Edit: It seems I have deeply hurt some people for using the words “media whore” to define white people who sell us for a profit. I apologize without reservations. My points on the ethics of this media stand, though. The fact that racism, transmysogyny, white supremacy and every other “tactic” are valid to generate outrage at the expense of our wellbeing remains. I am sorry for calling people “whores”. It wasn’t my intention to feed into the sex workers stigma which, coincidentally, much of this same media also promotes.
Last night I became aware of Amy Wallace’s feature on Hugo Schwyzer for LA Magazine. She’s been contacting people who chat with me on Twitter asking for their permission to quote them because she has claimed she intends to use me for her story. Tabloid clickbait bullshit at its best. I hate you Amy Wallace.
I hate you Ross Wolfe for stalking me and talking about me and trying to raise your profile at my expense. I hate your white man tactics of instilling fear. Your past affiliations with Platypus, that parody of political group that endorsed NAMBLA and promoted eliminating age of consent laws. And now, when obviously promoting NAMBLA hasn’t been enough for you to get the attention you think you so richly deserve, you stalk me and talk about me. You enlist white feminists like Gia Millinovich to “discuss” me because you are convinced I am a “white impostor”. You are not actually convinced of anything. You don’t even care about any of this. You just want all the media profile you can scratch at my expense. You think it’s all valid. You are a piece of shit and I hate you as well.
I hate you Helen Lewis. I hate you for promoting clickbait tabloid tactics at the expense of political ideas that mean something for people. I should have listened when people said that during your tenure at the Daily Mail a gay man was driven to suicide and you were part of the editorial team that made it happen. Rumors, people said. Seeing how you manage New Statesman on social media and how you clearly profit at everyone’s expense, whether you participated in that team is irrelevant. You certainly learned well, if anything, a man’s death was a didactic experience for you. And you do this all in the name of feminism. You are a piece of shit as well. And I hate you.
I hate you all Glosswitches, booblediboops, Laurie Pennys, Louise Penningtons, Julie Bindels, Megan Murphys, Michelle Goldbergs and your ilk. The B Classes of white feminism fighting tooth and nail for a place at the table. At our expense. With your writing commissions, the coins tossed in your direction by the men who own the media you so desperately want to be part of. And we pay the price of your success. You are not even good enough to be in charge. You pick the dirty cents that they drop and you will sell us all for the chance of picking the most no matter which ethics, which principles, whose lives you need to shit in the process. You also want your portion of media attention. You will soil anyone that gets on the way of your climbing. You have aspirations! The fact that now you are low level media whores edited by people who would gladly throw you into the lions if it meant they can pocket the change is irrelevant for you. We are the bootstraps you pull in the hopes of raising to the top. And raise to the top you will. The top of a vat of turds floating in your own media shit. No ethics, no qualms, no compassion, no humanity. I hate you all for that.
Contrary to popular belief, I do not hate Hugo Schwyzer, though. I feel deeply sad for him. Sad at the wasted potential of a man who obviously had the capacity to write and communicate and network and connect with people but became haunted by his own mental health issues and addictions. But I do not hate him. Sure, addicts make a choice to act on their addictions but how many choices do we have when there is a crowd that benefits from enabling the addict? What choices are out there when so many are fighting for the coins thrown at them to enable the addict, to give him rope, to let him hang, to push him further for page clicks and outrage. Like Jessica Coen, among many others, did for him. His actions are his alone but there is a point when people marred by mental health are not always in control of those actions. I can empathize with that. I would never be his friend. I would never share a drink with him. I don’t want him writing about anything that implies getting coins at our expense like his enablers do. But I do not wish him bad. If anything, I hope he can find peace.
As I sit here facing a potentially lethal diagnosis for my health issues, I want to be clear on one thing: I HATE YOU ALL MEDIA WHORES. I hate that I am the price you are willing to pay to raise to fame. I hate that you want us to believe you are doing this in the name of liberation. I hate that you have co-opted our language, our ideas, our freedom so that you could have a fighting chance at getting those coins. Fuck you. Fuck your media and your tactics. Fuck everything you stand for. When I intuitively removed myself from this competition more than a year ago, I wasn’t sure why I was doing so. I only knew one thing: I wasn’t going to crawl for coins like you do. I wasn’t going to accommodate my message and my ideas so that I could be more like you. You have nothing to offer me that I would want. You can pick my carcass but you will never have my dignity.
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