Mallorie has gone home.

The crying-together will be this weekend…and at Festival of Souls…and at DOM 2009, when we gather for our ninth year one Founder short…and probably for long in the future.

I don’t have tales of Mallorie to tell; those are for those who knew her best and knew her well. I was privileged to work with her. I was privileged to know her. I am privileged to cry together with those who loved her better, longer, and deeper than I.

But today I thought of Mallorie, because of

wiscon

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What would Rachel have said to Mallorie? What caption would she have put on her picture?

Today I emailed Rachel Moss’ Dean of Students to express my dismay that, even after her bosses had been notified, that she was still characterizing the actions of the women and families she attacked as “fat creeps harassing her boss”, and worrying that being perceived as hating the transgendered could be bad for her career.  This may not have been the correct action, but it was what I felt was warranted. Actions have consequences. My words were, I hope, measured and sane; I didn’t call for her blood, merely alerted an official charged with investigating harassment and poor citizenship on the part of her student body to her complete lack of actual remorse or understanding of her wrongdoing – in a hope that Ms. Moss is not going to get out of graduate school without at the very least understanding that it is not the “fat creeps” who were in the wrong here. I am not as forgiving as

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Before any of this, though there was Tales of MU distress floating around in my consciousness, due to a vicious and continual, outspoken  hatred of the transgendered character perpetrated by a handful of fans on the commentary. This is hardly indicative of the Opinion of the Fandom, mind you; ToMU showed up on fandom_secret just recently with a secret that bemoaned the fan hatred of the character, a hatred that, when you run across it nearly every day because you are addicted to a certain story and don’t care who knows it, becomes sinister, becomes depressing, becomes way too much like a simulacrum of real life in which no corner of the world – even one that’s geared towards and accepting of the Othered of all kinds – can ever be really safe from a predictable tide of hatred and mockery for people who are different. Without spoiling the story for you, I can only give my impression, which is that certain people appear to believe that the transgendered characters’ gender identity is the root of all her problems. The author can caution them on tone all she likes, but her policy has always allowed for honesty in commentary as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of personal attack or hate speech. What you’ll find in the comments there isn’t “LOL TRANNIEZ”, it’s worse – a comprehensive smear job, up to and including putting words in the mouth of the character in order to tear her down more, always assuming the worst of her motives, always looking for a way to tear her down for behavior they excuse in other characters. It’s like being forced to read my book in a room full of people who have all read it, but the people who merely scanned it and appear to hate it are shouting at the top of their lungs, and any conversation in particular which praises or even fails to express sufficient hatred of the trans character – who is, admittedly, a bit messed up emotionally in a nineteen-and-emotionally-stunted kind of way – is routinely and loudly shouted down.

These three things have become inseparable in my mind. Beautiful, strong Mallorie. Beautiful, strong

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First, we cry together for Mallorie, Mallorie who was real and strong and brave, Mallorie who could just as easily have been one of the women smeared by Rachel Moss. My friend Mallorie is gone before I had the chance to make her into a beloved friend – but I can, in whatever small way, stand in support of the women like her who are brave, and strong, and happy, and bring joy to their sisters despite the ugliness of a world that would easily discard them as garbage for the shape of their bodies or the nature of their beliefs.  I’ll be at Wiscon next year. I might just go ahead and buy my membership in July, so that money can be making money for them between now and then.

The real people of this post are the most important ones. But the fictional one is important too.

Tales of MU is important to me. I’ll just be honest; a story full of characters that are believably flawed, but whose roster of characteristics-tending-to-marginalize (other than the whole “nonhuman races” thing, natch) looks a lot more like my group of friends than any other story I’ve ever read, is a major thing. Water in the desert.  Just about any group you can tear down contains someone I cherish. To have a story that both focuses on people like my people and doesn’t treat them like tropes or clichés or make a Diversity Roll Call out of them – it means something to me, something big.

I understand why

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While no fictional character needs me to go to bat for her, still, I cannot separate the real people attacked for their bodies from the one – albeit fictional – attacked by the commentariat of my favorite story, either. What happened to the real people is, of course, more important. But allowing sexism and transphobia and ugliness – however genteely they might be phrased – to dominate the discourse both in is all tied together. It’s not unimportant just because she’s not real – because there are real people like her, and I cannot imagine how it must be to be a young transperson reading MU and seeing spelled out for you so graphically that even in a place where people like you are ostensibly welcome, you will never be a real person deserving of dignity to some.

So this is a request to all of you who don’t already to give Tales of MU a read – and if it’s your thing, if you decide to stick around, help me challenge in the abstract the ideas that produce things like Ms. Moss’ diatribes in real life, on real people, by throwing your two cents in when the commentariat starts in with their hateful garbage. I’m sure Ms. Erin would rather have the clicks that come from my queer, queer-friendly, trans, trans-friendly, accepting loving puppypile of homies who also happen to enjoy fantasy than she would those that come from the people who routinely tear down one of her major characters.  It’s always nice to have people who actually enjoy your story read it. (You can add the

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I love you all so much. Now I’m going to get some work done and get ready for my trip to the House of Cats and Dragons this weekend so I don’t come home to a dirty house.