#I swear there is a readmore in the version in my editor!

[sqbr]

Actually, she did apologise, making it clear she understood at least some of the reasons everyone was upset, and she acknowledged fault and said she would do better.

It's just that her behaviour around and after that apology only make her look worse.

Since it's a perfect example of the kind of shell game of shifting buzzwords she always uses to excuse her behaviour, and to prevent anyone saying "actually she did apologise" as a defense, I'll go into it under the cut. (Edit: readmore is being flaky, sorry!)

Disclaimer that this is based on decade old memories and may be wrong in some details. But this is how I remember it.

So. At first she said her victims deserved having slurs/violent language etc thrown at them because they were bad writers. When that kind of bullying fell out of vogue, she said she only attacked people who deserved it for being bad writers and problematic. She was punching down!

And if she attacked another POC it didn't count because they were American, and if she attacked another non-Western POC it didn't count because they were straight, etc etc. And if that didn't work she'd point out that some of her critics were racist white people (true!) so why criticise her instead of them?(because we can do both) To my eternal shame, I was somewhat swayed by this rhetoric myself. But eventually the weight of evidence became undeniable.

She made a new persona, the squeaky clean and friendly author Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Who initially not only denied that she was Requires Hate/winterfox, but encouraged people to attack anyone making the connection.

It was only once one of her 'friends' made the connection undeniable that she finally felt obliged to apologise. And she still took time to imply that the real problem was her critics.

And when that didn't fix everything her supporters would go "But she apologised! And she was under 25 for some of it so she can't be held accountable! And the real bad behaviour was creepily documenting every bad thing she did, why don't you focus on that??".

And then when people stopped talking about it she shifted her story to "noone ever told me why they were upset, it was just a bunch of white women being vague".

So yeah, apparently she is very sorry for everything she did, but also the accusations are too detailed, and also noone ever told her what she supposedly did wrong.

And there's no sign she's really changed.

Afaict these days she is presenting herself as a Defender of Trans People which is both darkly funny and horrifying. On the one hand I'm glad she's stopped gleefully throwing around transmysogynistic slurs, but on the other hand would prefer cis allies not focus quite so much on presenting certain trans identities as the Bad Ones (but it's ok, because she's Defending Trans Women!). I'm less sure how her pattern of attacking disabled people has evolved over time but am probably happier that way.

So yeah! Be smarter than past me! Stay the fuck away, and don't be taken in.

PSA: Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew/Maria Ying

I'm starting to see recs for Benjanun Sriduangkaew crop up in fandom again, so here's your reminder that Benjanun Sriduangkaew, aka Maria Ying, is actually Winterfox/Requires_Hate, a well-known serial harasser, blackmailer and abuser who decided that the best thing to do with her multimillionaire heiress time and money is to do real and lasting harm to many communities and many writers (especially writers of color) that she saw as rivals.

with how fast things move online right now, I imagine she's banking on people just forgetting everything she pulled: please don't! But even if you won't deny her your attention, at least keep yourself safe and remember that her modus operandi used to be either love bombing people until they let slip something she then blackmailed them with, or literally decades of unhinged harassment.

feel free to share.

original sources:

Mixon report: https://feralsapient.com/?p=889

The letter to Apex editors: https://web.archive.org/web/20170216003240/http://awitin.likhain.net/2017/02/a-letter-to-apex-editors-re-the-intersectional-sff-roundtable/

Zen Cho's report (start here of you never heard of any of this): https://web.archive.org/web/20200808225250/https://zencho.org/being-an-itemised-list-of-disagreements/

Rachel Manija Brown's report: https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1288081.html