On my recent absence:

Hi, everyone. I am writing this post to address the accusations precipitating my radio silence, update you all on my personal and professional life, and ease my way to what I hope will be continued, somewhat regular use of Tumblr. Everything is going under a cut for the sake of your dashboards. On March 1st of this year, I learned that a woman I considered a very dear friend to me felt sexually harassed by my behavior toward her. This was a shock to me, considering that up until that point we had been rather close and openly, honestly exchanged difficult secrets with each other. This friend, along with another former friend, followed this news by making public statements about their feelings. I am not here to deny their claims about my behavior - just to express that the things I did to hurt these people were ignorant mistakes, not the actions of a man looking to prey upon women. I feel terrible about the hurt that my ignorance has caused and have spent a lot of time looking at myself so I can be sure I never make mistakes like these again. I am grateful, as always, that all of you have taken an interest in my writing, and I want to move forward as a more thoughtful, careful person who is all the worthier of the kind of support you have shown me. As before, I welcome people to have open dialogue with me about this, but this time I ask that you contact me on my my newly revived personal blog. I’ll continue posting my writing on this blog as soon as I can, but my life is in a rather strange place right now after some dramatic changes in my health. The good news is that I am managing very well, and I have the support of family, friends and a wonderful boyfriend to make sure I am taking care of myself. In the meantime, I am still researching the best processes through which to (finally) publish my book. I am excited to share it with all of you. Once again, thank you for your readership and support. I hope you’ve all been well.

fivegallonheart lol. lol. lol. it was a shock to you? you were literally so fucking deep in every tumblr radfem’s asshole i find it VERY hard to believe you were unable to recognize how inappropriate your behavior was. lol.

this is such bullshit. this entire “””apology””” is manipulative as FUCK and it’s like you didn’t even try to be clever about it this time. did you even read that clearly self-obsessed bullshit before you posted it?

fact is, you took advantage of your position in a space that you shouldn’t have even been in in the first place and you hurt women who trusted you. there is no way you didn’t realize at SOME point that you were crossing a line, and even if hypothetically you had just been ignorant, it still doesn’t fucking matter because these people still suffered. but all you care about is yourself and your fucking book.

i’m really glad you’re doing well. i’m really glad that sexually harassing your former friends has taught you to ~be a better man~ and that, despite how hard it was to deal with the consequences of your own disgusting actions, you’re moving on. that is SO nice for you. that you get to move on. that you have the option to not think about this anymore.

I really do feel for straight women. Men are scary. Masculinity is scary. Dating is hard and disappointing. But that is not an excuse to collect gay men and treat them either like handbags or like erotic art depending on your whim.

I don’t really think it’s appropriate to…

Yeah this is inappropriate tbh

No boundaries for best friends

When I first joined the radical feminist community, I just wanted to be low key and read things and learn about what I was getting into. All politics aside, I was new in a group and I really wanted people to like me and think I was cool. Because that was the case, I didn’t really think about it when Wes (gaydiationpoisoning now but he was queerliterarysuperhero at the time) followed me. I honestly didn’t even realize that he was male because of how many of the women I followed interacted with him and followed him back. I know this is the case with a lot of women, and I think it says a lot that he definitely does not go out of his way to make it known that he is a man in women’s spaces. I initially followed back most blogs that seemed to have radical politics, and it wasn’t long before Wes was commenting on my posts and sending me messages. I did eventually realize that he was a man, but I also saw him interacting with and being supported by so many popular blogs within the community that I assumed that he was a vetted trustworthy individual. This isn’t to say that his behavior is in any way the fault of women. I’m simply saying that when you join a new group, the trust of popular figures goes a long way in influencing who you decide to trust. 

So after interacting on posts for a while, Wes asked me out of the blue if he could have my phone number so that we could text. I didn’t know him very well and I should have trusted my gut because something about this request made me feel super uncomfortable. I gave him my email address instead, and he didn’t seem satisfied. He asked if I had an iPhone, because the iMessages would be free. I gave in against my better judgment and he texted me very flirtatiously at a very high rate over the next few weeks. 

In addition, I don’t know how many of you who will ever read this were in the community long enough ago to remember when Wes used to say that he was bisexual. Now, I am not trying to question his sexuality or say that he was or is faking anything, but when a man you meet online introduces himself to you as bisexual and then approaches you privately in a flirtatious manner, it sends a certain message. Ultimately, Wes ended up telling me that he was gay, and that he had felt pressured by heteronormativity to say that he was bisexual, but that doesn’t change the sexual things he said to me via text or during phone conversations, and regardless of the origins of that statement, he approached me in a certain way and he is responsible for his own male entitlement influenced behavior. 

Even after he discussed being gay with me, he still continued to flirt with me and make sexual comments and initiate sexual conversations with me regularly. He was eventually not satisfied with texting and began asking me to talk on the phone, despite the fact that we lived in different time zones and I have to get up very early for work. He was extremely flirtatious over the phone, and would discuss not only his past sexual encounters with me, but also say that he would/could be comfortable having sex with me (despite being gay), say that we should have a baby together because it would be so attractive, discuss various scenarios in which we were together in person and would meet a bisexual man to have a threesome with and or to compete in a test of sexual prowess with this bisexual man as the judge of who’s various sexual skills were superior, and so much more. He would also regularly send me photos of men he found attractive or bring up famous men that he would enjoy having a threesome with along with me. He once sent me a nude photo of another man out of the blue (presumably a stranger?) because he and this man had “nearly identical penises”. He talked endlessly about how we should move in together and be roommates, troll bars together and do other sexual things as a pair. He discussed his sexual preferences with me regarding dominance, and even went so far as to promise to “leave those things out if we ever had sex” because I “deserve better”. 

In addition to these clear violations of my boundaries, he was very hot and cold as a friend, ignoring me for weeks if I was working or too busy to take his phone calls at all hours of the night. When we did speak on the phone he would ignore my requests to wrap up the conversation because I had to get up early for work, and seemed to have no regard for anyone’s well being but himself. 

Honestly as things progressed regarding his behavior, I began to wonder why I had initially accepted him as a part of a women’s community. He consistently speaks over and condescends to women, and even if he didn’t, he does not have a place in a community of women. He can feel free to take his opinions into male spaces, but he doesn’t. Instead he is content to sit on the sidelines and judge and ridicule women constantly. 

It has been quite a while since I deleted my radical feminist blog (for reasons unrelated to this situation), but even while I was a part of the community I was always afraid to speak out about his behavior. In light of the fact that he speaks consistently about being a gay man, I was afraid that my discussion of his behavior would be written off as reading too much into friendly interactions, or even as homophobia. Honestly this post could be 10 times as long just detailing all of the gross things he has said and done to me alone, and maybe I will make another post in the future, but I think I’ve made my point. 

I know that there are other women who have felt this way about his behavior, and although I am still nervous about the backlash of creating a post like this, I am adamant that women deserve a safe space, and that we should not keep a predator in our midst. 

This blog will be maintained for women to submit their experiences anonymously if desired, and to serve as a testament to the fact that there is no longer any excuse to continue to keep Wes as a friend. I hope those of you who he has crossed boundaries with feel comfortable adding your voices to mine if you so choose, and if nothing else, know that you aren’t the only one, and that you don’t have to feel alone. I know for a fact that he has done similar things to at least one other women, and I would honestly be astonished if there aren’t more women who have been feeling this way. 

I hope that the rest of the women you interact with support us in cutting him out of our spaces. He never should have been in our spaces in the first place, but especially not now. Stand up for your sisters. Cut ties with abusers, and Wes is an abuser. Support women and remove predatory men.

If you message this blog (anonymously or not) about your experiences, please note if you would prefer not to have your message posted publicly. And please know that if you too have had a similar experience with Wes, I am here for you and you are not alone. 

I haven’t been very active on this blog lately for a lot of reasons, mostly that my personal life has been crashing down around me but also that I don’t have internet and mobile blogging is a pain. In light of everything being said the past few days, I decided to come back at least to make this post. I apologize in advance if it’s sloppy or typo ridden because I’m writing this on my phone, and talking about it eveb at this point still makes me feel sick and nervous.

If any of you remember Lyssa staininyourbrain’s original post a few weeks back about Wes gaydiationpoisoning, and the way he sexually harasses several women: hi, I’m one of them. I met Wes via tumblr a couple years ago. When I joined the radical feminist community he and I began following each other; I don’t remember who followed who first. I don’t remember the early days of friendship. But eventually he and I realized that we lived in the same town, practically down the street from each other, and we made plans to hang out. Originally Wes told me he was bisexual. Shortly thereafter he told me he was gay. I didn’t question this at all, but his identifying as gay made it so that I took a long time to see what he did to me as sexual harassment. Each time we hung out he made me uncomfortable. He would make inappropriate comments about how he’d feel comfortable having sex with me, offering threesomes, so on and so forth. He would put his hand on my thigh, get close to my face, kiss me on the cheek. Things like that. It made me incredibly uncomfortable but I never said anything because I am a person who is terrified of confrontation; I also assumed I was simply reading things wrong because he was a gay man. However, my physical reactions to his touch were very clear - I tensed up, inched away, was obviously uncomfortable. Wes is a man who claims to respect and care about women and our boundaries. He proved time and time again that this was not true. Furthermore, Wes KNEW about my lived experience as a rape survivor. He knew about my personal need for great boundaries and space. He chose to invade those boundaries anyway. Eventually I noticed more and more things about him that made me uncomfortable. Other women have discussed this specific topic better than I, so I won’t get into detail, but I absolutely agree that he butts into discussions where he, as a man, does not deserve to be. I also felt that he would derail conversations to make them about himself. Early last year I stopped talking to him entirely, but I was too afraid to call him out because of how fully integrated and loved he is in the radfem community. I felt alienated and afraid, and I decided to leave. I have been trying to wrack up the courage to make this post for awhile, since early last year, but I decided it was time to come forward about my eexperience. Wes is a harasser and a predator and I refuse to be quiet about it any longer.

a few weeks ago my good friend lyssa staininyourbrain made a lowkey disclosure on her blog about wes gaydiationpoisoning having sexually harassed several women and just his general shady behavior. i don’t know how many of you follow her so you might not have seen it at all, and i want to bring that up again.

it’s not my place to identify the women of course, but yes it’s true. i was friends with him a while ago so i know first hand he’s a fucking piece of work and he’s the male ally i’ve been vagueblogging about this whole time lmao. my friends and i have literally been afraid to talk openly about the shit he’s done b/c he is so accepted in the radfem community and so manipulative. we didn’t (don’t) want to deal withspeaking to him directly, and i personally have been worried about our mutual followers taking his side.

i can talk about my experiences knowing him. he did not sexually harass me in particular, i want that to be clear. what he did do was assert his male privilege in front of me more times than i can count, and come up with clever excuses any time i got the courage to say something to him about it - which i see he still does to this day. always butting into discussions where men should not be giving their say, and using his extensive vocabulary to intimidate anyone who calls him out into giving him a free pass.

i don’t remember the exact timeline of our friendship but i know it was nearing its end a little while after i came out as a lesbian. that was around november/december of 2013, and i am still trying to work out the mindfucking conversations we had at the time about my sexual orientation and my place in the lgbt community. i trusted him as someone who was older than me and had been out longer than me, and he made me feel like i was unwelcome and some sort of fake.

i don’t really know what his problem is and i don’t care. i’m sick of seeing him on my dash, sick of seeing him praised for his bullshit “”“contributions”“” to the feminist community when it’s clear to me and many others that his actions are just motivated by his giant ego and need to feel like he’s better than everyone else. and like if I’M sick of it i can’t imagine how these other women who have been harassed by him must feel. for me, it took getting close to him and then him leaving tumblr for a while to start realizing what an ass he’d been all along. so i guess i get why people are drawn to him and why many casually follow him but it scares me how many women seem to remain good friends with him.

this post isn’t really me trying to convince you of anything; if the very first sentence didn’t change the way you see him then i doubt anything else would. i’ve just hated holding this in for so long.

if you don’t unfollow him, then unfollow me.