#legitimately fuck all of you trying to weaponize the fears of marginalized communities

[bloodyke]

next person to bring up project 2025 to fearmonger support for genocide joe is getting blown up i cannot stand you bitches

#zenith.txt #yall know NOTHING #you only have 1 talking point and its never worked #if you want people to vote you need to give them something to vote FOR not something to vote against or else all arguments are meaningless #second of all who the fuck do you think is currently laying the groundwork for project 2025? its literally biden #all the shit you fear is gonna happen is ALREADY STARTED UNDER HIS PRESIDENCY #third of all you all sound like fucking GHOULS when you say 'yeah genocide is bad but if we dont vote itll inconvenience ME this time' #what the fuck is wrong with you #joe biden will not get a second term that is a fact and it will be his own fault #if you guys ACTUALLY cared about these issues you would be mobilizing in your communities instead of yelling vote blue no matter who #its the fact that weve known about project 2025 for a whole year now but yall are only just now bringing it up bc people #are criticing biden more than ever and it scares you that your precious status quo is being challenged #legitimately fuck all of you trying to weaponize the fears of marginalized communities #the privilege in saying that under repubs things will get worse... #itll get worse FOR YOU. all of the things you worry about finally affecting YOU are literally already fucking happening #to black and brown (particularly black and brown disabled people) for DECADES #and im saying this from a place of privilege being white myself #yes i am a gay disabled puerto rican but i am white first and have been able to for the most part avoid a lot of the shit that has been #KILLING my family and the people in my communities #all of the things youve been saying will happen in project 2025 are things i have already fucking watched happen to the people around me #the only difference between now and this hypothetical project 2025 is now it will effect white people too #and thats the only reason yall even fucking care about it because now YOUR life is going to terrible and YOU cannot ignore it anymore #everything you criticized trump for biden and his team also does. #yall are so fucking pathetic wringing your hands and spouting the lie of electoralism but you refuse to do anything #that could enact meaningful change beacuse the point is you guys dont actually want change #the only thing yall want is to have people stop talking about all of this so you can continue to walk around with your head down #and not be inconvenience in your daily life bc you actually enjoy the status quo #saying you have to vote for the wolf in sheeps clothing over the wolf is not fucking better they are the exact same thing #and its time yall opened your fucking eyes to the world around you #'i domt support genocide but-' THERE IS NO BUT HERE.

[kingbennyboyyy]

benny’s RWBY rewrite: the white fang

so this is something that’s been on my mind for a while, and i’ve been trying to formulate my thoughts about it. the white fang in RWBY, as it stands now, is a really poorly thought-out approximation of the black panther party, an actual organization that fought for the equal rights and the equal treatment of black people in the united states. the black panther party’s actions have been long pathologized by white society and academia at large, and have been falsely contrasted with the ideals and teachings of MLK. the false dichotomy of violent and non-violent action is reductive at best, and blatantly racist at worst. while there is a whole fuckton to be said about the real-life consequences of these discourses, i’d like to focus on their impact on the writing of RWBY. i’d also like to talk about how i’d change how the white fang looks in order to make things a little less uncomfortable.

content warning for real and fictional racism, antiblackness, violence against marginalized people, and discussions of white supremacy under the cut.

so, the white fang. the RWBY wiki describes the group as “ a Faunus organization in Remnant. Founded following the Faunus Rights Revolution, the White Fang was initially a peaceful activist organization created to improve relations between Humans and Faunus and improve the civil rights of the latter.” more concisely, i would describe the white fang as a faunus rights activist group, whose modes of operation have changed over time. within the story, after the peaceful leader ghira stepped down, the faction as a whole took a notable nose-dive into violence. but why did this happen? why was the white fang written like this?

first of all, all of the following talk comes from the subjective opinion of one black genderqueer writer. i am not the voice of the entirety of my community, and i can bet that there are people who disagree with me. i’m just here to say my piece.

that said, i think that the white fang’s writing grossly misunderstands what oppression looks like to marginalized people. the RWBY writing team obviously wanted to handle racism in some kind of way- they wrote racism into the story. however, it’s incredibly clear that most of the writers don’t really understand how deeply racism runs in given societies. the oppression of the faunus is clearly mirroring the oppression of black people in the united states, and yet there’s little to this oppression other than surface-level discrimitation. ghira’s direction of the white fang doesn’t seem to understand that personal prejudice is a very small aspect of the continued oppression of the faunus. alarmingly, it’s only when “radicals” such as sienna khan and adam taurus take control that actual, structural avenues of racism are acknowledged. this has several issues.

- whether the RWBY writers intended this or not, attributing the acknowledgement of actual systemic issues to violent radicals is inherently a really bad call. the dismantling and destruction of racist structures is the baseline of most avenues of anti-racist thought, but by only assigning these beliefs to people like adam “kill all humans” taurus, you’re telling the audience that only people like adam “i’m gonna kill all my ex’s loved ones b/c she hurt my feelings” taurus think that these things are a reality. make no mistake, institutional racism and structural violence against marginalized people is a thing. by giving these ideas to violent actors, you’re sending a really shitty message. 

- another thing to note is the role of fear in the white fang’s activity. blake is quoted as saying that under adam taurus, people only pretend to respect the faunus because they’re afraid of the white fang. this is also bad. there is an actual line of racist thought that thinks that people who just want equality are a bunch of thugs using intimidation tactics to get special treatment, and by affirming this in-canon, you’re giving credence to these beliefs. in addition, adam’s literal desire to put humans in cages and make them go extinct is also an actual white supremacist talking point. actual fucking white supremacists go on about how the white race is going extinct as a means to manipulate otherwise well-meaning people into committing acts of violence against marginalized people. but RWBY says, “no, the white fang actually wants humans to be wiped off the face of the earth.” i shouldn’t have to tell you how buck fucking wild this is. 

- there’s also the role of violence in activism. the black panther party has long been attributed with senseless and anger-fueled violence against white people, but this assessment of the party is completely false. in truth, the arming of black panthers was a direct response to overpolicing and police violence against black people. the black panther party advocated self-defense, and acted as its own protective force for black americans. they had guns so that they could protect themselves from the cops, who were assaulting and killing them in absurd numbers. if the RWBY writers wanted to draw parallels between the white fang and the black panther party, they could have very easily done so by actually doing their research.

the question becomes, is it at all possible to have members of the white fang as actual villains within the RWBY universe? i’d say that it is possible, but it has to be done very carefully. there’s several things that have to be kept in mind here, and the entire understanding of faunus oppression has be to restructured in order for this to work. i’ll outline what i would change below:

- firstly, there needs to be more evidence of faunus marginalization past the surface level. this could be evident in a phethora of ways, anywhere from the trend of faunus hiding their animal traits being more common (an important thing to note is how accessible passing as a human is to the faunus), to beacon actually having much more bias than humans are aware of. blake highlighting these biases would be extremely helpful in establishing how deeply anti-faunus sentiments run. the only racists being cartoon bullies and shady billionaires rings too closely to the sentiments that white people have about racism. this is also a comparatively minor gripe, but the whole “becoming the monster people think they are” mask thing is just so... dumb. there are legitimate reasons for faunus to hide their identities during protests, and pathologizing this is just such a shitty thing to do.

- next, the white fang as a whole cannot be a terrorist organization in actuality. people can believe that the white fang are a bunch of terrorists, sure, but this can’t be the truth. for example, it would make perfect sense for weiss to think such things. her being the heiress to the schnee dust company, being fed stories about scary faunus with weapons trying to hurt her and her family would make sense. but the stereotypes humans have about faunus activism can’t be true. in addition, there should at the very least be more than one faunus activist party. the fact that there’s only one in the entire continent of remnant is so fucking stupid. you don’t think that some group of people would be dissatisfied and go and do something else?

- adam and sienna cannot be the leaders of the entire white fang. i’m sorry, but it’s just way too fucking easy for racists to say “oh, the entire thing’s just an excuse for (insert minority here) to ransack property and hurt people!” ilia could have been promoted after ghira stepped down. it would be interesting to see how she uses her ability to pass as human to actually make some changes for the people of menagerie, and the power structures that led to its creation. sienna has the potential to be someone disillusioned by strictly pacifist ideals of ghira, but she can act more in accordance to the actual black panther party, advocating for self-defense and knowing one’s rights. the arming and training of faunus, as frightening as it may be to the humans in power, cannot and should not be depicted at the beginnings of terrorism. there’s potential for actual discussion of the effectiveness of pacifism and respectability politics in activism, but all of that was overshadowed by the gross villification and oversimplification of the white fang.

- finally, adam. i think that adam is able to remain mostly the same, with a few adjustments to the environment around him (along with the previously discussed changes). i don’t think that adam should be the only person whose violent oppression is readily visible. the trope of the oppressed person going “mad with vengeance” is just adding fuel to the fire of the belief that those who speak out against their oppression should be put down. as satisfying an arc blake and yang beating the shit out of blake’s abusive ex was, it did just kind of feel like two people being like “yeah! violence wrong! pacifism good!” the unification of faunus SDC workers shouldn’t be attributed to adam. the advocacy for faunus to be able to defend themselves shouldn’t be attributed to adam. adam needs to be labled extremely clearly as an outlier, and even then this is risky. i think that adam’s group should be miniscule in comparison to the other sects of the white fang, and i think it would be interesting for his dealings with roman and company to be based on the distribution of android soldiers. adam shouldn’t come from a good place. yes, he suffered atrociously at the hands of his oppressors, but as a character and as an element of the story, he should be uniquely evil. for the few actual people in his group, he should rule through fear and violence, and defectors should be common. his brand of violence should be unique: rather than actually aiming to make changes to help the faunus, he should be solely focused on revenge. blake’s leaving him makes more sense in this way: rather than her leaving because of the inherent evil of violence, she should leave him because of his twisting the good intentions of the white fang into a self-serving cruelty. this all has to be contrasted against the well-intentioned actions of the actual white fang. the terrorist logo that appears universally on white fang regalia should either be solely adam’s, or his group should have a different name entirely.

so there. there’s my thoughts on the white fang and the stuff that the RWBY writers were trying to do. what should be taken away from this discussion is this: it is possible to write racism into a fantasy story without it being an absolute garbage fire, but it takes work. it takes understanding racism, the fact that it’s not just cruel people, but people complicit in the structures that uphold it. it takes being mindful of actual racist talking points, and making sure that your work doesn’t play into them. finally, if you’re going to make a main antagonist a member of the fucking civil rights movement, please for the love of god make it abundantly clear that they aren’t the villain because they want equal rights.

i’ve read so many stories where this defanged, platitude-ridden form of activism is treated as the only valid form of activism. in reality, it’s the form that people in power are most comfortable with. people approve of the idealized version of MLK because his activism was one that made white people feel good. the MLK we read about in schools is an illusory one. the real man kept a gun on him because he knew that as much as white media would have you believe that people liked him, he knew that people still wanted him dead. 

#benny's RWBY rewrite #RWBY #story #adam taurus #the white fang

[hypnoticwinter]

110 Epigrams, in no particular order

1. there is no such thing as bad writing so long as you are saying what you mean to say the way you mean to say it to the people you mean to hear it.

2. prose is only inexcusably purple when it is pretentious or unnecessarily complex.

3. the most important part of any relationship is knowing what you want and knowing what they want.

4. you handicap yourself if you have power but refuse to exercise it.

5. characters don't have to be likeable and don't have to grow, but they do have to have logical motives for their actions.

6. everything is art, but that doesn't automatically make it worthy of discussion.

7. literature is multidimensional and the original author should not be placed on a pedestal; however, the original author should also not be completely disregarded.

8. intelligence is the ability to take in knowledge and dissect it; wisdom is the ability to use it in your life.

9. the good don't need the law and the bad don't obey it.

10. in great attempts, even to fail is glorious.

11. it's not what you do with your life, it's how you feel about it. If you're content, nothing else matters.

12. the quickest and laziest way to solve a problem (provided the entire problem is completely solved) is always the best way.

13. money can't buy happiness, but it can buy fun.

14. irony has come to define people and their vain struggle to escape the cage only accentuates its existence.

15. either have something new to say or a new way to say something old.

16. you shouldn't marry someone unless you'd still do it if there was no cake, no celebration, no witnesses, no rings, and the only thing you got from it was a little piece of paper that said 'ur marid now grats.'

17. never buy people things they are better at selecting themselves.

18. being truthful is preferable to lying, but if you have to lie, do it to anyone but yourself.

19. the point of marketing is to make people think they want your product.

20. you can have an infinite set without having all possibilities.

21. morals are for people who want to feel better than anyone else, but can't get money or sex.

22. people only do things because it benefits them in some manner.

23. a law is only as powerful as the apparatus that enforces it.

24. being fat is prole, but having a lot of muscles is prole too.

25. you're not a dog, so don't reward yourself with food.

26. the only person who will always be there for you is yourself.

27. you're not as good as people say you are, and you're not as bad as people say you are.

28. if you need to do it with friends to have fun, then it isn't fun.

29. to feel sorrow is to deserve forgiveness.

30. we never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

31. slang is the weapon of elitism.

32. art should never be censored.

33. someone fucking someone over because of the bottom line makes sense, but getting fucked over because people are friends irks people the worst way.

34. trust the written word the least, the spoken word a little more, and actions the most. The way people act is the way they feel.

35. carefully cultivated vagueness is any artist's best friend. Let your audience fill in most of the blanks themselves and they'll invent things much more fantastic and memorable than you ever could.

36. no matter how little you care about what other people think of you, their opinions of you still affect you.

37. saying 'then you do it better' is never a valid response to criticism.

38. if you don't respect yourself, nobody else will.

39. make no more enemies than necessary.

40. when people say 'just be yourself' what they really mean is 'don't try to trick me' or 'don't get uppity.'

41. true communication is distinguishing between when the other person doesn't understand you and when they do understand you but don't care.

42. it is always the speaker's responsibility to ensure their message is heard.

43. how hard you work does not and should not affect the value of something you create.

44. the government is a tool to serve a purpose; it should never be the focus of love or unconditional loyalty.

45. finding an aspect or the entirety of a work of art offensive is not a good reason to not absorb and attempt to appreciate it.

46. either have substance or have form.

47. the surest way to identify constitutional weakness in someone is if they phrase their insults and other opinions in the form of a question for no reason; people only do this when they don't believe in themselves because they're afraid of their own voice.

48. the best scams of all are the ones that punish people for not partaking: marriage, taxes, degrees.

49. if you can't bear your power/status gracefully, you don't deserve it.

50. the secret to empathy is to suggest something believable enough that the other person thinks that's what they were thinking.

51. whenever you feel you must do something, make sure you are doing it because you want to do it, not because someone else thinks you ought to. Note that the two are not always mutually exclusive.

52. you cannot feel shame unless you already harbor guilt.

53. it is the responsibility of the commissioner of a task to ensure that it is done to their liking; it is the responsibility of the doer of a task to ensure that it is done to the best of their ability.

54. ignorance is never shameful unless it is willful.

55. once an individual accepts the inherent injustice in the world, all things become just.

56. for praise to be worth something, it has to come from a higher source; thus the object of praise lifts the praise-giver to a superior level.

57. success in life does not come from actual virtue or competence, it comes instead from appropriately and frequently signaling one's holiness through ideological gang signs.

58. people do things publicly so others will notice them. What people do when they're alone is what they truly enjoy.

59. it is difficult to be kind to a person who wants nothing.

60. trying to be calm is not calmness.

61. it is safer to beg than to take, but finer to take than to beg.

62. you are only as good as your latest work.

63. being a victim has become a currency and like all currencies, it is counterfeited.

64. faith is a tool that becomes more necessary when an individual is living close to death.

65. poetry is the only art not consumed by its 'fans' ... it is an art divided between snobs, who refuse to accept any but classical poetry, and other snobs, who ape contemporary poets with none of the requisite skill or understanding.

66. companies are sociopathic entities. They don't have any empathy or desire to help people, nor should they. Their only purpose is to function efficiently and produce money, and it's the government's function to impose human values on them through regulations.

67. if you're actually proud of something, you won't be offended when someone uses it as an insult against you.

68. silencing an opponent through brute force rather than logic makes them a martyr.

69. people want sympathy, not solutions.

70. rules have no inherent power, and people no inherent obligation to follow them. Rather, the enforcers of rules are the ones with power, and rules are only obeyed out of fear of punishment. Corollary: the degree to which a particular rule is obeyed is directly related to the power or aggression of the enforcer of that particular rule. Hence why everybody obeys the law of gravity and nobody obeys laws against jaywalking.

71. people do not normally react aggressively to honest, non-aggressive criticism unless there is an underlying insecurity about the thing being criticized.

72. never put a person in a position where they have to defend themselves, even if they're wrong.

73. never apologize to people who do not believe in forgiveness.

74. never pick up something you aren't willing to put down.

75. if you can't change the situation, change your view of it.

76. the best way of learning is to accept your ignorance and regress to a childlike state where you are not ashamed of not knowing what you are doing and you are free to experiment even with the most basic elements of what you are trying to learn.

77. if you are proud of your country you are either a thug or you haven't read enough history.

78. justice without dispassion is rarely justice.

79. do not do anything for someone that they can do for themselves.

80. the truly marginalized people are the ones you never hear about.

81. change is not the same as progress.

82. the more irrational and bizarre a person's beliefs are, the more their subjective viewpoint is proven to exist.

83. believe in the ideal, not the idol.

84. know when to stop.

85. it is impossible to argue with someone who knows they are right.

86. when you reduce your character to one aspect of yourself, you will begin to assume that every criticism levelled against you stems from prejudice against that aspect instead of any legitimate wrongdoing on your part.

87. trust no information that was transmitted or created in exchange for money or favors.

88. praise the person, not the act.

89. giving an excuse means that you are not sorry.

90. looks depreciate.

91. you will only change if you see a need to.

92. if you want to be noticed, be irreducible. The larger the box you can be shoved in, the more you will stand out.

93. make no quotes in languages you don't speak unless you are certain of what you are saying.

94. a bad defense looks worse than silence.

95. do unto others as they do unto you.

96. if you can't explain something to someone, it's not because they're stupider than you are.

97. if the worst someone can do to you is yell at you, they are no threat.

98. groups are not defined by the outliers.

99. make decisions with irreversible outcomes rarely and with grave consideration.

100. those who refuse to follow are doomed to lead.

101. tribalism allows for blatant hypocrisy without even a trace of self-awareness.

102. a sequel should not undo what was done in the original, it should instead expand on it without damaging the original's legacy.

103. the only people against gatekeeping are those it's meant to keep out.

104. the only human right is the right not to have to do things that you don't want to do, and it is violated wholesale.

105. fudge everything you can get away with.

106. the only law is might makes right, all else is vanity.

107. believing features of a different culture are by default sacred is just a sophisticated way of insulting them for being savages.

108.  never attribute to incompetence that which can be explained by malice.

108a. sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

109. anything good that flows downstream is an accident.

110. you can't gatekeep if you don't own the keys.

#writing #inspiration #alt lit #writeblr

[literarygoon]

So,

When trans rights activists began to mobilize in opposition to feminist thinker Meghan Murphy's appearance at the Toronto Public Library in October 2019, I was only half-interested in the controversy. Several literary figures I admire had become swept up in the pseudo-religious fervor, and I was shocked to see them enthusiastically championing censorship. I figured this person they were protesting must be some ghoulish anti-intellectual, spewing hate speech and vilifying marginalized communities. I assumed that a quick Google search would result in a list of published works worthy of this sort of opposition, or maybe news items about her provocative past.

Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that not only was Murphy innocent of the hate speech accusations she was being doggy-piled with, she was actually advocating on behalf of marginalized populations and rape victims — something I'm personally passionate about. Her highest profile dust-up was with a pedophile trans activist named Jessica Yaniv, a true villain if there ever was one, and now she was facing death threats for publicly questioning whether convicted child killers who self-identify as female should be allowed in women's prisons. As far as I could tell, she was a strong-willed social crusader making a real positive impact in the world.

So how come everyone was treating her like the Antichrist?

In the week leading up the event, I followed the controversy via Twitter and began to educate myself on the subject being discussed: trans rights. I learned that this new slur "TERF" is an acronym for "trans exclusionary radical feminist", though it was being used as a catch-all for anyone who disagreed with their rhetoric, and it wasn't immediately apparent what trans people were being excluded from. I learned that "dead-naming" someone means using someone's name from before they transitioned (like calling trans icon Caitlin Jenner by her birth name Bruce) and that there were a few koan-like mantras everyone felt strongly about: "Trans rights are human rights" and "trans women are women."

As I engaged on Twitter, posting a few comments and questions, I became increasingly aware of how toxic this discourse was. These trans rights activists were looking for people to crucify, drunk on self-righteousness, and were incapable of having a nuanced conversation about this new worldview they were wielding like a weapon. As I consumed their vitriol, following accounts on either side of the spectrum, it occurred to me that all of this anger wasn't only being funnelled towards anti-trans bigots. It was also sliming well-meaning leftists who weren't sufficiently up to date on how this conversation has been progressing (learn your acronyms!) and people blissfully unaware that this esoteric social justice battle is even happening. According to their standards, not only was I a TERF but so was everybody else in my family, from my toddler niece all the way up to my grandparents. We all believe in something we've been taught since childhood, biological sex, and that makes us the enemy.

But how could I make my own position known without offending and alienating the trans people in my life who I love, regardless of how I feel about this new gender ideology? Could I oppose the indoctrination while embracing trans people themselves? Was there some sort of middle ground I could take, where I could express my support and love for them while simultaneously refusing to drink the Kool-Aid?

Then the big night came. By this point the Toronto Public Library scandal had taken up three or four days of my attention, and I remained glued to social media so I could follow every development. I read an extremely thoughtful prepared statement by a city councillor named Gord Perks and thought "finally, a voice of reason!" only to see his contribution written off and misrepresented. Hundreds of people took to the streets, necessitating a police presence to keep the audience and speakers safe. Videos posted on Twitter showed this hate mob, led by Governor General Award-winning author Gwen Benaway, shouting violent epithets at cowed women while pretending they were the victims. These bullies were out for blood, and anything less than full surrender wouldn't satisfy them.

The thing that struck me the most during all this was that the two sides of the political spectrum were arguing different points. While one side was insisting that Meghan Murphy deserved free speech, the other side was arguing about the perceived content of her talks as they pertained to trans rights. They weren't meeting anywhere near the middle, because they weren't even having the same conversation. The result of this was that trans rights activists were passionately mobilizing certain nuances of their worldview, and demanding these tenets be accepted, while the other side was simply saying "let her talk". The protesters had smeared her as an anti-trans speaker, though that wasn't how she self-identified. For a movement so obsessed with self-identification, this was a huge blind spot. Just like misgendering someone, they were accusing her of being something she's not.

As the think pieces and news articles began to come out in the following days, I read opinions from both sides and searched for even a shimmer of mutual understanding. This divisionary rhetoric was going to have devastating consequences, I figured, including within the literary world. And if people were continuing to be scared into silence for fear of being mobbed like Murphy, how could we ever have a meaningful dialogue? Who would be the next person to inspire one of these hateful clown parades?

This was the headspace I was in when I came across a story in Flare written by Benaway in which she narrates her experience addressing representatives of the library during a feedback session leading up to the event. With purple prose, silly histrionics and self-aggrandizing rhetoric, she singles out Head Librarian Vickery Bowles (who didn't speak a word during the exchange) and accused her of being transphobic simply for supporting free speech. In the most embarrassing passage she repeatedly challenges those present to tell her which bathroom she should use, which is so off-topic it comes off as nonsensical. I couldn't take it anymore. I left a comment under the article, calling Benaway "so dishonest" for misrepresenting Bowles and Murphy, and accused her of "tilting at windmills, hard."

This was it. The first public stance I'd taken on the issue. I knew that nearly every literary figure I was associated with on Twitter probably disagreed with me on principle, and would probably only experience this as some privileged white dude punching down on a poor trans activist. That being said, I really believed in what I was saying and legitimately believed trans rights activists who were vilifying librarians and feminists needed to be fucking stopped. I felt a twinge of vertigo as I let go, allowing myself to tumble head-first down this howling rabbit hole. I'd heard that these activists are militant, sometimes going after people's livelihoods if they disagree with you, but I was feeling ready for a fight.

It was around this time that a Twitter account started retweeting some of my comments, tagging my employer Humber Literary Review, adding melodramatic captions about how I was a trans-hater. This Internet stranger made me uncomfortable, but I didn't engage, comfortable in the knowledge that my editors had known me for five years and understood I was incapable of hatred. Anyone who took a moment to read my timeline would see that I wasn't a zealot; I was just a newbie to this particular conversation, trying to make sense of what was going on in a respectful manner. Also, I wasn't interested in having a conversation about trans rights -- the issue is hardly relevant to my day-to-day life -- I was interested in talking about Meghan Murphy's right to free speech, a right that had been thoroughly trampled for no good reason.

One thing that occurred to me was that the library protest ultimately had the opposite effect of what was intended. Rather than silencing Murphy, they'd elevated her to a new level of prophet-like prominence. I'd never heard of her before, but now she was being profiled in newspapers and discussed all over social media. I'd gone from having no idea who she was to being one of her most ardent fans, keen to hear what she was up to next. And pretty soon there were titans of the entertainment world stepping in to take her side, including J.K Rowling and Ricky Gervais. The haters tried to silence her but instead set her on fire, leaving us all to watch her dance wreathed in holy flames.

Then they came for me. Three days after my comment on the Flare article, which inspired a long back and forth with a Toronto poet, Humber contacted me to say that I no longer had my position as interviews editor. According to them they were restructuring, but we were in the middle of an issue and that made no sense. I sent a few exploratory emails, one proposing a book project that would be a collection of the interviews I'd done over the years, and I was mostly met with silence. Was it possible? Would they actually pull something like this? Would they take sides with the trans mob over me? And why?

The way I figured, if the move to take away my position was actually motivated by my Twitter interactions then their real motive was both to shut me up and to distance themselves from me professionally. The hate mob who had attacked would be waiting for word that I'd been turfed, and I wouldn't give them that satisfaction. For the following weeks, and then months, I made sure to routinely tag Humber in my posts, reminiscing about my interviews of the past and looking forward to the one that hadn't yet been published with Yasuko Thanh. I sent my editor an email and asked her to retweet some of these posts, which she said she would, but then didn't. I started escalating my rhetoric, criticizing trans activists and calling out their bonkers nonsense, all with Humber's twitter handle nice and prominent in my bio.

Finally, just before the holidays, vindication came. The founding editor of Humber Literary Review, Meaghan Strimas, contacted me to say that the collective had "grave concerns" about my Twitter content (even though she admitted she rarely uses the platform) and then demanded I remove her magazine from my bio, even though my interview with Thanh had not yet been published. Her email confirmed all my concerns: they had a staff meeting without me to discuss my conduct, they took issue with my views on trans rights, and they were hoping to make an example out of me. It was two weeks before Christmas and they were picking a fight with one of their employees for no good reason. The positive relationship we'd enjoyed for half a decade wasn't enough to shield me from their poorly researched dogmatism.

I knew what to do right away: I alley-ooped the email, and a bunch of screen-shotted Twitter posts, to a journalist named Anna Slatz. She was an active participant in the trans rights conversation, and had appeared at an event in Vancouver in which activists showed up wearing a guillotine for TERFs. She was just as outspoken as Murphy, I knew, and would be just as infuriated by this turn of events as I was. This was a minor freelance gig for me, but what if it was my main livelihood? Would they come after my other job next? My fiancée was six months pregnant with our first child and now I had to worry about these pitchfork-wavers? Slatz was thorough, professional and tactful: within 24 hours my story was live on the Post Millennial website. Watching the story rack up engagements was one of the most vindicating feelings of my life.

Within hours I was contacted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. I'd heard of them through the Yaniv debacle, and I was thrilled to learn that their potential involvement in my case would be free of cost. I took them through what happened over the phone, step by step, and revelled in how appalled they were. I wasn't the only person who thought these activists had gone too far, targeting people's jobs and smearing them in public. They told me that if it went forward my case would have the potential to affect a huge number of people's lives, perhaps setting a precedent that would dissuade these clowns from using sinister tactics like this in the future. And I wasn't the only person this was happening to -- online there were examples of people like Maya Forstater, who lost her job for saying that biological sex is real, and others who lost gigs for something as simple as retweeting a gender critical account.

The stress and sudden attention from all this hoopla had me panicked. I was worried both about my employment, and for the financial future of my baby. As my case drew the attention of names I recognized, like Jordan Peterson, I worried that I would be submerged by this trans rights tidal wave. I knew my misgivings were shared by many, both in the literary world and everywhere else, but people were too afraid to speak the truth. For a few nights I couldn't sleep. I didn't feel like fighting; I just wanted to be left alone.

But then I began to reflect on what actually mattered. I have a number of trans friends who are intensely important to me, and it's them who are suffering the worst consequences of this toxic rhetoric. As activists continue to over-reach and inflame controversy, the blow-back is hitting people who would just like to quietly go about living their lives. They don't believe in some of the more ridiculous aims of these activists, like plugging biological males into female sports or subjecting female prisoners to the company of murderers hiding behind self-identification. They're just as embarrassed by the Gwen Benaways and Jessica Yanivs of the world, and believe just as strongly as I do in Meghan Murphy's right to free speech. They don't believe in vilifying strangers, or taking away their jobs, because that's the purview of idiots and assholes.

As J.K. Rowling recently wrote on Twitter: this is not a drill. The time for ignoring or being complacent about the trans rights conversation has passed, because it is now doing real harm not only to trans people, but also everyone else. With my daughter en route to Earth, I want to create a future where this dystopian rhetoric is a thing of the past, and I don't have to worry about her being indoctrinated into a worldview where biological sex doesn't exist. I believe that inclusion is non-negotiable, and that trans people should be embraced and supported, but that should never come at the expense of people who reject their ideology or have beliefs of their own. It's possible to love someone even if you think their worldview is nonsensical, and trying to speak sense to them is the opposite of hate speech.

You could even call it love speech.

The Literary Goon