I want to thank everyone for the support they expressed in my post yesterday. Thank you all, so much. I hope to try to post more deconstruction content soon, and I am sorry (for myself and all of you) that all this has to be going on. I know I'd prefer to be writing fun content, and I'm sure you'd prefer to be reading it.
I have been monitoring the harassment site yesterday out of necessity since my post went up here, because I had hoped to see an acknowledgment that they'd received my message that their harassment of me hurts and (I'd hoped) that they would stop now that I have asked them to.
The site moderator has posted several posts in response to mine, so they are aware of my feelings. But they have also claimed that I haven't said anything to them, which I have taken as a desire that I do so. I have sent them the following message on their Tumblr contact form, which I am reposting here so that they can verify that the message did in fact come from me. I do not plan to contact them further. Also, that they might verify that the request to please stop has come from me, I have recorded the message in my own voice, though I apologize for the quality: I am not a public speaker.
Comments will not be enabled on this post, though I will leave them open on yesterday's post. This is simply being posted as a direct and clear message that yes, I am asking the site owner of SKA to please stop harassing me. I don't want there to be any claims of confusion on the grounds that I didn't ask directly.
Hi.
Uh. I don't know what to call you. I don't know what you prefer to be called. I guess I'll just say "you"? Is that okay? Hi, you?
I'm Ana. Ana Mardoll. I'm recording this message because I know you care about making sure that submissions to you are verifiably from who they claim to be. Anyone could write in claiming to be Ana Mardoll, but my voice is mine--though I'll admit my previous voice-work has been limited to Let's Plays on YouTube. But my voice is here now, and I will also cross-post this statement on my website, so that you can know it's really me.
I've been reading your site the past few weeks out of necessity. I don't want to read your site, because I know it hits all my depression triggers, stuff that arises out of my being a survivor of stalking and abusive relationships. But I've increasing felt that I have to read your site because, whether you see it go up or not, members of your site--people whose participation in your site is visible in their Disqus profiles--leave hateful drive-by comments on my own site after you post things about me. When I click through to their profile to try to figure out why some stranger has come to my board to be abusive, and hoping that if I can piece together their motives then maybe their comment will make sense in a non-abusive way--like, maybe I've just misunderstood?--then I see vitriol heaped on me at your site. And it hurts. Every day it hurts.
I know you call this criticism and not harassment. But I care about criticism. I have spent 4 years criticizing a single book by a single author, because that's how much I value criticism. I do not feel like what you are doing, what you are saying about me, and what you are hosting in your space is criticism--I feel that it is harassment and I know that it is hurtful. I would never host in my space the types of comments that I find in yours; statements-- if it was about an author I was deconstructing, I would not leave those up. Because I do feel like they're harassing and hurtful. Your commenters call me a horcrux. A doppelganger. A heifer, because I talk about fat and being fat. People in your space speculate about my death, about whether my cats will gnaw on my corpse. You yourself call me "fair game". For all of this. In your posts, you mockingly refer to me as "sweetie" and "honey" even as you host threads encouraging people to speculate on my disabilities and whether I've been honest about them.
You say that I am fair game because I influence the Shakesville community heavily, even though I haven't written a blog post there since May of this year--and that was a post on my transcript project. The last time I posted actual content was in March, when an extended period where I couldn't leave my bed caused me to create some Ross Geller posts to cheer myself up and deal with the depression that flares when I am housebound. Yet you said this morning that I continue to be fair game, even after I posted that this is affecting my health and depression because, and I will quote you here: "Ana Mardoll’s been on that list because she’s a bad moderator and also perpetuates the stupid “Visual Processing Disorder” lie."
Would it help if I explained to you that my eye doctor has talked with me about my visual processing disorder? That it has a name and symptoms, defined by doctors and not by myself? But you would have no way of verifying any of this, if you already think I'm a liar. And how can you not understand that demanding that disabled people disclose MORE about their disabilities in order to PROVE that we are not lying is hostility that I already face every time I leave the house? I see the looks that I get when I pull into my handicapped parking space, the certainty that I must be faking somehow. And I see the threads you post about me and my lying, made-up, fake disability that you have decided I am perpetuating. I see those threads because after you post them, your commenters come to my site to sneer at me for lying about the disability I've made up.
And it hurts.
Yesterday you stated that I haven't tried to contact you, that I haven't "said sweet FA" to you, which I assume means "sweet fuck-all" but I don't want to put words in your mouth. I interpret this to mean that if I did send you a note directly asking you to desist, you might stop harassing me, stop speculating about my disabilities, stop calling me a liar about my disabilities, stop hosting threads tagged with my name for people to talk about my weight and my mental stability and my cats and my life as though I were a game to them, a FAIR GAME.
I'm not a game. I'm a person. I'm a person whose eyes don't work well, whose back doesn't work well, and yes, sometimes my mind doesn't work well because depression is not an easy thing to live with. So I'm asking you, I'm begging you, please stop this. I hope that you will.
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