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azariasUpdate 10/20: RequiresHate has posted an apology for the actions of her RH blog. However, she's also disclaimed responsibility for threats given out under the Winterfox brand. She claims that some, such as threatening an Asian woman with being raped by dogs, was the work of an impostor. I haven't been able to find any earlier mentions of an impostor, but large swathes of both the RH blog and Winterfox's backlog of comments remain deleted, so that's probably impossible to verify unless a witness wants to speak up. She's also apologized on A Bee Writes, her professional bog.
There's a theme of "I was an asshole but I've gotten better as the years have passed," which is something most of us have probably lived through ourselves -- however, Winterfox harassed a rape victim for six months as late as last year, so any decrease in assholery is going to be a very recent phenomenon. Intentionally or not, these apologies seem to further the narrative that the controversy is primarily about RequiresHate's book reviews rather than Winterfox's decade-long troll campaign. They also repeat assertions that all of Sriduangkaew's bad behavior was in the distant past, despite her harassment continuing into 2013 at least.
An open question to pro sci-fi: since Sriduangkaew has admitted she was wrong, can we stop arguing it's okay to threaten women of color with rape and assault if someone we like is doing it?
I had to stop following this wank for a couple of days to meet some RL deadlines. I wished someone had made a roundup post to summarize what's going on -- so I'm making one. If you're not interested in seeing some of your favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors make excuses for abusers, enable trolling, and belittle women of color who have received rape threats, stop reading now. It gets ugly.
This post is a work in progress and the wank is ongoing. Please feel free to comment with updates, corrections, and discussion. Anon comments are turned on, but I will delete with extreme prejudice at the first whiff of trolling.
Here's a timeline of events for this most recent blowup.
Who is Benjanun Sriduangkaew?
Benjanun Sriduangkaew is an up-and-coming science fiction author from Thailand. First published in 2012, she has been nominated for a Campbell award for best new writer and her stories have been reviewed favorably in several publications. Her public persona is cheerful, friendly, and new to the genre. She blogs at A Bee Writes and on Twitter.
Requires Only That You Hate is Sriduangkaew's sci-fi/fantasy review blog which she runs under the pseudonym RequiresHate. ROTYH is famous for using violent rhetoric in reviews, including some that amount to murder fantasies, but has received some measure of critical acclaim among sci-fi and fantasy pros. (Sriduangkaew has recently deleted many of her most vitriolic reviews, following a long-established pattern of deleting posts that make her look bad.) Though RequiresHate reviewed many epic fantasy novels, Sriduangkaew claimed not to have read epic fantasy at all until last month. RequiresHate also has a Twitter feed. [Edit: that feed is now defunct.]
Winterfox is Sriduangkaew's long-standing troll pseudonym, which has been active since at least 2004. As Winterfox, she's famous for directing threats of rape and assault at various people, particularly women, especially queer women and women of color. For example, she threatened one Central Asian woman with rape by dogs for the crime of liking different videogames than Winterfox.
She shut down discussion in 50books_poc by directing personal attacks at authors such as Cindy Pon, harassing commenters who liked books she didn't, and making racist comments to various minority members of the comm -- one famous example involved accusing a Cambodian woman of crying "white woman's tears." 50books_poc was a community dedicated to reading and discussing the works of authors of color. Winterfox's personal hatred for certain authors of color and anyone who enjoyed reading them lead to the death of the comm.
In an unrelated incident, she drove one woman to attempt suicide. (Some of her fans then mocked the victim for the attempt.) Here is the account of a rape victim whom Winterfox harassed for at least six months in 2013. Any claims that Winterfox stopped harassing people years ago are lies, unless last year is now the distant past. Here is an account of a victim from 2012.
I can't sum up ten years of trolling in one post, but you can get a decent overview here. Known Winterfox aliases include acrackedmoon, pyrofennec, Valse de Lune, and Lesifoere. In brief, she's not one of the top ten misogynist assholes on the Internet, but that's not for lack of trying.
What the hell's happening?
It's been public knowledge for years that RequiresHate and Winterfox are one and the same. Meanwhile, Benjanun Sriduangkaew appeared to be just what she claimed: a sweet, friendly newcomer to sci-fi.
Last week, however, editor Nick Mamatas publicly outed Sriduangkaew as RequiresHate/Winterfox. His motivations for doing this are unclear, and it seems to have been done without Sriduangkaew's permission. As Mamatas has published several of her stories -- and therefore written several of her paychecks -- there're some serious ethical concerns about his actions here. (Full disclosure: Nick's banned from commenting in my space, but you can find him speaking in his own defense, or not, just about everywhere.)
EDIT: There's some debate over whether or not Nick Mamatas was in fact the person to out her. This comment was posted in early September, referring to rumors circulating among SFF pros that RequiresHate and Benjanun Sriduangkaew were the same person. I'm leaving the link to Mamatas's post up as the source for now until I can get some more clarity, because the Mamatas post is where most of the people who aren't SFF pros (including yours truly) heard it first.
This outing followed a post by author Tricia Sullivan in which she did not name names but discussed her recent experiences with a "toxic person" -- meaning Sriduangkaew. Sullivan reports that Sriduangkaew had befriended her and Sullivan had recommended Sriduangkaew to a couple of editors. When Sullivan later found out that Sriduangkaew is Winterfox, Sullivan privately contacted those editors and withdrew her recommendation, not wanting to be associated with a troll. Again, Tricia Sullivan did not name the person she was talking about and did not publicly out Sriduangkaew as Winterfox. Nick Mamatas did that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Following Mamatas's outting of Sriduangkaew, reviewer James Nicoll made a post in his LiveJournal, where the comments quickly exploded. (Note: Nicoll froze the post, but only after several days of single-handedly moderating a large, intense, and often nasty discussion across a national holiday.) This is where the discussion gets really ugly, because this is where Winterfox's victims start coming forward.
A sample: She said, posting as Winterfox not all that long ago, in a posting that has now been deleted in a semi-private venue, that I ought to be raped by dogs. (This is bad enough as it is, but I come from a country where dogs have traditionally been seen as distasteful or, for lack of a better word, unclean. She knew this; my being an American woman POC formerly from this country was explicitly part of why she targeted me. So it was meant as both a sexualized and culturalized threat and insult.)
Friends of Winterfox showed up to explain why rape threats aren't really threats, why women of color being threatened with rape is okay as long as it's another woman of color doing it, and that the correct response to feeling threatened is to toughen up.
Where discussion's taking place.
This is a list only. I can't vouch for or recommend any of these places in particular.
A lot of the current discussion among SFF pros is taking place on Twitter.
Discussion on RPG.net
Discussion on Dear Author
Discussion at Absolute Write
Discussion at OhNoTheyDidn't [locked to comm members]
Discussion on tumblr [one of possibly many]
Discussion of the apology at James Nicoll's journal
Author Tori Truslow postsabout the Sullivan/Sriduangkaew feud
Who's siding with whom.
I'm listing only SFF professionals who have made explicit statements one way or another. I'm not linking to random fans. Also, a lot of writers have sent messages of support to Sriduangkaew on Twitter, but many were told only that she is a young writer feeling some heat for controversial opinions. At least one author has retracted her support and expressed anger at being mislead, so please keep that in mind before judging anyone on the basis of a single statement. The assholes here are making plenty of statements to judge.
Defending abuse
Djibril Al-Ayad
K Tempest Bradford (EDIT: retracting my editorializing here until I have links to back it up)
Jaymee Goh (here's a cap of a deleted post where she asks victims to stay silent)
Kameron Hurley
Keffy R. M. Kehrli (also here)
Alex Dally Macfarlane
Nick Mamatas
EDIT: One of the names I listed under "defending abuse" was not a pro writer, violating my own rule. I've removed the name and I apologize for the error.
Defending the victims:
Polenth Blake
Kate Elliot
Caitlin Kiernan
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
Tricia Sullivan
Ambivalent:
Rumors, Distortions, and Lies (with the Occassional Truth)
I'm going to try to sort out the rumors that are flying around.
CLAIM
Liz Williams or Tricia Sullivan publicly outed Benjanun Sriduangkaew as RequiresHate/Winterfox.
Status: FALSE
Nick Mamatas did the outing.
CLAIM
"Benjanun Sriduangkaew" is a pseudonym.
Status: UNCONFIRMED
The only evidence for this so far is a comment from Nick Mamatas that he doubts Sriduangkaew is the author's real name, combined with a general sentiment that Winterfox wouldn't know the truth if it bit her. Anything else is simply speculation, and to be honest some of it sounds pretty racist on the basis of her having a "funny name" so let's not, okay?
CLAIM
Authors Liz Williams and Tricia Sullivan have conducted a poison pen campaign to ruin Sriduangkaew's career.
Status: SORT OF
Sullivan says she's contacted editors to withdraw her recommendation of Sridaengkeuw and has privately warned friends about Sridaengkeuw's habits. Whether this constitutes smearing a new writer or simply giving fair warning about a troll depends a lot on what you think about people being held responsible for their actions.
CLAIM
Sriduangkaew has contacted publishers and reviewers (falsely) accusing numerous authors of racist harassment and asking that those writers be blackballed -- often writers with whom she was publicly friendly.
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Tricia Sullivan's post says this, and it fits Winterfox's pattern, but there's as yet no proof. Nick Mamatas has also made statements which suggest this is true, but it's unclear if he's working from firsthand information himself.
CLAIM
No one speaking out against Sriduangkaew has spoken out against white male harassers in the past.
Status: FALSE.
Complete pile of horseshit. Here are the results of five seconds worth of googling by a kind anon.
CLAIM
Everyone speaking out against Sriduangkaew is an author angry that their books were reviewed poorly on Requires Only That You Hate.
Status: FALSE
Winterfox has been trolling for ten years. The majority of her victims are not and have never been published authors. Her ROTYH reviews, while often pretty nasty in and of themselves, are not the issue. Using violent sexual threats to frighten women into silence for a decade straight is the issue.
CLAIM
Winterfox was only actively trolling for a year or two, and she was 19 at the time and too young to know better. Status: AGAINST THE LAWS OF PHYSICS Unless she was 19 years old for 10 years, this is a lie.
CLAIM
All the anonymous comments on James Nicoll's post were from one or two IP addresses.
Status: FALSE
James Nicoll confirms that this is false. He also questions how whoever started this rumor purported to know, since only Nicoll himself can see the IP addresses on his journal.
CLAIM Tricia Sullivan wrote a super racist book.
Status: MAYBE. IRRELEVANT.
If every single person Sriduangkaew has abused was a sockpuppet of Tricia Sullivan, this would be relevant. Also if Sriduangkaew has developed the power of time travel, allowing her to wreak vengeance in 2004 for a book that was written in 2012. Listen, for all I know, Sullivan's the Grand High Elf of her local KKK. That has absolutely nothing to do with Sriduangkaew's abuse of other people.
CLAIM
Polenth Blake's post about abuse didn't specifically mention that it's wrong to abuse white people, therefore Blake thinks it's okay to abuse white people.
Status: ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS. ARE YOU.
Look, fellow white people. It's okay not to talk about us in every single post! Really it is! It doesn't mean someone's out to get us if we're not the topic of the conversation.
CLAIM
Sriduangkaew has a creepy stalker following her around.
Status: TRUE
There's a person by the name of Roguey a.k.a. creepalicious popping up here and there. I don't want to link them just in case they get off on the attention, but the long and short of it is this person seems to have met Winterfox on RPGcodex and gone from there. There's no indication this is someone involved in the current wank under another name.
CLAIM
Everyone speaking out against Sriduangkaew is white.
Status: FALSE
Have you read a single damned thing I've linked?
An anon at loudlysingcuckoo@gmail.com has offered to be a sympathetic ear to victims who want to come forward, anonymously or not. I've spoken with this person privately and can confirm that this person is absolutely not Sriduangkaew nor a friend of Sriduangkaew. I'm not otherwise involved and will not see any messages sent there.
The long and short of it is that there are two sides in this wank. One side, Sriduangkaew's side, thinks it's cool to threaten women of color with being raped by dogs. The other side thinks that's bullshit. Let me make it more explicit: Sriduangkaew is a racist, misogynistic bully, and those people defending her are of necessity defending racism and misogyny.
Think about that for a minute.
Sriduangkaew isn't the worst asshole in sci-fi. That means that sci-fi has a problem with assholes, not that it's okay to threaten women with rape and murder. When your best defense is "but little Timmy did it first" you're thinking on the level of a particularly spiteful five year old. When you want abuse victims to stay silent because speaking up might hurt their abuser's career you're contributing to abuse.
Many of the people currently defending Sriduangkaew and trying to silence her victims are people who spoke out loudly against James Frenkel and Rene Walling, two recent abusers whom the sci-fi community harbored and enabled for years before finally rejecting. Just goes to show that it's all in who you know -- exactly the same things that were said in defense of Frenkel, Walling, and every other abuser in history are getting said now, by people who know better. Sriduangkaew's friends are trying to spin this story to make her the victim and make the victims afraid. To hell with that.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 10:30 pm (UTC)I mean no harm to Bee/RH, but I do not believe her apologies are authentic. There's been no sign of any change in her behavior--reports of ongoing and *current* harassment and bullying, mostly directed toward women and poc, are hard to ignore--and several women of color personally known to me as friends and colleagues have confirmed in private communication that there's been no recent change in her behavior except publicly.
I believe the evidence. I believe Rochita and Trish's version of events. I believe the other victims. I also believe my role is to support them when and if they choose to speak.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 10:36 pm (UTC)On this we completely agree.
I want to make sure, in case there's any question, that I think those people affected who've chosen not to speak up are doing what is right and necessary for their own well-being and they're under no obligation to jump into the middle of this -- they've already gone through enough. And at the same time, those victims who have come forward are doing something very brave and helping out others who can't speak.
Re: Who is Benjanun?
Date: 2014-10-20 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 01:12 am (UTC)This makes it very believable to me that someone (especially one of the Codex users) would pose as her and say someone should get raped by dogs. I still find it extremely horrifying that people (apparently some of her friends?) tried to fucking defend that though when they thought it was coming from her. (And if she did do that, and she's lying, that's utterly unconscionable.)
My apologizes for not being able to verify any of this; I never thought this would be relevant to anything, so I didn't keep track, and googling is finding either recent links or Sh-----trly or both. Sometimes it's remarkably hard to retrace one's internet footsteps. :/
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 01:29 am (UTC)there's also that. both the ones pretending to be her (because they were trolling), and, well, the ones which she definitely posted (because, er, they were trolling, and/or she just wanted to wipe them). sigh.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 01:56 am (UTC)I have a very hard time believing that the majority of her threats and harrassment and stalking of other people over the years were done by other people pretending to be her. There's just such a strong history of Winterfox doing that shit. If she's gone and deleted it now, there's still a wide fandom memory of dozens or hundreds of people who can say "Yes, I remember that." Is it possible that some of it was people impersonating her? I guess. But there's no way I'm going to believe that the majority of it was anyone but Sriduangkaew under the handle of Winterfox. If she's claiming it was, it sounds awfully like "I was haaacked!" which is right up there in the troll toolbox with "It was a social experiment!"
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 01:59 am (UTC)I have a very hard time believing that the majority of her threats and harrassment and stalking of other people over the years were done by other people pretending to be her. There's just such a long and consistent history of Winterfox doing that shit. Even if she's gone and deleted it now, there's still a wide fandom memory of dozens or hundreds of people who can say "Yes, I remember that." Is it possible that some of it was people impersonating her? I guess. But there's no way I'm going to believe that the majority of it was anyone but Sriduangkaew under the handle of Winterfox. If she's claiming it was, it sounds awfully like "I was haaacked!" which is right up there in the troll toolbox with "It was a social experiment!"
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 02:11 am (UTC)Just to be totally, totally, totally clear, that's not what I meant to imply at all. A majority? Even a slim majority? I would be utterly astonished by that.
I'm purely saying that "I have seen more than one person pose as Winterfox" and therefore "It's within the realm of believability to me that she didn't make that rape comment, as she claims, and that it was someone using her name".
My motivation for posting this was azarias saying: "I haven't been able to find any earlier mentions of an impostor, but large swathes of both the RH blog and Winterfox's backlog of comments remain deleted, so that's probably impossible to verify unless a witness wants to speak up."
And I'm a witness, even if a poor one (so this shouldn't count as verification, but I hope I was clear about that). That's literally it. Salt away.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 02:13 am (UTC)I also don't want to give the impression that I'm trying to say her past shit (and RECENT past shit) is excusable. The amount of text I devoted may give a different impression, but unfortunately that's just me not knowing how to edit. So I apologize. :/
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 03:54 am (UTC)No, no, don't worry, I didn't think you were giving that impression. It's a complex situation in that there are a lot of people involved, and some of the ones who are not on her side are also people I would never want on my side. (Creepy stalker dude, for example.)
But yeah. Huge swathes of it were still her. Some folks, you hear that they threatened graphic assault on someone and you'd go, "Wow, that's not them, they're being impersonated," because they have a history of being not-an-asshole. I suspect that's what Sriguangkaew is trying to go for here, but the thing is...too many of us have seen her consistently choose the asshole option, time after time, to be surprised when someone brings up another instance of it. In one or two cases maybe it was someone pretending to be her to make her look bad, maybe it was still her, it's hard to know for sure--but that itself is kind of worrying. Bit of a Poe's Law situation.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 05:05 am (UTC)This may not have been genuine, and it doesn't necessarily even matter. I mean, she stopped using slurs a few years back if you follow her, er, evolution, but that didn't stop her from apparently harassing a rape victim for months last year. There are ways to significantly improve and still be a terrible, awful person. It just depends on how low the bar started out.
But it does imply, at last, that she was probably trying to distance her Requires Hate persona from these things at the very least. It would be very odd to suddenly flip stances on that, in such an extreme form, under a name associated with her, in an arena where others could see it.
(...Though, unfortunately, not impossible. And then again, a bunch of her friends/fans DID try to defend exactly that comment, unbelievably. So... while I believe her, there's plenty of room for doubt.)
Also, I see that RH linked to one of her impersonators which I'd discovered. Apparently I really am the worst at retracing my steps because she literally linked it right there in her apology: https://twitter.com/acrackedmoon
That one's apparently run by an RPG Codex user. It's mostly referencing specific terrible stuff she said on RPG Codex & in the RP community in general (which is, frankly, why she fit in there). Some stuff she definitely said (links provided by her stalker, so I'm... not going to link to them, but they happened, and they're find-able via the James Nicoll link), but this twitter account takes it to eleven.
That should have been really easy to google, so I guess I am just terrible :P
I think to those who are inclined to forgive her, the raped by dogs thing would be a bridge too far (especially given how recent it was), and that's why she & others have brought it up specifically.
Though frankly for me the rape victim harassment thing was more than enough in terms of 'recent issues' :/ and she's not apologized for that at all, as far as I know, and that was absolutely her.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 09:26 am (UTC)What she's claiming here is that people made radically offensive comments and claimed they came from her AND SHE LET THEM. She let those comments stand under her name. I don't believe that.
I think I could just about believe that she didn't know the comments were out there, I mean I've seen TV documentaries that briefly convinced me we never went to the moon, so yes, I could believe it. But Occam's Razor says this is all just another manipulative exercise in damage limitation.
Colum
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 07:01 pm (UTC)Still, I think for me this aspect will always be a bit too convinient, but I guess it's possible. It's just... someone in her position would claim it wasn't them, wouldn't they?
Maybe I'll believe it one day.
Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-21 09:59 pm (UTC)But I am also disturbed at how many people are making this a black and white, "you are with us or you are with the terrorists" kind of thing. Yes, I know a lot of people who approved of how she drew attention to issues that the establishment in sff often ignore, but these people had a range of attitudes towards the attacks and abuse. Some thought they were funny, true, but others just didn't know the extent of it. Some thought it was fine as long as she was punching up instead of down. Others didn't like any of it. People can have complex opinions with lots of internal contradictions or things in tension with one another. FACT.
Re: Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-21 10:09 pm (UTC)That'd be why I've only linked to people who were making specific statements about it (and only ones about the abuse, not the ones specifically about the Sullivan-Sriduangkaew personal feud) ... because people who aren't getting into it one way or another aren't the topic. Thought that was pretty easy to track, but I guess not.
Re: Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-21 10:27 pm (UTC)(Generally I think you wrote an opinionated but not unfair writeup.)
Re: Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-21 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 11:24 pm (UTC)"I'm ending speculation, because I'm sick of this. If you want to know my views re my overdose, see my comment here:"
Then linked to: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5132567.html?view=96509719#t96509719
--where she states:
--------------
This is Kari.
Yes, it's true that Requires Hate apologised to me, two years ago. I accepted the apology and I have no particular anger with her over what happened.
At the same time, yes, she was a contributory factor in what happened with me. And that's all I'm prepared to say, for personal reasons. I'm just not comfortable talking about such things in public.
I hope that this is enough to end at least some of the speculation. Revisiting this is not pleasant.
-----------------
Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/KariSperring/status/524604832024625152
Note: I'm contributing this because this is the only roundup I'm aware of, even if it's a little incomplete. Not sure if it's desired? IDK.
Re: Let's be honest: many people were in the middle on RH
Date: 2014-10-22 12:53 pm (UTC)I also think that the SF&F community enabled and supported her for years. I saw hardly anyone presenting any effective opposition, and a great many singing her praises. I think it's true that few people knew the extent of it, I didn't, I didn't know she was attacking PoC as well as whites, and I'd have struggled to believe that, because it wouldn't make sense, but then nothing here makes sense.
However, if people had taken a stronger line of disapproval of abuse from the start, instead of cheering her and acting as supporters in her gang, think of all the people who would have been defended. By defending this person, even just in words, you defend all the other people, regardless who they are, by sending a
clear message of what you do and don't approve of. The SF&F community utterly failed to do this, and I think there need to be changes in attitude in the community or we'll have this, or something worse, happen again.
All that said, the apology that RH made two years ago to Ms Sperring, makes me think somewhat better of RH. For me it's one star in a universe of darkness, but it's still one star that's there. She absolutely didn't have to do it, yet she did it. That means something. I'm not sure what it means, I'm not sure how it fits into this chaotic jigsaw, but it's something that's there that we can't ignore.
# People can have complex opinions with lots of internal contradictions
# or things in tension with one another. FACT
That's true, but that's always true, isn't it? You're probably right that many people were in the middle, but they were a silent middle, moral dark matter, and they allowed a vocal extreme group to rule the roost. Also a lot of people were probably silent because they felt afraid and powerless, which would be me, for instance.
Perhaps you're right though, that the mutual accusation has gone on too long. I see people who don't seem to have fundamentally shifted their position on this thing, and I don't think they will, so there's no benefit to further recrimination. The SF&F community will either deal with it's problems, or it won't. If it doesn't, then outside forces (the press, law enforcement) will deal with it's problems for it.
Still, it is likely that all that can usefully be said, has now been said.
Colum