So, I was interested by the wording of this. On the surface it's an innocuous-sounding post, but first off - I immediately knew that it was about the woman most commonly know as i-suggest-forcefem, or ISFF, although I believe her current blog is @missstrogen. That is the recent drama around a trans woman being called out, so there's no way it can't be read in light of that, even if it wasn't meant to be about it.
Thing is, ISFF spent a long-ass time sexually harassing people by adding her noncon kink to their posts without warning; was intensely transandrophobic; and capped it off with the thing that finally got her significant backlash, which was platforming the idea that pedophiles should be embraced by the queer community, stating herself that not wanting to be 'proud to know' pedophiles and 'leaving them behind' to be the same as people who wanted to 'drop the T'. She didn't explicitly say 'pedophiles are a part of the queer community, but she did literally everything but. This post doesn't have screenshots of everything she's said around the matter, but it's a good quick rundown of the situation.
She very shortly afterward began deleting posts she'd made and lying about the content of what she said, and her followers were quick to pile on and say the same thing - also just to paint her as a martyr who was being unfairly targeted and 'lynched' or 'murdered' because people reported her blog. They also lost their shit about people, you know, taking screenshots and making notes of what she said. Obviously, on the internet, and kind of callout is likely to snowball into some people taking it too far, or obsessing over the matter - but here's the thing. If the person who did shit is immediately deleting evidence of it, moving blogs, lying about what happened, and trying to get back to presenting herself as a pillar of the transfem community, I think it's kind of necessary to keep records.
If someone immediately tries to cover up the harm they've done, it needs to be talked about. It does not matter what their identity is. And I do count 'trying to help usher the idea that pedophiles and queer people should be allies' idea back into the light as harmful; do we remember when that was a planned 4chan psyop? Do we want NAMBLA back? This is the kind of stuff that I personally believe needs public conversation and pushback. Because if you just 'block and move on' and only 'chat to a friend' about it... There's no records maintained, and no visible pushback to the ideas. And I think that letting someone like that present herself as a transfem icon is actually more harmful to trans women than calling someone out for their horrific opinions (plus people finally started talking more about the sexual harassment and transphobia, thankfully).
Especially now that she's calling other trans women 'the enemy' and 'monsters' for asking her if she knew that the woman she reblogged a birthday trip fundraiser for was accused of sexual assault and abuse by multiple other trans women. Not even saying that the woman in question didn't commit sexual assault, just that people can't say that they don't want to share a community with an unrepentant abuser - or keep records of what she'd done - without being 'her enemy' and 'the danger (to trans women)', which seems odd considering that she harmed other trans women.
The woman she's defending is, by the way, OP of this post.
Yep. Sophie is, I assume, biased in her opinions on people talking about trans women behaving badly, because she's deleted what was, according to a Reddit post about it, her confession to it in the past - the main thread by the person speaking out about the abuse is still up, though. And I'd like to take particular note of a line from the statement signed by multiple women - that they are speaking out because 'the whisper network was not enough to protect us'.
If someone tells you that, for any reason, you should not speak about someone doing 'stupid and/or harmful' things - please question it. Please look at where the person is coming from, and what they had in mind. Because while this is phrased to make it sound like they're not really talking about, like, bad stuff - and I don't blame people for reblogging it when they don't understand the situation or people involved - this is the attitude that leads to, well, a whisper network. Don't talk about that person, they're family/a pastor/gay/etc etc etc, it'll look bad to outsiders. Just ignore them. Just avoid them. Just 'chat to a friend' about it, and let their opinions and their image flourish in public.
Callouts are often badly done, misused, or spiral out of control. I've seen that happen plenty. But I think a lot of people can throw the baby out with the bathwater and think that means they're never necessary - even if, when we move it a little over to the left, we can tell that people complaining about 'cancel culture' are usually not right. Information needs to be available about things people have said or done in the cases where they are trying to cover it up themselves, trying to lie about it, or friends and followers are also trying to deny and cover it up for them.
We shouldn't stop talking about Thanfiction/Andy Blake/etc because he's a trans man, yeah? We shouldn't avoid calling out abuse in queer communities because people are queer. We shouldn't keep it hush-hush that we disagree with pedophiles being natural allies with queer people, or overlook sexual harassment, because ISFF is a trans women. And - and this is why I'm making this post, though it's far outside of my usual style - we sure fucking shouldn't let Sophie write this post and spread it around without saying something, because even if people don't know the full context, it amplifies her voice and seeming support for her beliefs.
Plus, when queer people, leftists in general, etc, stay quiet about something, that means that what does come out comes out of the mouths of bigots. Meaning A, people are less inclined to believe them, and B, the fire is fanned even hotter by the self-satisfied statements of 'See, (insert category of people) can get away with abuse because people are afraid of being called bigoted!'
And to the trans women who have to deal with these shitty people trying to exploit the known discrimination against trans women to protect themselves, the ones who have been told they're transmisogynists who don't belong in the community, who have been abused, so forth and so on - my word might not count for much but jesus christ, I'm sorry.
