The paradox of protection: What can publishers do to better protect and promote closeted queer voices?
Cal Johnston
There are two paradoxes when protecting and promoting closeted queer authors. The first and most obvious is that once a closeted author is outed, at least to their audience, they are no longer closeted in the context of that audience. The goal then changes to protecting an openly queer author, not a closeted one. The second paradox is that the more protected a closeted author is from conservative reactionary groups, the more vulnerable they become to paranoid speculation and outing from left-wing gatekeeping. This can be most clearly seen in an examination of Isabel Fall’s Helicopter Story and its reception, in the context of a post-Gamergate internet.
While coming out is not always safe, staying closeted bears risks as well. With less information, audiences can speculate wildly about an author’s sexuality, gender or political alignment, which consequently can lead to real harm. There exists a trend of authors being outed as a result of this speculation. From an analysis of the reception of Helicopter Story, contextualised with testimony from queer authors’ experiences of closeted publishing, this report can, ideally, arrive at some recommendations for striking a balance of protection for closeted authors.
Closets and Context
For the purpose of this report, ‘closeted’ individuals refers broadly to those in a liminal gender or sexuality who are unable to publicly perform their gender or sexuality. While language is imperfect and there exists considerable literature and discourse on the closet metaphor, its history and ethics, it remains important to discuss closeted authors’ experiences and rights. Even more so in the context of ongoing violence against trans and non-binary people in general and rising rates of violence and transphobic legislation in countries like the USA, UK and Australia. This extends into the online sphere: the online harassment campaign, Gamergate, still offers a useful template for contemporary conservative reactionary harassment campaigns against queer creators.
Limitations
While there is data and discourse on LGBTQIA+ people in general, there is somewhat less data on trans and non-binary authors. Additionally, we have even less data specifically about Australian trans authors, and much less data still about closeted authors. Hence it is difficult to make any claims regarding closeted authors of scale beyond anecdotal or anonymous evidence. With regards to the principal case study, Helicopter Story, there exists a wealth of articles discussing it and its place in literature and online discourse. However, the main figures of the incident (the publisher/editor and the author) have made themselves unavailable for further comment on the matter. As such, we must rely upon the publisher, Neil Clarke’s editorial on the matter, and the interview conducted by Emily St. James. It should also be noted that this report will involve discussion of internet culture, a published story, critique thereof and as a craft, and online movements. It will therefore rely in part upon archived conversations and testimony of since abandoned or dissolved message boards and threads.
Post-Gamergate
Gamergate, most prominent between 2014 and 2015, was the coalescence of various conservative reactionary targeted harassment campaigns, focused principally upon the visibility of women, people of colour and LGBTQIA+ in games media. It should be noted that nothing in Gamergate was new; the component harassment campaigns against individuals like Anita Sarkeesian were already extant. Neither did Gamergate and its components start in 2014 nor stop in 2015. The difference here is one of scale, organisation and media attention. The impact of Gamergate is still being felt. Many components of it, both human and strategic, moved from and still exist in the alt-right, and the victims still live with harassment and trauma. As a result, Gamergate and its impact are worth examination to contextualise hypervigilance in queer audiences that remain well after the ostensible death of Gamergate.
A key strategy of Gamergate harassment was inexplicable and abstracted memes with clear context designed to be understandable to two parties: the victims and the attackers. For example, ‘88’, a common white supremacist code, symbol and more, has use in non-extremist subcultures is doubly useful, since it makes reporting and explaining the harassment harder. In essence, for a period of time between 2014 and 2015 there was a large-scale concerted effort at gaslighting from conservative reactionary movements across the internet, and while the strategies and rhetoric of Gamergate have been analysed, the impact of this movement upon its victims and internet discourse as a whole has not been so thoroughly examined.
Gamergate tactics also include doxxing and ‘swatting’ (the act of fraudulently calling armed police to an address), both of which are done with the larger intent of sowing terror at the idea of being a visible or outspoken minority. This post-Gamergate internet state is relevant here, as it not only contextualises the internet culture of the time but also extends to the international science fiction community, which had its own conservative reactionary movement. It is the pre-eminent explanatory point for justified internet paranoia.
The Sad Puppies
Between 2013 and 2017, the Hugo Awards experienced its own conservative reactionary movement—the Sad Puppies. In goals, methods, and even membership, similarities to Gamergate, and this was remarked upon in articles at the time. Despite some impact, the Sad Puppies movement ended after the 2016 awards. Its overlapping Rabid Puppies and the movement as a whole died out by 2017 with its support being estimated at about 80-90 voters at their last voting. While largely unsuccessful in their stated goals as voting blocs within the Hugo awards, the existence and operation of the Sad Puppies—a group with documented homophobia and misogyny and clear links to Gamergate—within the wider science fiction community would understandably make LGBTQIA+ authors and audiences nervous.
The dissolution of the voting blocs also does not necessarily imply the dissolution of their constituent homophobes and misogynists. In turn, this can breed hypervigilance or even paranoia of potential markers associated with these groups. The less information available about an author, the more freedom to scrutinise and draw competing or conflicting conclusions.
Helicopter Story’s story
On 1 January 2020, Helicopter Story was published on Clarkesworld Magazine’s website under the title I sexually identify as an attack helicopter. Approximately 14 days later, it was taken down. It still exists in various archived formats, but outside of a limited e-book release, legitimate editions of Helicopter Story do not exist. The original title was a reclamation of a transphobic meme born in 2014, generally attributed to a Team Fortress 2 game forum, aimed specifically at mocking trans people. By Helicopter Story’s release, the meme had largely passed from relevance, becoming referred to as ‘the only joke’ transphobes had. As such, while a transphobic meme may seem a transphobic choice for a title, it fits effectively into the historic reappropriation of slurs, such as ‘queer’. The author of this story, Isabel Fall, had very little biographical information at the time of publishing; from her name, gender could be assumed but not confirmed, and her date of birth was given as ‘1988’.
The content of Helicopter Story itself has been discussed by various critics, but for the purposes of this report, it can be summarised as an examination of gender through a literal reading of the aforementioned transphobic meme: it is an exploration of how societal structures would and can exploit the exploration and medicalisation of queer identities. It makes frequent allusions to the liberating effect of queer activism as contrasted with exploitative militarism, while also suggesting that even toxic elements of gender can be affirming. In short, a fair reading of the text would struggle to conclude that it was intentionally transphobic or written to satirise trans people.
Attacks, Outings and Paranoia
As stated, Helicopter Story existed on Clarkesworld Magazine’s website for approximately 14 days. In those days, there was rampant speculation on the identity and political affiliation of Isabel Fall: her date of birth,1988, was the basis for speculation that she was a neo-Nazi troll, for the aforementioned reasons. Fall’s writing style was analysed for influences, which then led to analysing of the text for clues to her gender, race, and even for hints that Isabel Fall was a pseudonym for a larger, more established author. The speculation across various comment boards took on the aesthetics of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a game played using real-world elements and requiring player interaction. In this case, participants’ speculations fed upon one another, especially in comment sections.
It is hardly a new observation that various social media algorithms designed around the nebulous ‘engagement’ have a pattern of radicalising their participants. In online discussions of literature, writer, queer theorist and critic Lee Mandelo has combined this with queer theorist Eve Sedgwick’s concept of ‘paranoid reading’. Mandelo argues that in online spaces like Twitter, paranoid readings are common and get boosted because they are simpler and more rapidly consumable compared with more in-depth readings. In the context of minority groups attacked by documented harassment campaigns with the stated goals of their named targets’ deaths and the repression of the minorities they belong to, hypervigilance and paranoid readings of texts can also become more common, even a necessity for safety. However, this can also lead to the alienation and harassment of queer authors, as demonstrated by the reception of Helicopter Story and Isabel Fall.
Here, we should consider the wider trend of paranoid readings resulting in queer authors being outed. Literature critic Liz Crockford, while discussing the case of Isabel Fall, placed her story in the wider context of authors Becky Albertalli and Cole Nagamatsu, and a critique of the OwnVoices movement’s tendency to paranoid readings of queer texts. A consistent theme across the harassment of these authors—Albertalli, Nagamatsu and Fall—is scepticism not only about their identities and affiliations, but about their rights to tell their own stories.
Now the paradoxes return: an author may, for protection or other reasons, be closeted. A closeted author is no less queer for their being closeted. However, while protecting them from doxxing, swatting and other forms of harassment by conservative reactionary groups, it in turn leaves them vulnerable to paranoid readings from queer and left-leaning audiences.
This should not be taken as a rejection or an attack on the OwnVoices movement; the intention here is to draw parallels between the stories of other queer authors to Isabel Fall’s. In this comparison is the implication that some critique of closeted queer authors is facilitated by a rejection of the closet and otherwise labelled liminal gender spaces. There is a requirement of both invisibility and hypervisibility of queer people, and the same is evidently true of queer authors on the internet.
Discussions of representation and safeguards from the publisher’s side often return consistent recommendations: sensitivity readers, positive discrimination and a variety of other policies that can be broadly summarised as ‘nothing about us without us’. It should be noted that no group is a monolith, and as such sensitivity readers or queer editors, or even queer leadership, will not guarantee that a given text will be accepted by a queer audience, in whole or in part. However, based on reporting of the publishing of Helicopter Story, it went through a rigorous editing process, and trans sensitivity readers were hired and listened to.
Once Isabel Fall was outed and the story removed at her request, some critical discourse shifted to the publisher; similar paranoid readings and ARG thought patterns continued with this new target. However, this pattern of critique further strips Isabel Fall of agency and fails to confront the flaws within Helicopter Story’s initial criticism. Clarkesworld Magazine and its editor in chief, Clarke, accepted responsibility for the poor reception of Helicopter Story, removed and retitled the story at the author’s request (from I sexually identify as an attack helicopter to Helicopter Story) and published an editorial explaining the situation. While some criticism has been suggested that Clarkesworld Magazine should have anticipated controversy and the potential scale of backlash, this ignores the aforementioned context. The meme on which the title was based had largely passed from relevance and no publisher can control discourse once it leaves their own forums. Neither can a publisher stop an author from reading criticism of their story, which Isabel Fall described as causal in her withdrawal of the story.
Some analyses of Helicopter Story’s reception lay the blame mainly at the feet of Twitter, both in more researched articles and in comment sections. While this is to some degree an unavoidable conclusion—as mentioned, Twitter’s algorithms have been described as particularly vulnerable to these sorts of paranoid readings and are unlikely to improve under current leadership—this also rejects wider responsibility for audiences and other spheres.
Major authors’ comments or the evidence of such comments (public retractions, apologies, screengrabs shown by other users), critic blogs, Reddit and comment sections thereof still exist, and the conversations therein point to further discourse independent of Twitter. While there is a consensus that Twitter exemplifies the negative feedback loop of paranoid readings, it is neither causal nor the only form. The removal of social media in literature marketing, while potentially workable for larger publishers, would also be harmful to smaller publishers and authors.
Interview with Élodie Lloyd
Responding to a request for an interview, Élodie Lloyd of the Weird Blue Yonder, RPG writer and illustrator, answered the following questions (2023):
Have you ever written while closeted, questioning or in an otherwise labelled liminal gender space?
’Yes. Some are credited under my old name and still spread or published. Some are published under my brand name.’
How important is social media to your career? Would you be able or willing to stop engaging with any or all social media platforms?
’If I did that, I would lose 100% of my business.’
What protections do you believe closeted queer authors should be entitled to from a publisher or hosting forum?
’That’s hard. Some forums don’t have any central authority. The right to change your name on a new edition is one thing, but I think some publishers already do that. It’s a non-ideal solution though.’
These responses remind us that closeted queer authors exist. They have existed and will continue to exist. Social media engagement will also likely continue to be important to their publishing, personal risk and flawed algorithms notwithstanding. Thus, any recommendations that suggest social media disengagement are unworkable, both because such recommendations would restrict closeted queer authors’ agency and because it would likely result in closeted queer authors being further marginalised. Equally, these suggestions would negatively impact publishers, especially small and niche publishers.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The unfortunate case of Helicopter Story highlights that publishing will always incur risk. While steps can be taken to mitigate that risk, there is no way to eliminate such risks entirely. Sensitivity readers are useful in encouraging trust with some groups, but once discourse has left forums mediated by the publisher, such context may quickly become irrelevant. Helicopter Story had trans sensitivity readers and a long review process. It is difficult to consider what else could have been done.
Publishers must also be aware that publishing closeted queer authors comes with a specific set of risks, while requiring similar risk assessment and mitigation to publicly queer authors. It can be tempting to conclude from this that publishers should recommend an author to out themselves, but this is neither ethical nor a viable solution, as paranoid readings in this case are shown to eliminate context or switch targets if necessary. It would also accept the premise that being closeted, questioning or in an otherwise labelled liminal space is an invalid queer experience and this is unacceptable.
Regardless of the impact, publishers must also enable and emphasise their authors’ agency. This includes extending rights to name and biographical changes. It is also tempting to recommend publishers encourage closeted or questioning authors to disengage with social media and criticism for a given post-publication period, but this also limits the agency of authors. Moreover, as laid out by the interview, it can be directly detrimental to an author or publisher’s business. It is also unlikely to prevent or limit paranoid readings, of which many in Helicopter Story’s case persist, with retractions taking a year in some cases to occur, if at all.
While social media engagement remains important to small authors and publishers, and while its algorithms remain largely as they are, the risks will remain. Publishers should not be discouraged from mediating their own spaces and should remain vigilant for paranoid readings of their authors and their work. However, all those involved should be informed and be conscious of the risks involved. It is possible to take every precaution and still suffer backlash, and the consequences of this backlash can be severe.
About the author
Cal Johnston is a writer, fled from London. A long-time player of games, dungeon/game master and sometime contributor to Doublejump.co. When not running or participating in TTRPG campaigns, they are pursuing a Master’s in Writing and Publishing at RMIT, cooking and reviewing games. Areas of their interest include science fiction and queer fiction.