If stalking, harassing, or being manipulative is the way you choose to get someone to date you, then you better be ready for the consequences. Doing those things are Never okay and it’s better to not date them at all if you’re thinking that.
Look, I know this person could be a child, so I’m not asking you guys to go harrass them. But please be aware of @courteousmingler. Aside from calling me- a non-binary lesbian with a trans lesbian girlfriend, a rape survivor, and outspoken inclusive feminist- “pro-rape”, “anti-trans”, and basically insinuating I’m a rapist, this person also is apparently spreading my picture to “warn” people at Pride about me. First off, as if I’d even have the ability and privilege to go to a Pride event with my abusive, homophobic parent. So thanks for that. Second, THIS is why exclusionists exist. I openly share that ace people intruding in lgbt spaces and taking resources from those of us that need it more makes me uncomfortable. I regularly post/reblog things here that make it clear that cisgender people who do not experience same-gender attraction do not belong in spaces for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, for what I assume are obvious reasons. And what do I get when I talk about this? Not using any slurs, hate speech, transphobic or homophobic language or rhetoric, as if I’d ever use them anyway as a lesbian and girlfriend of a beautiful trans woman? Hatred. Abuse. Slander. A person contacting me directly telling me I am a rapist and a terf and think all ace people should die. I don’t even know what else to say. I considered ignoring these messages, but Jesus Christ. You’re going to come to me, to throw lies and triggering posts/language in MY face….and I’M the abusive one??? Fuck. Off.
(these are two separate posts, the top one was a while before the bottom one, which is a response to the fallout from it)
i stumbled across a post today where catandkitty stated that all rape is by men, which… is not true, and erases the experiences of a LOT of people that I know, and a LOT of people in general.
and I know that all the courteousmingler receipts that inclusionistsstayinyourlane was giving me were about this person. i mean i don’t know if they all are, but i do know enough about their ongoing fight to know that everything i see is either “courteousmingler is emotionally abusive because she infodumps and switches topics constantly to confuse you and also because she says that rape survivor catandkitty was supporting rape and wants aces to be raped!!!” or “catandkitty is a proto-TERF who gets people to harass courteousmingler and anyone associated with her en masse and create sideblogs to pile on, and says that rape survivor courteousmingler has no right to speak on rape and lies about it and” whatever i’ve already lost track of what they all say about each other.
so i looked through catandkitty’s blog some more. and this is what you guys are talking about?????????
of course catandkitty isn’t, and can’t be, personally responsible for millions of ace people being raped. of course she doesn’t love rape or want to support rape.
but when people who have been abused via “sex is a human need” say that that is an idea that facilitates their rape, that it is an idea that people need to not spread, that saying this supports the people who raped them… they deserve to be listened to too.
saying “consensual, adult, healthy sex is a human need” is not better. because the problemisn’t that people assumed this didn’t mean “consensual, adult, healthy sex.”
the problem is that just as catandkitty, and I, and many others, were abused by people who used withholding sex as a punishment/control tactic, there are also lots and lots of people who were abused by people who used “sex is a human need” to justify rape.
the problem isn’t that those abusers SHOULD have instead said “consensual adult healthy sex is a human need.” it’s not the lack of “consensual healthy” phrasing that is the problem.
the problem is that so many people use the idea that “no human can stay physically and mentally healthy without having sex, it is a human need” to manipulate others into agreeing to sex they are not actually available for. or which is not healthy for them. or which they cannot consent to for all sorts of reasons.
which leaves them feeling like it’s their fault they “gave in”. that it “can’t be rape” because they “let themselves” be pressured or manipulated into it.
it’s not okay to build up the arguments either side uses, or to ignore either side of survivors.
I want to address a few things here - first, I would really like a source for your claim that catandkitty said that all rape is by men. That runs entirely contrary to every interaction I’ve had with catandkitty over the past several years, and while I don’t know everything she’s ever posted on her blog by heart, I have been following her on tumblr for I think around four or five years, during which time I haven’t been aware of her saying anything that even remotely sounds like that.
Second of all, your comparison of the two “sides” here as being equivalent or equally wrong in their approach seems disingenuous when you have spent the past several months defending courteousmingler and condemning catandkitty and those who stood up for her. Also, while I can’t read courteousmingler’s mind, she HAS - explicitly! - said that catandkitty wants people to be raped, and supports rape.She hassaid thismultiple times even.She has said this about me as well. This is not an exaggeration, and pointing it out is not unreasonable. Catandkitty, on the other hand, has said and done nothing that you present the other “side” here as claiming. She doesn’t run sideblogs that are active in the discourse (maybe this comes from speculation about who runs THIS sideblog? but I’ve since revealed my own identity specifically so people would stop just accusing anyone who criticizes cm as being the author of this blog; it’s missvoltairine, now located at a new personal blog which I’m keeping discrete due to harassment and stalking), and she’s never said that courteousmingler should not talk about rape at all, and she doesn’t send anyone to harass courteousmingler and her circle, much less “en masse” (cm claimed that catandkitty “sent” clownyprincess to harass her; this isn’t true, as clownyprincess herself has confirmed).
Third of all, I have a fundamental problem with your assumption that someone who talks about how their abuser used withholding sex as an abuse tactic - which both catandkitty and myself were always very clear on, despite courteousmingler and others falsely claiming that we said that “saying no to sex” could be abusive on its own, absent of a pattern of abusive behavior, even though both of us explicitly said otherwise - necessarily has NOT been abused by sexual coercion, guilt-tripping, etc and are inherently undermining the experiences of other people who have been abused in that way. I specifically talked about how withholding sex was part of a pattern of abuse that ALSO included manipulation and guilt-tripping and emotional and physical coercion into sex I didn’t want. To expect me, or catandkitty, to only talk about one aspect of that and not another because you think that these experiences cannot be acknowledged side by side without undermining each other is silencing. We do not need to foster an environment where rape and abuse survivors are expected to be silent at all times about their experiences because someone might find those experiences to be narratively inconvenient or harmful to the cause. (And before you say that the problem is that we talked about withholding sex in direct response to rape survivors telling us that their rapists said “sex is a human need” - that is not what actually happened, and the recontextualizing of our participation in this discussion has been one of the most enduring lies used to harass catandkitty over the past few months.)
I’m not sure how to respond to your statement that
saying “consensual, adult, healthy sex is a human need” is not better. because the problemisn’t that people assumed this didn’t mean “consensual, adult, healthy sex.”
Because first of all - no one SAID that if a rapist used pro-consent language in their coercion of a victim, that would make it not coercion/rape. But people DID assume that when catandkitty HERSELF said “sex is a human need”, in the context of a series of posts to her personal blog about her own experiences with abuse and recovery, that she WAS explicitly including rape in that statement. Carmen defends that interpretation directly in this post, where she says:
because needs are things you require to survive, and survival is a human right. and you really should be able to enact your human rights no matter what. so to believe sex is a need is to believe someone is justified in fulfilling that need, lest they die because they couldn’t.
people are making posts about “supporting healthy sexual communication” as a guise for pushing rhetoric about it being acceptable for non-ace people to pressure aces into sex.
like they’re pushing conversations where a non-ace partner asks, repeatedly and consistently, about sex and sexual boundaries using a script that out of context sounds like a healthy attempt to have a conversation about sexual boundaries.
and yet they’re really using the language of discussing consent to mask the fact that they’re hounding an asexual partner about their lack of interest in things becoming sexual… this is coming from the same group of people who entered a conversation about asexuals being pressured into sex (aka raped) to remind everyone that denying someone sex can be abusive.
The bolded makes it clear that this is an accusation being leveled at catandkitty and myself, as this is consistently how she talks about us specifically, and this post was made shortly after I made a post about healthy communication in relationships. So your assertion that people understood and respected that when catandkitty said “sex is a human need” she was clearly referring to consensual, healthy, adult sex is pretty grossly inaccurate.
Finally, your claim at objectivity and neutrality here - positioning yourself as condemning “both sides” as equally bad - is laughable since you have consistently defended courteousmingler in the past. Even if you HAVE changed your opinion on the appropriateness of her behavior (which you do not seem to have done), and WEREN’T still repeating misrepresentations of what has been happening here that have been used to justify harassment of catandkitty and others for months now (which you are), you have positioned yourself in such a way that expecting people to accept you as an equitable judge of the situation is laughable.
Last night, tumblr used clownyprincess was approached via DM by Carmen/courteousmingler. The conversation opened with Carmen asking clownyprincess to “walk [her] through” how to commit suicide and went downhill from there. Carmen has since made several postsabout this, and posted some decontextualized screencaps from their conversation.
It IS gaslighting to consistently lie to someone, over and over again, and then berate them for not believing you automatically. Which is not to say that courteousmingler gaslights people - I don’t think you can call any singular, one-off interaction with a person gaslighting; gaslighting by necessity takes place over a series of interactions, that is how it works - but having been in an abusive relationship that included gaslighting, it’s noticeable to me that Carmen frames people simply trusting their own immediate perceptions over what she tells them to believe as “gaslighting”.
After talking to clownyprincess about her interaction with Carmen, we decided that it would make sense for me to post the screencaps of their conversation, as well as a statement from clownyprincess, here. The caps are below the cut. I received them from clownyprincess via e-mail last night, and am only posting them this evening because I had a lot to do today and couldn’t post them earlier.
PLEASE note that this chat contains heavy trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, discussions of rape and abuse, and honestly, serious emotional manipulation. I am not kidding. I find these screencaps deeply upsetting, even triggering. Take care.
There’s a lot I could say about this interaction and I may say it later. The way Carmen lies (claiming that catandkitty tagged posts about her own abuse with “aces”, for example, which is provably untrue) and then repeates the lie over and over and then demands that clownyprincess tell her where she’s lied and then immediately changes the subject - the way she opens with a request that clownyprincess go over suicide with her in explicit detail - the way she starts out questioning and becomes increasingly aggressive and verbally abusive (going from “it’s been really scary lately” and “I’m having a bad day” to “RAPE WORSHIPER! RAPE WORSHIPER! RAPE WORSHIPER!” in very short order) - the CONSTANT, constant, attempts to define catandkitty’s thoughts and intentions, followed by a complete meltdown when clownyprincess said that she felt she understood Carmen’s thoughts and intentions - the accusation that catandkitty and clownyprincess want to rape asexual people. All of that is here. What’s also immediately obvious is that Carmen has a specific sort of arguing style - I observed it from her in the DM interaction we had on my old blog; other people have commented on this as well. She messages you repeatedly, VERY quickly, often shifting the subject slightly from one message to the next, so that it’s hard to get your bearings, and you end up responding belatedly to some point she made earlier. When you do this, she berates you harshly for lying or changing the subject. Recently, she has claimed that this is a symptom of autism, and that therefor if any other disabled people find it hard to follow her particular chat style, they are being ableist, because her disability, I guess, trumps theirs.
However, I want to close this out with a statement from clownyprincess, that she sent me along with these screencaps. I’ll preface this by saying that clownyprincess and I have been mutuals for many, many years now; our internet friendship dates back to livejournal days, and during that time, I have seen her get triggered and angry, but I have never seen her be dishonest about her feelings and motivations. If there is one person I trust on this hellsite to be a straight shooter, it is clownyprincess. She and I have very different styles of engagement in this sort of thing, but I understand where her anger here comes from, and I have a lot of respect for her relentless honesty in confronting online harassment and abuse.
Anyway, here is what she had to say:
first of all, I am well aware that I lost my self-control whilst DMing with carmen yesterday and that nothing productive could come of it. I have worked hard to gain a great deal of self-control I didn’t have over the last few years and having it stripped away like that left me shaken. the entire interaction has left me feeling hollow and ill.
carmen knew exactly which buttons to push in order to trigger me and elicit an hysterical reaction, because later she can use those against the person she attacked. the aftermath of knowing a manipulative liar managed to suck me into the vortex of her awfulness is stark and ugly. fuck you, carmen, you’re a fucking black hole.
carmen maliciously and savagely attempts to rewrite history, casting catandkitty in an incredibly ugly role of a rape advocate and apologist and which I knew could also be extremely triggering for her target. the following in particular horrified me: “catandkitty ran a campaign trying to associate asexuals who say “no” to sex, to violent abusers who withhold sex. because associating these two groups with each other can make the rape of asexuals more socially acceptable.”
it is such a heinous, depraved thing to say, especially as it is absolutely untrue. seeing such a malicious lie said about someone who is themselves a rape survivor infuriated and disgusted me. it was so blatantly evil. I sent carmen an ask saying simply “you are an evil fucking monster”. though some may say I started it, I stress again that what prompted my reaction was an evil fucking lie.
she then responded by DMing me with a request to help her commit suicide, as seen in the screencaps. this was deliberate, I have no doubt. it is such a vile, violent thing to say to someone and she knew exactly what she was doing, evidenced in her own words “I know”. she attempted to manipulate me by trying to get sympathy and when that didn’t work, she doubled down on the same awful, repeated statement about catandkitty. frankly, the whole thing was triggering for me.
having someone deluge me with endless messages all basically just repeating themselves and all with the same disgusting, UNTRUE message about a traumatised woman who was only speaking the truth drove me right over the edge. so many people have explained so many times in so many ways, the only possible reason that occurs to me that carmen maintains her insistence that catandkitty’s motives were what she claims is pure vindictiveness. having someone repeat the same HORRIBLE lie like that, over and over, someone intentionally using the most distressing and awful language possible, knowing full well the impact it would have, was awful. I couldn’t believe she could lie like that, like she doesn’t give a fuck about the actual impacts this is having on a real person. I yelled at her because I wanted her to know that no matter how many times she told the same lie, I would not believe her.
the messages were flying back and forth constantly and by the time I was able to reply to one thing she’d said, another couple of her messages had come through, disrupting the continuity of the messages. her efforts to trigger me reached their peak when she told me that I was trying to make rape easier so I could rape someone. with the sexual violence I’ve experienced in my past, I just went numb. I realised I was arguing with someone who has no soul and no heart. I played cool and blocked her. good riddance to a toxic hellhole.
I’m not proud I lost my shit with carmen, but that’s because it’s what she wanted. from the second she sent her first message she knew what angles to play. asking me to help her commit suicide was a seriously abusive and violent thing to do and I am still shaken by it. she wanted to distress me as much as possible, knowing she could then manipulate the conversation to further blind her sycophants and cast herself as persecuted.
I will call an abuser an abuser. carmen has lied and lied and lied about catandkitty and has obsessively stalked catandkitty for seven months now, which is a type of abuse. carmen uses catandkitty’s abuse history against her in order to further traumatise her. that is abuse. and when someone is screaming the same stomach-churning lie calling a rape victim a “rape worshipper”, you bet I will double down and tell that abusive person they are a liar, that I know they’re lying, that they’re not fooling me for one second. and there is no damn good reason for these vile lies, except that that piece of shit enjoys it. if someone is gonna stand their ground and maintain the same obvious lie, expressing it in the most violent language they can find, I will definitely draw my own conclusions about their agenda.
oh and catandkitty did NOT send me. another blatant lie, carmen. I acted on my own accord.
So, there has been a reckoning in wangxian/mdzs fandom since yesterday, when twitter fandom found out that popular author (AO3 user Shinocchi) was suspended from AO3. And it turns out it was because she was behind what seemed to be a cyberbullying campaign against other authors on AO3. Which she did on her own (well, and some of her followers. But mostly by herself). She created sockpuppet accounts (fake accounts), which she used to stalk and leave hateful comments, harass authors when their fics were becoming increasingly popular (more comments, kudos and bookmarks). She did this to drive these authors off of fandom. She is a STALKER, and she did severe emotional damage to others. Why? Because their fics were becoming too popular? Because she didn’t agree with wangxian characterization? Proof shows that the one thing all of these authors had in common was that their fics were becoming popular. As soon as this happened, they were attacked by multiple accounts
Geragrena, rikke, cafecliche and yiqie are only a few that have been mentioned that were her victims.
This came about thanks to AO3 user sweetlolixo, another popular mdzs author who was also targeted and harassed by Shino. She compiled pages of proof that all of the people leaving hateful comments on her fics were coming from ONE person. Don’t believe me? She created a thread here where she published a google document with everything that happened and all the proof, plus the response from AO3 that resulted in them banning Shinocchi.
And what was Shino’s response? She blamed “her sister,” then privated her twitter account. Today, she became public again and said she would take responsibility for all the people she hurt and apologize. However, people confronted her about her crappy apology and she ended up deactivating her account.
TLDR: AO3 author Shinocchi was removed from AO3 after another popular mdzs author, sweetlolixo, compiled evidence proving that Shino was a cyberbully who created fake accounts to harass and leave hateful comments on other fics, while pretending to be multiple people. So if you’re looking for her fics and find them deleted? This is why.
UPDATE: Found screencaps of Shinocchi’s apology from this morning, where she said she would take responsibility (well, she still blamed her “sister”) and apologize to everyone involved.
A little less than an hour later (I think?), she deactivated her account and flounced to her website (which is private), where she made a post saying that she’s leaving fandom and that she won’t apologize because nobody wants to hear it.
She made a post on her (private) website, where she basically doesn’t take any responsibility, and instead implies that most of the people dogpiling on her are “those who held grudges” against her, and that she won’t “admit to faults that aren’t hers.” So no apology from Shino to all those affected. Pretty different from what she posted this morning on twitter, isn’t it?
Besties…sexualizing Caitlyn (and/or Vi) still…isn’t ok just bc they’re fictional. I see it specifically with Caitlyn a lot, where people sexualize her chest size, or make comments like “I wish she left her buttons undone” and that’s still. Not okay. Like, sexualizing ANYONE isn’t okay, but to see it happen specifically with a large bust woman is really uncomfortable. Harassment is something that happens to thick/large busted women all the time IRL, and it’s still harassment. Caitlyn seemed uncomfortable in the mf brothel scene, and she *likes* Vi. Treating a character who doesn’t even show interest in sexualizing herself, the way that the fandom (often) treats her, is really weird.
Fuck it, I’m mad. Who wants to see receipts on a fucking abuse/rape apologist in my local queer community, who recently got a write-up in a Vancouver paper?
okay, I guess at least some of you are interested. I probably shouldn’t care, it’s my blog, and I’ll call out awful people if I want to, but hey, multiple years of abuse will do that to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TW: mentions of sexual abuse, gaslighting, abuse apologism. This is long and image heavy- the screenshots speak for themselves pretty well. I can’t describe them, sorry, it’s just too much rn.
So, 2 days after I made this post, I got a message from a friend. Or rather, they forwarded a message to me that had been sent to them by a guy name Chase Gray, who goes by GaySalishArt on some platforms:
If you want to buy local native made stuff, there’s plenty of options (here’s a good starting point: https://www.indigenousbc.com/stories/responsible-wishlists). I’m sure you could find more folks in your own area who could use your business (& who don’t pull shit like the stuff shown in the screenshots) with just a little digging. All I’m asking is that you to spend your money, time, and energy supporting the many, many native artists who don’t mock and threaten abuse survivors.
(That also means don’t go comment on his shit or review bomb him btw, I’d rather you take that energy and use it to leave positive comments on/share other people’s work!!! There were a whole bunch of comments I didn’t manage to screenshot where he was encouraging people to dismiss me & playing the victim to people who were watching this shit unfold, so it’s not worth giving him ammunition- but if you happen to SEE someone sharing his work, feel free to message them a link to this post )
Lookit this fucking creep:
So, fun fact: I only know the white half of my family, because my mom and my not-so-white Mexican (aka visibly indigenous) father broke up before I was born. One of the regular fights that occurred between me and the person this guy is defending was about my discomfort at her making “authentic Mexican” jokes about my taco kit dinners, particularly during a time when I was very actively trying to learn more about my own heritage. She eventually agreed to stop making those jokes, only to replace them with self-congratulatory comments about how she would normally make “a joke” (as in, that joke) in that situation.
(Guess she forgot to mention that part, huh?)
I hate everything right now
(Yep, it’s the same guy. I seriously feel fuckin’ nauseous…)
