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pro-ice · 9 years ago

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I won.

Oh boy it’s another totally unedited blog post about my legal proceedings because apparently I don’t learn!

Last time I wrote about my legal entanglement with Eron Gjoni, the man who started GamerGate after I walked away from him, it was after asking the DA to drop the criminal harassment charges that the state wanted to bring against him.

I touched on the ongoing appeals process for the restraining order, and how it ironically tied me to my abuser even more, and became another tool for him to control my life and send the mob after me. The detective on my case had warned me that this might be an outcome with someone as chronically abusive as he is. While I had successfully persuaded the DA to drop criminal charges because the courts involvement was making everything worse, his appeal was still going. Despite his flat out refusal to abide by it (he actually started actively siccing people on my partner at the time immediately afterward), and despite my move to vacate my own restraining order to get him to finally fuck off, he was determined to milk it for everything he could - both the attention from GamerGate, the renewed harassment against me and my family, and the money he was soliciting.

What this meant for me is that for the last year or so, despite having relocated and completely reorganized my life to keep him and his new friends away from me, I’d have to deal with the legal proceedings. This essentially turned this man I had spent two years trying to get away from into a pop-up ad in my life. This is really bad news for someone with PTSD who has to take pills to stop having nightmares about their abuser. It constantly interrupted any kind of recovery or closure I could make for myself, and a call from a lawyer about some new bullshit he was pulling, or a flood of gross links to his diatribes on Kotaku in Action from his new best friends in my mentions would hamstring whatever I was trying to do. Just before I had to take the stage at XOXO, I had to talk with my lawyers about asinine legal moves that he was pulling. I was on the other side of the country and I still couldn’t get away from him.

I’ve been in a holding pattern since the appeals court heard oral arguments on a restraining order that had not only been destroyed, but would have already expired on it’s own months prior. My pro-bono counsel was optimistic, since the courts seemed to see that my ex was using them as a talking point since he had long since had any legal relief they could have granted him. I was told to expect a phone call, probably, in the next 3 months, though sometimes courts take longer. I’ve been holding my breath ever since.

The good news is that it’s finally over. The courts ruled that I acted within my rights, and dismissed his appeal as moot. I had gone into this asking that the court drop this and let me move on with my life, and they reassured my legal right to do so. My ex wanted to use me to set first amendment case law - what happened was a ruling that reassured the rights of domestic violence survivors to modify and terminate their restraining orders if they’re causing more harm than good. This was the outcome I wanted - not just for myself, but for anyone else that’s tried whatever they could to get away from their abuser without fully realizing how the legal system might make everything worse.

Quoth the court:

“We agree with Quinn’s argument that this rule does not apply in the sui generis context of c. 209A abuse prevention orders. Pursuant to statute, an abuse prevention order that has been issued can be modified “at any subsequent time.” … This provision serves to protect victims of abuse by allowing them to tailor the terms of abuse prevention orders as (often rapidly) developing circumstances may warrant… “A victim of [domestic] abuse is in the best position to decide what course of action will provide more safety. At a given time, an abuse prevention order might exacerbate the plaintiff’s danger”. With the parties having a recognized statutory right to seek modification of existing orders, it follows that a pending appeal of a 209A order does not deprive the trial court of its ability to modify the order.”

The courts found the “deluge of harassment” to be “uncontested”, that despite my ex’s constant bullshit claims “nothing in the record suggests that Quinn committed a fraud on the court”, and that my ex still has to obey court orders even if he doesn’t agree with them.

I’ve uploaded the court’s opinion here. It’s not too heavy on the legalese, and has a pretty good tl;dr of this last of the legal battles.

Naturally, his fan club is trying to spin this as a win because of a single footnote that lower courts should generally care about free speech, despite the court stating that the entire appeal is moot. I find my ex and his ilk clinging to a single footnote as a victory in a 12 page document detailing his complete failure to be nothing more an apt metaphor for his role in the last two years.

They’re trying to claim it a a loss because I’m choosing to walk away from a legal battle that hasn’t protected me, but an end to this is all I’ve ever wanted from the beginning.

I cut contact with Eron because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he launched GamerGate. I didn’t retaliate against him because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he invaded every digital space that I occupied to spread his hate & yell at my friends and fans. I got a restraining order because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he used it to solicit funds from GamerGate while promising them more nonsense about me while “joking” in their raid IRCs about breaking into my house while I couldn’t go home. I dropped charges and gave up on having to see or hear him ever again because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, and he doubled down in spite of that.

Now that the courts have said “no thank you”, I’m hoping that this is finally the end, and that maybe we *both* can move on with our lives. I’m hoping that I finally have the abusive creep out of my life, even if it won’t undox my friends and family, cure my ptsd, undo the harm caused to my friends and the industry, or fix the fact that to this day, strangers still claim that I fucked a writer at a press outlet that I *already had written for* simply to obtain coverage (that never existed) of a free game about mental health.

But it’s a pretty fuckin big milestone in the healing process.

By all signs, this marks the end of nearly two years of having to bag and tag my ex’s abuse against me for courts, judges, and law enforcement officers who have a loose understanding (at best) of what they’d even be looking at, and a seeming lack of resources to obtain any of that themselves. I don’t have to plan my life around court dates anymore, or get calls about what new stunt the man who ruined my life is pulling this time that I absolutely have to respond to or face legal repercussions. That alone is a tremendous weight off my shoulders. The Abusive Ex Popup Ad feature on my life is hopefully disabled - or at least this aspect of it is. His abuse is still a perpetual motion machine, and the threats and harassment is still the background noise of my life and likely always will be. I still have a way to go before I’m what I’d consider out of the woods, both in terms of unfucking my personal situation, healing the mental and emotional scars the last two years have left, and fully being able to talk about GamerGate in a past tense way. Creep Throat can still file for additional appeals, and after the last two years I’m not going to assume anything is impossible.

I can’t unfuck the last two years, not for me or anyone else he’s hurt. But this is at least one win. This is regaining control over my life and being able to finally ignore bargain bin Kilgrave. This is me being able to joke about how shitty my ex is without being afraid of how his lawyers will use it to justify what he’s done to me as they have previously. This is reaffirming the rights of domestic violence victims to walk the fuck away when they choose to. This means more energy for Crash Override and my ridiculous comedy games and the people I love.

Finally, I can move on from this ridiculous legal battle and focus on my energy on my ridiculous unicorn smut games.

What more could I possibly want?

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pro-ice · 10 years ago

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On sexual harassment and public discussion

Last weekend, I made public on twitter some emails I had received from an overzealous fan who had been harassing me for a month through email. The response was overwhelming. Publicly discussing sexual harassment (or any form of harassment) is not new, it’s definitely in the current cultural lexicon, but the idea of openly addressing it still seems to shock some people. Women, for the most part, were not shocked, since they’ve been dealing with it their whole life, but many men were, which shows me that the current discussion of sexual harassment is not reaching as far as it should. So I decided to make a post about it, and address some questions I got after I went on twitter. Also, I will not be posting any screen shots of the conversation, like I did on twitter, because I don’t want to give him any more publicity than I already did.

For reference, the focal point of this post is not about the specifics of the emails I received. It is about all sexual harassment. Street calling has long been the bane of my existence, but I will not be directly addressing it, however I certainly do mean for it to be included in the overall discussion. The umbrella under which I’m addressing the situation is this: I’m a female cartoonist who has thousands of readers. I do autobio, which encourages an unusual level of familiarity, and often people get confused about where the line is when they contact me. I understand this, and I am often forgiving of blunders of this nature. On the other hand, because of my work, I deal with more crazy correspondence than the average person. However, women everywhere, regardless of their jobs or social standing, receive some form of sexual harassment on a regular basis. So if you’re reading this and you can’t identify with the particulars, please substitute any woman you know for my situation.

The specifics are this: He sent me over 40 emails, some were seemingly normal, complimentary fan letters, some were just links to youtube videos, one selfie, and some had graphic sexual content, such as describing sex acts he’d like to perform on me, and screenshots of explicit sexting sessions. A polite request to not receive any more emails was ignored. I blocked him, which just means the emails go to spam, they do not bounce back, but they should, so the sender knows they’ve been blocked. Gmail, fix this please!

The day it all blew up was when he ordered a book from me and wrote, “I’d be enchanted if you rubbed your vagina on it.” I immediately canceled and refunded the order. He responded by calling me an idiot, criticizing how I run my career, and claiming nothing he did was harassment. He claimed to know the rules of online sexual harassment, because of course he does.

Since there was no reasoning with a person like that, I decided to make the emails public. The minute I did, he responded to me on twitter, proudly claiming responsibility for them, and published part of an email where he explained that the vagina remark was meant to ‘enlighten’ me, and was not sexual, and saying I should have been flattered by the praise that preceded it. I blocked him immediately, but I continued to address the situation.

While seeing the response this kicked up on twitter, it became apparent that many people, men especially, have no idea this happens to women. They’re not to blame for not knowing. If they’re not exposed to any media on the topic, and/or if they don’t have women in their lives who openly discuss it, it makes sense that they would not know. But on the other hand, it’s 2015, the topic is everywhere, so to not know is to have your head in the sand. (Although not knowing the extremes of public figure harassment is acceptable, since that is not a common aspect of the subject.)

A lot of men responded by asking me if I was okay, which, don’t get me wrong, was sweet and very much appreciated, and I know they were just looking out for me. By no means am I saying this is NOT something you should ask someone, it is! But it backhandedly proved a level of naivety that women have long since shaken. Women are accustomed to harassment, they already know the person being harassed is okay, and they just commiserate with the frustration. And that’s where people get the “angry feminist” idea, but what’s really happening is that we’ve long ago gone through all the other emotions, and we’re just fucking fed up. And for the record, even though the “angry feminist” is seen as off-putting, it’s not inaccurate. I am a feminist, and I’m fucking angry.

Which brings me to why some people are afraid to address harassment publicly. The idea of the “angry militant feminist” is losing ground, but it definitely still exists. We’re also often accused of overreacting, which is infuriating and demeaning. All of it is infuriating, and sometimes it’s even scary, which is why when women address being harassed, we bring to it all the harassment of the past, and because we keep it all bottled up, it comes out with a lot of emotion and anger. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but hopefully the message will come through the (totally justifiable) anger.

Another condescension we receive is the claim that we’re generalizing- like saying being called “sweetheart” by an old man at a diner is just as bad as someone cat-calling. But we’re not. While the sweetheart thing might be mildly annoying, we aren’t dumb, we know the difference between an old man who has harmlessly called women sweetheart for 80 years, verses the aggression of a sexual email or remark. However when we address it, some of us lump it all together for the sake of brevity. Also we don’t want to give the impression that there is a level of harassment that is acceptable. So while we’re not trying to fight the old man at the diner, we are hoping that younger men will know better than to use the same terminology their grandparents did.

When you’re reading direct writing from a woman addressing sexual harassment, you’re often seeing a woman who’s at the end of her rope. She’s been pushed over the edge, and has gone public because of it. Unfortunately, that push is often what it takes to get people to talk about harassment. My generation, and the generations before me, grew up being taught to endure harassment quietly, to not provoke the harasser, and to just shrug it off. I’ve been shrugging off email harassment for years, due to this exact line of thinking. In fact, in my early twitter posts, I even apologized for upsetting anyone by making the emails public. It was a throwback to the way I was raised, a victim-blaming subconscious reaction. I had nothing to apologize for, and yet I did, because it is so deeply engrained in my behavior. And that behavior is what I’m trying to change.

Talking openly about harassment is changing the public landscape. It’s enabling young girls to fight back, and to not put up with it and to make it public. However, due to basic biology, women will always be afraid to fight back in some situations. Sometimes fighting back angers the harasser, and sometimes it leads to more harassment. I once confronted a man who was cat-calling me on the street, and his response was to follow me for two blocks, loudly hitting on every girl behind me, to prove his point that cat calling was “complimentary.” So my fighting back led to a wave of harassment, for which I felt erroneously responsible. Situations like that are why women will always be afraid, and that is sad.

As for how sexual harassment feels, I will keep this brief, even though it’s so much more than what I’m about to say: It feels horrible, of course. It’s belittling, humiliating, condescending and infuriating. It’s dehumanizing, reducing a person to a target for unwanted aggression. And mostly, it’s just really annoying. I want to be able to walk to Rite Aid at 9am without someone yelling at me about my ass. I don’t want to have my morning ruined by checking my email and finding an angry, sexually explicit message. You will never know how it feels until you experience it, but I will say that if men were to be sexually harassed the way women are, there would be constant fistfights on every street.

I’m not delusional enough to think public discussion of harassment will affect those who are doing the worst harassing. Individuals like that will not respond to reasonable appeal. But by making it a bigger topic, one (of hopefully many) outcomes is that we can reach the middle ground- men who accidentally harass women due to ignorance, or just bad judgment. This is a grey area, and often happens unwittingly. I sometimes get emails and drawings in which the sentiment expressed is that the sender saw a photo of me in real life and was surprised they were attracted to me. I understand that telling someone you find them pretty is relatively harmless, and sometimes even complimentary, if you know the person. However, being told by strangers that they’re surprised by my face is disheartening. It detracts from my work, and has a subtle demeaning undertone, like they can’t believe a pretty person could make work they like so much, as if someone who spends all their time and energy on faceless creative endeavor should be ugly. In short, it is mostly unnecessary, and occasionally offensive. Hopefully by reading something like this, the next time a guy wants to say that to a woman, he’ll think twice. (I keep saying men vs women, but I mean everyone. Men aren’t doing all the harassing, just the majority of it.)

The bottom line is this: I want public discussion of harassment to encourage women to be more open about it. I want younger women to recognize early on what constitutes as harassment, and to know it’s not their fault. I want the discussion to reach people it previously didn’t, and for them to understand how it feels, and why it’s important to think twice before engaging in what could be perceived as harassment. I want a new generation of women who are emboldened to not put up with this bullshit, who aren’t willing to just quietly endure it, and who aren’t afraid to fight back, and in doing so, will be supported by their community and the public. I want a new generation of men who fully understand why harassment is so damaging, and who treat women with respect. And that goes for everyone. Because of basic human nature, I know these are lofty goals, but this is me doing my part, and hoping you’ll do yours. I don’t want to be The Voice of anti-harassment, I want a bunch of voices everywhere raising awareness, putting it in the public eye, and doing their part to change the way people cause, handle and talk about sexual harassment.

Addendum: I tried to address questions I received within this post, but if you have any others, or just general feedback, you can email me at juliajwertz(at)gmail(dot)com.

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