an open letter to sana (@ /iucieh)

you’ve blocked me, so i honestly don’t know if you’ll see this or not, but i still felt the need to write it because your behaviour online over the last month or so has caused a lot of pain and hurt and i just don’t think you understand that?

maybe i’m just hoping you don’t understand that, because at least that would be better than you intentionally trying to hurt people. anyways, i know none of this is really my place, but i feel like i can’t stand by anymore after some of the things i’ve seen the last few days.

i’m hoping after reading this you’ll come to understand why the things you’ve been saying and doing are wrong, and you’ll apologise and change your behaviour. but if not, at least this thread will be out there so people know to avoid you in order to not be hurt by you.

i’m sure you saw this coming, but let’s start with your tweets about the lgbtq+ characters in tlh. a lot of people explained why these comments were wrong to make already, but i’ll still go through a few reasons because this whole situation hurt me personally as a bi person

so, the reasons i found for you not agreeing with their being so many lgbtq+ characters in tlh are:
1. a book with 50-60% lgbtq+ characters is unrealistic because there’s not that many irl
2. it’s unrealistic for so many lgbtq+ characters to be out and have no issues in that time

3. the book wasn’t marketed as lgbtq+ centric so it shouldn’t be lgbtq+ centric
4. matthew only has female love interests (to our knowledge) so it seems as if cassie just made him bi for rep points

here are my reasons for not agreeing with each of these

1. is 50-60% of the world population right now lgbtq+? no, probably not. there are more lgbtq+ people than statistics show, because those who are scared to come out or who haven’t accepted/figured out their sexuality aren’t shown in statistics. but you’re right, it’s not 60%

1. HOWEVER. not every group of people is statistically the same as the world population. i know it sounds a bit strange, but lgbtq+ tend to congregate together even when they don’t know their own and/or each other’s sexualities

1. this means that in a group of people, if one person is lgbtq+, chances are that a lot of the rest of them are. i have my own anecdotal evidence to support this, as all but one person in my old friend group turned out to be lgbtq+ and none of us were out when we became friends.

1. this lovely person tried to explain that to you. you replied that because tlh characters were children of tid characters that they weren’t a chosen group. but just because their parents were friends doesn’t mean they HAD to be. not to mention, 2 of the 6 lgbtq+ characters are

1. not even kids of tid characters.

on top of that, i don’t know where you got the number of their being 13 main characters. full disclosure, i haven’t read chain of gold, but i found online that only 9 people get a pov, 4 of whom are lgbtq+ (including magnus tho so)

1. the three main perspectives are all from characters who are assumed to be straight since cassie has said there are only 8 lgbtq+ characters and we know who all of them are. there are COUNTLESS characters in tlh. if you actually added all of them up, you’d get way more than 13.

1. in fact, youd get approx 60. so the ratio of queer to straight characters isn’t 6:7 as you’ve been claiming. it’s 2:13ish (assuming that all characters who haven’t been specifically confirmed as queer are allocishet, which i hate doing but for the purposes of my point i will).

1. cassie happened to focus on a lot of the lgbtq+ characters, but that absolutely does not mean that lgbtq+ people are the majority in tlh. far from it. only about 15% of the characters in tlh are lgbtq+, a number you’d seemingly be happy with since its “a little more than” 10%

1. but even now that i’ve basically debunked your there’s-an-unrealistic-amount-of-lgbtq-characters argument, i want to pose this question to you: why is it a bad thing to focus on a group of people with a higher percentage of lgbtq+ characters than the general population?

1. look at a book like the hate u give. there’s a way higher percentage of black people in that book than there is in america overall. but that’s not because the book was bad or unrealistic (bc thug is honestly the opposite of both). it’s because different groups of people do NOT

1. naturally reflect the exact world-wide percentages of different identities. some areas have more black people, some have more white people. some areas have more allocishet people, some have more lgbtq+ people. and not taking that into account leads to a reductionist argument.

1. if you already knew this, then that leads me to this question: what’s your issue with this book following a group with more lgbtq+ characters? it seems to be that you don’t enjoy reading about them, which is why so many people have claimed you’re homophobic.

1. so yeah, your first argument really doesn’t work for me. spoiler alert: neither do your other arguments

2. cassie basically answered this one for me. and the argument doesn’t apply to downworlders seeing as how they canonically view sexuality differently to shadowhunters.

3. lgbtq+ people are normal. we exist in the world. you say you want representation to reflect reality? well lgbtq+ people exist in reality. and as i pointed out when i was talking about your first argument, the ratio of lgbtq+ to allocishet characters is lower than you claimed.

3. i also pointed out that IN REALITY queer people tend to group together naturally, so having a group of friends with more than one lgbtq+ person ALSO reflects reality. people pointed this out to you, you didn’t listen. so what other conclusion are people supposed to come to

3. other than that you’re homophobic? i’m not gonna say that’s fine, because imo it’s not. but it’s your prerogative. admit to yourself that you do hold some homophobic views and either accept that about yourself or try to change your views to be more accepting of lgbtq+ people.

3. obviously i’d prefer the latter, but as i said, in the end it’s up to you.

4. this argument is biphobic and genuinely made me angry but i’m still gonna try to remain as respectful as possible. Bisexual. People. Don’t. Have. To. Date. People. Of. All. Genders. To. Be. Valid.

4. if matthew finds himself crushing on just girls throughout tlh, he’s still a valid bisexual, as he still feels attraction to people of other genders. not that we even know he only crushes on girls throughout tlh though, cuz only the first book is out. and until we get the rest

4. of the series, you can’t claim that matthew’s bisexuality is never visited again because you’ve only read 1/3 of the series. your argument is premature, and thus feels like an excuse to invalidate a character’s bisexual identity. maybe i’m wrong about that though. i hope so.

4. i don’t think i am wrong though, and i have a reason for that. but i real quick wanna take this time to educate you on a couple quick things in regards to bisexuality. there’s no such thing as a “heterosexual love interest” for bisexual people. all their love interests are

4. bisexual love interests because they are bisexual. just like dating someone of a different gender to their own does not mean they’re in a heterosexual relationship because they’re still bisexual, yk?

secondly, bisexuality does NOT mean attraction to “either men or women”.

4. bisexual people feel sexual attraction to people of 2 OR MORE genders (biromantic people feeling romantic attraction rather than sexual). yes some bi people are only attracted to men and women, but a lot of us are also attracted to non-binary people and it’s important to

4. consider that and adjust our language to accurately portray that for the sake of bi people and non-binary people.

ok, so why do i think you’re biphobic? you claim when discussing matthew’s bisexuality that you’re speaking only from a writing perspective. that you aren’t

4. talking about real life bisexual people at all. and yet i found public interactions between you and a bi person where you’re questioning their (i’m using they/them pronouns bc idk their preferred ones in case anyone is wondering) sexuality because they’d told you they’d only

4. had a crush on one girl in their life. this isn’t about fictional bisexual people not being written the way you think they should be anymore. this is a real life person whose sexuality you are questioning because you “think everyone finds girls pretty tho lol”.

4. this is absolutely not ok. i cannot stress how wrong this is. figuring out your sexuality can be so hard, and for you to make this person’s life harder by openly telling this person that they are contradicting themselves now by coming out as bi is, frankly, disgusting.

4. i’ve not included screenshots of this interaction because i don’t want to bring back this memory for the person you were interacting with cuz i’m sure its not a good memory for them. but it happened, and you can’t say it didn’t because there is literal proof on the internet.

and this is why i felt the need to address the tlh situation, even though it did happen a month ago: because you claimed that it was just logical to not agree with their being so many lgbtq+ characters in tlh, yet, as i’ve proved, it’s not logical. it is, in fact, the opposite.

you typing out in all caps “where is the logic?” in response to their being multiple queer characters in a story is straight-up manipulative. you give arguments that are loosely based on logic to support a homophobic take so that, when someone disagrees with you, you can call

them stupid for just not understanding the logic and reasoning behind your argument, even when your argument isn’t logical in the first place. you’re someone with a platform online, and yet there are multiple manipulation techniques you’ve used to get people to agree with your

lgbtq+phobic opinions. and this is why i felt the need to write this.

“but laura, you’ve only given one example of my manipulation” you may be thinking, and so this is where we move to your discussions on herongraystairs and with herongraystairs shippers (plus a few other ships)

we’ll start with your you-just-didn’t-understand-the-books reasoning behind why you think “poly herongraystairs shippers shouldn’t be allowed to exist”. this is along the same lines of what i was talking about before. you put down people’s intelligence, essentially claiming that

they’re not smart enough to understand “the point” of tid. but the beauty of books is that their meaning is up to an individual’s interpretation. some people, like you, stick very closely to what they believe the author’s interpretation was. others, as this wonderful person tries

to explain, follow their own interpretation, or the “death of the author” camp. they read into things differently, and don’t care if their interpretation ends up being different than the author’s. just because someone doesn’t see YOUR interpretation of the story, doesn’t mean

they’re not intelligent enough to, it just means they’re their own person and have the critical thinking skills to find alternative meanings within a book. and aren’t you someone who applauds the ability to be critical about a book? and don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy

of you claiming “different interpretations are actually healthy” when you’re constantly fighting people who interpreted jem and will’s relationship differently to you.

anyways, adding onto the last manipulation method we discussed, let’s talk about calling people delusional

for disagreeing with you. this is another way to put people down so that other people disregard their opinion. it’s also just incredibly arrogant to think your view must be the only correct view, and anyone who thinks differently must be having delusions.

i think one of the worst ways you manipulate people, though, is by calling people “sick” for shipping herongraystairs. this is not only incredibly rude, but also starts heading into the territory of being discriminatory against polyam people. you talk about herongraystairs like

it’s disgusting and not just another relationship that people ship together. is it a coincidence that it’s only the poly ship from tid that you talk about this way, or do you just find polyamory gross? i’m sure you’d argue you find herongraystairs gross because you think of jem

and will as brothers because they’re parabatai, and yet you’re totally fine with julian and emma being in love, despite them being parabatai. but jemma were canonically in love! i hear you shouting, but we’ve established that not everyone’s interpretation of will and jem’s

relationship is the same (i know, i know, you don’t consider head cannons valid (or even seem to know what they are if you think an author needs to say a hc could happen for it to be valid), but too bad because they are valid). looking at your opinions of keirarktina just

solidifies my belief that you must just find polyamory disgusting. but i’m not even surprised that you seem to be against yet another lgbtq+ identity at this point. even going so far as to, yep you guessed it, question the validity of a real life polyamorous person’s identity.

again, i’m not showing screenshots of this, but essentially you said being “poly doesn’t give you a superpower” because they said that it was possible to love two people equally, and then you proceeded to say polyamory is “not a sexuality” despite multiple polyamorous people

considering their polyamory to be a part of their sexuality, thus directly invalidating those people. which is a horrible thing to do, honestly, and i hope you take a good look at yourself and your behaviour, especially towards lgbtq+ people, because it is absolutely not ok.

so yes, twice now you have used logical fallacies in an attempt to manipulate people into accepting your lgbtq+phobic opinions. in fact, you’ve even gone so far as to compare parabatai dating to actual siblings dating (but not julian and emma, they don’t count of course. hmmmm

i wonder why. couldn’t possibly be because they’re straight). this is, again, manipulative, because you’re comparing something that isn’t wrong (we discovered in tda that parabatai are only supposed to remain platonic because of the curse and that parabatai did used to fall in

love because it wasn’t considered wrong in any way until it started causing deaths) to something like incest, which is fairly universally considered gross. and i honestly wouldn’t have a problem with you being grossed out by the idea of parabatai being in love (because there’s a

solid argument for the parabatai curse and the consequences of incest being parallels now that i think abt it) if you weren’t so openly in favour of julian and emma. because then it seems you only think same sex parabatai being in love is gross, which seems pretty homophobic imo.

oh and another way you manipulate people out of shipping non-canon lgbtq+ ships is by telling everyone who does that they’re fetishising mlm relationships. is mlm fetishisation an issue? yes. do you, as someone who isn’t mlm (to my knowledge at least, i’m sorry if i’m wrong) have

any authority at all on the topic? no. this is just another way for you to guilt your followers into agreeing with your opinions, and it’s just so manipulative. here’s another example of you doing this, except you’re literally qrting a mlm person who DOES have an authority over

the issue of mlm fetishisation, which is even worse. not to mention they didn’t even bring up any of the issues you discussed or remotely say any of them were ok (though we all know hating straight people is ok obviously(i’m kidding, this is a joke)). you just brought them up

to further your cause and make yourself look like the good guy because “oh look at me i fight against fetishisation, i can’t possibly be homophobic” when in reality it really does appear as if you’re just fighting against queer relationships.

moving on, can we talk about this real quick? did you seriously call people “sensitive pussies” for not wanting an anonymous account to post needless hate about people on book twitter. i mean, i know you did cuz the proof is below, but i still can’t believe that people genuinely

wanted an anonymous account to start posting hate about people for no reason other than, what? they were bored? wanted drama? i don’t presume to know your reasons, but i can’t imagine any reason i would accept.

here’s more manipulation, calling someone a “psycho” and “12” years old to undermine them and manipulate people into believing you’re in the right. also, funny how you go off at this person for posting dm screenshots to clear their name when you literally turned around and did

the same thing. except, you weren’t even in the right because this is the same person who i’ve seen public interactions of you questioning their sexuality. so not only have you been incredibly biphobic to this person, but now you’ve doxxed them by revealing their private phone

number (which i have edited out because i think revealing people’s private information is a horrible thing to do, along with all the messages they sent in the dms because this person has been through enough without me spreading things they said privately too). but this is another

example of your hypocrisy.

and then when, full disclaimer, someone who is a very close friend of mine called you out on your behaviour, you called her the r slur. which is just BEYOND wrong. you also said “i have a lot of friends here” which sounds like a threat, and honestly

is a massive part of why i decided to actually post this, because i absolutely can’t stand people threatening my friends.

speaking of friends, i didn’t really collect much evidence of wrongdoing from yours because this was really meant to be focused on you. however, here is some

screenshots of them displaying some of the same behaviours i’ve discussed in this thread. the four of you have seemingly spent a lot of your time on twitter attacking people for the ships they like, which, outside of being rude, doesn’t seem very productive at all, and i truly

hope y’all take a good luck at your actions and apologise for the hurt and pain you’ve caused people. but just in case you don’t, for anyone reading this who doesn’t want to be associated with people like this, their accs are
- @/donottearmedown
- @/jamesheronaie
- @/emmajuiiaan

anyways, i know this thread was incredibly long, and i’m sorry for that. i’m not very good at being concise. but part of the issue was also just the sheer amount of things i had to cover, all coming from the last month alone. that is incredibly concerning. i don’t think people

like sana and her friends should be on this platform until they’ve learned to be respectful of other people, so honestly i vote that we block and report them, and hopefully the time off twitter will give them a chance to reflect on their actions. i know it might not mean much

coming from me, since i’m not really a part of any of this, but i really am so so sorry to anyone that was hurt by sana and her friends, and i hope you’re all doing ok. that’s it for this thread, so good bye xx