#People are literally scared for their lives and live in fear of being doxxed and forcibly outed

[myfandomrealitea]

Honestly if my support system weren't extremely anti I'd be more comfortable reblogging and doing stuff that's proship. I have a recognizable art style sadly, and very niche ideas that I've already shared with 'safe' ships so I fear that it'd be extremely easy to get figured out. A couple of them know where I live so its very likely at least one of them would try and do severe damage to my personal life (transphobic family) I've been trying to connect with other proship people, but so far, no luck.

If its possible for you, create a second blog. Not a side-blog, an actual second blog. Build a completely fake identity from scratch. Pick a name wildly different from your own, carefully craft the visual identity of that blog so it looks nothing like your own.

And go fucking ham.

Its still you. You're not an imposter. You're not a fake. You might not be able to be who you are in your "main space" for your personal safety, but you can carve out the freedom to be who you are within the safety net of being anonymous.

Build a community on that blog. Build a support network that isn't going to collapse under you the moment you step on the wrong plank.

The thing about 'niche' is that the world is still so very, very vast and there are still so very many people within it. And in the era of communication its ever easier for people with the same interests and ideas to cross paths. Practice a different art style. Mingle with the people who share your ideas. Spread your ideas far and wide so you're not a shade of red in a sea of blue. Everyone is purple.

I know its very easy for me to say these things and make it out like its so simple. I know its not. I know its risky, and scary, and hard work. But its a chance. Its an opportunity, if you're ever ready to at least attempt it.

[tommyssupercoolblog]

Hello, I'm the factive who asked your husband how he was able to find peace in being open as a factive in a relationship with you. His confidence and insight really helped me feel validated and less ashamed of my existence. I also wanted to ask your POV being out as factive? And does it bring you peace and comfort to be where you are with your husband now than before? You don't necessarily have to share everything, only bits you're comfortable to share are ok by me.

I think, after all this, I wanted to be close or connected to other factives wherever I could find one. Just like you and your husband, me and my in-sys husband wishes to be ourselves and gush about each other without feeling too scared to speak our names out loud. If you find this ask relevant, thank you so much for taking your time in answering.

AAAA HELLO!!! OMG I totally forgor about this lol okayokayokay

YES I AM VERY HAPPY AND SECURE AND STUFF I am feeling very pog!!! 👍🏻 I do not have anxiety or anything anymore I am feel peace. And I am SO GLAD we are out? Literally best decision of my life. We r seen and we can be ourselves and it's so much better than hiding FORREAL FORREAL

So about the fear thing, I'm a tommyinnit factive so like.... There was a lot of fear when I first started doing my thing. Because the interactions I'd had with the DSMP community previously were...uh....bad!!!

Very bad!!! Like, doxxing people over shipping c!Tubbo/c!ranboo in a romantic way even though they were literally married bad !!!!!! Suicide baiting and shit bad!!!! And they also seemed to think that things like special interests and introjects were things you can control (even though they aren't) and would harass neurodivergent people who had connections to problematic cc's in that way, so the ableism was also spooky.

So I got it in my head that if I came out, especially as an alter in a relationship with someone else, it would be a BIG problem even if I wasn't vocally pro-rpf and anti-censorship because like. They would see my existence as offensive to source and also as "shipping" and then I would literally be hunted for sport and die. Like that's not an exaggeration that's literally what I thought, I had nightmares about people showing up to our house with guns because they found my Tumblr blog?? Which is.....very overdramatic like that is NAWT going to happen. HELLO???? My Tumblr blog with like 300 followers??? As if someone's going to purchase and learn to use a gun, find our real world address, travel all the way to it, and somehow manage to get to our house with a gun in their hands without being stopped, and then manage to get INTO the house without being stopped or spotted or bitten by the dogs, and then find us, somehow know which one of the people living here is us, and successfully both shoot and kill us??? GIRL NO. GIRL THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

But I was SCARED. So what I did, right, was that when I first made my blog and started posting? I took a page out of poppytwt's book and wrote everything with numbers and symbols and shit, (like this: "T0mm√1nn1+") And I didn't interact with any DSMP posts at all. I would see fanart and fun posts about my source or the characters and I wouldn't like or reblog because I was paranoid that OP would be mad at me, so I would scroll sadly by.

But I was still myself. I was still "Tommy" and I still explained that I was an introject, and in a relationship with Seán. And that was a big step!!! -even if I had to put a space between Tommy and Innit when talking about my source, and also spell it like I was a Homestuck character.

Eventually I dropped the censored letters because it was MAD annoying but I still used spaces liberally, and avoided referring to my source as anything other than "source" unless I like, HAD to. I also didn't make "Innit" jokes about myself, even tho I REALLY wanted to.

Then I started making the Innit jokes too, but only with spaces, and I started timidly reblogging fanart from people who seemed chill- I would read DNIs and intros first, but if I got the vibe they were chill with me, I would reblog. This was a BIG BIG step for me, and I remember at first obsessively checking for DNIs and if someone didn't have one at all, like my blog, I would either scroll through their blog to get a feel for their opinions or I would just leave- because I didn't want to risk interacting with someone who was weird about introjects or RPF or both.

And then people from the fandom...started talking to me. I made friends and acquaintances. And they all told me that basically, as long as I knew who to block, I was fine; and that the fandom overall had MASSIVELY calmed down since 2020 anyway, so the things I was worried about weren't even normal anymore here on Tumblr- only on twitter. And they sort of reassured me.

I stopped feeling the need to put spaces between "Tommy" and "Innit", and started using Tommyinnit casually, both in reference to myself and source. I went back to all our AO3 fanfics, which at the time had no character tags to avoid popping up in DSMP circles, and added the character tags.

Then I started actually making fanart just for source, not septicinnit, and even- gasp- TAGGING IT with tommyinnit. Same with liveblogging and posts about him.

And then I made even MORE friends as people realized my blog like. Existed?

It was a very gradual process for me, and if you need to go slow too, that's okay. But what I've found is that the things I was worried about weren't even really things I had to worry about at all. I didn't get much Anon hate, in fact over the last two years I think I've only gotten it three times.

once from someone who said I was faking DID because I had no friends and was mentally ill and depressed which. Hurt but also was kinda funny because they were being so ableist and mean to me? Girl you clearly don't care about systems.

once from a confused anti-endo who thought WE were endogenic because we have endo friends (and literally all they wrote was "traumas fuck endos suck" with nothing else??? LMAOOO?????? So thankfully that one didn't even hurt my feelings)

And once from a person who spammed a few poorly written asks because I was talking to my friend Kency and someone who didn't like Kency was going through their interactions and anon-hating people. They did have alt accounts that they came back with when I blocked the first ones but they only had like four so after I blocked the anons the fourth time, it stopped.

I was mostly able to laugh it off, and when I was sad, Seán and our friends/family were there to support me.

I ended up on r/system cringe, too, and I had a meltdown about that, but then quickly realized it didn't really matter? Again, no one was coming to my house. None of these people would actually hurt me, especially not when they do this all day and have no special malice for me specifically. If anyone showed up I'd just block them- and even weeks after the post, no one did.

Once someone posted a screenshot of one of our fics to twitter, and then people dogpiled us and we got some hate comments, but all it took was a friend pointing out that ao3 is a pro-rpf and proship/anti-censorship website for op to delete the screenshot, and everyone else stopped after that.

Like, what I've discovered is that as awful as cyberbullying is, it's only as bad as your fear lets it be. If you block them and if you remember to stay calm and that you're not in any physical danger, then it's not a big deal. It only hits hard when you panic, and even then you can find support from the people who love you.

Doxxing is of course another story but it's usually rare and also usually easily solved (delete the information) and also ... doesn't always lead to action. In order to have a hate mob swarm at your house your address can't just be posted, you also have to have a bunch of people decide, independently, to actually get off their ass and show up; and unless you're taylor swift that's probably not going to happen.

I can't keep a cool head under pressure, but Seàn can, and I've found that when we talk things out and work as a team, the threats usually aren't as bad as they look. And again, I've never been doxxed and my harassment has been very minor.

I'd recommend having one or more people in your life who are able to talk things through calmly with you and think clearly when things are a little hectic, to block anyone who bothers you or who looks like they might (because of their DNIs or past activity or whatever), and then to just...take the plunge. Because once you experience being out you're forced to realize that the negatives aren't nearly as harsh as they looked. The water looks colder than it is; you won't truly realize how warm and welcoming it can actually be until you're swimming :) I wouldn't trade this for the world 🌍💓 and that's FACTS, forreal forreal.

[dual-fantasy]

i also think chester is just. an untapped comedy market. if people even remember he exists they never talk about him. hes literally the funniest one and i stand by that. he fucking hates cameron back in his day they'd eat pure unfiltered radiation. cameron had a sip of diet coke and he was hospitalized. back in his day if you were thirsty you'd go to the swamp and suck the water out of the mud. cameron almost died cause he stepped in dirt. they hate each other(in a way. camerons scared of him. he wants cameron dead)

vito and svetlana try to be friends with cameron but any time they hang out he gets violently hurt. any amount of physical activity and he needs to be put on life support. the same goes for manitoba. hes trying to be friends with cameron but hes allergic to dirt and running. i think mal and cameron would actually be friends. in a special way. cam has to cover his ears and eyes whenever mal opens up twitter but other then that they tolerate each other. cameron got near a Scike Fight and was found barely breathing in a ditch 50 miles away. hes accident prone in a way thats literally impossible. he needs to be put back in the bubble. he was contained in there for a reason. putting cameron near any of the mutant maggots is like throwing a squeaky toy into a crowded dog park. he barely survives every social gathering. Grave Dog

so real people who don't write chester are cowards. it's peak comedy. back in his day there wasn't this fancy pronounce or anything there was only one gender and it belonged to the queen. Cameron gets into a car crash and he's like back in my day there wasn't cars or bikes you had to get onto all fours and crawl. they literally despise eachother so much. he looks at Cameron and starts shaking with rage and Cameron looks at him and starts shaking with fear. peak dynamic

Vito and Svetlana try to be nice. they try. they don't succeed but they do try. Svetlana tries the hardest but she also doesn't really care. she just doesn't like doing first aid because she finds it annoying. Vito and Manitoba dont want Cameron to get hurt but they have literally no idea how to do things without it being dangerous. Vito takes him to a repair shop and he gets flung into the wall and leaves a perfect outline of his body as he breaks it because he got hit by an opening car door. Manitoba asks him to go on a quick walk and ten hours later they just arrived at the beach and Cameron collapsed literally ten seconds in. Manitoba carried him the rest of the way there. mal is friends but in the way that someone on Roblox is mean to him and mal immediately doxxed and sends death threats to their family. Cameron has to remain completely unaware of this otherwise he'll get upset and his heart will explode.

Jo raised her voice at him one and he shriveled like paper in water. he accidentally trips into the scike fight and the next time they see him he's on the news for the most injury they've ever seen on a living human. just in general. maybe the bubble was good for him. now that he knows how to talk to people hes normal so maybe we can stop letting lightning accidentally crush every bone ever when he says hi. squeaky toy is right. please get him out of there it's so bad for him. they keep inviting him because it's funny but it's very bad for him

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

"Let’s see if she stops now that she knows I know who she is and she’s risking prison time - as per her state law. "

This is what gftwd said about you 😭 PRISON TIME LMAO she also calls you her "bully". You did nothing wrong and to no point bullied her. She bullied everyone else and suffered the consequences and now her fragile ego can't deal with being called out. Also isn't she the one risking prison time trying to find your personal information and trying to doxx? She really needs to log out for good, for the sake of her own mental health and for other blogs...

oh boy, an update! thank you. you're absolutely right. there she goes again with the legal threats, can she please retire this concept? 🙄 the irony is not lost on me that the day after one of her jilted discord buddies ends up in my ask box, confessing her deranged stalking/doxxing attempts and plot to “ruin my reputation”, she magically identifies me and knows who i am and where i live! okay, then go call the ''local police'' and report my nefarious deeds so i can be locked away forever.

but really.. let class begin. trust when i say this humble tumblr blogger knows a little bit on the subject of laws and prosecution 😉 now, i am aware that she’s in another country, and for my global readers, let me explain, as some folks on this app throw words around expecting us all to be naïve, fearful dummies. in the united states, cyber bullying as a criminal offense is generally most common among school age teens. this is why a lot of the language you’ll find on the web is particular to events happening or originating on school grounds between pupils, speaking to how online drama (between people who know each other in real life) can escalate to in person violence, or even suicide attempts because someone was constantly being intimidated.. or had a questionable photo or video spread, for example. it’s not, like.. calling someone on twitter a stupid twat. cyber bullying becomes a crime punishable by law when you repeatedly intimidate or threaten with physical violence, make death threats, extort/sextort, that type of thing. serious shit. the parameters for this type of conviction is incredibly stringent. no one is going to get sent to prison for posting that they disagree and hold negative feelings about another internet user, who is not being identified by their legal name. the only one threatening to bring real life identities into this scenario is gftwd. anyhow, the laws surrounding internet activity is quite literally why gftwd could get away with running what could be described as a hate blog, dedicated to spitefully critiquing the every move of a regular person (frances mairead), with no legal consequences. i am a grown woman, i’m not scared of some mentally ill teenager a million miles away who has a vendetta against me. her discord pal already told me what her goal is: she was evidently going as far as to scope out someone to manipulate images and screenshots to spread lies about me, with the intent to ruin my reputation.

even if she were able to hop online and post my name, address and a photo of my bare (amazing, glorious) tits, what is she or any one of her multiple personalities going to do with that information? send me a pipe bomb, or maybe an anthrax laced letter disguised as a nude photo of evan peters? ok girly. do that, then call the popo and tell them you’re mad at someone on the internet. i know those folks could use a laugh.

[sonicthecringehog]

you think me saying someone doesn't care about you is really abusive? yeah i see you posting about me in your discord.

TW: ABUSE; R*PE, SUICIDE, GASLIGHTING. Alrighty gather 'round children - I think I know exactly who you are now so I'm going to lay it down for you, maybe this is me being a sociopath with a victim complex as ableist as that sounds to my followers. Allow me to educate you, even if you think this is manipulation too~ Now, I may have grown up very privileged - considering my mother had escaped literal poverty, and my father escaping a cycle of intergenerational trauma from actual abuse. I will never deny that and I am grateful for all of the things I have and have worked hard for myself. But dude I have clinically diagnosed PTSD that I only just found out about last week after spending a few days in an actual psych ward - they genuinely thought I possibly had either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia because of how bad of a state I was in, I couldn't eat or sleep for days. I learned that when I rushed into a convenience store crying and shaking, and just apologizing constantly because I didn't even have a mask and my phone was dead, so I had no idea how to get to the hospital. I did not want to be turned away yet again out of looking like a walking stereotype (looking at you, Karens). And just before that, confession I broke into a friend’s house because I took his word literally that the door is always open, and someone convinced me I was gaslighting the both of them which is exactly what sent me spiralling to begin with. But anyway, the people at the store were really understanding even if it was just a liability thing, and they called the police for me, and the police contacted a social worker for me to get my story out and they all reassured me that I was doing the right thing - and eventually, I got the help I needed and I realized it's time to take back my life once and for all.

Not even strong antipsychotics like olanzapine, what I'm currently prescribed with, helps me in those times. I wake up with cold sweats, I have constant nightmares I don't tell people about because I don't want to fuck them up the way I got this way. And now I understand why my aunt from my dad's side of the family who was apparently schizophrenic took her own life, and never told anyone her struggles either. And why my dad was so overprotective of me for so long. You see, I live in constant fear for my life because I have dealt with actually violent, clinical psychopaths who only think for themselves and will instead lie through their teeth to make it seem like they'd changed. And they stalk you or just cling onto you, to try and find every little detail about you to use as ammo against you because they know they can, and will manipulate people into thinking you're the one abusing them and manipulating everyone around you until they have no use for you anymore. Lots of shit happened but honestly if I just accepted that "no one cares" and I just learned to "shut the fuck up and think before I speak," like my actual abusers would say... I'd be a single mother living in poverty right now, and I would probably have lost custody of that child to my one abuser at that time because he is exactly like this. I don't like talking about it because I know how triggering it is for some and this might blow up again like a lot of my "controversial" posts, but if I didn't accidentally stress and overwork myself into having a miscarriage in the bathroom at my work, I would have become the walking stereotype my other abusers would try to implant in people's minds. And I feel horrible and responsible for all the shit I'm causing now, because I know of people with diagnosed NPD or ASPD and they're trying to better themselves, and do their part in the world without hurting people. You really can't win no matter what side you're on. Hell, I developed a saviour complex over the course of a few years because I've seen some vulnerable people get taken advantage of like this, too without ever understanding why so they constantly find themselves being abused without realizing it, it's heartbreaking to me. I was r*ped at 7, not from the stereotypical creepy uncle. But a girl my own age who I'm pretty sure was abused herself, which is why I never held anything against her. Maybe it's my Stockholm Syndrome talking again. Regardless, I learned that you can't change a person. The only person you can change is yourself. However, sometimes those strangers who show basic human decency knowing one's past, are that ultimate kick in the ass to motivate people to save themselves.

So let this ask post be a lesson to all of you. These kinds of abusers I had also knew exactly how to dogwhistle me to try and get a reaction, exactly what to say and how to act in front of authority figures - to manipulate them into thinking I was the abuser or whatever ableist walking stereotype they wanted people to think. Hence, I was gaslighted into thinking I was on the autism spectrum my whole life by the people around me growing up, and that my close family and friends were the “real” abusers even though they were trying to help but didn’t know how... without these people even realizing who the real culprits were. Growing up being The Girl Who Cried Wolf even when you did nothing you were aware of, fucks you up for life, my friend. And that's exactly what they wanted. Maybe I do need a break from social media as even my family doctor says, maybe I do need to let myself be "cancelled" again to grow stronger from this. Because I'm not saying you specifically are abusive or a bad person per se, because I don’t even know who you are, I could have easily deleted and ignored this. But just let people live and stop trying to take away what little innocence they have left that they lost at a very early age... out of being too comfortable in your own magical fantasy world of self-pity to get your own shit together. Because shit like this is exactly why I overwork myself and get these "manic" episodes as my abusers called it, as live in fear that I might actually get shot one day when things seem to finally be stable and peaceful. Hell, I might never be able to get a real job because of shit like this. But if you want to report my posts again on my Instagram which I'm pretty sure was you at this point, go right ahead. Because you need to grow the fuck up... and to the other people reading this, don't ever let anyone tell you that no one cares or your feelings aren't valid, because there are people who do understand and will help you, even if to them you're just a passerby on the street. Because people do care.

This kind of cancel culture and bullying people out of getting help without giving them a chance to explain themselves, while doxxing and overanalyzing every post one says to use against them... has been so normalized in our society that we often do glorify the people who show basic human decency. When it should have been the standard all along. On to the point, I wish you all a wonderful journey to a beautiful recovery too - I might not be active for a bit because I think I need a break ^_^'

TL;DR: Don't feed the trolls, kiddies, but don't let them win out of fear that no one will believe you even with concrete proof. To make a bad Sonic reference - if you see someone abusing their power over you and doesn't want you to thrive because they think you're nothing more than some welfare queen attention whore... THATS NO GOOD~

(Also excuse all the edits, I’ve been spiralling mentally because holy shit I don’t appreciate being stalked and doxxed y’all regardless of who is doing this... so I’m keeping this post up as a reminder to all of you to just not feed the trolls and keep moving forward. Hell, someone on Snapchat kept stupidly adding me by my number for a few months on and off, so this is why I get in these situations where I’m kiiiinda scared for my life. I admitted myself to the hospital but ended up leaving after asking for resources for these kinds of situational crises. Oof. ^_^”)

Anyways, toodle-oo fuck you too bitch. ;)

~ Serena

[banishedfromirk]

I just want you to know that I support you in whatever you decide to do. You need to take care of yourself and cope with the troubles that come your way. I understand anxiety. I can appreciate what you are going through. I hope you will be able to find the courage and methods you need in order to whip that anxiety into its place. You deserve a lot more positivity. You deserve to enjoy IZ and GF and anything else that catches your eye. Just remember you are a great person and deserve happiness.

💖Thank you. That is very kind of you. ;; I’m so sorry to hear that you also experienced being run out of a fandom. It really is the worst thing in the world to enjoy something so much, and then have it stripped away due to negativity. Back when I was first in the fandom during 2011 it was wonderful, I remember thinking back then it was the best thing I ever did for myself by coming out as a ZADR fan. I was a bit late to the show but I actually got into it after seeing ‘The Frycook What Came From All That Mess’ on Nick one night after being recommended to watch it. But then slowly over the year I started getting a lot of hateful comments. I actually put a bunch of them together recently and screenshotted it to show other friends. I got people telling me my designs were weird, or my art was just outright gross. People weren’t afraid to be terrible. I remember one particular person - GPleader - called me a retard because I didn’t support the idea of OC’s and they had told me people that shipped ZADR/ZATR/ZAGR ruined the spirit of the fandom. Another individual called Kitsunexen actually posted hate art about me because I didn’t want to be critiqued on my work, telling me to grow up and another user also bitched about me on facebook repeatedly, saying they hated me and mocking me about not wanting critique on my work and people stealing my art. I’d never spoken to these people other than just brief comments where they had actually complimented me on my work! So many people were two-faced like this. There was also one individual that was extremely popular in the fandom that sent white knights after me after a minor spat that was resolved. I had people threaten me on my front page after she called me a bitch in her journal well after it was resolved. Sometimes I see that users work on here and it brings those memories back because people don’t know what that person is really like. I even had people steal my artwork numerous times and block me or called me derogatory terms when called out on it or asked to remove it. Amazingly enough, even at DoomCON this treatment continued. I remember standing with my two friends talking, and one girl actually had the nerve to fully turn her back into my face to talk to them, pushing me back. Despite travelling out from Australia alone, I’d felt so down after that and actually just wanted to leave. My friends felt down as well after it. Thankfully, it picked up later in the day in the best way possible.I got so many insults/flames and nastiness directed towards me from the fandom back then to the point I was forced to leave. I got so fed up that I started snapping back at people in anger. People just ruined both the show and fandom for me. I’d had enough of feeling like shit for simply sharing my ideas and artwork. And even though now my experience mostly been positive since returning, I’ve had a few antis to deal with. One idiot called me a pedophile for drawing adult Zim and Dib. Thankfully I’m much more resilient than I was before, so I can shut these people down without being hurt, but it’s just been the non-stop harassment and doxxing I’ve seen that has at this point, just made me want to quit again even after all these years.I love the ZADR community so much and I’m sick to death of seeing innocent people being targeted and having their accounts removed. I’ve seen people decline from it and want nothing more to do with the fandom. I’ve seen how bad it’s got for some people, especially recapkid for example, and it’s getting to that point for me as well. My good friend even left the fandom due to bullying/harassment and is sick to death of the show itself thanks to that. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to get help and have been able to start taking on my anxiety through the help of my psychologist over 2019 - but seeing how nasty people in this fandom can be, and even worse now than it was before with these god forsaken purists (the ones that wish death upon zadr fans), has led to the fandom being a source of stress and negativity yet again. I am grateful for the support I have got from people since reconnecting with the fandom. Like I met apocalypticwaffles who has been an amazing friend over last year and a reason to reconsider staying in the fandom. The positivity from other ZADR fans has been what has kept me here and the only reason I would consider staying. And as I mentioned, I really do hope the spark comes back to me because Zim has been such a huge part of my life for such a long time. I have so many good memories associated with it I don’t want to let go of. I don’t want to be pushed away again thanks to people that just can’t be decent human beings.I just want to be able to be happy online. It’s a safe space for me to be here because even though I have close friends outside of internet life, I rarely get to see them because of how far away they live. I love being part of a community that so deeply resonates with each other. I hate feeling scared to be able to post because of fear of being mass reported for doing literally nothing wrong except enjoying a ship that makes me happy. Even now it just brings bad vibes and i just don’t want it to go that way again.Thank you for reaching out, and I’m sorry for the wall of text. Your asks did make me feel a lot better. :) 💖

[legionnaireslover]

Inspired by doctortwhohiddles' excellent post!

Here's my contribution to answering @thoroughlyskeptic...

-sending threatening asks to anyone who likes a blog’s posts, even when unrelated to the fandom : I've never seen any of these so-called "threats" either. But I have seen Haters threaten Sophie with harm. I have seen Haters try (and sometimes REPEATEDLY try) to follow anti-hate blogs - has happened repeatedly to me. And I have REPEATEDLY told them I don't mind them reading my blog (unless they become abusive, which a few of them have, so I have had to block them... but only a handful) but I don't allow known Haters to be followers of my blog.

And YES Aeltri HAS a habit of jumping all over positive posts about Sophie and Ben (so have other Haters), especially on her Twitter account! She literally went into a Twitter rage during the Flourishing Diversity event, calling Sophie a whore, cunt and a criminal!

-ostracizing someone for saying ANYTHING not completely positive about your Queen : NOT ostracizing - just NOT letting them get away with sneaky, hypocritical behaviour... having their "Sherlock/Ben fandom" cake, and yet all the while supporting and enabling disrespect and hatred for Ben, his wife and his children.

All I want from these people is honest TRANSPARENCY. If you are going to show total disregard and respect for Ben's choice of wife and their children, then at least own your petty hatred. Don't sneak around the fandom pretending to respect BC. Just come clean and stop pretending to be something you're NOT! The most likely motivation for these people to HIDE their true nature is NOT fear - it's done because they are ASHAMED of their hatred and don't want others to know about their pettiness and small-mindedness. BTW most anti-hater bloggers don't care if someone doesn't LIKE Sophie - all they care about is that they don't spread HATRED AND FILTHY LIES ABOUT HER, BEN AND THEIR CHILDREN!

-blocking people and DEMANDING others block them too, if they don’t follow your “rules” : I don’t ever remember anyone DEMANDING that someone block a Hater either. I ABSOLUTELY remember telling Haters that unless they UNFOLLOWED ME I would block them from MY blog because I don't allow Haters to follow my blog. But if they did unfollow me I DON'T BLOCK THEM. And I remember other blogs saying the same thing... but demanding others block them... nope!

-DOXXING : I think Gator PURPOSELY misuses the term "doxxing". She KNOWS that she and other Haters have exposed personal info on the internet and then she cries about doxxing when she want to play the victim card.

And I remember all too clearly that it was GATOR AND AELTRI who tried VERY hard to publish personal information about someone's address on their blogs (thank goodness they're complete incompetents and they got it wrong).

-MAKING MULTIPLE SOCK PUPPET BLOGS TO DOXX : Oh please, Aeltri is the fucking QUEEN of sockpuppet accounts!

-POSTING A MAP TO SOMEONE’S PERSONAL HOME TRYING TO INCITE OTHERS TO HARASS : Ditto to Doctortwhohiddles response! As for inciting others to harass... that's practically a national pastime for the hater crowd on Twitter!

-having people blocked from other chat sites : just show us ANY real evidence of this! If it has happened (I don't visit chat sites) these people probably decided to block Haters because their obsessive insulting of Ben's wife and their children more in likely disrupted the chat.

-trying to have blogs on Tumblr shut down JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE THEM : No, it's not just because we don't LIKE them... PLENTY of Hater blogs exist and no one reports them EVER. The few that are reported are ones like Aeltri who post outrageous hatefilled and dangerous comments. Like the latest diatribe from Aeltri stating that people SHE labels "defective infrahuman subspecies" be FORCIBLY STERILIZED! Is it any surprise that some are HORRIFIED by this and demand that some restrictions be put on this kind of hateful talk?

-TRYING TO GET PEOPLE BANNED FROM EVENTS : like Doctortwhohiddles said this is specifically about ONE person... Aeltri - and that was a case of due diligence because Aeltri was hell bent on seeing BC in person and all that was done was notify the organizers of the event about who she REALLY WAS and THEY decided to take that action to protect Ben. Honestly, what did you expect them to do once they read Aeltri's blog??? Welcome her with open arms? AELTRI GOT HERSELF BANNED FROM THAT EVENT BECAUSE OF HER OWN BEHAVIOUR on her blog!

TRYING TO GET PEOPLE FIRED FROM THEIR JOBS : Well the one that comes to mind where someone had proof of it actually happening is when a person published the incident in full on the XOJane site. And that was someone who was HARASSED BY A HATER because they posted that they had seen a pregnant Sophie with Ben. As for the Haters being hounded by others... never seen ANY proof or FULL accounting given - just accusations slung out by Haters and NO receipts EVER given! The XOJane incident... I remember reading the tweets AS IT HAPPENED, so I KNOW the harassment took place. Sooooo, who are the bullies???

-SENDING THREATENING LETTERS TO THEIR HOUSE : Just post the letters please! Otherwise it's just more imaginary delusions of the Aeltri ilk - "Sophie is making PHONE CALLS to me and hanging up!! Sophie has been making harassing phone calls to me PERSONALLY!! Sophie is HAVING ME WATCHED!! She's READING my blog!! She's hiring people to harass ME!" Sure Jan!

-SAYING YOU WANTED PEOPLE WHO DON’T AGREE WITH YOU TO DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS : Well, let's look at the timeline, shall we? If I recall correctly it was the Haters who started that sort of shit talk.

THEY were the ones who started with talking incessantly about harming Sophie, slapping her at events like red carpets and Letters Live, and then that escalated quickly into wishing her to have a "sad life event" (dead baby), wanting her to miscarry, saying they wanted to punch her in the belly to PROVE her pregnancy was a sham, posting photoshopped pics of her being run over by a train, posting allegorical pictures of dead octopuses (because their nickname for her was "octopus"), and then finally this culminated in Gator's horrible "warning" post to Ben about how he, Sophie and the children would be killed for PR. So, who wins the "Horrible Death Wish Crown"???? I think it's the Haters hands down!

And this doesn't even touch all the other vile lies that certain Haters have been spewing out over the years including accusing Sophie of sex trafficking, being a drug addict and a prostitute, killing and eating babies (!!) in satanic rituals (!!!), torturing Ben by scaring his head with secret cult brands, starving him to kill him, poisoning him... all under the guise of just partaking in innocent celebrity "gossip"!

So, the question is - why should we believe ONE FUCKING WORD ANY HATER SAYS if they readily partake in this sort of outrageous discourse?

Let's stack up THIS kind of rhetoric the Haters use ON A REGULAR BASIS, against the reactions of some people who are absolutely disgusted by the blogs of Haters, and see who has a CREDIBILITY PROBLEM, shall we? I don't think the Haters would come out on top!

[aboriginalnewswire]

Trigger warning for sexual abuse, stalking, rape, domestic violence and large-scale attacks by hate groups. Last Thursday, I criticized the Linux community for continuing to support and center a leader with a years-long, documented history of unrepentant abusive behavior, someone who has actively and systematically nurtured a hostile, homogeneous technical community, and someone who has long actively chased people from marginalized groups out of open source. The retaliation has been terrifying. On Friday night, the home addresses of every member of my immediate family were posted online. I have received literally thousands of harassing, abusive, threatening and violent messages across at least half a dozen separate sites. People speaking up in support of me had their home addresses posted online as well, sometimes within minutes, creating a climate of fear that has functionally isolated me from most community support. I have received slurs of every variety, death and rape threats, and violent and threatening images. They have gone after my business and my family's livelihoods with slander, intimidation and attempts to cut off financial support, and tried to hack into various of my accounts and systems. They have left pages and pages of stomach-turning comments on the front of every internet community I am a part of and that influences my professional community and peers. As I was reeling from my family being doxxed and taking steps to ensure everyone’s safety, the tech press was giving a massive platform to an ex-partner - someone I dated for four months more than 3 years ago - who has, after I dumped him, terrorized, threatened and abused me for years, and continues to do so. This is a person who is a known liar, abuser and manipulator, with a long history of stalking, hacking and terrorizing women, who is now being treated as an authoritative character witness on one of his long-term victims - for the sole purpose of destroying my company, discrediting my work, and terrorizing me into silence. This is a person who has hacked nude photos of me and sent them to my employers - yes, bosses, executive team and investors. (I barely left my house for two weeks after and to this day cannot recall a time being more scared, depressed and humiliated). Details of my private sex life - provided by my ex - are now all over the internet and have been used to justify my abuse, incite more of it, and slut and kink-shame me. Valleywag -- less than a day after stealing stories from me, plagiarizing content from my Twitter, publishing my comments without permission or compensation, and refusing to properly acknowledge my work and job title -- has used its platform to replicate this terrorism and domestic violence to an even larger audience. Nevermind that their original articles had already incited harassment against me (they were posted over and over to the anonymous hate boards that attacked my family); their most recent article on me is an act of pure and spiteful violence following my critiques of their behavior. The past few days have been terrifying, and my heart is broken. This is abuse. This is domestic violence. This is harassment. This is terrorism. While many are eager to claim that I am actually being abused because I'm crazy, a liar, a fraud, a troll, a hypocrite, a neo-Nazi, a whore, because I've had kinky sex, because I dated an abuser, because I'm mean to men on Twitter, because I swear a lot, because I'm a "blogger" that contributes nothing to the field: I am being targeted because of my work speaking up against tech culture. My work is what has made me a target, but it is nonetheless ironically (or maybe predictably) being erased in a frothing media-frenzy to portray me as a useless, insane "PR girl", a hysterical slut with a social media account, and to generate page views from my pain. (I'm posting this on Pastebin because unlike most of the tech press, I refuse to use this abuse as a machine for eyeballs and ad dollars.) In case you’re not familiar with my work, let me tell you about it. A few years ago, I started blogging independently about tech culture, giving talks about it, and organizing resistance efforts on social media. In that period, I produced several books-worth of essays that deconstructed in detail harmful elements of tech culture, discussed useful modes of intervention and resistance, and called out collective complicity in oppression across the industry... including my own complicity. I also began using my Twitter account to talk about my experiences with misogyny in tech, call out inequality and advocate for change - and yes, I use swear words on Twitter dot com, and you will handle it because you’re not a fucking three year old. (I might take your cookies and smash your fucking Xbox anyway, though.) I did this in my spare time until late in 2013, when I started working full-time on Model View Culture, which launched in January '14. In the past year, Model View Culture has produced a body of tech and cultural criticism the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We have published over 150 authors. Our publication consistently stands against discrimination, abuse and oppression in the tech industry. We have covered sexual abuse and assault, social media activism and abuse, the surveillance complex, engineering mythology, open source community, accessibility, hiring discrimination, mental illness and disability, consent in product design, workplace abuse, the VC industrial complex, suicide, white liberalism, police violence, codes of conduct, team dysfunctions, and systemic discrimination, violence and inequality at every stage of the technology pipeline. We publish and pay a large and diverse groups of writers speaking to their experiences, to their beliefs and to their sense of justice, to their demands for a better tech industry. We challenge racism & white supremacy, sexism and misogyny, transphobia, ableism, classism and other forms of institutionalized oppression rampant in tech. I believe we have produced more critical content from diverse voices than any other tech media. Model View Culture is not perfect. It is not a panacea. It is not done, or complete. It is one year old, just getting started, and there is so much more for us to do. But we have been an influential, if small, part of the growing attempts to call out and dismantle fundamental problems in the tech community. This work is what people are desperate to stop, by any means including trying to get my family killed by SWATing, trying to convince me to kill myself, terrorizing my supporters, stalking me (I have had multiple men stalk me for 6-14 months at a time), hacking my computers and accounts, "exposing" my sex life, cutting off my funding, belittling and erasing my writing, plagiarizing my content, sending constant rape and death threats, and ceaselessly holding me up for abuse to hate groups. This has been my life for almost two years. I'm sad to say that part of you starts to get used to it. But I also want to tell you about what it does to me and other victims of these attacks. Because of my work, I can no longer make public appearances, speak at events or have anyone know where I am or what I'm doing. I can't have friends over to my house because no one can know where I live. My social life consists only of a few close friends who I feel I can trust. Many of them also undergo the same shit I do - other people don’t understand and find it too stressful to be around. I am traumatized by what is now years of active stalking and abuse; abuse committed by tech workers and unaffiliated individuals, by anonymous harassers and influential figures in tech, and by media both in tech and mainstream. My sex life is fodder for 8chan and corrupt journalists trying to destroy my company because it is competition and it poses a threat to their press-release factories, funded by startups and venture capitalists and uncritically reproducing their propaganda. I receive anywhere between dozens and thousands of harassing messages each week. Anything bad that happens to me is considered “normal” and “expected”, and any reason to expose me to abuse is sufficient. People say I am a "professional victim", suggesting I am somehow profiting off my work, but I am now unemployable in the field I once loved and make a fraction of what I used to make as a tech worker. I spend an enormous amount of money and time securing my safety. It is no longer safe for me to do media appearances as media abuses me, demeans me, violates my boundaries, steals my content and holds me up for abuse, offering no support or protection: every article has resulted in more stalkers and harassment. I am frequently cut off from support because people who support me are afraid to be targeted as well. That's just my everyday. Then there's these recent attacks. Frankly, I am devastated, depressed, vulnerable, non-functional, anxious, paranoid and isolated. I’ve visibly lost weight since last Thursday. My heart hurts and my body aches. I feel humiliated, exploited, and am in physical pain. I'm frightened for myself, my family, my friends, and people in my community who have supported me. I am trying to keep working but honestly, it is incredibly difficult. I had a lot of plans for Model View Culture in the beginning of this year, and unfortunately most of them are going to be delayed by at least weeks as I try to put my self-esteem and sense of safety back together, take the needed steps to protect myself, family and community, and process these feelings of fear, anxiety, trauma and anger. It's devastating to admit the toll this has taken on me, to accept that it is having such a significant impact on my work. I fear that people won’t want to write for Model View Culture anymore because doing this work is actually dangerous. As is, we have to publish far too many articles anonymously, because people fear losing their jobs and their safety for speaking out and telling their stories. I am asking myself how I can actually continue like this and run a company under these conditions. No other tech press is operating under this level of violence and terrorism, and we don’t have corporate money or VC funding to help us defend against it. It’s intimidating. I ask Model View Culture readers and community to be patient during this time. The truth of the matter is that as much as people want abuse victims to be fearless, to come out on top, to not be stopped: at some point, this is simply not realistic. That said, I'm not stopping, I am not going away, and I will continue, even if it happens a little slower or a little later than I planned. Changing tech is my life's work. I'm only 28, so you'll probably have to deal with it for at least the next few decades. This is a set-back for my health and my ability to work, but I'm here for the long-term. I am sad that my new normal is, well, this. But so be it. To everyone who has supported me in this time: Thank you so much. I haven't been able to respond to so many of you because it hasn't been safe to, but I appreciate and value your belief and faith in me. To everyone else: Go fuck yourself. Some specific “fucks yous” go out to: The Linux community, I hope you realize how fucking toxic and broken your “community” is after standing by silently as me and my entire family were terrorized after I criticized Linus Torvalds. I think you are cowardly and spineless and I stand behind everything I said. I also think you need to seriously look at the clear ties the Linux community has to 8chan and GamerGate which led many of the attacks on me. Andrew Auernheimer aka a blast of trash from my past: you started whining and crying the day I dumped your ass and you haven’t stopped since. May the ouroboros eat YOU, easily mistaken for a snake, and may you spend the rest of your days as you have to date - pathetic, prospectless, alone and heartbroken, ever-pining over women who hate your guts and clinging to any last scrap of fast-fading relevance. Milo Yiannopoulos, a failure of a human being but tremendous success as an opportunistic sell-out scumbag who has spent months digging up details on my sex life and leading harassment campaigns against me. Valleywag, particularly Valleywag editor Dan Lyons -- a white man who is 26 years older then me and uses my sex life for clickbait while citing Yiannopolous and Weev as a credible source in order to take me down. Also Jason Calacanis, who has supported my long term stalker Loren Feldman and is basically a shitstain of a human being who we should kick out of tech forever. Vivek Wadhwa, who is building his career off women in tech yet is transparently a misogynistic asshole who has used this opportunity to get back at me for criticizing his profiteering and patriarchal brand of "allyship." Also Elizabeth Spiers who continues to refuse to get the FUCK away from me after MONTHS of me asking to be left in peace. Get the fuck over me and move on with your life as a has-been. You are literally 10 years older than me, yet are relentlessly picking on a young woman with an up-and-coming media career like you once had. You look jealous and petty, and your ongoing obsession with me is creepy as fuck. In the remainder of this post, I am addressing my community. I realize that following my tweets can be difficult and not very coherent, especially as I have navigated the emotional roller coaster of the weekend. My anxiety is through the roof and I haven’t gotten much sleep. While I don't think I should have to explain and rehash my sex life, analyze terrorism against me at length, and somehow summon words out of a fog of anxiety, fear and depression, I want to get my views on the record. They have been dismissed, erased, deemed irrelevant, misconstrued, twisted and deployed against me. So here they are, FROM ME. They have made it too scary to defend me, so I defend myself: I, unequivocally, support ourselves and stand behind us. Lol. OK for real. I wanted to start by discussing my past sexual history. Since we are already so deep into my sex life - released non-consensually and with the sole aim of terrorizing me - let's talk about it. Over three years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev. I had no idea who he was prior to this friend telling me about him and introducing me. I was not involved in the infosec community (still aren’t), was fairly new to tech, and arrived in Silicon Valley years after his most high-profile attacks on other women in tech. As many of you have conveniently forgotten, (even those of you who wrote them!), articles about him painted him as a charismatic, counter-culture hacker taking on powerful and corrupt systems - someone who expressed a number of "controversial" (i.e. sexist, racist and homophobic) views, but these were glossed over as satire and mischief. I was happy to do the same, something which I deeply regret and deeply apologize for. The industry was, as it always has been and remains, enamored and worshipping of the "edgy" young white male hacker who ostensibly reflects a challenge to the status-quo, but in actuality just re-creates those systems under the guise of liberalism, satire and "mischief" aka misogynistic and racist terrorism. Frankly, I was also enamored. At the time, I was really early in my career, didn't give much of a shit about social justice, didn't particularly understand how fucked up the industry was, and was laboring under the profound delusion that my career success meant some kind of feminism. I think I was starting to undergo some type of political realization or awakening and was in some clumsy and inept way reaching out for an alternative framework, a tech “counter culture”. Of course, the "alternative" framework I discovered was some abusive piece of shit who would crawl into my life, use me for money and housing, and then spend years after punishing me for it. Typical. I am also not the only victim of his predatory and exploitative behavior towards his partners and ex-partners. At the time, I was in a bad place (which he gleefully exploited) and frankly looking for some strings-free fun and (unhealthy) emotional support. A good time seemed like having a completely doomed relationship with a notorious, emotionally co-dependent bad boy that I could fuck for a few hours and call daddy in a hotel room, then leave after giving him $40 out of the ATM because he had no money (stemming from a blanket refusal to work, preferring to just take money from women who feel sorry for his miserable existence). It worked for me at the time, it satisfied something I was looking for, and it made my life feel edgy and exciting, even though I know recognize it as a a huge mistake and deeply regret it. But, it happened. To all the people berating me for making poor dating choices in my mid-20s, many who haven't seen their mid-twenties in ten to twenty years: Guess what, assholes. Mistakes. Were. Made. Can you really tell me that you haven't fucked the wrong people? Maybe ones of the dudes I fucked was worse than your partners, but I've always been an overachiever. Like I have previously stated: At least I fucked weev in shame and private unlike the EFF, TechCrunch, the NY Times and all the rest of your favs. To be honest, dating men who are emotionally and physically abusive has been something of a pattern for me, due to the fact that I have disproportionately fallen into these relationships as a former abuse victim AND due to the fact that so many men are abusive, predatory, manipulative and lying scum. Fuck them, and misandry forever. In response to Andrew's allegations that I am a racist, hate-filled neo-Nazi who shared his views, that I am simply a troll or performance artist: I do not, and have never shared Andrew's views, and he didn't teach me shit. Most of our relationship consisted of fucking in potentially disturbing and unhealthy ways, talking about his upcoming trial, sharing photos of red pandas, me bitching about work, watching My Little Pony (i know, i know) and him trying to get as much money out of me as he could. I smoked a bunch of weed, he drank and we ate lots of takeout. As far as his trolling techniques, they seem to consist primarily of convincing people who can actually code to do things for him, then taking the credit for them, so I wasn't really interested in acquiring these “skills” even if I did have a naive fascination with what I then saw as his "innocent" pranks and how they functioned. While it wasn't a big part of our brief-lived (four month) relationship, he often made comments that were racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynist and transphobic. I alternated between being like "hahahaha", “satiring” back to him (including making similar comments), and telling him to knock it the fuck off. In private conversations he assured me that he was just a performance artist, that it was satire and trolling, and that he was actually a feminist (lol). He was always laughing when he said really horrible things. Like the anti-intellectual, self-centered, callous, cavalier and "edgy" white liberal that I fancied myself (And was) at the time, I laughed too and played along. As much as there is lots of feigned outrage from white people about it, this discourse was frankly not much different than that I saw and still see constantly in the tech workplace and at events, online and in the community. Tech prides itself on being "not overtly -ist" when it actually is, despite almost everyone’s vehement protestations. For those who attempt to distance themselves from the racism, sexism, and transphobia of the industry by congratulating themselves that we don’t "say those things": you are full of shit. The tech industry is chock full NOT ONLY of "subtle" issues that let us continue to feel like good people because we don't use slurs, but actual constant and overt abuse, discrimination, and violence - often under the guises of "irony" and "satire”. And I have absolutely participated in it. People demand to know why I won't "defend" myself from the "charges" made by my ex. Yes, they contain a number of outright lies and inventions as well as self-serving exaggerations, distortions and manipulations. Frankly, I’m not going to indulge this circus by refuting and responding point-by-point to the details of an abusive relationship I had years ago. As to the overall tone of the allegations, basically that I used to be an oppressive asshole who held much different values than I do now... well I don't feel a need to "defend" or "deny" that because the truth is, I had for years and years of my past been whole-heartedly complicit in the systems of inequality and discrimination that plague our field. I thought that if I made six figures and did well in my career, acted like "one of the boys” aka white male patriarchs, or played along with them, and was as vulgar, violent, self-centered and cut-throat as the "successful" white men around me, that was "feminism." I gave a shit about my own advancement but for many years didn't really give a shit about anyone else's advancement. I didn't recognize my role in the tech industry as a privileged white woman, and didn't do much of the internal and external work required to divest from those systems. As I started my political awakening, I was primarily concerned with the advancement of white women like myself and didn't give much thought to broader systemic issues, or how I was complicit in the oppression of other groups. My attitudes, beliefs and behavior were 100% born of my alignment with white capitalist patriarchy, and I benefitted enormously (And still do) from it even as it has abused me. Here are two categories of things that are both true. 1. I am queer, mentally ill and a woman. I have been through a lot of hard stuff because of those things. I went through some Carrie-style shit when I came out in middle school. I have had an anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a kid. Some of my first "real" sexual experiences included being molested and a victim of statutory rape. Later in my life, I've been raped at knife point and dragged across the floor thinking I would die that night. I've been punched in the face by my "lovers". I showed up to my first real job interview with a barely concealed black eye and bruised ribs. I've finished school while I screamed bloody murder into an apartment complex at night pleading for help from anyone who heard. As a working professional I've been sexually harassed, verbally and physically intimidated by managers, underpaid, overworked, denied promotions, humiliated, and subjected to hostile work environment after hostile work environment. I've been threatened with revenge porn by multiple exes, and coerced into doing things I think are unethical by people in positions of power over me. I've had hacked nude photos sent to my bosses and investors. I've been stalked over the course of months and years, been slandered and abused by media, and disowned by my industry for being a woman who spoke up. I am one of the most visible women in tech - not as a respected and valued member of our industry, but as a target. I live in constant fear of the tech community and am terrorized on a regular basis. I am held up for all to see, a public example of what they will do to you if you speak out - and it seems “anything goes” more and more each day as organized hate groups grow in numbers and strength while the tech community grows in apathy. 2. I am a cis white woman who has uncritically profited from white supremacy, cissexism, ableism, classism and other forms of oppression. My success, visibility, and achievements are fundamentally built on the oppression of others, and I spent years not giving a fuck, lending any semblance of a hand, acknowledging my role, or working to dismantle the systems I've been part of. Most of my privileges in life happen as a direct result of a white supremacist capitalist system, and I too long stayed silent and comfortable. From an essay I published in autumn 2013 on my personal blog, called "Finding Out You’re a Sexist, Misogynistic, Homophobic, Classist, Racist Asshole and Hypocrite": "I can only cringe and hate myself when I think of all the times I have totally fucked up and became part of the very problems I hate. Yes, I have slut-shamed, body-policed, name-called, bad-joked, appropriated, derailed, co-opted, silenced, objectified, stereotyped, trivialized, slurred, punished, isolated, insulted, benefited, and stayed silent with the worst of them. A highlight reel of my life profiting uncritically and even participating in the systems of misogyny, classism, racism, cis-normativity and homophobia that oppress my friends, my family, my fellow humans would not endear anyone to me, least of all myself. It fees horrible to talk about. But I am because we all must realize how complete, how intersecting, how deeply fucked up the system is, and the role we play in it. It’s easy to become invested in an image of ourselves as good human beings, without blame or participation in the oppression of other people. Sometimes we even imagine ourselves as a helper to them, a healer, an ally, without even thinking it through." I have made many sexist, racist, transphobic and homophobic comments that were abusive and violent in my life. I have consistently failed to stand against discrimination that affected other people. I've often prioritized my own needs and success above that of more marginalized people. For years, I made no effort to use my privilege and power to help others. I have *literally fucked a neo-Nazi and harbored him with money, emotional support and yeah, kinky sex.* My internalized misogyny and the racism I have reproduced affected real relationships and hurt real people. Because I have had access to white, cis, class and educational privilege, I have been able to protect myself, get amazing health and mental health care, and attain economic security that many suffering the same and much, much worse do not have access to. In the workplace, I got the perks of diversity in tech efforts while more marginalized people were left behind, and I didn't say shit. I benefited and continue to benefit enormously from white supremacy in the tech industry, able to amass financial resources to start my own company and escape the day-to-day grind of the abusive tech workforce, which is not an option for so many. All of the above things are true. As a cis white woman I have both abused and been abused, been a victim of violence and someone who commits violence, been punished by the system and also benefited extensively from it. I refuse to run around insisting that I'm not an oppressive asshole instead of actually doing the work of dismantling the system - inside me and outside me. I heal myself, and I also work to ease, destroy and amend for the pain and oppression I have inflicted on others, that I participate in, benefit from, and bear responsibility for taking down. I also want readers to note that the "redemption" narrative that people are looking for me to manifest here is hugely problematic, centering white people's feelings and experiences, our personal growth over dismantling oppressive systems, and our need to feel like we are "good people." As I've written in the past, I don't believe that "good person" as a framework to approaching systemic inequalities is useful. I don’t think I am a good or bad person. I am a person who has done good things and bad things, and I try to do more good things as I grow. I don't wish to offer excuses for my past. I cannot undo it, nor change it. I remain complicit in and benefit from many systems of oppression, I still have an enormous amount of work to do to divest of my own investment in the system and how I enable it to continue, and I have a life-time of work to do against it, work that I try to do each day. This is work that the tech industry needs to partake in. I invite you to get out of my sex life and to join me doing it.

[thebeautyis]

I’ve been pretty quiet the last couple days. This is me laying low. But this post and all the lovely comments was brought to my attention this morning and I sort of feel the need to defend myself. From shippers. and yes I’m going to be bitter. I think I’m allowed that. 

There’s a couple things I take issue with because, you see, I was in many of your shoes not even a week ago. Pretty innocently shipping with very little to no threats from antis. Antis being mad made me happy because, for the most part, their anger was empty bullshit. It made me want to ship harder. However. What myself, Jess and Lauren have received is not empty, angry anti bullshit. My last name, Lauren’s last name and my place of work were dropped into my inbox by some anonymous person with the CLEAR message that if we continued to ship the way we do, my job was going to be threatened. That is not an empty threat. Realistically, do I think my boss would care that I ship? No. Does it stop me from being absolutely terrified that this random anonymous psycho now knows my last name? Hell fucking no. The minute you know someone’s name, you know their address, their phone number, their family members names, all thanks to google. Lauren has a child with one on the way. She has a family, a life, all of which are now threatened. And why? Because she ships. I don’t wish our last couple days on anyone and certainly I don’t wish it on any other shippers but you know what? I do wonder if any of you would be doing a happy dance that antis are mad if your privacy was suddenly under attack. I also wonder if you’d be as annoyed as I am that other shippers, who I thought had our backs, were now partying and shipping even harder because the antis are mad. I don’t think you’d be super happy if the tables were turned. Their anger is now threatening real people. Lauren, Jess and I are not just blogs. 

So while all of you are so happy that the antis are mad, we are terrified. We’re scared to ship again. I’m scared to take my blog off private. I’m really paranoid. I made a separate locked twitter account so I can ship in peace without the fear of being quite literally stalked and harassed. But quite frankly shipping is the last thing I’m worried about. In my mind, this has nothing to do with “the ship.” This goes way beyond the ship. 

Are there things the three of us, as shippers, could have done differently? Maybe. Depends on who you talk to. Sam doesn’t seem to mind us tweeting him all the time. None of you seemed to mind that we were so active when he was faving our shippery tweets. Personally? I have no regrets on how I ship. I’m not afraid to speak my mind because, for the last 3 years or so, I didn’t think there was going to be any serious consequence. Which is how all of you are living your lives on this ship. Without consequence. Some part of me is really happy for you. I’m glad you can all ship without consequence, without nasty threats being dropped into your inbox (and that’s how it SHOULD be. But it’s not so here we are.) It’s really easy to “ignore” when the threats are not personal. 

The other part of me though is really sad. I’m sad, I’m frustrated as hell, I’m annoyed, I’m angry and I’m resentful. Partly because I can’t ship the way you guys get to and I miss it. I want to be able to. But also because, somehow through no fault of our own, Lauren, Jess and I have big red targets on our backs. Everything we do is screen capped and analyzed and ridiculed. Everything. Don’t believe me? Go take a gander at some of the more well known “anti” blogs. Just yesterday I was having my name smeared all over one of them for something I had no part in or knowledge of. And before this happened, I was able to laugh at it because it was just so ridiculous but suddenly none of it seems super funny to me. So while all of you get to ship and enjoy and have fun, we have to make a choice. We have to make a choice about whether or not we even want to continue with our blogs. Whether or not this ship, which used to be a happy place for all of us, is worth continued threats, continued harassment, continued bullying, continued screen capping etc. Potentially more doxxing. Spoiler alert: it’s 100% not worth that. Because if we decide to leave, antis are not going away. They’ll just choose new targets. 

I’m not looking for pity with this post so please don’t try it. But I am looking for a bit of understanding, a little less “stay strong” and “just ignore and keep shipping” and a LOT less “YAY ANTIS ARE MAD TIME TO PARTYYY!!!!”

[itsfinancethings]

At the farthest edge of Hong Kong, where suburban foothills descend into a riverine border with China, a lone sentry shoos away traffic. The checkpoint, his gestures and the line of U-turning vehicles indicate, is closed.

Behind him towers the glass and concrete skyline of Shenzhen—the nearest Chinese city to Hong Kong. Without the usual throng of travelers, buses and hawkers here at Lo Wu station, the only noise comes from water buffalo grunting across the tracks.

This and nine other border crossings were recently shut in a bid to contain the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus, COVID-19, that emerged in the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan, wreaking havoc on the mainland and spreading far beyond.

In Hong Kong, the symbolically charged boundary with the mainland has become yet another font of militant unrest after months of anti-government protest. Residents in this semi-autonomous enclave—which the British handed back to China in 1997—insist the whole thing must be sealed. A suspected bombing campaign appeared to be an attempt to pressure the government into doing just that. Nobody was injured, but the spate of homemade explosives, planted at a hospital, a public toilet and Lo Wu station, took “one big step closer to terrorism,” police said earlier this month.

Beyond the looming health scare, this latest fight to control the people, pathogens and ideas that cross the border reflects the same deep distrust of the Chinese Communist Party that exploded during the recent protests. It also exposes a dirty secret that many protesters and their supporters try to downplay: how easily antipathy toward the party translates into resentment of ordinary mainland Chinese.

Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in recent years has fueled outrage against perceived encroachment. It has also helped catalyze a distinct Hong Kong identity—one rooted in defending the territory’s unique freedoms against an influx of mainland money, people and power. “Hong Kong is not China” has become a rallying cry throughout the city, sprayed onto walls and chanted at protests. Anger extends to anything identified with China: emblems, businesses and even people.

Long distrusted as agents of demographic, socioeconomic and even political occupation, mainlanders are now feared as vectors of disease, emboldening a bigotry that increasingly spills into violence.

“As long as the epidemic keeps worsening, people will at the back of their minds blame the mainlanders and think, ‘After all, it’s the mainlanders who started all this,’” says Willy Lam, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images This photo taken in Hong Kong on Feb. 6, 2020, shows the border fence with Shenzhen, China (background), near Lo Wu station.

Read more: The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Derail Xi Jinping’s Dreams of a Chinese Century

A nightmare relived

In Asia’s financial center, where more than 60 cases have been recorded compared to the mainland’s 75,000, anxiety is compounded by memories of another nightmare. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) traumatized the city in 2003, claiming 299 lives. Then, Hong Kong was in the middle of the outbreak. Now, the epicenter lies about 600 miles away.

Yet the cosmopolitan hub of 7.5 million resembles a city in lockdown. Restaurants, shopping malls and public transportation are largely deserted as people work from home and schools are closed. Medical masks are in such short supply that lines hundreds long form beside pharmacies rumored to have stock. Runs on toilet paper, bleach and rice have denuded grocery store shelves.

After months of bitter protests, lack of confidence in the government runs deep. Panic is “spreading faster than the virus because the government is not acting in an efficient manner,” says Dr. Ho Pak Leung, a microbiologist and director of the Centre for Infection at the University of Hong Kong.

Union members, democracy activists and even pro-establishment politicians have joined together in calling for the border’s closure. Striking medical workers have threatened to quit en masse. Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, rejected sealing the border as impractical and discriminatory but eventually agreed to shut all but three checkpoints and impose a mandatory, 14-day quarantine for anyone entering from the mainland. The measures are unprecedented but not enough to the many who fear that contagion will overtake Hong Kong and mainland patients will sap its medical reserves.

“We have to protect our own people first,” says Ng, a patient care assistant who joined the recent strike. “If our medical system goes down, then there will be no one to help Hongkongers.”

With the border still partially open, some have taken it upon themselves to enforce their own restrictions. Several restaurants refuse to serve speakers of Mandarin (the official language of the mainland, unlike Hong Kong where Cantonese dominates). Some hotels require certificates of health from mainland guests, and a student from Hubei told local media that mainlanders quarantined at a university were doxxed.

Read more: The Pandemic of Xenophobia and Scapegoating

Yet experts have warned that the draconian travel bans adopted by much of the world may only divert vital resources from public health tasks and inflame Sinophobia.

“I don’t see any public health reason to justify sealing of borders at this point in the outbreak,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Paul Yeung/Bloomberg via Getty Images Medical workers wearing protective masks gather during a protest outside the Hospital Authority’s head office in Hong Kong, China, on Feb. 4, 2020.

A fraught boundary

Beyond the public health debate, the push to seal the border brims with political subtext.

With its riverbanks, barbed wire fences, passport checks and a compact no-man’s land, the 25-mile perimeter sets Hong Kong apart from the rest of China, designating it as a place where the laws of the mainland do not apply.

A colonial relic, the boundary follows the same line as it did under the British. Their efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to reinforce the border and maintain a stable population—after the influx of refugees in previous decades—transformed the territory. Once a temporary sanctuary for those fleeing famine and political instability, it became a settled homebase with a specific local identity, anthropologist Ip Iam-chong writes in “Politics of Belonging: a study of the campaign against mainland visitors in Hong Kong.”

After Hong Kong retroceded to China in 1997, the border served as a “firewall” protecting the city’s autonomy, says Jeffrey Twu, who researches border conflicts and nationalist movements at Columbia University.

“This call to shut down the border is not so much about asking the government to literally close all the immigration booths. It’s really this urgent call for the government to rethink its relation vis-à-vis the central government in Beijing,” he says.

But the increasing permeability of the border in recent years has exacerbated the fears of local activists that Hong Kong, with the British gone, will become just another Chinese city. After Beijing loosened restrictions on travel in 2003, mainland visitors provided an economic lifeline for Hong Kong’s SARS-bruised economy, filling hotel rooms, restaurants, malls and boutiques. But as visitor numbers swelled from 7 million in 2002 to 51 million in 2018—nearly seven times the city’s population—resentment grew.

Increasingly, the economy catered to the needs of deep-pocketed Chinese day-trippers, who were accused of everything from congesting the streets to allowing their children to defecate in public. “Many of them are very rude,” Isaac Au, a 30-year-old Hongkonger, says of mainlanders in what are fairly common sentiments. “When they are rich they think that they can just spend money and they are the kings of the world.”

Birth tourism, competition for college spots and the growing use of Mandarin has also irritated locals. Conspicuous consumption by mainland shoppers—some estimates say the city accounts for up to 10% of the $285 billion annual global sales of luxury goods—has exacerbated the sense that many Hongkongers are being priced out of their own city. So has the influx of mainland money into the local property market, already one of the world’s most expensive.

Beijing has attempted to boost territorial integration through massive infrastructure projects. A high-speed railway that directly connected Hong Kong to 58 mainland cities, and brought the Chinese capital Beijing within nine hours’ reach, opened in 2018. So did a $18.8 billion bridge linking Hong Kong to the former Portuguese colony of Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai.

Attempts were made to foster cultural assimilation too—like a 2012 campaign to introduce “patriotic education” in Hong Kong schools. But that initiative fueled bitter protests and China’s growing has proximity left Hongkongers cold. According to an annual survey by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program, Hongkongers’ sense of being Chinese hit an all-time low in 2019. Among 18 to 29 year olds, 75 percent identified as “Hong Kong” rather than Chinese, while 49 percent of those 30 or older felt the same.

Kyle Lam/Bloomberg via Getty Images Graffiti reading “Hong Kong Is Not China” is displayed on the wall of a highway during a protest in the Central district of Hong Kong, China, on July 21, 2019.

Escalating violence

This simmering angst has regularly burst into xenophobia. In 2012, a local newspaper ad infamously depicted mainland Chinese as locusts draining the city of its resources and “locusts” has since stuck as a derogatory name for mainlanders. Nativist groups sprang up, pledging to defend their home. One, Hong Kong Indigenous, staged “reclaim” campaigns in 2015, targeting mainland shoppers.

The initially fringe cause found far wider support during the recent pro-democracy protests, which morphed into a broad, ideological battle to both win greater political freedoms and preserve Hong Kong’s special identity. “Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Time,” the movement’s defining credo, was coined by jailed activist Edward Leung, a former member of Hong Kong Indigenous. (Ironically, Leung, who argued for tighter borders and even full independence, was born in Wuhan.)

After adopting Leung’s clarion call, some protesters also embraced his advocacy of more militant tactics. Violence, once dismissed as extreme, has become largely accepted as the only way to pressure a sclerotic regime because of the lack of other viable outlets.

Samson Yuen, an expert on social movements at Lingnan University says that, in Hong Kong, people cannot directly elect their leader or legislature, yet are deeply fearful of falling under authoritarian Beijing’s control. “It’s really a symptom of how ill the whole political situation is,” he says. “If there was democracy, people wouldn’t be throwing petrol bombs on the street.”

Coronavirus is just the latest trigger. At a protest-aligned restaurant in the buzzing shopping and entertainment district of Tsim Sha Tsui, diners say they feel more comfortable now that Mandarin-speakers are barred from the establishment. The entrance is covered with pastel-colored Post-It notes expressing support for Hong Kong’s autonomy and exhorting fellow customers to “stay healthy.” People wait in line for a table, even as neighboring eateries sit empty.

“Hongkongers don’t have a choice about our government, about our freedom. But for eating at least, we do,” says Keith, a 33-year-old patron.

And while coronavirus paranoia is certainly not unique to the city, the outbreak provides yet another vehicle for Hongkongers to distinguish themselves from mainland Chinese.

“I blame China for it,” says 23-year-old Karmen, echoing old prejudices. “They eat everything there. We don’t do that.”

This “racialization” says Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, could prove dangerous amid the violent protest tactics that have become normalized in recent months.

“The dehumanization of the mainland Chinese makes it easier to engage in violence and to believe in an IRA-style separatist ideology and militantism,” he says, referring to the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary organization that waged a terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended most of the conflict.

It seems like a long way from the once troubled streets of Belfast to Lo Wu station. But two homemade explosive devices were found there on Feb. 2; shortly afterward, an anonymous message on social media threatened mainland Chinese arrivals.

“You come to our city to spread germs, but have you considered clearly if you would be able to continue living if you cross the border?” it said.

“I protect my city, [you are] welcome to personally experience the force of a bombing.”

— Additional reporting by Hillary Leung / Hong Kong

[itsfinancethings]

At the farthest edge of Hong Kong, where suburban foothills descend into a riverine border with China, a lone sentry shoos away traffic. The checkpoint, his gestures and the line of U-turning vehicles indicate, is closed.

Behind him towers the glass and concrete skyline of Shenzhen—the nearest Chinese city to Hong Kong. Without the usual throng of travelers, buses and hawkers here at Lo Wu station, the only noise comes from water buffalo grunting across the tracks.

This and nine other border crossings were recently shut in a bid to contain the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus, COVID-19, that emerged in the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan, wreaking havoc on the mainland and spreading far beyond.

In Hong Kong, the symbolically charged boundary with the mainland has become yet another font of militant unrest after months of anti-government protest. Residents in this semi-autonomous enclave—which the British handed back to China in 1997—insist the whole thing must be sealed. A suspected bombing campaign appeared to be an attempt to pressure the government into doing just that. Nobody was injured, but the spate of homemade explosives, planted at a hospital, a public toilet and Lo Wu station, took “one big step closer to terrorism,” police said earlier this month.

Beyond the looming health scare, this latest fight to control the people, pathogens and ideas that cross the border reflects the same deep distrust of the Chinese Communist Party that exploded during the recent protests. It also exposes a dirty secret that many protesters and their supporters try to downplay: how easily antipathy toward the party translates into resentment of ordinary mainland Chinese.

Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in recent years has fueled outrage against perceived encroachment. It has also helped catalyze a distinct Hong Kong identity—one rooted in defending the territory’s unique freedoms against an influx of mainland money, people and power. “Hong Kong is not China” has become a rallying cry throughout the city, sprayed onto walls and chanted at protests. Anger extends to anything identified with China: emblems, businesses and even people.

Long distrusted as agents of demographic, socioeconomic and even political occupation, mainlanders are now feared as vectors of disease, emboldening a bigotry that increasingly spills into violence.

“As long as the epidemic keeps worsening, people will at the back of their minds blame the mainlanders and think, ‘After all, it’s the mainlanders who started all this,’” says Willy Lam, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images This photo taken in Hong Kong on Feb. 6, 2020, shows the border fence with Shenzhen, China (background), near Lo Wu station.

Read more: The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Derail Xi Jinping’s Dreams of a Chinese Century

A nightmare relived

In Asia’s financial center, where more than 60 cases have been recorded compared to the mainland’s 75,000, anxiety is compounded by memories of another nightmare. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) traumatized the city in 2003, claiming 299 lives. Then, Hong Kong was in the middle of the outbreak. Now, the epicenter lies about 600 miles away.

Yet the cosmopolitan hub of 7.5 million resembles a city in lockdown. Restaurants, shopping malls and public transportation are largely deserted as people work from home and schools are closed. Medical masks are in such short supply that lines hundreds long form beside pharmacies rumored to have stock. Runs on toilet paper, bleach and rice have denuded grocery store shelves.

After months of bitter protests, lack of confidence in the government runs deep. Panic is “spreading faster than the virus because the government is not acting in an efficient manner,” says Dr. Ho Pak Leung, a microbiologist and director of the Centre for Infection at the University of Hong Kong.

Union members, democracy activists and even pro-establishment politicians have joined together in calling for the border’s closure. Striking medical workers have threatened to quit en masse. Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, rejected sealing the border as impractical and discriminatory but eventually agreed to shut all but three checkpoints and impose a mandatory, 14-day quarantine for anyone entering from the mainland. The measures are unprecedented but not enough to the many who fear that contagion will overtake Hong Kong and mainland patients will sap its medical reserves.

“We have to protect our own people first,” says Ng, a patient care assistant who joined the recent strike. “If our medical system goes down, then there will be no one to help Hongkongers.”

With the border still partially open, some have taken it upon themselves to enforce their own restrictions. Several restaurants refuse to serve speakers of Mandarin (the official language of the mainland, unlike Hong Kong where Cantonese dominates). Some hotels require certificates of health from mainland guests, and a student from Hubei told local media that mainlanders quarantined at a university were doxxed.

Read more: The Pandemic of Xenophobia and Scapegoating

Yet experts have warned that the draconian travel bans adopted by much of the world may only divert vital resources from public health tasks and inflame Sinophobia.

“I don’t see any public health reason to justify sealing of borders at this point in the outbreak,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Paul Yeung/Bloomberg via Getty Images Medical workers wearing protective masks gather during a protest outside the Hospital Authority’s head office in Hong Kong, China, on Feb. 4, 2020. P

A fraught boundary

Beyond the public health debate, the push to seal the border brims with political subtext.

With its riverbanks, barbed wire fences, passport checks and a compact no-man’s land, the 25-mile perimeter sets Hong Kong apart from the rest of China, designating it as a place where the laws of the mainland do not apply.

A colonial relic, the boundary follows the same line as it did under the British. Their efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to reinforce the border and maintain a stable population—after the influx of refugees in previous decades—transformed the territory. Once a temporary sanctuary for those fleeing famine and political instability, it became a settled homebase with a specific local identity, anthropologist Ip Iam-chong writes in “Politics of Belonging: a study of the campaign against mainland visitors in Hong Kong.”

After Hong Kong retroceded to China in 1997, the border served as a “firewall” protecting the city’s autonomy, says Jeffrey Twu, who researches border conflicts and nationalist movements at Columbia University.

“This call to shut down the border is not so much about asking the government to literally close all the immigration booths. It’s really this urgent call for the government to rethink its relation vis-à-vis the central government in Beijing,” he says.

But the increasing permeability of the border in recent years has exacerbated the fears of local activists that Hong Kong, with the British gone, will become just another Chinese city. After Beijing loosened restrictions on travel in 2003, mainland visitors provided an economic lifeline for Hong Kong’s SARS-bruised economy, filling hotel rooms, restaurants, malls and boutiques. But as visitor numbers swelled from 7 million in 2002 to 51 million in 2018—nearly seven times the city’s population—resentment grew.

Increasingly, the economy catered to the needs of deep-pocketed Chinese day-trippers, who were accused of everything from congesting the streets to allowing their children to defecate in public. “Many of them are very rude,” Isaac Au, a 30-year-old Hongkonger, says of mainlanders in what are fairly common sentiments. “When they are rich they think that they can just spend money and they are the kings of the world.”

Birth tourism, competition for college spots and the growing use of Mandarin has also irritated locals. Conspicuous consumption by mainland shoppers—some estimates say the city accounts for up to 10% of the $285 billion annual global sales of luxury goods—has exacerbated the sense that many Hongkongers are being priced out of their own city. So has the influx of mainland money into the local property market, already one of the world’s most expensive.

Beijing has attempted to boost territorial integration through massive infrastructure projects. A high-speed railway that directly connected Hong Kong to 58 mainland cities, and brought the Chinese capital Beijing within nine hours’ reach, opened in 2018. So did a $18.8 billion bridge linking Hong Kong to the former Portuguese colony of Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai.

Attempts were made to foster cultural assimilation too—like a 2012 campaign to introduce “patriotic education” in Hong Kong schools. But that initiative fueled bitter protests and China’s growing has proximity left Hongkongers cold. According to an annual survey by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program, Hongkongers’ sense of being Chinese hit an all-time low in 2019. Among 18 to 29 year olds, 75 percent identified as “Hong Kong” rather than Chinese, while 49 percent of those 30 or older felt the same.

Kyle Lam/Bloomberg via Getty Images Graffiti reading “Hong Kong Is Not China” is displayed on the wall of a highway during a protest in the Central district of Hong Kong, China, on July 21, 2019.

Escalating violence

This simmering angst has regularly burst into xenophobia. In 2012, a local newspaper ad infamously depicted mainland Chinese as locusts draining the city of its resources and “locusts” has since stuck as a derogatory name for mainlanders. Nativist groups sprang up, pledging to defend their home. One, Hong Kong Indigenous, staged “reclaim” campaigns in 2015, targeting mainland shoppers.

The initially fringe cause found far wider support during the recent pro-democracy protests, which morphed into a broad, ideological battle to both win greater political freedoms and preserve Hong Kong’s special identity. “Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Time,” the movement’s defining credo, was coined by jailed activist Edward Leung, a former member of Hong Kong Indigenous. (Ironically, Leung, who argued for tighter borders and even full independence, was born in Wuhan.)

After adopting Leung’s clarion call, some protesters also embraced his advocacy of more militant tactics. Violence, once dismissed as extreme, has become largely accepted as the only way to pressure a sclerotic regime because of the lack of other viable outlets.

Samson Yuen, an expert on social movements at Lingnan University says that, in Hong Kong, people cannot directly elect their leader or legislature, yet are deeply fearful of falling under authoritarian Beijing’s control. “It’s really a symptom of how ill the whole political situation is,” he says. “If there was democracy, people wouldn’t be throwing petrol bombs on the street.”

Coronavirus is just the latest trigger. At a protest-aligned restaurant in the buzzing shopping and entertainment district of Tsim Sha Tsui, diners say they feel more comfortable now that Mandarin-speakers are barred from the establishment. The entrance is covered with pastel-colored Post-It notes expressing support for Hong Kong’s autonomy and exhorting fellow customers to “stay healthy.” People wait in line for a table, even as neighboring eateries sit empty.

“Hongkongers don’t have a choice about our government, about our freedom. But for eating at least, we do,” says Keith, a 33-year-old patron.

And while coronavirus paranoia is certainly not unique to the city, the outbreak provides yet another vehicle for Hongkongers to distinguish themselves from mainland Chinese.

“I blame China for it,” says 23-year-old Karmen, echoing old prejudices. “They eat everything there. We don’t do that.”

This “racialization” says Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, could prove dangerous amid the violent protest tactics that have become normalized in recent months.

“The dehumanization of the mainland Chinese makes it easier to engage in violence and to believe in an IRA-style separatist ideology and militantism,” he says, referring to the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary organization that waged a terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended most of the conflict.

It seems like a long way from the once troubled streets of Belfast to Lo Wu station. But two homemade explosive devices were found there on Feb. 2; shortly afterward, an anonymous message on social media threatened mainland Chinese arrivals.

“You come to our city to spread germs, but have you considered clearly if you would be able to continue living if you cross the border?” it said.

“I protect my city, [you are] welcome to personally experience the force of a bombing.”

— Additional reporting by Hillary Leung / Hong Kong

[itsfinancethings]

February 19, 2020 at 02:27AM

At the farthest edge of Hong Kong, where suburban foothills descend into a riverine border with China, a lone sentry shoos away traffic. The checkpoint, his gestures and the line of U-turning vehicles indicate, is closed.

Behind him towers the glass and concrete skyline of Shenzhen—the nearest Chinese city to Hong Kong. Without the usual throng of travelers, buses and hawkers here at Lo Wu station, the only noise comes from water buffalo grunting across the tracks.

This and nine other border crossings were recently shut in a bid to contain the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus, COVID-19, that emerged in the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan, wreaking havoc on the mainland and spreading far beyond.

In Hong Kong, the symbolically charged boundary with the mainland has become yet another font of militant unrest after months of anti-government protest. Residents in this semi-autonomous enclave—which the British handed back to China in 1997—insist the whole thing must be sealed. A suspected bombing campaign appeared to be an attempt to pressure the government into doing just that. Nobody was injured, but the spate of homemade explosives, planted at a hospital, a public toilet and Lo Wu station, took “one big step closer to terrorism,” police said earlier this month.

Beyond the looming health scare, this latest fight to control the people, pathogens and ideas that cross the border reflects the same deep distrust of the Chinese Communist Party that exploded during the recent protests. It also exposes a dirty secret that many protesters and their supporters try to downplay: how easily antipathy toward the party translates into resentment of ordinary mainland Chinese.

Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in recent years has fueled outrage against perceived encroachment. It has also helped catalyze a distinct Hong Kong identity—one rooted in defending the territory’s unique freedoms against an influx of mainland money, people and power. “Hong Kong is not China” has become a rallying cry throughout the city, sprayed onto walls and chanted at protests. Anger extends to anything identified with China: emblems, businesses and even people.

Long distrusted as agents of demographic, socioeconomic and even political occupation, mainlanders are now feared as vectors of disease, emboldening a bigotry that increasingly spills into violence.

“As long as the epidemic keeps worsening, people will at the back of their minds blame the mainlanders and think, ‘After all, it’s the mainlanders who started all this,’” says Willy Lam, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images This photo taken in Hong Kong on Feb. 6, 2020, shows the border fence with Shenzhen, China (background), near Lo Wu station.

Read more: The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Derail Xi Jinping’s Dreams of a Chinese Century

A nightmare relived

In Asia’s financial center, where more than 60 cases have been recorded compared to the mainland’s 75,000, anxiety is compounded by memories of another nightmare. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) traumatized the city in 2003, claiming 299 lives. Then, Hong Kong was in the middle of the outbreak. Now, the epicenter lies about 600 miles away.

Yet the cosmopolitan hub of 7.5 million resembles a city in lockdown. Restaurants, shopping malls and public transportation are largely deserted as people work from home and schools are closed. Medical masks are in such short supply that lines hundreds long form beside pharmacies rumored to have stock. Runs on toilet paper, bleach and rice have denuded grocery store shelves.

After months of bitter protests, lack of confidence in the government runs deep. Panic is “spreading faster than the virus because the government is not acting in an efficient manner,” says Dr. Ho Pak Leung, a microbiologist and director of the Centre for Infection at the University of Hong Kong.

Union members, democracy activists and even pro-establishment politicians have joined together in calling for the border’s closure. Striking medical workers have threatened to quit en masse. Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, rejected sealing the border as impractical and discriminatory but eventually agreed to shut all but three checkpoints and impose a mandatory, 14-day quarantine for anyone entering from the mainland. The measures are unprecedented but not enough to the many who fear that contagion will overtake Hong Kong and mainland patients will sap its medical reserves.

“We have to protect our own people first,” says Ng, a patient care assistant who joined the recent strike. “If our medical system goes down, then there will be no one to help Hongkongers.”

With the border still partially open, some have taken it upon themselves to enforce their own restrictions. Several restaurants refuse to serve speakers of Mandarin (the official language of the mainland, unlike Hong Kong where Cantonese dominates). Some hotels require certificates of health from mainland guests, and a student from Hubei told local media that mainlanders quarantined at a university were doxxed.

Read more: The Pandemic of Xenophobia and Scapegoating

Yet experts have warned that the draconian travel bans adopted by much of the world may only divert vital resources from public health tasks and inflame Sinophobia.

“I don’t see any public health reason to justify sealing of borders at this point in the outbreak,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Paul Yeung/Bloomberg via Getty Images Medical workers wearing protective masks gather during a protest outside the Hospital Authority’s head office in Hong Kong, China, on Feb. 4, 2020. P

A fraught boundary

Beyond the public health debate, the push to seal the border brims with political subtext.

With its riverbanks, barbed wire fences, passport checks and a compact no-man’s land, the 25-mile perimeter sets Hong Kong apart from the rest of China, designating it as a place where the laws of the mainland do not apply.

A colonial relic, the boundary follows the same line as it did under the British. Their efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to reinforce the border and maintain a stable population—after the influx of refugees in previous decades—transformed the territory. Once a temporary sanctuary for those fleeing famine and political instability, it became a settled homebase with a specific local identity, anthropologist Ip Iam-chong writes in “Politics of Belonging: a study of the campaign against mainland visitors in Hong Kong.”

After Hong Kong retroceded to China in 1997, the border served as a “firewall” protecting the city’s autonomy, says Jeffrey Twu, who researches border conflicts and nationalist movements at Columbia University.

“This call to shut down the border is not so much about asking the government to literally close all the immigration booths. It’s really this urgent call for the government to rethink its relation vis-à-vis the central government in Beijing,” he says.

But the increasing permeability of the border in recent years has exacerbated the fears of local activists that Hong Kong, with the British gone, will become just another Chinese city. After Beijing loosened restrictions on travel in 2003, mainland visitors provided an economic lifeline for Hong Kong’s SARS-bruised economy, filling hotel rooms, restaurants, malls and boutiques. But as visitor numbers swelled from 7 million in 2002 to 51 million in 2018—nearly seven times the city’s population—resentment grew.

Increasingly, the economy catered to the needs of deep-pocketed Chinese day-trippers, who were accused of everything from congesting the streets to allowing their children to defecate in public. “Many of them are very rude,” Isaac Au, a 30-year-old Hongkonger, says of mainlanders in what are fairly common sentiments. “When they are rich they think that they can just spend money and they are the kings of the world.”

Birth tourism, competition for college spots and the growing use of Mandarin has also irritated locals. Conspicuous consumption by mainland shoppers—some estimates say the city accounts for up to 10% of the $285 billion annual global sales of luxury goods—has exacerbated the sense that many Hongkongers are being priced out of their own city. So has the influx of mainland money into the local property market, already one of the world’s most expensive.

Beijing has attempted to boost territorial integration through massive infrastructure projects. A high-speed railway that directly connected Hong Kong to 58 mainland cities, and brought the Chinese capital Beijing within nine hours’ reach, opened in 2018. So did a $18.8 billion bridge linking Hong Kong to the former Portuguese colony of Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai.

Attempts were made to foster cultural assimilation too—like a 2012 campaign to introduce “patriotic education” in Hong Kong schools. But that initiative fueled bitter protests and China’s growing has proximity left Hongkongers cold. According to an annual survey by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program, Hongkongers’ sense of being Chinese hit an all-time low in 2019. Among 18 to 29 year olds, 75 percent identified as “Hong Kong” rather than Chinese, while 49 percent of those 30 or older felt the same.

Kyle Lam/Bloomberg via Getty Images Graffiti reading “Hong Kong Is Not China” is displayed on the wall of a highway during a protest in the Central district of Hong Kong, China, on July 21, 2019.

Escalating violence

This simmering angst has regularly burst into xenophobia. In 2012, a local newspaper ad infamously depicted mainland Chinese as locusts draining the city of its resources and “locusts” has since stuck as a derogatory name for mainlanders. Nativist groups sprang up, pledging to defend their home. One, Hong Kong Indigenous, staged “reclaim” campaigns in 2015, targeting mainland shoppers.

The initially fringe cause found far wider support during the recent pro-democracy protests, which morphed into a broad, ideological battle to both win greater political freedoms and preserve Hong Kong’s special identity. “Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Time,” the movement’s defining credo, was coined by jailed activist Edward Leung, a former member of Hong Kong Indigenous. (Ironically, Leung, who argued for tighter borders and even full independence, was born in Wuhan.)

After adopting Leung’s clarion call, some protesters also embraced his advocacy of more militant tactics. Violence, once dismissed as extreme, has become largely accepted as the only way to pressure a sclerotic regime because of the lack of other viable outlets.

Samson Yuen, an expert on social movements at Lingnan University says that, in Hong Kong, people cannot directly elect their leader or legislature, yet are deeply fearful of falling under authoritarian Beijing’s control. “It’s really a symptom of how ill the whole political situation is,” he says. “If there was democracy, people wouldn’t be throwing petrol bombs on the street.”

Coronavirus is just the latest trigger. At a protest-aligned restaurant in the buzzing shopping and entertainment district of Tsim Sha Tsui, diners say they feel more comfortable now that Mandarin-speakers are barred from the establishment. The entrance is covered with pastel-colored Post-It notes expressing support for Hong Kong’s autonomy and exhorting fellow customers to “stay healthy.” People wait in line for a table, even as neighboring eateries sit empty.

“Hongkongers don’t have a choice about our government, about our freedom. But for eating at least, we do,” says Keith, a 33-year-old patron.

And while coronavirus paranoia is certainly not unique to the city, the outbreak provides yet another vehicle for Hongkongers to distinguish themselves from mainland Chinese.

“I blame China for it,” says 23-year-old Karmen, echoing old prejudices. “They eat everything there. We don’t do that.”

This “racialization” says Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, could prove dangerous amid the violent protest tactics that have become normalized in recent months.

“The dehumanization of the mainland Chinese makes it easier to engage in violence and to believe in an IRA-style separatist ideology and militantism,” he says, referring to the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary organization that waged a terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended most of the conflict.

It seems like a long way from the once troubled streets of Belfast to Lo Wu station. But two homemade explosive devices were found there on Feb. 2; shortly afterward, an anonymous message on social media threatened mainland Chinese arrivals.

“You come to our city to spread germs, but have you considered clearly if you would be able to continue living if you cross the border?” it said.

“I protect my city, [you are] welcome to personally experience the force of a bombing.”

— Additional reporting by Hillary Leung / Hong Kong