Untitled

(I don’t have a snazzy title or image for this one. I haven’t proofread or edited much, I just wanted to give myself the space to share. Disclaimer – as always these views are my own blah blah blah)

I’ve been feeling really violated recently. I keep circling other feelings but that’s the one I come back to.

I’ve always struggled socially, I’ve never enjoyed socialising much, small town politics will do that to you. I decided I was happy without for a long time. After getting into sex work I’d started to build out a little and got involved more, found a little corner I could feel safe. Entirely away from the brain rot of small towns. Having someone from this side of my life – someone I still to this day don’t actually know beyond they followed my instagram account and we spoke in a pub once – just stick their fingers into the life I’d built as refuge from it all, felt incredibly violating. It still does.

I’d built a nice little community that was now under attack by a barrage of messages from anonymous accounts and accounts linked to this person. On D-Day my inbox was flooded with emails and calls asking what the fuck was going on. Others, didn’t bother asking me about it, cut me off entirely, act like we’ve never worked together, and have come at me with a holier than thou sentiment. I’d say shoot first ask questions later, but they never asked me anything at all. They still decided to facilitate this harm, to allow this person to cause harm to me, despite being informed of what was going on. It’s really made me rethink how quick I am to trust civs who work with Sex Workers in Sex Work spaces, no matter how much they claim to create a “safe space”. The day my website received the most hits this year – all pinned on a map to my local area – was the day I had work planned with one of the groups the harasser “anonymously” contacted. Which the harasser knew about as they’d asked me about it at the pub a week prior. I’m sure they didn’t stake out my website all day to see if I posted any updates, to ensure they’d managed to harm me, now that they’d been blocked from all my socials. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence right?

Their fanfiction is entirely fictitious of course, I’m not going to sit here and defend myself when it’s all so entirely ridiculous and baseless – I don’t have reason or need to. I just want to share my feelings around the situation and ideas that have cropped up as a result.

I was around this person for a short time one night in a pub, I found out after this they’d done something very shitty to someone close to me – after they’d tried gloating about it in front of me, I removed them from my following on the social media they followed me on, and rejected their second attempt at speaking to me a few days later. I’ve not known them otherwise. Not spoken to them. Nothing. I later found out they’d asked a friend of mine to “keep tabs” on me, through their friend I haven’t spoken to in 12 years but still held some vendetta from a teenage spat in high school. My friend of course said no and told me, but as I’d never experienced anything like this before that felt very jarring.

It’s been hard. The initial harassment came with dummy accounts watching my social media, so I had to private everything and purge my following, this then escalated to fake accounts of myself popping up, then my work network started being contacted with a range of made up stories to try and ruin my career, a fake tinder profile using my work photos to try and ruin my relationship, my work content was posted on Reddit, my real name and town were posted online, then my personal phone (with a number I only give out locally and don’t use for work or events at all) started receiving calls all day, texts and then threatening voicemails. They even attempted to contact members of my family, who I keep very private and separate from my work life. I had to endure this for months because I rejected someone at a pub due to their inappropriate behaviour. I had to endure all of this for months because of someone perceiving a slight, being vindictive, and having absolutely nothing better to do with their time. It’s been quite alarming the extent that someone I don’t know will go to, all because they had their ego bruised.

I feel foolish too, I won’t lie – I’d been warned by practically everyone to stay far away, they’ve done this before, they get off on doing this to people because of the insecurity and self-hate etc., but I had assumed it was just small town bullshit. I was so fucking wrong. Sometimes, if multiple unrelated people warn you that someone else is “poison” and that this is a recurring theme with them, with examples, you should sometimes maybe listen. Or consider being more cautious at least – I don’t believe in cancel culture and I’m not going to start now after someone attempted to do it to me. Since this kicked off, three separate unrelated people have reached out to tell me they’ve experienced the same at the hands of this person and their gaggle.

For now, it has seemingly stopped. They’ve stopped contacting my network and harassing me directly – but I’m aware they still enjoy trying to badmouth the situation to anyone that will listen. I think the direct harassment only stopped due to being notified of potential civil proceedings, the cost of these proceedings, and because they’re now aware of a criminal investigation into harassment and have received their warning from the police (who have months of phone numbers, messages, voicemails and everything else). I’m still unearthing the extent of the reach of this person’s campaign of harassment, I’m still unsure what exactly it is I’ve apparently done that’s been imagined up by this person to try to justify their behaviour. Why they decided my life had to be cannon fodder for their own insecurity. But as it stands, it’s all slowed down since they received notice of the consequences of their actions. Any fallout from this they experience is a direct result of their own actions. Of their continued decision to continue with their harassment for many months and counting.

It’s been a long few months but that’s some solace. The damage to how I feel as part of the community is done, and bridges have been burnt as a result of this person’s harassment and the responses of some to that. But just having all of this end is enough for me, for now anyway.

This experience has also allowed for some wonderful moments, as ridiculous as it all sounds.

As a result of being wary of those around me due to the extent of the harassment I was able to connect more deeply with those that remained close to me. For the first time in a long time I felt comfortable to be vulnerable around other people, to be vulnerable in how I expressed my actual feelings and how I leant on these people for support, the people who checked in on me, who commiserated at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, those that supported me in listening to the voicemails when I didn’t want to. I had people I’d never spoken to reach out to me, online friends buying all my work so I could take time off to rest, even just people who sent me photos of their cats, it all really helped stifle the wound.

This experience has brought me closer to so many people, and I think that’s beautiful considering that this person’s goal was to destroy my link to my community entirely.

A. x