The Tale of Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Interstitial II
For those of you wondering what’s going on with this series, the second full post in this series is well underway. It’s been delayed by a mixture of work deadlines, a couple of false starts (having a lot to do with things I’ve found as I’ve dug into the background further), and then having that disrupted just as I was building steam by another event…
In the meantime, I’m going to just address a couple of things that have come up time and again.
You’re defending abuse! This, and other statements and assertions that reframe our objections to this shitstorm and the dominant narrative, imply (or state outright) that we approve of and support every single thing Bee said or did during the time in which she was, in her words, “a horrendous asshole.”
This is not true.
We do object to the caricature — built on half-truths and outright fabrications — that’s been created, presenting her as being some sort of uniquely awful person, or an extreme outlier in the realm of vitriol. (Hell, in one of the places used as a source? She was pretty average in terms of toxicity.) We also object to the assertion that she has not changed over the years, which is backed up by presenting posts she made four or five years ago as if they reflected her thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and values now. I’m a solid decade Bee’s senior, and I had some markedly different thoughts, beliefs, values, and opinions five years ago. (Hell, five years ago as of this writing — April 9th, 2015 — I was still operating under the belief that I’m a man.)
We also object to her past transgressions being used to justify the ongoing campaign — holding someone accountable is one thing, but when people start making new rounds of hateblogs (and I am not using hyperbole there) whenever Bee has a positive career development (such as getting nominated for the BSFA), just to remind everyone that she’s the worst person ever and so forth.
Bringing up [other notorious person] is just derailing! It is true that there’s some people (that I’m not going to name because they vanity search and I’ve no desire to get into that hot mess) we’ve brought up as being at least as notorious and toxic and damaging as Bee was at her worst. When we ask when someone is going to do an exhaustive blog post about them, or asked why nobody has done one yet, it’s not to say “well, this dogpile will then be okay if you do x first.” It’s a rhetorical question to ask why, out of the constellation of people that have conducted themselves in such horrible ways in fandom (not just SFF, mind, but overlapping communities like YA, romance, anime/manga, and video games, just to name a few), why her, and, to date, her alone (especially with this extreme level of visibility — GRRM signal-boosted it, for fuck’s sake)?
That question is why we suspect the motives of the people most visibly speaking out about it.
Originally published at asymbina.tumblr.com.
