the night Frump was elected as we all watched in horror. None of them even asked me what I’d meant with my thread, whether it was directed at someone or not, they just assumed and listened to this horrible author. People who weren’t exactly friends, (I use that word sparingly and with care) but were more than casual acquaintances.

Once I finally figured out what people thought I’d said (I mean… jesus, would it have killed someone to reach out to an autistic person and say, hey, these allistic people think you said X, maybe if you didn’t mean that you might want to clear that up?) I both privately and publicly apologized for my thread.

I still, for the life of me, don’t understand how those awful people could think my words on general authorial behavior could be associated with a young woman who hadn’t ever written a book. I mean… she hadn’t written a book? HOW COULD SHE BE AN AUTHOR THAT I WROTE A THREAD ABOUT? The illogic of it all was staggering. But that’s allistic people for you, they make no damned logical sense at all. Sorry allistics, many of you are wonderful, and I mean that, I wish you made sense to me. You just don’t.

I’m mixed-race, mentally ill, queer, autistic, and physically disabled. I’m a published author of queer romance with ownvoices characters and I also don’t lay down about abuse. I have strong opinions that I voice frequently, and I tear apart warrior autism parent’s self-aggrandizing books. I’m not bad to look at and I have a real, recent photo of myself as an AVI. I get (and I expect to get) a lot of harassment of various types including sexual harassment. I get a lot of death threats, some quite inventive.

So that’s why I use a pseudo, it’s got nothing to do with trying to hide who I am. In this industry, my legal name is an open secret anyway because it’s on any query I’ve ever sent. I stopped counting at 500 queries, so you know, a lot of people know my legal name. But most people, most industry professionals, have the decency and honor to keep it to themselves. As is done in any industry where pseudonyms are used.

To out that, to doxx me like that, to host that comment for YEARS on her blog. It’s personally reprehensible to me. Horrific even.

Someone mentioned the possibility that she didn’t know it was there. Anything is possible I suppose, but I highly freaking doubt it.

  1. It was on her contact page, and it’s fully updated to include her agent’s information. I have a fantastic memory when pain isn’t inhibiting recall. My autistic memory is telling me she didn’t get the agent until *after* August 2017. Meaning she had to have seen and approved of that comment. It was the only one on the page! Also, it had been there for years, years! The belief factor of her not knowing it was there kinda fades the longer it’s there.
  2. It was on the contact page, not buried in some random blog post. I glance over my contact/landing page frequently, once every few months, to make sure my professional contact information is up to date, most authors do.
  3. It’s a wordpress site, we all get notifications when we receive comments on our pages. It’s part of the wordpress setup and you have to physically opt out of that option. Most of us don’t bother because we actually want to hear from people about our work. We’re authors, we like to hear what people think.

This author, letting this comment stay there on her page for so long, is directly responsible for the months of harassment I received. Even if the harassment didn’t come from her directly (and I have no proof one way or the other, whether it was her or not). The harassment that eventually made me close my direct messages on Twitter to mutuals only. The harassment that made me take all contact forms (which allow messages from anonymous IP addresses) from my website. (Basically if someone fills in a contact form on a website and sends it in, it looks like it comes from the website, not a personal IP address.) So that the harassers would have to send anything to me from trackable IP addresses so the police could catch them. I had to involve the police with the level of harassment I was receiving. 8 months of death threats, threats of exposing my name, threats of exposing my partner’s and childrens’ names. Where they go to school, my home address…

All because this author had my name/pseudo right there for anyone to find. When I think about it even now it makes me cry. WHY? Why would she do that to me? Why would anyone do that to anyone?

Why does she hate me so very much that she would allow this? It’s her blog, it’s her responsibility. Legally and morally.

What have I *ever* done except try to stand up for people like me, to point out the unfairness of the way marginalized people are treated? What have I ever done that would make this author think this is even remotely okay?

I mean, I know a lot of authors’ pseudonyms and real names, I worked in publishing for several years before going freelance. It would never, ever occur to me to out someone. It would never occur to me to allow a comment outing someone on my blog. I just don’t understand why this person is so awful. I don’t, I never have.

I don’t understand why they won’t suffer professional consequences either, but as I’ve learned, I will never understand allistic people.

During the time when I was getting *at least* a harassing email every week, (often I’d get three or more) I wondered who the person was who was being free with my legal name.  Or people, it’s possible other people have something like this out there. Obviously, someone was, because the harassing emails all had my legal information. Many had my partner’s, his place of work. One even had our phone number and license plate number in it.

Do you have any idea of how terrifying that is? I’m a trans, mixed-race female presenting person. A person very similar to me was attacked just last week in the states. I have a family with minor children in it to protect. These are the consequences that this person will probably never face because of what she’s done.

And this author carelessly, or perhaps maliciously, (I’ll never know because I won’t speak to her, in fact have had her blocked since the thread/subtweeting issue) left my name where anyone could find it.

That kind of thing, those unfounded accusations and my legal name being paired together with my pseudo could’ve cost me jobs if I’d gone to search for them. It could’ve really fucked up my immigration status.

How is any of that even remotely okay?

People aren’t, and have never been, shy about telling people like me, in detail, what kinds of horrible things they will do to us and our families to ‘pay us back’ for being queer, or outspoken, or *insert whatever reason for hatred people can come up with*.

They’re not shy about actually doing those things either.

At 4am this morning, I wrote to this author’s agent, begging her to make the author take the comment down. I didn’t know what else to do except publicly out and shame the author (which is a form of cyberbullying, so I didn’t want to do that). I guess the agent must have moved swiftly, because, despite my not receiving a response, the comment has been taken down. I’m certain the author claimed innocence. A lot of allistic people do when they get called on bad behavior. We’ve all seen that. But you know, also, I’ll point you to the fact it was there for almost 2 years. Every day it was there the believability factor of innocence fades. It just does, it’s only logical.

Despite the removal, I still feel so threatened by what that author did. And I’m questioning how many of my mutuals, even people I’m close to, knew it was there and didn’t tell me?

Not being able to trust easily is so hard.

I’m still afraid, I’m still wickedly upset and crying at the drop of a hat (and I really don’t cry easy, I’ve been through too much, too much trauma, but this has just shaken me so damned much.)

To leave that kind of thing up on her contact page for so long is utterly unconscionable. But she’ll get away with it. Just like she’s gotten away with subtweeting and harassing me. Of causing me so much pain in the past. Like she’s gotten away with attacking and dragging other neurodiverse people over and over again. I’ve seen her do that multiple times.

For someone who is a so-called professional in an industry like publishing, gods, especially of books for young adults! (I tell you, I have a young adult. I would not want my young adult reading a book by someone with morals like that. I just wouldn’t, I wouldn’t allow that book into the house. I wouldn’t.) To not only allow the doxxing of a fellow author on their blog but to also leave it where anyone could find it for such a very long time… it’s personally reprehensible to me. Especially when I’m a marginalized author, it’s so dangerous. I’m terrified, angry and sickened by this author’s actions.

Although the post has been removed, it doesn’t change the damage and pain she’s caused to me. The 8 months of harassment I received, me having to contact the police, the danger my family has been in. The danger *I’ve* been in. I had someone threaten to kill my cats!! Yeah. It doesn’t change it.

Because of people like that author, and others, the rumour mongers, I will always have the stink of false rumours and cruel innuendos clinging to me. That is so unfair, I don’t deserve that.

I had a wicked panic attack last night, then I got so, so angry. I still controlled myself. I didn’t publicly out who this author is. I can and will continue to tell people who ask me privately. That is not bullying, and since she had my legal name and pseudo on her blog for almost two years, two motherfucking years!, I have no problem at all telling people who it is if they ask me privately. Email me if you want to know, or if you’re one of the few who have access to my direct messages on social media, you can ask me that way. I won’t become the bully and say it in public, though. Not unless I have to out of self-defense. What you all do with that information is up to you. I don’t advocate for following/unfollowing or blocking this person. (Because that would be bullying.)

If *you* want to unfollow/block, do it, and I’ll support you.

If *you* don’t want to unfollow/block, do that, and I’ll support you.

I make it a policy to not attempt to influence peoples interpersonal connections, it’s far too close to abusive behavior (controlling who someone is friends with is a huge abusive red flag) and I’ve had that done to me by abusive boyfriends and family members. I’ll never knowingly do that to someone else. I may warn someone, I might open the door to say here is this information if you want it, but telling them who to be friends with/not be friends with is just not something I do.

But, I understand the need to protect yourself, and the need to know you aren’t friends/associates/following someone who is capable of doing such a horrific thing as this. So yes, I’ll absolutely privately tell anyone who wants to know. What you do with that info though, you get to decide. I can’t and won’t advise you on that.

My eating disorder reared up again last night, and I’ve been doing so well! I still haven’t eaten (I’m working on it, I really am, I’m working on it).

I had a horrible night of insomnia, and honestly, I doubt I’ll ever get an apology. She’s never apologized for anything she’s done to me before, she’s most likely is not going to suffer anything for what she’s done, professionally or personally, so why the hell would she apologize to someone she obviously doesn’t consider human?

I knew, from previous encounters with her, how horrible she could be, but I never in a million years expected her to stoop so low as to allow a doxxing of me on her blog. Never.

So that’s what’s been behind all the vague angst I’ve had for the past 18 hours. I’m going to go on full hiatus from Twitter for the weekend, maybe even a week. Maybe just stay off online for a bit. I’m removing the app from my phone and tablet for a while.

It’s got nothing to do with any of my followers, you all have been wonderful, but I just need a break. I need to lock the door to my house and keep the world out for a few days. To just be around my family, people I know would never hurt me, either by doing awful things or not telling me about someone doing awful things and thereby endangering me and my family. Enabling the level of harassment I was under.

Because some people I’m close to must have known that was there. It’s illogical that they didn’t with this person being a mutual, a friend even, with many of mine. Being close friends even, with many of you… we have many of the same business associates, this industry is tiny. We know many of the same people.

That fucks me up so badly.

That they didn’t bother to tell me. That’s… rather an ouchy thing to realize. That people I’m legitimately close to would allow all that harassment of me and my family to continue to take place. Knowing the likely source of where the harassers got my name.

Ouch. So I kinda have to cope with that too.