Here goes... Thread of my experience working for QFX events, the racism I faced while working for them, and how the racism on the team was handled by management:

I’ll preface by saying I was brought on the team later than anyone else. I was hired to help with social media, to engage more with guests, and to bring something different to the table. My girlfriend was also hired as a graphic designer/video editor.

We were both very excited to join a team in a convention that branded itself as inclusive, diverse, and welcoming. As a middle eastern lesbian, there are hardly any spaces where I feel comfortable and included. This was very exciting for me.

However, RIGHT away, the marketing team decided they didn’t like me. within a week, the marketing director, Divina, told me she doesn’t need me on social media, and wants me to work as the PR manager (even tho I had minimal experience with PR at the time).

When I spoke to management about it, they told me that this is just how Divina is, that she talks to everyone in a way that makes them think she hates them. That really didn’t sit right with me to begin with, but still, I tried my best to deal with it.

So I said, on top of helping out with social media, that I could also take on PR. However, moving forward, any social media suggestions I had were immediately shot down or told they weren’t good enough. I put things in our digital content calendar that were -

- immediately not approved by Divina herself, and eventually, I stopped trying to suggest anything altogether, as it was exhausting constantly receiving pushback for my ideas.

However, as I was still trying to work with them, give my ideas, and work as a team, two things happened that were inappropriate, racist, and made me very uncomfortable to continue working with the marketing team.

The first thing that happened was this - In writing my blog post, Kimberly ended with “if you’d like to know more about Egypt, ask Youstina.” I asked her to amend it as I am not the spokesperson for an entire country, and in trying to relate to me, she related her struggles -

- with her blue eyes and white skin to my struggles as a middle eastern immigrant. This made me extremely uncomfortable, and I was genuinely shocked that anyone would say something like that to me.

However, I was brand new to the team. So i tried my very best to brush it off. I told no one except my girlfriend of the incident, and did what I always do in situations like that - nothing.

Until the second incident occurred, with a different white staff member. While this one wasn’t as bad as Kimberly’s, the two together were enough for me to decide I was too uncomfortable to continue working with this team, as Ashley is the social media manager.

I would like to point out that being told that we are not allowed to use GIFs of people of color sounded very exclusionist to me. Though she meant well, the idea of only using gifs and memes of white people did not sit right with me.

So I decided to step back from social media entirely and focus completely on PR, thus making my interactions with Ashley and Kimberly minimal. Remember at this point, I hadn’t told anyone about these comments. I was brand new and didn’t want to cause any problems.

Right before I decided to step back from social media, I went on Coming Out Pod (shoutout to @ComingOutPod ) to promote QFX and tell my coming our story, as that was the focus of the podcast.

If anyone has listened to my episode on the podcast, you know my coming out story is complicated - I am a middle eastern immigrant with parents who are far from accepting of any of this. So my story was heavily revolved around my experience as a lesbian woman of color.

When I did the podcast, I was yelled at by Divina for “not talking about QFX enough.” She then got mad at me for bringing up ClexaCon, even though I brought it up because Lauren and Nicole asked me how I met my girlfriend. Was I supposed to lie?

Moving forward, my interactions with staff were minimal. I mostly interacts with Nikki, who is one of the three directors, or Holly, the founder/director of the convention herself.

Until a comment was made in slack about how I’m “not a team player,” or how I “don’t do any work,” in which Holly herself had to get involved and stood up for me regarding the pushback I had received initially.

I will be discussing two members of the staff who found out about the racism, reached out to me, asked if I was okay, and offered their support for me. For the sake of their privacy, I will be blocking out their names and such. But just know I appreciated them immensely.

However, during this whole debacle, a social media subtweet war started between me, kimberly, and ashley. It started because I made a comment on my social media about how being queer does not absolve you of your racism. So they caught on.

Gotta say, I’m still proud of myself for this one loool. Also in case ur not aware: reverse racism isn’t real

After this happened, the marketing director, divina, decided to lock me out of our digital content calendar, which had ALL my work in it, and told people it was on the account that she found me, an ARAB, “suspicious.”

It got to the point where me, and the two other poc employees who have supported me through this, decided everyone needed to stop acting like a child and have an actual conversation.

So we started a groupchat. The groupchat consisted of me, the three directors (Holly, Nikki, and Mel), Nadia (my girlfriend), the two poc staff members (let’s call them A and B lol) and the marketing team (Divina, Ashley, and Kimberly).

This was the first time I brought up said concerns to Holly, the founder, and it was EXTREMELY mishandled. As a white person, telling a poc that “I don’t think their intent was to be racist” (which she had told me over the phone at a later time) is a form of racial gaslighting.

But this is the part that really shook me. The part that made me truly believe Holly did not care about me, or my experience. Keep in mind, Holly brought on Divina, Ashley, and Kimberly herself. They were friends. A fello staff member sent me this screenshot.

One of the two poc staff members mentioned above, A, sent me a screenshot of a text Divina sent her, which very clearly states her opinion that I am “racist against white people.”

This, to me, was the absolute breaking point of this situation for me. During this conversation, Divina brought in screenshots from my personal account. These tweets were in regards to all the “WW3” jokes and memes that were being made when a war with Iran was being -

- threatened. I was terrified & I was sick of seeing my people be murdered for no reason. And I was called Anti American for it. And then she had the nerve to say I was the one being a bully and being emotionally abusive. LOL. (Thank you to staff member B for defending me)

She said the tweets were making the convention “look bad.” How does the convention look now, Divina?

This is what my girlfriend sent them in this groupchat during the fight (we could only find the notes app screenshots but whatever it was just copied and pasted into the slack lol)

Poc staff member A sent me this, a convo between her and Divina. More accusations of me being racist against white people. More people not owning up to their own racism.

Our director holly finally responds in the morning, and says she wants to talk to each of us individually to get this sorted out. So we have a chat over the phone, she tries to make excuses for them, but tells me she doesn’t take this lightly and concerns of racism WILL be -

addressed. she said she will implement proper HR training, and that she’s sorry this has been my experience. I left the convo feeling doubtful anything would change, but happy that something was going to be done about all of this.

And then covid happened. And every single thing that was promised, like HR training, bigger conversations, addressing racism, was NEVER brought up again. Not once.

I still feel extremely uneasy about all of this, but I try to let it go because the world is literally going to shit and it feels stupid to hold onto something like this when people are literally dying (or so I tell myself).

And then Holly gets the idea for QFX cloudcon, a virtual convention that would take place in June since QFX had to be postponed. Nikki and Holly tell me they want me to do social media for cloudcon, and I get excited about finally getting a chance to show what I’m capable of -

-without having to answer to a bunch of people who don’t like me and who have been racist against me. But then she never spoke to me about it again. She handled social media herself, she did graphics herself (even though she had asked nadia to do it, and i got ignored for months.

Now, before I get to the last text, there’s something else that’s really important in the micro aggression of racist things I’d like to address.

Shortly after the “anti american” tweets, the directors sent out a social media policy that everyone had to sign. As I’m not sure I can fully talk about the context of this policy, I will leave these screenshots here to speak for themselves.

Any convention whose majority demographic is “white terf lesbians” is not a convention I am ever interested in being a part of. Also, the fact that I “broke policy” for tweeting a POC hashtag in a Halsey fandom is absolutely beyond me.

Going back to the previous texts, I finally decided to text Holly about how uncomfortable the silence was, how it bothered me that the racism was never addressed again, and how absolutely exhausted I had felt about this entire situation. Pt. 1 of the conversation.

Here’s pt 2. I felt a lot better after this conversation, and I was looking forward to finally being able to deal with all of this and get past it. Until...

Over the past month and a half, I have tried to contact her several times to have the onversation she promised me, where I can finally address all my concerns. And instead of taking the time to reply to me, she texts someone else to tell me she doesn’t have time for me. Nice.

Every single excuse made as to why she didn’t have time for me involved her working on the back end of things to make a profit from her convention. And still, as I’m being ignored, she’s regularly updating the @qfxcloudcon social media page.

Profit over people, because racism only matters when you are performatively tweeting about black lives matter. But when it comes down to it, the lives of black and brown people don’t actually matter. The mental health of those people doesn’t matter.

So me and Nadia resigned. (first is me, second is nadia)

Still no response from her, but she did favorite this tweet that her girlfriend tweeted about how we “showed ourselves out.” Pretty interesting.

Anyway. I’m going to name everyone involved, because they have really played a part in making this entire experience as absolutely uncomfortable and horrible as possible for me. I hope you guys learn from your mistakes.

@EverythingClexa @divinagpena @kimberlyamato @piscesdaydreams @qfxevents @qfxcloudcon

End of thread. If i think of anything else, I’ll add to it. Thank you all for listening and for supporting.

adding this cause i give no fucks lol https://twitter.com/moonstiina/status/1290721728675508225?s=21 https://twitter.com/moonstiina/status/1290721728675508225

Also, for clarity, all of these events took place from January until August. So this has been happening for MONTHS. Management has had MONTHS to address and deal with this, and they haven’t. I tried SO hard to just deal with it, I really did. But I was miserable.

So I just received this DM... Blocked out the person’s name and picture for privacy purposes. But anyway, Ashley has a history of racism (also, I asked if I can post this first)

the way QFX knew they had a racist staff member and just didn’t care LOL

more people coming forward about ashley... pretends to be shocked.

New evidence has been brought to light and I am absolutely, sickeningly disgusted. For someone who claims to be such a strong ally, Holly sure has played a huge role in the oppression of minorities, including people of color and trans people.

An anonymous source sent this to me, a screenshot from QFX documents where they *LITERALLY* have diversity checkboxes from guests... I have absolutely no words

also just wanna add i don’t know when this screenshot was taken, or when this document was filled out. i was just sent it. i presumably do not have access to this particular document.

Please do me a favor and don’t tag the attendees that are on this list. If my name was on there and I saw that, it would be heartbreaking. So please, let’s not tag them, and instead let’s take it up with the people who are responsible for this to begin with.