#cw csem mention

[the-bar-sinister]

If everyone who works at AO3 does that work without compensation who the fuck do they think should be combing through works.

"The people who did this weren't compensated for their time" No one is!!

"Only paid specialists should be doing this"

So you think their budget should be tens if not hundreds of thousands bigger, and in the mean time nothing should be done about it??

If the answer to that is no, then what the fuck do you wanr, they didnt do The Best, but they are doing Their Best, and it is better than Nothing At All.

Hopefully they improve in clarity and guidance for the volunteers and hopefully they give more support to those troubles by what they find, but god damn. This work is done for free. What else do you expect? Miracles??? Perfection???? We're human, what you see is what you get.

Exactly, anon, exactly.

People are treating OTW like its another tyrannical corporate oppressor with its boot on the throat of the masses, instead of what it IS, a grassroots organization of passionate volunteer fans.

People, this is not who the guillotine is for!

[miss-rum-hee]

I still can't believe this is a real case.

[roomwithavoid]

i usually leave anons on for people who are shy about requests and whatnot but if youre going to defend sexual exploitation of children you dont get to be anonymous. cmon dont be a coward, keep sending asks, bub.

[candypopchaos]

muskrat personally reinstating an acc that posted csam is the last straw for me fuck that website

[degensys]

I’ve had to deal with a devastating issue today; and I feel like us Proshippers need to have a conversation really quickly about something very important.

Drawings of real minors in sexual situations should not be created or posted. Ever.

I’ve made that mistake when I was 12, and it still affects me deeply to the point I call myself a CSEM victim because of my stupid and immature decisions. (Actually, if you knew me when I was Destroyalition, you might’ve seen my vent posts about how bad it affected me when I was younger.)

I understand if you’re a selfshipper and want to show your love to your f/o by drawing you guys in romantic situations, but drawings of real kids in those situations are risky. Sexual drawings of that nature are something we should be warning kids not to draw at all. I don’t want anyone else to feel the same pain and grief and anxiety I felt after learning what I drew was harmful and illegal.

Please, be careful. Don’t let adults draw you in sexual situations. Don’t let yourself make a dumb and immature decision. Please stay safe and be careful.

So Minor Proshippers. Listen up. There’s an alternative that is safe to this called creating OC self inserts. Please use those instead to your hearts content. Make sure they don’t look like you though, and please heal.

I just feel like this needs to be specified to the MAXIMUM. I am dearly sorry to everyone who was as immature as I was, and made the same mistake. Take this as a warning, don’t learn the same way I did. Stay safe.

[the-bar-sinister]

Why are people mad about ao3 now?

Do I wanna know?

The founder of dreamwidth and a former OTW volunteer are stirring shit about the organization's alleged mishandling of the situation wherein malicious actors were terrorizing OTW with CSAM, and the ongoing situation where malicious actors attempt to upload CSAM to the archive.

The short version is that people are mad that the OTW "forces" volunteers to deal with CSAM, ignoring the fact that all of OTW is volunteers, in favor of smearing OTW as malicious oppressors.

[kaiasky]

I really truly hate to ask but in your bio when it says map enjoyer the map part is not an acronym. is it??? or u mean the paper maps

ah. a normal map!

source. i think this is very pretty. this is a normal map. The idea is like. Suppose we want to have a 3d model of an old desk like this:

If we just throw that picture on a texture and hit render, we get something like this:

Which doesn't look particularly realistic! Notice how the light is staying in one place and all the highlights on the places where the pencil has dug into the wood don't move to catch the light. Our eyes automatically pick up a lot of detail about the texture of surfaces, and this doesn't look real.

in particular, the angle of the surface determines how much light is reflected at the camera. So we need a way to store the angle of every point on our surface! But it turns out we can use a neat coincidence; we see 3 primary colors and live in 3-dimensional space! To store the orientation of a surface, you can use the normal vector--the arrow perpendicular to the surface. (I like to imagine the object being covered in little tiny spikes sticking straight out at a right angle. We need a way to store those spikes.) Since we have 3 colors and 3 dimensions, we can encode the angle of the normal vector spikes as a color, where the red channel means the left-right angle, the green channel means the up-down angle, and the blue channel means the vertical angle sticking out at the viewer. So to go back to the old image:

The cyan bits to the left (some green, some blue, no red) are spikes pointing to the left. The red/pink bits to the right are spikes pointing to the right. The neutral blue-grey color in the middle is a spike sticking straight up.

There's lots of ways to make a normal map. You can paint them yourself, you can model a really complicated geometry and then calculate a normal map to apply to a much simpler geometry, or you can create it as the "derivative" of a heightmap (a greyscale image where white is high bumps and black is dips). There's even cool neural network things that try to infer the height/normal map from a picture or video!

Here's that normal map I stole applied to a totally flat grey square, with the light moving. Look how convincing the illusion of depth is!

Here's two grey cubes smashing into one another except one has a normal map applied.

So I think this is a really cool technique! But I also think that normal maps, the images themselves, are stunningly beautiful. That's why the background of my avatar is a normal map!

Shoutout to gif.ski for making those gifs. I'm not really sure why its quality is 10x what i get from imagemagick or ffmpeg but it sure as hell is.

[chloroformcurry]

A rather heavy experimental piece. Could count as oc content and as something applicable to a real life issue igs. I hope I took all the right precautions on the tags 🙏

[roomwithavoid]

so U would rather real life children get actually Harmed? ok then

very normal thing to say about erotica of real life children btw. you should bring this topic up at your next family gathering

[lolotheparagon]

https :// twitter. com /red_ devil330 /status /1574 503508619018281

weirdness is not what creates morality. It's whether it's harmful. Saying "It's weird you sexualize children irl or fictional" obviously shows why you don't understand why abuse of real children is illegal.

Children are human being with their own rights. And someone abusing them, whether physically, emotionally or sexually, is taking away those rights. It's harming them physically or mentally long-term, which creates problems in the future that can damage a generation.

Abuse of children is not "weird." Calling it weird is downplaying it, because weirdness is inherently something that isn't harmful. Children can die from abuse. Adults can die from abuse. Fictional characters feel nothing from it. They don't have the ability to understand abuse.

Same thing with CSEM. "All forms of CP is gross" is downplaying the harm of real CSEM. CSEM laws are not created because of it being gross, it's created because it's the documentation and/or production of child abuse, which I have already explained above.

Fictional characters cannot be abuse. They have no rights, freedom or any documentations that explain why drawing or writing them in a certain way would be illegal. Any place that makes fictional content illegal, has already created laws against violent medias as well.

You can call it weird. You can call it gross. But saying both is weird and/or gross, is fucking horrific to say. Fictional porn of an underage child can NEVER be compared to CSEM of a child. That child has to live with it forever. A fictional character, can be aged up.

~

It's condescending to assume that a reader is too stupid to recognize when a character is doing something harmful or crossing a taboo in a piece of fiction.

It's patronizing to believe that a reader will have their morals compromised by reading fiction and be reprogrammed by it to believe that the harmful action and crossing taboos is good in real life.

It's ridiculous to act like people can't read about characters harming others or crossing taboos in fiction without starting to believe it's okay to harm people or cross taboos in real life.

It's unrealistic to assume that you know what reason someone has for reading a piece of fiction in which harm occurs or taboos are crossed.

It's disgusting and boundary crossing for you to speculate about and fixate on someone else's' sexual habits based on the fiction they consume.

~ yknow in order for something to be considered csem/csam

it must depict an actual identifiable child. a fictional character isnt considered a real living being with thoughts and emotions. or rights for that matter. it cant be exploited in the way a real child can. separate fiction from reality and leave us alone

Fictional children are still children, mate.

[kaz3313]

Serious shit, talk of csem (not specifics), Rape threats, and things of similar nature. Please mind the tags:

I think it’s disgusting that both antis and pro shippers harass people with rape threats/threats of harm on children/etc. I’ve seen it mostly within antis But I’m definitely not saying it doesn’t happen on the other side (I will be talking about antis doing it Because that’s the experience I’ve had). This is especially true when antis have told ship and let ship people (so I’m including those neutral) that their “desensitized” to “child porn”.

I just watched a video on a woman explaining the types of videos that are found. I could not finish the whole thing- it’s been several minutes and my stomach still aches.

I’ve had antis tell me that because of written underage I’m the same- that I’m the same as the people who’ve made those disgusting videos hurting children and babies.

What I consider one of my darkest fics is about rape and it is a character in the fic who’s a child. The fic was written to show how the character grew up in constant danger and in particular this fic was to show when he lost his innocence. It’s based off canon with an even darker element added to it- and I wrote it as a horror. I think I’m well within my right such a thing as is anyone else. There are several reasons one might write or read such a thing- but I’m not getting too in depth over that.

The thing I’m going in depth over is how normalized threats are. I’ve seen people wish harm on people’s (not born yet) children’s genitalia (I’m not exaggerating), I’ve seen people say that someone deserved the abuse in the past or any abuse that might come to them in the future. That they hope people lose their job, livelihood, friends, and family. Threats of violence.

I just want to say that we as a collective need to stop making these threats. Even if their a “joke” or toward the “bad people”

[survivingcocsa]

COCSA / CSA TW ahead

this is a side vent blog for my COCSA and CSA trauma I endured since I was a child. I was S. abused by both adults and other minors.

u can send vent asks anon or not up to u. vent about ur trauma relating to one of the following: cocsa, csa, csem, online nccsa, nccsa, nccocsa. if u dont know what the terms mean u can ask me or look them up in the tags usually only work with a "tw" or "cw" before or after the word.

[the-bar-sinister]

Why aren't these people mad at the people who are y'know actively and intentionally breaking the law by attacking an organization with CSEM if they're so obsessed with legality, hypocrisy probably but it pisses me off tbh

That is definitely a question to examine, isn't it?

One could draw a lot of conclusions from examining that question.

[roomwithavoid]

and U have Ur mental illnesses listed in Ur bio LMAO

this is about me being against erotica of real life children btw in case anyone was missing the context

[proshippers-against-censorship]

CW for mentions of horrid CSEM, and Pedophile jokes

can i just say that, is it just me, or do i hate when people make Epst3in and Diddy? Because,(yes on Twitter) antis always, and i mean always , make Epstein jokes.

Bc i can recall an incident, this one time a fnf modder made an absolutely horrific “joke” relating to D@isy’s de£structi0n , one of the most vilest CSEM video ever in a legal case. And everyone rightfully bashed this person. But what was really absolutely “fascinating” (NOT) was that most of the people calling out this person who made the horrific joke, ALSO made Epst3in and Diddy jokes. Ok. So you making “joke” edits of Epstein and calling pro ships “espst3in disciples” is funny to you, despite knowing what he did. But someone “joking” about a csem video, which is just as absolutely horrific. Is “too far” and “disgusting”

Antis piss me off. Their moral compasses are always so flawed. And lack so much empathy. How is it ok ever to jokes like what Epstein did?vdid you guys not KNOW what he did? And you making jokes and calling others “Epst3in” waters down what the victims gone through?

Antis are truly vile hypocrites

The fact that they'll attack folks for fictional art but aren't afraid to like, actually make jokes about actual child predators is.

Vile.

[elspethdixon]

<I>Personally, I think that Azarias and Denise have it right, and that PAC needs to have better working conditions in order to see any improvement, whether in racist harassment or CSEM. I would prefer to see the energy behind EndOTWRacism be directed towards addressing racism in fandom as a whole, rather than appealing to OTW to change what is hosted on Ao3.</I>

Azarias and Denise are both 100% right in my opinion (Denise is also 100% correct about both the problems with EndOTWRacism’s mission statement/heavy reliance on a blogger who is loudly and proudly pro-content restrictions given that they themselves are claiming not to want those, and about Stitch’s long history of being deeply nasty to any PoC who disagree with her or dare to ship pairings she doesn’t like - I officially swore to have nothing to do with her or anyone who regularly reblogged her after she posted those “bootlickers of color” tweets in 2020, and also publicly endorsed/encouraged bullying people off AO3 via harassment campaigns in order to, and I quote: “make having the story up no longer worth it for the author. As in, by making their online lives hell.”)

(Links to the relevant tweets here, cw for racial slurs: https://twitter.com/stichomancery/status/1271176594791583760

https://twitter.com/stichomancery/status/1342121454222110725?s=20,https://twitter.com/stichomancery/status/1344113224841637888,https://twitter.com/stichomancery/status/1349726849622917121,https://twitter.com/stichomancery/status/1341949329716760576)

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

You may have seen talk flying around about drama going down with OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works) and AO3. There isn't a clear write-up of the situation on Tumblr, and since the allegations in this case are serious and OTW Board elections are coming up, I thought there should be a resource for people to get some basic understanding about the events.

This account is a burner, because the topics here are deeply charged, and I don't want to become a character in what's happening. I am not a member of or volunteer for OTW; I am not affiliated with End OTW Racism; I am not affiliated with Dreamwidth; I do not personally know any of the people involved in these events, or have personal knowledge of the events themselves. I am only compiling the publicly available events, allegations, and discussion into a convenient format for Tumblr. I will be heavily referencing the the similar compilation put together by Dreamwidth user Synonymous, but I am not Synonymous, nor do I know who they are. I am not, however, completely without bias; for one thing, I am writing this with the clear understanding that I believe OTW's treatment of its volunteers and policies on content moderation are both deeply troubling. If I did not believe that, I wouldn't have bothered writing this post.

This write-up includes events relating both to allegations about volunteer abuse and improper handling of CSEM moderation by the OTW, and to arguments made about the OTW's handling of racist conduct and about End OTW Racism's ties to the writer known as Stitch. I am including both of these threads because they are deeply related both causally and in the arguments of many of the people involved, and because volunteer abuse, CSEM, and racist harassment are all deeply serious problems.

This situation has not resolved, and therefore you can likely expect more to occur, probably relating to all of those topics. I have not yet decided whether I will continue updating this timeline, but it should at least give you a grounding in what's happening.

Heavy Content Warning for discussions of child sexual abuse material; abuse, harassment, and stalking; and interpersonal and systemic racism. All language in this write-up is non-graphic and high-level, but some links include more detailed descriptions.

The Events

June 24, 2020: In the wake of George Floyd's murder and in response to pressure from people including Black writer Stitch (of the blog Stitch Media Mix and Teen Vogue) and fan studies academic Dr. Rukmini Pande, the OTW makes a statement promising to review their policies and procedures and take steps to protect users from racist harassment. The specific promises they make are:

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

May 7, 2022: The OTW makes a public statement on their website that an unknown attacker has sent CSAM (child sexual abuse material) to some of their volunteers' email addresses, that they are working with authorities to find the attacker, and that response times may be slower than usual, as they have "shut down a number of internal tools" in order to protect their volunteers and the investigation.

May 8, 2022: Dreamwidth cofounder and former head of LiveJournal Trust & Safety Denise (rahaeli on Twitter, synecdochic on Dreamwidth) posts a Twitter thread urging any current or former OTW/AO3 volunteer who has provided the organization with their real-life name ("wallet name") to contact their local police department and let them know that they are at an elevated risk of swatting. She also provides advice on disabling image auto-loading in emails and dealing with trauma and anxiety from being exposed to CSAM, and mentions that she has contacted AO3 to offer help.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

May 10, 2023: The Tumblr account end-otw-racism publishes its first post, End OTW Racism: A Call to Action. In it, the anonymous authors call on the OTW to implement the changes that they promised in 2020, especially:

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

As part of their background establishing the problem of racist abuse and harassment in fandom, they link to several articles written by Stitch on their commentary blog, as well as a couple of posts from other fans. In their FAQs and other posts, the organizers of EOR clarify that they are not calling for the removal of any racist fic, but fic that is written specifically with the intention of perpetrating racist harassment or abuse. They also urge supporters not to berate or harass anyone for disagreeing with or failing to support their campaign.

May 17, 2023: An anonymous user asks about the End OTW Racism protest on the anon-meme Dreamwidth community Fail Fandom_Anon (FFA). As part of a tangent in that discussion, an anonymous former volunteer member of the OTW's Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) mentions that they handled CSEM (child sexual exploitation material) tickets as part of their work, and that the OTW did not provide sufficient resources or expertise in dealing with them either emotionally or logistically. They describe themselves as being traumatized, burned out, and overworked during their time in PAC. They also mention that there was an earlier CSAM attack, targeted only at PAC volunteers, prior to the one that the OTW announced; that they were the volunteer who handled reporting to law enforcement; that the PAC chairs urged Legal and the Board to prepare for more attacks, but that nothing was done; and that the OTW did not provide any mental health resources for volunteers after the CSAM attack. (Here is a link to the user's top-level comment; read down the thread for more.)

May 20, 2023: Dreamwidth user chestnut_pod posts an entry called Be More Democratic, Be More Autocratic, OTW. The thesis of their post is that the OTW fails to adequately respond to racism on AO3 because of structural problems within the organization that amplify biases and make change difficult to achieve, and that in order to address racism and other problems more effectively, the organization should create a clear and straightforward command structure. They also advocate for creating some paid roles within the organization. The comments of the post become a kind of referendum on OTW's organizational policies, and some former volunteers show up to say that chestnut_pod's description of the problems with the org's structure tally with their experience.

May 23, 2023:

An anonymous user links to chestnut_pod's post on FFA. In response, the same former OTW volunteer describes various details of how the Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) made decisions during her time there. (The description covers a lot of comments, so with one exception I'm linking to Synonymous's overview rather than the individual comments, but you can find all of them either through Synonymous's links or by reading down the FFA thread.) The upshot is that PAC often found it difficult to address racism, abuse, and harassment due to roadblocks and micromanagement from OTW's Legal Committee. In particular, the user mentions that they wanted to remove photo manipulations of real-life minors engaging in sex, as well as ambiguously-sourced explicit gifs from underage fics, and were told that they could not by Legal. (I have described the user's objections at as a high a level as possible, but the language used at the link is much more detailed and explicit.) A subsequent, current OTW volunteer says that since the first user left, the policy has changed to allow PAC to remove similar gifs.

Denise leaves a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post saying that the PAC policies described there run counter to industry best practices for Trust & Safety. In response to a commenter asking whether she could advise OTW, Denise says that she has offered several times, and only heard back from the organization once: after she posted her Twitter thread in response to the CSAM attacks, "at which point it immediately became extremely clear the person in question was more interested in protecting the external reputation of the organization than in listening to any advice I had to give and the only reason they'd contacted me was to pressure me to remove my Twitter thread."

In response to Denise's story, Dreamwidth user azarias reveals herself to be the anonymous former PAC volunteer on FFA. In a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post and FFA (bulk of the information in this comment, but see Synonymous's compilation or read up and down the thread for more), she relays the following story: On May 6, 2022, shortly after the CSAM attack, azarias was kicked out of the OTW volunteer Slack with no notice and no communication. When she realized several days later that this was not an organization-wide shut down, she emailed the OTW Board, Legal, and the PAC chairs asking about the situation, and whether she was a suspect in the attack. The chair of Legal, Betsy Rosenblatt, responded, apologizing for the lack of communication and saying that the shut-out was at Legal's request because they thought azarias' account may have been compromised, but she was not a suspect. On July 22, 2022, having heard nothing further from the OTW, azarias emailed again asking about reinstatement, and Betsy responded that they had just that day started that process. (EDIT: Azarias clarifies that her original stated date of July 22 was an error; she checked on her status July 4, and Betsy responded July 6.) All of azarias's accounts had been deleted, so she returned to the OTW with new accounts, and was informed by her PAC chairs that they were not consulted or informed about her suspension until it happened, were not told why she had been suspended, and were ordered not to speak to or about her during the suspension. Due to awkwardness, trauma, and burn-out, azarias quit volunteering soon after.

May 30, 2023:

On FFA, an anonymous OTW volunteer (not azarias) comments that the OTW Board has posted an update to Slack addressing azarias's story (though she is never named in the update). The update confirms that Legal made the decision to suspend azarias, and says that the Board was not consulted on or informed about the decision to either suspend or reinstate her. A statement from Legal is also attached. The statement does not in any way dispute azarias's timeline of events, and outwardly apologizes to her for the distressed caused, but it also contains several strong insinuations that the letter-writer believes that azarias was responsible for the CSAM attack.

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

June 3, 2023: Azarias (now posting under her real account, which FFA allows people who are players in the events being discussed to do) comments on FFA that she has consulted a lawyer regarding Legal's insinuation, and has been advised that she doesn't have anything to worry about, legally. She explains some more of the details behind the situation, and discusses some of her guesses about the current situation at the OTW. (For clarification, the Heidi she's referring to is Heidi Tandy, a longtime member of OTW Legal. During the heights of Harry Potter fandom, Fandom Wank coined the term "Heidipology" to describe what they believed to be Heidi's pattern of making insincere, backhanded apologies.) In the comments, anonymous users discuss the fact that OTW's Legal team is made up entirely of IP lawyers, and not lawyers who have expertise in criminal law, nonprofit governance, or Trust & Safety. (Link goes to Synonymous's compilation.)

June 12, 2023: The OTW publishes a statement addressing the End OTW Racism protest. They thank the organizers for holding them accountable, list the steps they've already taken in addressing racism (mostly muting/blocking abilities and similar), and reiterate that they are working on hiring a diversity consultant and reviewing PAC policies. They also say they will improve transparency and communication.

In the comments, azarias (and several others) push the OTW for a retraction of Legal's letter. Azarias also pushes the OTW to make real progress on racist abuse, rather than paying it "lip service." Azarias reveals that she was the Board's original pick for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer, but dropped out. (Further comments later and earlier at FFA clarify that she dropped out due to the OTW's one name policy, which requires that all work that a volunteer does for the OTW be done under a single name; officers are required to serve under their wallet names, and azarias wanted to do her PAC work under her fandom name and not link that to her wallet name, and when OTW didn't let her, she resigned. Link to Synonymous's more thorough compilation of this story here.)

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

June 15, 2023: Denise posts a thread on Twitter, shortly after compiled on her Dreamwidth, laying out what she consider's the OTW's "absolute failure" at Trust & Safety. Among other things, she claims that:

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

In this post, Denise also elaborates on the story she told in the comments of chestnut_pod's post. She says that in May 2022, before the OTW made its statement about the CSAM attack, several volunteers reached out to her for advice, and she learned that the attack emails included threats to expose identifying volunteer information to, among other places, Kiwi Farms, a site whose users have previously swatted many people. In response to this, after the OTW's statement, she published her Twitter thread advising volunteers to alert their local law enforcement, and also reached out to the OTW to offer resources, contacts, and advice. In response, OTW Legal member Rebecca Tushnet called her and spent half an hour pressuring her to remove her Twitter thread.

At the end of the post, Denise briefly touches on the End OTW Racism action that began this conversation, saying that she appreciates their work, but believes that their proposed solutions will not be effective, both because the OTW's organizational dysfunction makes it impossible for them to moderate racist content, and because PAC must moderate "conduct, not content." She says that she "firmly disagree[s] with the foundational work their campaign was built on."

June 16, 2023:

In response to several people asking for clarification on her statements about End OTW Racism, Denise posts a follow-up Twitter thread (which has not at this time been crossposted to Dreamwidth). She says that a diversity consultant will not effectively address abuse because the current OTW culture is resistant to change, and that reviewing TOS policies will not be effective, because the current TOS already allows for moderation of abusive conduct, but PAC has not been empowered to enforce it. Instead, she claims that progress on moderation of racist abuse can only truly be made once the organization's systemic issues have been addressed. She also believes that End OTW Racism's messaging is counterproductive, "because of its repeated failure to differentiate between content and conduct." In particular, she argues that, "by citing so heavily to the foundational background work by people who *have* repeatedly called for bans on work that 'reflects racist and bigoted stereotypes', and by failing to differentiate the two except in passing, the campaign has positioned itself in such a way that it will be, and I'm certain has already been, dismissed by the OTW." She does not mention Stitch by name, but it is clear by context that it is the citations of Stitch's work that she is referring to.

After someone DMs her to request she take down her clarifying statements about End OTW Racism, and various people supportive of EOR on Twitter denounce the statements, Denise posts a follow-up statement to Dreamwidth and to Twitter. She says that she has been contacted several times over the past few weeks by Black fans who have been harassed and abused by Stitch in racist and racialized ways, and who showed her screenshots of these interactions, which Stitch has since deleted. She says that because these fans are afraid to speak up for fear of further harassment, she offered to relay their concerns about a campaign based heavily on Stitch's writing. She does not provide the screenshots, in order to prevent the fans from being identified. She reiterates that she agrees with Stitch and with EOR that the OTW is failing to respond to racist abuse and harassment, but that she disagrees with their approach and proposals. (For what it's worth, as I said up front, I am not personally acquainted with either Stitch or Denise, and have no personal knowledge of events, but Denise is not the first person to accuse Stitch of racist harassment. There has been a great deal of discussion on FFA, both well-sourced and not so much, detailing Stitch's past behavior. I am linking to this round-up so that people can find it, but with the exception of those that directly link to the evidence, and one or two that reference Stitch's public writing, I do not know the accuracy of any of the claims, and I do not know the source of some of them. The allegations listed also vary wildly in their degree of seriousness, ranging from "actually harassed someone" to "said something distasteful," to "is friends with a known serial stalker and harasser.")

The OTW posts a newspost addressing Denise's original (June 15) thread and allegations. The say that they are in legal compliance with CSEM reporting procedures, that they provided resources to volunteers following the CSAM attacks, and that "the Legal Committee has always worked closely and cooperatively with the Policy & Abuse Committee, and continues to do so." They do not reference azalias's accusations or Denise's claim to have been pressured by Rebecca Tushnet. In the comments, azarias, Denise, and many other users, both anonymous and signed, express outrage at the OTW, and push for answers, apologies, retractions, and in some cases the resignation of Legal and/or the Board.

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

June 16-18, 2023: A group of people on Twitter, Tumblr, and Dreamwidth post individually and in conversation about Denise's comments on Stitch and End OTW Racism, defending Stitch and arguing that Denise's claims about them and disagreement with their and EOR's work are racist, unfounded or overblown, and a derailment from EOR's mission. Some of these are the same people who are in the comments of the OTW's response to Denise, pushing for the OTW to respond to azarias's allegations. (These are not inherently contradictory positions; I just want to note that both the personal and ideological stances here do not necessarily line up neatly into, say, pro-OTW and anti-OTW.) See, for instance, naye's Dreamwidth post, fiercynn's Dreamwidth post, or pearwaldorf's Tumblr post.

June 18, 2023: Denise posts a Twitter thread going into much greater detail about the number of fans of color who reported to her that Stitch had harassed them ("a number greater than five and less than fifteen"), and the severity of their claims ("Several of them said the harassment they experienced was so severe and pervasive that it caused them to change screen names, leave fandom, or otherwise restrict their conduct online.") She also gives a detailed, step-by-step outline of how she went about verifying their claims to her own satisfaction. She continues not to give out identifying details to prevent further harassment.

[Updated July 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]