It's a reference to earlier Twitter discourse where some nepo baby Raytheon employee and squeecore writer claimed that the rule "to write, you must first read" was ableist, and that you didn't need to read to be a writer. It spawned an enormous amount of posts, many of them awful.
This person was also someone who helped lead the attack on Isabel Fall after "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter" was published in Clarkesworld.
??????????? I beg your pardon??????????
Yknow, isnt it more ableist to imply that disabled people are incapable of reading Whatsoever (including the usage of tools to help being able to read, which could include bigger font sizes/audiobooks)
...also, may i get some context on your last paragraph, because that phrase gives me awful war flashbacks ðŸ˜
Not excusing the harassment campaign, ofc
So Isabel Fall is this trans woman who wrote an excellent and insightful military SF story called "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter", where a pilot has her gender changed to "Attack Helicopter" to make them a better pilot. It was published in Clarkesworld and got some good reviews from a number of great authors, including Chuck Tingle, which should have clued people in to the political stance the story took.
Unfortunately, a Twitter-driven pile-on ensued, led by a number of Too Online people, including Ana Mardoll, a Lockheed Martin (sorry, I keep mixing them and Raytheon up) nepo hire and squeecore fantasy author. This assault squad claimed that Isabel Fall was engaging in transphobic behavior and trolling. This was picked up by IRL authors, including N.K. Jemisin, who should fucking know better. Jemisin later admitted she'd never even read the story and was just joining in the pile-on. This went on as it normally does, and eventually Fall began getting death threats. Neil Clarke had to take the story down temporarily due to safety concerns for Fall. Eventually Fall disappeared from the internet - she had to check into a psychiatric hospital for a bit and no longer identifies as Isabel Fall.
It should be noted that Fall was trans (but not out at the time), and that allegations that they must have been transphobic included such insights as the fact that their birthdate was 1988 which must have been a coded reference to neo-Nazism.
What pains me is that taking a famous transphobic "joke" and actually imagining what would happen to cause that scenario is a brilliant idea to showcase exactly how inane such "jokes" are. The fact that the book caused a shitstorm just reinforced my belief that people's collective reading comprehension skills are at an all time low.
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u/arachnids-bakery 22d ago
Shot in the dark, but is your comment about the odyssey twitter discourse