Firstly, I feel to focus solely on Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sridungkaew's race and ethnicity (she's a Thai national, apparently of Chinese extraction) as a reason why she shouldn't be called to account by people from majority culture, without admitting her behaviour over a long-term period was not conducive to building community, but rather directly responsible for tearing some communities down, is another form of disingenuity in this case. It's also, to my mind, a form of both Orientalism and racism - she shouldn't be held to account (by white people - not even white people she hurt) because she wasn't accountable (to white people - not even to white people she hurt) because she's not white.
Secondly, I have some longer thoughts on the way social justice issues are treated online, most specifically around the concept of privilege, which I'll get into at greater length probably later today (my time - Tuesday morning, 18 NOV). Suffice it to say we really need to start thinking of the ways privilege doesn't play out as an absolute, and the ways relative privilege, contextual privilege and things like online privilege can be and are used to toxic effect by wreckers.
For example, WF/RH/BS as a Thai national living in Thailand has a different experience of what "being Thai" means to someone who is a Thai national living in, for example, Australia. However, a lot of the people who are defending her as a WOC seem to be framing their defence as though she were a WOC living in the society of the USA or the United Kingdom[1], rather than accepting her location and nationality are going to alter that experience for her.
Again, I'll go into these sorts of things at greater length later on in the day.
Thirdly, I will freely admit I don't really have much skin in this particular game. If I'm involved in this at all, it's because I have a strong dislike for bullies and bullying (of all shapes, sizes and identities), and that's the focus of my activist interest in this whole car-wreck. I tend to see a lot of what's happening in the context of poetic justice, and "be sure your sin will find you out" - starting with her Winterfox persona, this person has been acting as a wrecker and a destroyer of people since approximately 2001, and it's taken at least a dozen years for the chickens to come home to roost, but here they are, and my! aren't they an interesting flock.
Winterfox, as long-term members of fanfic fandom have pointed out, was a wrecker long before she learned to shroud herself in the language of social justice. She used the language of social justice to gain social license to carry out her wrecking and bullying activities, under the guise of "punching up". WF/RH/BS and her followers, left in their wake a long string of hurt and deeply affected people - a lot of her former targets display behaviours congruent with a diagnosis of PTSD, and a number of witnesses of her behaviour wound up withdrawing from discussion of things they enjoyed, or from communities they liked, simply because they couldn't deal with the toxic behaviour which accompanied her presence.
I feel if we switch our attention away from what she did under numerous identities onto what Laura Mixon did in bringing the pieces together, we lose the point of the piece, which was to STOP her wrecking activities from spreading further. WF/RH/BS is/was a "missing stair". We've just had her spotlighted and signposted.
(I also think it's a positive step in social justice terms to be able to admit and accept people in minority groups are just as capable of being exploitative arseholes as people in majority groups).
[1] I'm presuming she's still living in Thailand; I don't know for sure. I haven't heard anything to the contrary, so I assume she's stayed where she started out.
no subject
Firstly, I feel to focus solely on Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sridungkaew's race and ethnicity (she's a Thai national, apparently of Chinese extraction) as a reason why she shouldn't be called to account by people from majority culture, without admitting her behaviour over a long-term period was not conducive to building community, but rather directly responsible for tearing some communities down, is another form of disingenuity in this case. It's also, to my mind, a form of both Orientalism and racism - she shouldn't be held to account (by white people - not even white people she hurt) because she wasn't accountable (to white people - not even to white people she hurt) because she's not white.
Secondly, I have some longer thoughts on the way social justice issues are treated online, most specifically around the concept of privilege, which I'll get into at greater length probably later today (my time - Tuesday morning, 18 NOV). Suffice it to say we really need to start thinking of the ways privilege doesn't play out as an absolute, and the ways relative privilege, contextual privilege and things like online privilege can be and are used to toxic effect by wreckers.
For example, WF/RH/BS as a Thai national living in Thailand has a different experience of what "being Thai" means to someone who is a Thai national living in, for example, Australia. However, a lot of the people who are defending her as a WOC seem to be framing their defence as though she were a WOC living in the society of the USA or the United Kingdom[1], rather than accepting her location and nationality are going to alter that experience for her.
Again, I'll go into these sorts of things at greater length later on in the day.
Thirdly, I will freely admit I don't really have much skin in this particular game. If I'm involved in this at all, it's because I have a strong dislike for bullies and bullying (of all shapes, sizes and identities), and that's the focus of my activist interest in this whole car-wreck. I tend to see a lot of what's happening in the context of poetic justice, and "be sure your sin will find you out" - starting with her Winterfox persona, this person has been acting as a wrecker and a destroyer of people since approximately 2001, and it's taken at least a dozen years for the chickens to come home to roost, but here they are, and my! aren't they an interesting flock.
Winterfox, as long-term members of fanfic fandom have pointed out, was a wrecker long before she learned to shroud herself in the language of social justice. She used the language of social justice to gain social license to carry out her wrecking and bullying activities, under the guise of "punching up". WF/RH/BS and her followers, left in their wake a long string of hurt and deeply affected people - a lot of her former targets display behaviours congruent with a diagnosis of PTSD, and a number of witnesses of her behaviour wound up withdrawing from discussion of things they enjoyed, or from communities they liked, simply because they couldn't deal with the toxic behaviour which accompanied her presence.
I feel if we switch our attention away from what she did under numerous identities onto what Laura Mixon did in bringing the pieces together, we lose the point of the piece, which was to STOP her wrecking activities from spreading further. WF/RH/BS is/was a "missing stair". We've just had her spotlighted and signposted.
(I also think it's a positive step in social justice terms to be able to admit and accept people in minority groups are just as capable of being exploitative arseholes as people in majority groups).
[1] I'm presuming she's still living in Thailand; I don't know for sure. I haven't heard anything to the contrary, so I assume she's stayed where she started out.