Last post I ever want to make about this @/lgbtmazight situation
Please do not harass anyone, no matter what their stance on this is. Please be kind to each other and to yourselves.
Here is a link to the original Post, Here is a link to a great focus/framing statement.
In this post, I’m gonna talk about a few things that I think need context, and then I never want to talk about this again. Okay? Ok.
1. Anyone who is using this situation to try and gain clout/respectability points needs to sit down and shut up. No one should be aiming for recognition. Saying “This needs to go viral/I was right all along,” is very unhelpful. If you were hurt by Len you definitely deserve an apology. But please stop trying to accrue brownie points over this discourse.
2. To the people defending Len. Please stop framing that post as a doxxing attempt. The content from that post is all things that Len made publicly available on the internet. Instead of saying “They pulled up tweets from ten years ago.” What should concern us is that for over ten years, Len has shown a documented history of holding dangerous and hateful political views and has constantly lied about different aspects of their identity.
What we should be focused on is the people that Len has hurt and the ways Len has misled our community. The only person who should be defending Len is Len. Speaking of,
3. Re- the subject of the silence of big blogs/ A new Discord server.
A few days ago, I was invited to be a part of a small discord group that was dedicated to “nuanced discussions and recreating the inviting spirit of the TOG fandom” from last summer. I accepted and was surprised to see some of the biggest names in fandom.
Four days ago the mods put out an announcement that a post had been made about one of their mods and that ALL of the accusations were false. And they then asked everyone in the server not to engage with the post at all. I didn’t even see the post until someone sent it to me directly.
The mods framed this call for silence as a way to keep Len and her family safe. As if anyone engaging with the post was directly putting Len in danger, rather than to face the fact Len was the person who put that much personal information online.
The mods in this discord did not allow for any discussion about this situation in the general server. So anyone who was concerned or had questions had to go directly and separately to the mods. How then do we know who has the same concerns as us? You don’t. In this server, a culture of silence has allowed Lens Closest Mutuals (a group of mostly white women) to act as a PR team that fields any and all concerns from people in the server.
The mods assured me that Len had done video calls with them and showed proper “documentation of their family,” to prove that Len is who she says she is. Which version of Len, is who she says she is? No one answered this question.
When I expressed my concerns to the mods, I got a stock response filled with defections, straw man arguments, red herrings as well as various statements that appealed to moral superiority and conflated separate identity terms all at once. I argued against all of their points and the response that I got was that if I was going to continue “not seeing eye to eye about the need for Len’s safety,” then I would be removed from the group.
I removed myself. I won’t ever stay in a group where one person's mental health is put on a pedestal above all the ways they have hurt and wronged others.
3.A - Please be wary of these White and White-passing women talking about what is and isn't racist. The people who claim that these accusations against Len will drive PoC out of fandom. As a whole ass Black and Indigenous woman, NO. What pushes PoC out of fandom is allowing people w/o racialized lived experiences to be the arbitrators of whether or not something is racist.
4. If an argument is made in bad faith but turns out to be true, it doesn’t mean that the accused should get away with everything just because someone accused them with ill intent. In this case, intent means nothing. Len has lied and holds terrible views. The end.
5. Race, Ethnicity, nationality, familial origin, religious background, class, and cultural upbringing are all different aspects of identity. Over the last ten years, Len has a documented history of lying about ALL OF THESE ASPECTS.
6. No one hates Len for being White-passing. However, you cannot be White-passing and “constantly racialized” at the same time. That's not possible because Race is what is read onto your body. If you are Read as White, and if you are allowed to exist in White spaces, you are not racialized. So which narrative is true?
7. I think that the aspect of race is one of the least important things in this to focus on. Len is a genocide denier, steals aspects of different religions, cultures, and lived experiences as their own. On top of this Len has made themselves a pillar/authority in TOG fandom while constantly lying to all of us, causing harm and posing as the authority on all things Maghrebi.
8. This news has already upset the fandom's past and present in ways we can't go back from. I know I personally feel really guilty for having ever followed this person. But again, the only person responsible for Len’s actions is Len. I'm simply dedicated to being more discerning in the future.
I know that a lot of us are angry. But I think there are ways for us to be angry and still kind. We have learned that someone close to us holds hateful views, but we don't have to act in hatred.
It goes back to the source material that brought us together right? In a terrible situation, we can still do some good. Still build bonds in honesty and nuance. Maybe I’m being naive, but I want to believe that our fandom can grow from this.
We're about to get a sequel! Let's get rid of the bad and move forward as a community. "Shit, Let's start a band."
