Last night I blocked Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch, who both had followed me for some time after she did the equivalent of detonating a tactical nuke as a flash bomb to distract the audience, blaming all emerging accusations against her on someone her community will accept.

If you know me, you know my view on consequences of past actions: no one is required to like, trust, or forgive you and if you behave egregiously enough then for the rest of your life you might find your reputation preceding you. This isn't something anyone decides. It happens.

But... Jesus, this is going to get messy.

I would be surprised if the people who were hurt by or bore close witness to Benjanun's storied toxic edgelord phase are foremost among the people who find Elizabeth Bear's "scientific guess" that she's beyond the accusations credible.

Her "guesscusation" post's replies are replete with people saying things like "Wow I don't know who this person is but judging by the report she sounds awful." and "Why hasn't anyone stopped her???" and calls for her to banned from conventions and expelled from publishing circles

Whatever you think of Benjanun Sriduangkaew in the past and whatever you think of her now, there is a third person in the mix: a fictitious Benjanun who is Macavity Meets The Devil for a certain subset of science fiction and fantasy writers.

And since a lot of them are old enough to get this reference, when I say the Devil I specifically mean the archnemesis of Dana Carvey's Church Lady character, who denies the existence of coincidence and wonders, "...could it be SATAN-ATAN-ATAN?"

Before I blocked them I had been grappling bringing something up with Scott Lynch in private, since he'd listened respectfully to my advice about legalistic rhetoric.

He has said, or I took from what he said, that he understands that Alex Rowland has every right to think badly of him.

But he also says that they have concocted lies about his and Bear's behavior towards their career and towards other writers.

If we were to grant the most innocent explanation for everything he's done, and yet we also grant that Rowland has no reason to trust him... I don't know how he can feel sanguine about labeling Alex a liar and not someone who thinks badly of him from past experience.

So when Tempest Bradford is talking about things like who gets rehabilitated in SFF and who gets slack and a chance to slide by, this is the kind of thing I think about. https://twitter.com/tinytempest/status/1278358959527583745

Oh, and I guess I should explain for people who don't get the gag here - she doesn't go to conventions, isn't in publishing circles, and "was stopped" years ago. https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1278364904815239169

I'm not going to tell anyone harmed by her to get over it and I'm not going to tell anyone who found out about it they're not allowed to judge her by it, but the idea that she's an active supervillain of SF/F literature with an army of "flying monkeys" is farcical.

I've been told there are allegations of recurrent misconduct in communities I'm not part of, so I should at the very least be less confident in flatly saying that she's "been stopped". I apologize for that. It's arrogant to act as though I have a full picture of what anyone does.

But in terms of the level of furor directed against her from communities she never had any appreciable level of power or participation in, vs. how the people with connections and privilege in those communities are viewed with regards to their own actions? It's very unequal.

And if white literary sf/f can believe Elizabeth Bear, who cries one single shining tear and has seventeen and a half veteran luminary editors rush to wipe it away, has not the institutional power to impact a single solitary career or a young writer's security and state of mind?

Given my admittedly incomplete picture I'm going to tie this thread off here and refer you back to Tempest's thread.

Some people's harm slides under the radar more easily because they tick off enoug hof the right boxes. https://twitter.com/tinytempest/status/1278358980213878784