I'll get over it if you let me breathe from the skin

[sovay]

I had just been going to mention belatedly that I will not be attending NecronomiCon Providence 2022 starting tomorrow despite planning on it for two years and designing some of the programming because there is still too much plague on, but was somewhat distracted when I checked into the internet by the news that Joanne Harris is being harassed personally and professionally over her support for trans rights, including her own child; it is being framed as a free speech issue in the way that once again seems to mean "you are legally obliged to support my bigotry, but you're breaking the law if you exercise your own right to express a difference of opinion from me." Claiming that her child disqualifies her from holding an elected position in a trade union, as if her trans son is an undisclosed conflict of interest (though it sounds as though she was accused of bias against the transphobic even when she was believed to have a cis daughter: cherry-pick that ammunition as you find it). If I'm exhausted just reading her Twitter feed, I can only imagine how ready to roll everyone up into the sun Harris is. I am glad she has no intention of resigning. Her son's cat is indeed excellent and I don't think I had known either that it is Black Cat Appreciation Day or that Harris' own pronouns are actually she/they since last I checked. As a piece of news, it flashed out at me not only because I like their books and care about trans rights, but because I have just been discussing freedom of expression in conversations both online and off. I hope everyone, cat included, stays safe.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Wow, people, man. People. I don't know Joanne Harris, but I went to her twitter after reading this, and I started feeling tense and sick to my stomach after approximately 45 seconds. People who feel they have permission to be awful sure can be eager to be awful.

ETA: Wow, that was weirdly oblique. Let me clarify: reading people's attacks on her made me feel tense and sick to my stomach (not reading *her*). And by "people who feel they have permission to be awful," I mean people who feel legitimated in attacking others due to something terrible [in their eyes] about the person they're attacking. Here, those are the people attacking Joanne Harris.

There never seems to be a shortage of people eager to do some public attacking.

[sovay]

People who feel they have permission to be awful sure can be eager to be awful.

I find it distressing and confusing in the way that frustrates me to try to describe, because I don't mean it disingenuously, I am well aware of the reality of the behavior, I have been on the receiving end of it personally and it shapes the sociopolitical climate in which I have to survive; it is not that important to my personal cosmology to have someone to hate.

[asakiyume]

it is not that important to my personal cosmology to have someone to hate.

I know. You sing things into being. More people need to connect with their generative side.

[selkie]

WHO WAS AWFUL TO YOU
I WILL BITE THEM
I WILL BITE THEM AND HANG ON UNTIL THEY ARE DEAD
I WILL NEED HOT SAUCE