To the 15-year-old reader I know about, and anyone around that age or younger: please set this one aside without reading further. There will be enough time later to face the darkness in the world.
Everyone else should load images if reading in email, or read this online.
See After math (1) and After math (2) if you haven’t already, because this will make no sense otherwise.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
—George Orwell, 1984
While his essays are incisive, I’ve never liked Orwell’s fiction because of its bleak and bitter view of human nature. In his novels, people are mad for power or rabidly compliant, cheaply idealistic until there is a price to be paid, capable of lust and hatred, often combined, but incapable of love. Bradbury at his darkest is more accurate. He paints the same portrait of most of society but allows for the exception, the remnant, the woman facing down the men who have come to punish her for reading and thinking, armed with nothing but a kitchen match and an echo of history.1
Many people these days seem determined to prove Orwell’s assessment of human nature correct. The only real refutation that can be offered are those lives lived out in counterpoint and counterargument. The Orwellian protagonist shrieks, “Do it to [her]! Not me!”2 His antithesis is the person who can look at the costs of telling the truth in a totalitarian environment and still say: “Very well. Do it to me, not her.” I am grateful for those who have done the latter, from J.K. Rowling to Jonah Wheeler, and for all those in the centuries before them, from Joan to Havel, including many ordinary people whose names are far more obscure. Who am I, a nobody, to refuse to pay that price?
When the time came, I was mildly surprised by how well I was prepared, and how well I had prepared others to recognize what was happening, if they dared to think. Those who have read Psychological Defenses in Fiction (March 2023) or taken the live classes I taught on the subject would have been able to put names to the behaviors they were seeing: projection, displacement, splitting, denial, and acting out, among others. Labyrinth, Pearl, and Greengrocer (March 2024) and Carreau, Pique… (February 2024), which quotes Orwell’s warning to writers who “find excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality,” are likely of interest. The butterfly catcher (March 2025) is relevant as well. For those who are interested, the sociologists’ term for what was done to me is “degradation ceremony.” I suspect that degradation ceremonies are more effective when the target does not know the term “degradation ceremony.”3
What was more surprising was that, in the long and ugly howl of the thousand-person mob [formed in response to After math (2)], I could not find any refutation of what I was pointing out, no counterarguments of substance, only barefaced lies and ad hominem attacks. Classically, when your opponent is reduced to ad hominem attacks, you have won the debate, because ad hominem attacks are the last resort of someone with no real arguments or evidence. In practice, however, when a man responds to a woman’s reasoned and well-evidenced argument by calling her a bitch or assaulting her, unthinking onlookers assume that the man has won. This has been the case since at least Hypatia, and before her, Aspasia, which is to say, for thousands of years.
Over and over people proudly declared themselves too pure and innocent to have read what I had written, but claimed they were certain that I was a bad person and had written something bad. Many also announced that, although they were too righteous to have read any of it, my fiction was also boring and not worth reading. (See, again, splitting.) Their behavior is, point for point, identical to that of fundamentalist churches in the Eighties and Nineties, down to a reprise of the fundamentalists’ attack on Madeleine L’Engle4 in one of the diatribes that I have linked from the footnotes. It also resembles H.L. Mencken’s description of literary America in the 1910s in his essay “Puritanism as a Literary Force,” which I quote at length in Break, Blow, Burn, and Make.
The mostly white mob, instigated by a couple of unsuccessful male writers on Twitter, was in full force for approximately two weeks. During that period, this was the top post on Bluesky if you searched for my name:
If you are at all familiar with the depths of depravity that men reach online, you’ll know that I have been very lucky. If you are not familiar, I recommend
’s very short Kill All Normies, an even-handed history of the most extreme corners of the internet from about 2010 to 2017, which holds a great deal of explanatory power. ( describes the immediate outcome of that book—Nagle’s blacklisting and ejection from academia by tenured colleagues—in Virtue Hoarders.)As far as I can tell, even in extreme cases where male writers assault women, lie to and steal from and plagiarize women, or threaten women with violence, those men never have the eyes scratched out of their author photos. With one notable exception,5 that degree of hatred is reserved for women who disagree with men. As editor Stephen Theaker, who has publicly voiced the same opinions, has said privately: “I haven’t really had any blowback, but I know it’s different for men, since there isn't the same psychosexual urge to make us submit.”
For another example: male atheists Jerry Coyne,
, and Steven Pinker, when they resigned together from the honorary board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in late December, called gender ideology “quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue… apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology,” (Coyne) and “a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” (Pinker). While they have been criticized, they have not had the eyes scratched out of their photos.Crandal and Eshelman 2003, in their justification-suppression model of prejudice, describe the readiness of many people to vent their pent-up, bitten-back hatred of women, or of a racial or other out-group, once they can plausibly offer an alternative justification for their behavior. Once provoked or aroused, the prejudiced person behaves far more aggressively toward a member of an out-group than toward a member of an in-group who delivered an identical provocation. Other studies have supported the proposed model, or shown higher stereotyping instead of aggression.
indicates another possible factor in Hounded, which is the first book to analyze the past decade of mob violence against women who support women’s rights and know that human beings cannot change sex. The arts, Lindsay notes, are often seen as a zero-sum, highly competitive environment, though few will openly admit it, and the gleeful destruction of female artists who refuse to lie is often a barely-disguised attempt by their colleagues to remove competitors from the field.6As I wrote in On Brevity in 2021, defending oneself against other people’s bad-faith attacks, which can multiply infinitely, is a waste of an artist’s limited time. So I have instead been forging blades, chasing metal, chasing a northern hawk owl, and waiting for the right moment in which to respond. Though I’ve never celebrated it, Holy Saturday seems as good a time as any. The following sections deal with the aftermath (yes, the title was foreshadowing) of my two-part attempt at parrhēsia.
My thanks to everyone who kept me in their prayers, to the far braver feminists and former homicide detective who provided advice and support, to the artists at FAIR, and to the sympathetic atheists at Butterflies and Wheels and elsewhere, who saw what was happening to me for what it was. I’m also grateful to those who were courteous to me, regardless of their own views.
I. Two timelines
A brief selection of events, excluding anything I would consider common knowledge.
Nation, world, and state
Sep 24, 2024: After math (2) is sent to subscribers. On the same day, Scotland accepts all findings from the Cass Report and moves to implement the Report’s suggestions.
Oct 23: The NYT reports on USPATH President-Elect Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s suppression of the results of a NIH-funded $10M study on puberty blockers due to the results being politically and professionally inconvenient. Incidentally, Olson-Kennedy and fellow activist Jack Turban are two of the authors on the Yale “Integrity” Report, which attacks the Cass Report due to the findings being politically and professionally inconvenient.
Nov 19: FAIR takes on King County Jail and WA Department of Corrections for housing male offenders with female inmates.
Nov 20: New Zealand’s Ministry of Health releases its position statement and evidence brief on puberty blockers, warning of bone density loss and low-quality data and advising more cautious prescription than what has been happening.
Nov 22: Italy’s National Bioethics Committee recommends restricting the use of puberty blockers and treating dysphoric minors with psychotherapy.
Dec 4: ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio admits under oath before the Supreme Court that, contrary to activist claims, trans suicides are rare.
Dec 5: Alberta’s Bill 26 receives royal assent, banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgery for children 15 and younger.
Dec 6: Clementine Breen, 20, sues Dr. Olson-Kennedy for medical negligence after being fast-tracked into puberty blockers at 12, with a double mastectomy at 14.
Dec 10: The U.K. makes its temporary restrictions on puberty blockers permanent. No wave of youth suicides was observed after the initial ban, as activists claimed would happen.
Dec 23: A California judge orders one of the multiple female inmates raped by male inmate Tremaine Carroll to refer to him as a woman, using female pronouns. This practice forces rape victims to choose between being arrested for contempt of court or potentially having their rapist’s conviction overturned in the future due to perjury. (The U.K. was doing this as far back as 2018.)
Dec 29: KIRO7 reports that Mozzy Clark has sued the Washington Department of Corrections for locking her up with 6’4” convicted child rapist Christopher Scott Williams, who was transferred to the women’s prison after declaring himself a woman. Predictably, he assaulted her.
Jan 9, 2025: U.S. District Court Judge Danny C. Reeves vacates the Biden administration’s revision of Title IX to prioritize gender identity.
Jan 15: In Tallahassee, Rhonda Fleming loses her case against the federal Bureau of Prisons for forcing her to shower with male inmates.
Jan 18 or so: A NYTimes/Ipsos poll finds that 67% of Democrats oppose male athletes competing in women’s sports, while 54% of Democrats oppose any minors whatsoever having access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. An additional 24% of Democrats think these should only be available to those age 15 and above. Error margin is +/-2.6% at 95% CI, and their random sampling method seems reasonable.
Jan 20: Trump signs an Executive Order removing male inmates from female inmates’ cells and showers in federal prison. State prisons are unaffected and continue, as before, to violate UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, Rule 11. Were the affected female inmates prisoners of war, we would be violating Article 25 of the Geneva Convention. (A federal judge bars most of the male-inmate-to-male-prison transfers in February.)
Jan 27: Queensland issues a temporary ban on new prescriptions of puberty blockers for minors and orders an investigation into a clinic in Cairns.
Jan 28: Trump signs an Executive Order prohibiting federal funding of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries for minors.
Jan 31: Australia’s Ministry of Health announces a national review of the evidence on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries, to be concluded in 2026.
April 11: Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine bans puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Sex-change operations for minors were already banned.
April 16: Grassroots organization For Women Scotland prevails in the U.K. Supreme Court, which rules unanimously that: “The definition of sex in the EA [Equality Act] 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man. Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men. Although the word ‘biological’ does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman. These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation.”
Protections for trans-identifying people are maintained, but women are once again legally permitted to have single-sex rape crisis centers, shelters, and bathrooms.
Individual
August 2023: “Witchfires” is published in The Book of Witches.
December 2023: Proofs of Break, Blow, Burn, & Make are finalized. In addition to quoting H.L. Mencken’s account of writers mobbed by fanatics in the early twentieth century, the book contains this passage:
“I found myself once again lying awake night after night, horrified by the story that I saw I would have to write. If published, it was likely to cost me both my good name and my career as a writer, bring a thousand modern-day witchfinders down upon my head, cause friends to denounce me in public, and lead to publishers’ panicked withdrawals of my books from publication. But it was precisely because such extreme punishment for writing a short story was possible in the United States in the twenty-first century that the story had to be written.”7April-May 2024: I update my will.
Apr 12: “The Bonfire of the Words” is published by the Boston Review. No one notices.
Jun 11: Break, Blow, Burn, & Make is published.
Jun 14: Philosopher and fellow heretic
graciously compliments “The Bonfire of the Words.” Still no one notices.It turns out that some of the witchfinders did read the story prior to September, but failed to attack it before then. Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” This appears to be true.
Sep 24: After math (2) is sent to subscribers.
Sep 25 to present: Six months late, a thousand modern-day witchfinders descend upon me, friends denounce me in public, &c.
Because I published a book predicting a mob, and also described in After math (2) exactly what people would do to me, the most effective thing my attackers could have done was—nothing. I would have looked foolish. Instead, they have made me appear prophetic.8
II. A composite interview by several hundred members of a mob
Selected, edited, and condensed to make subtext explicit, or to make other people sound more civil. (Really.) Their actual words are linked in the footnotes. I’ve avoided identifying people who wrote to me in private, or whose health and well-being I am concerned about.
Q: Doesn’t believing that women’s safety is of equal importance to men’s safety, and that women’s feelings are of equal importance to men’s feelings, make you a fascist?9
A: No. Feminazi didn’t work on me last decade, either.
Q: Doesn’t wanting male inmates to stay out of female inmates’ prison cells and showers, after seeing Jamel Blount’s indictment for rape, Karen White’s conviction for sexual assault, and what they are doing to Tomieka Johnson in California, make you a transmisogynistic TERF?10
A: Once you untangle the convolutions of thought and spell out the acronym, it turns out that the compound neologism you’re using is identical in meaning to man-hating feminist. Man-hating feminist was several decades before my time, but it wouldn’t have worked on me then and it doesn’t work now.
Q: Doesn’t being Christian make you a fascist?11
A: Sir, you’ve publicly called for J.K. Rowling’s throat to be slit and for reporter Jesse Singal to be murdered. What’s more fascist—or more properly, authoritarian—than calling for writers who disagree with you to be killed?
Q: You’re a bitch.12
A: Ecce homo.
Q: You’re an Evangelical!13
A: I’m… not, though?
Q: You’re a white supremacist!14
A: Ma’am, if you had clicked on the linked data or looked at the footnote, or if you had thought for a moment, you might not have misread my question about homicide victims as being about perpetrators. Also, although it’s flattering that you attribute so much power to me, I don’t control how the FBI aggregates data.
Q: I, a violent, sexually frustrated man, will now call you a violent, sexually frustrated man!15
A: Huh.
Q: You hate LGBTQIA2S+ people!16
A: I don’t think lesbians should be coerced into sex with men, arrested for saying men can’t be lesbians (Christina Ellingsen and Tonje Gjevjon in Norway), or driven out of their jobs for believing biological sex is real and important (Kathleen Stock, Allison Bailey, and Maya Forstater, as well as other feminists). I don’t think that gay-rights pioneers like Fred Sargeant or Miriam Ben Shalom should have been assaulted or ostracized for holding those same beliefs. I don’t think children likely to grow up to be gay and lesbian should be sterilized or treated in the same way that Alan Turing was treated by his government. Call that whatever you like.
Q: If I were you, I’d crawl into a hole and die.17
A: I’m good, thanks.
Q: It seems like name-calling, lying, slander, smears, and emotional manipulation don’t work as well on you as they do on most middle-to-upper-class white women.
A: If you’d read my third book, which states this directly, you could have saved yourself the trouble. If you’d actually read After math (2), I also state this there. The relevant studies are Brown and Gilligan 1992 and Fordham 1993, described in Phyllis Chesler’s Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman. I briefly mention them in Perspective.
Q: Then what is your weakness!?
A: Trader Joe’s chili spiced mango. It’s a problem.18
Q: But how am I supposed to use that against you?
A:
Q: Can’t you ignore the rape of incarcerated women by male inmates in order to advance your career? Look at me, I’m doing it. It’s easy.19
A: No. I can’t.
Q: Don’t you feel bad about my male friend, who is terrified that somewhere, somehow, a woman might disagree with him? Don’t you care about making sure he’s safe from women’s disagreement?
A: How does your male friend plan to make himself permanently safe from any woman ever disagreeing with him? Do you understand that the only way he can ever experience complete “safety,” as he defines it, is through the total domination and control of all women’s minds and bodies? As the brilliant Sarah Schulman writes in Conflict is Not Abuse: “Which kind of safety are we endorsing here? Is it the safety from psychological ‘power over’ and actual harm? Or is it the safety from being made uncomfortable by accurate information that challenges one’s self-perception?”20
If he is as you describe him, and I hope you’re exaggerating, your friend sounds like a miniature Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot.
Q: He works at a bookstore and could refuse to sell or recommend your books.
A: I suppose that’s better than a land war in Asia.
Q: I didn’t bother evaluating the evidence for either side—21
A: You may be pleased to know that I wrote a short course on data quality and collated the principal evidence for both sides of the argument, which should allow you to do just that.
Q: —but a lot of people on social media are saying that the Cass Report is wrong and that you’re wicked. Therefore the Cass Review must be wrong and you must be wicked.
A: See Einstein’s retort to Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein, the Pyramid of Evidence, and Graham’s Pyramid of Disagreement (derived from “How to Disagree”). Baxendale 2025 is a good read.
Q: Protecting the environment is more important than protecting women. You should stay silent about women’s rights and speak up about the environment.22
A: I’m sure you have noticed by now that you can’t, in fact, trade women’s rights for environmental protection.
Q: Can’t you lie just a little bit, for the rest of your life, to appease all the people who will otherwise silence and destroy you?
A: No. I can’t.
Q: Don’t you know what happens to women who disagree with men?
A: Yes.
III. The very small miracle
In the hours after the mob began to grow into a real Two Minutes Hate, on the evening of Saturday, September 28, I was able to pray for more than sixty participants individually and by name: for their good health, for God to have mercy on them, and for them to know how deeply they are loved. After the mob became too numerous to count, I continued to pray for the group as a whole.
I had not been capable of this before.
IV. The small failure
At one point, I asked a congregant at my church which side he would bet on: one person and God, or an army of thousands? The odds seemed approximately equal to me.
“God,” he said promptly. Every time. What I was describing wasn’t even a fair fight.
He was correct. Oh me of little faith.
V. Notable mob participants
From what I saw, which was certainly not everything, the only genuinely notable (and extremely talented) writer who joined the mob was Pamela Dean, who spread someone else’s smear about me. Dean’s Tam Lin is an excellent book, well worth reading. It pointed me to Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning, which is also lovely. I would have thought her able to recognize “the howl of human jackals,” as Fry puts it, but decades have passed, human memories are short, and it takes a great deal of strength to withstand the hydraulic press of social media.
Clarion West’s current Board Chair joined the mob in its earliest hours, posting a public denunciation of me that she later removed. It’s possible that someone pointed out to her how vile it looks for the leader of a writers’ workshop to denounce a writer, donor, and volunteer for the crime of… writing. She replaced her denunciation with a note of encouragement to the mob that did not name me.
That Clarion West could fall so low, below even Scientology’s Writers of the Future contest—which, while I don’t recommend it, isn’t in the habit of denouncing non-Scientologist writers for not believing in Scientology—is a disappointment.
VI. Litany of reasons (“But why?”)
The following points independently apply. The list is incomplete.
In the summer of 2022 I became aware of the shoddy state of research in this area and of the ACLU’s multiple successful lawsuits to move male inmates into female prisons. I thought for a moment—a whole month, even—that I could ignore these things. But in preparing the book proposal that would become Break, Blow, Burn, & Make, I reread the essays I had previously written on courage and counting costs, among others, and realized that I could either live by my values and risk everything, or become a hypocrite and coward.
Muslim comedienne Shumirun Nessa was silenced by violent men stalking and threatening her young children. Activists at Vermont Pride shoved Fred Sargeant to the ground and poured coffee on him. A young man punched 71-year-old Judith Hobson in the face in Auckland. Angry men assaulted Lierre Keith in Portland. There are many other examples of the costs of speaking up on this matter. I have had a meaningful life and have realized most of my dreams, and I can let go of these things without regret, if necessary.
Because in Norway, Iceland, Scotland (law in effect April 1, 2024), and Germany (law in effect November 1, 2024), men have rewritten the law and redefined hatred so that women who accurately and truthfully describe men can be arrested, fined, and locked in cells with male rapists. Meanwhile, men can still call women “bitch” and other sex-based slurs without punishment. Colorado seems about to join them. If men can write so-called “hate speech” laws that keep the hatred of women legal, while rendering factual descriptions of men illegal, who holds the power in this situation? Who is, in fact, hated and oppressed?
Because I read Gender Trouble and encountered Judith Butler23 in person in graduate school over a decade ago and was unimpressed by both.
Because I knew about the Solomon Asch conformity experiments, which showed a large drop in subjects’ conformity to the wrong, consensus answer when one confederate offers a different answer, even an incorrect one.
Because over the years I have been repeatedly lied about and screamed at by colleagues at various jobs, by members of writing groups and churches, and by strangers on buses and trains—almost all of them white, though this may be due to local demographics—and am no longer surprised when it happens. Because I am familiar with the behavioral patterns of people with personality disorders, as well as the apathy of onlookers, and can anticipate those behaviors and wait patiently for things to work themselves out.
Because it had become necessary to show other artists that one could tell the truth and walk through fire and survive.
Because even if I failed in the attempt—if I had in fact been assaulted or killed—that too would have been a useful proof.
Because I have advised many new and emerging writers over the years, and felt a sense of responsibility to them as a whole. When I began publishing, the waters were not quite as infested with piranhas as they are now. Now the one thing I can do for newer writers is to buckle on a suit of armor, wade into the river, and thrash around a bit, to blunt the teeth of whatever bites me.
While I did not know who would rush to lie, slander, smear, and spread rumors about me in order to sell books and curry favor, and was sorry to recognize so many names, I saw an opportunity to break the weapons I knew would be used against me, which are destroying literature. I wish my adversaries peace and health, but if they choose to lie, slander, and smear again, I hope their audience will say:
“Aren’t you that unsuccessful 55-year-old male writer who harasses younger women online?”
“Isn’t that the envious woman who lied through her teeth about whatshername?”
“No, thank you.”
Because I’m not that important. Weighing up one life, one career, against the potential to reach one or two parents who may hate me and yet begin to doubt, and avoid reducing their children’s IQ and bone density for little benefit; or one or two women who may hate me and yet begin to doubt, and refrain from exogenous testosterone and thereby avoid a stroke in their 20s, incontinence in their 30s, and a premature death in their 50s or 60s; or a man who may hate me and call me slurs but look into the research and learn, before an irreversible decision, that suicide rates increase after sex-change surgery—there is some very bitter math there. Many others have worked through that math. I have reached the same result.
VII. End without end
If Jenny Lindsay’s description of behavior patterns holds true, then the second wave of mob violence begins when the targeted woman describes what has been done to her. Many of the participants in the second wave of abuse will be new, and the behavior of the mob will escalate. There is no exit once a woman has been targeted in this way.24
The alternative, however, is to abrogate one’s responsibility and remain silent, which means that other, younger women, even young girls, will have to bear that responsibility and the abuse and violence that follow. Because so many people have either stayed silent or adopted the lie, this is already happening.25 I’m nobody important, but I can at least do this much.
One of the hardest and most gallant prayers: “But even if He does not save…”
Very well. Do it to me, not her.
“‘Play the man,’ she said, ‘Master Ridley….’”
“‘We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out,’” said Beatty.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2013) 37. Latimer and Ridley were burnt at the stake in 1555 for rejecting the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. If you subtract “Catholic,” this is also my heresy.
The Orwellian chorus, in contrast to the Orwellian protagonist, consists of those in the background who obediently chant “WAR IS PEACE / SLAVERY IS FREEDOM / [other self-contradicting slogans],” who do not question what they are told.
And now you have been inoculated. Also see René Girard’s I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning for another perspective that could loosely be called anthropological.
“I turned the radio on, to a ‘Christian’ station. It was a very strange sensation to listen to a spewing out of hate, a septic vilification of me and of everything I believe. My response was instinctively visceral, as though someone were plunging a knife into my intestines and twisting it....
I, and all my writings, were denounced as being not Christian, indeed, as being demonic…. The interviewer mentioned another name, and the woman said, “Oh, we're going to get her, too.” Get her? Is this what Christians are supposed to do?....
Why is it a human tendency to enjoy hate, to be quick to believe anything evil that is told about anybody? ….Why do we want to believe evil of others? Is it that our own self-esteem is so low that we can raise it only by putting others down? We are none of us exempt from this virus, but if we truly hold to Christ’s love we are helped to recognize it and combat it.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Penguins & Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places (Colorado Springs, CO: Shaw Books, 2003) 109-110. Compare ft. 13, Vincent et al.
I value
’s courageous reporting, though I differ from him on several points. He is the only man I know of who has received graphic rape and death threats for speaking out on this issue; male “activists” tend to reserve those for women.Jenny Lindsay, Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2024) 73.
152-3.
It’s only pattern recognition, though. Thanks to Gamergate, I’ve had an unwilling front-row seat to mob behavior for a decade. I’ve also had the benefit of Mencken’s historical insight into those envious writers and self-righteous moralists who mobbed writers in the first decades of the twentieth century. Mob behavior is fairly predictable by now. Nor am I the first, or even the twentieth, to be treated in this way.
As Simone Weil wrote in “Evil” in Gravity and Grace, an essay that is well worth reading: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” M. Scott Peck quotes Weil in People of the Lie and adds, “Once you’ve seen one evil person, you’ve essentially seen them all.”
Too many people to mention. Since Alexei Navalny and Jonah Wheeler were also called fascists, I’m in good company.
Several people, variously.
Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Bluesky, September 28, 2024 and Alana M. Vincent, Professor of Interreligious Dialogue (!), Bluesky, September 28, 2024, among others. The monologue by Vincent is a good example of what is discussed in the first half of Break, Blow, Burn, & Make. Also see, for contrast, “On Publishing Nonfiction.”
For the record, ahead of publication, the marketing team at Worthy Books reached out to multiple media outlets to pitch coverage of the book, as is standard in book publishing. The CT editor said yes and assigned a writer. Neither knew anything about me.
L.M. Kate Johnston, Bluesky, October 1, 2024. Her references are to Exercise 2.1 in After math (2).
I was originally scheduled to be on a panel on faith in science fiction at the World Fantasy Convention in Niagara Falls. As soon as the panel composition was announced, the white panelists ejected me from the panel for being Christian, making this claim. I specify “white” because the one other nonwhite panelist had a Bible verse prominently displayed in her social media profile. She dropped out of the convention altogether before it began.
(Solipsistic white people don’t seem to remember that ~80% of black Americans, 59% of Korean Americans, 64% of Latinos, and 74% of Filipino Americans are some kind of Christian, according to Pew, and that when they jeer at me for being Christian, they are also jeering at a majority of nonwhite Americans. None of them remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. said about 11am on Sundays.)
Some white guy on Bluesky, October 1, 2024. See ft. 7, Vincent.
There are 66g of added sugars per bag. The label claims that one bag is six servings. This is not correct. One bag is, at most, two servings.
This and the following are from the first private email, September 30, 2024. All private correspondents know me personally, two for over a decade.
Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) 62.
This and the following are from the third private email, dated February 6, 2025.
From the second private email, dated September 30, 2024.
For those who do not know, these are the holy text and high priestess of the strange new religion.
Lindsay xii, 28-36. What she does not say explicitly, but what I believe to be true, is that if a sufficient number of people dare to speak the truth, then the mob loses its power. Don’t do this without taking precautions, however. See the list of resources at Crash Override.
Small clarification added in square brackets, for those who could not believe that a reaction so disproportionate could occur in response to simple dissent.