Winterfox

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Fan
Name: Winterfox
Alias(es): Requires Hate, Benjanun Sriduangkaew (pro SF name), pyrofennec, Maria Ying, acrackedmoon, lesifoere and others
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Winterfox was a rage blogger who used many pseuds and sockpuppets. In online fandom circles, she was generally considered a bully. She ran the blog "requires only that you hate" from 2011 to 2013 under the "winterfox" pseud. Around the same time, she started writing professionally under the pen name Benjanun Sriduangkaew. She continues to write under this name.

Controversies

Pre-2014

2014: Connecting Two Pseuds & The Mixon Report

The connection between the two pseuds started to be circulated in 2014[1] and was ultimately confirmed publicly by her friend Nick Mamatas in October.[2][3][4]

After Mamatas outed her, she posted an apology on the requires hate blog where she stated:

I was an asshole for years and said a lot of crap I regret, only I wasn’t big enough to own up to it and apologize then. It’s a huge accumulation of being shitty, I hurt a lot of people. I’m sorry I didn’t grow up and learn better sooner. I toned down as the years went by, but in the process of that I should have made apologies as I went along, not waited until the end. Unfair yes, shitty yes. Because I was an asshole who just didn’t want to admit she was wrong.[5]

Other fans report that she continued to behave badly after this apology, and the apology is not widely believed.[citation needed]

In November 2014, Laura J. Mixon posted an expose to her blog about winterfox's behavior harassing other fans and sf writers called A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names. This expose, also known as the Mixon Report, won Mixon a Hugo Award for fan writing in 2015.

Sridauangkaew and her friends allege that an ongoing campaign of outing followed the publishing of A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names and that is saw "wide support from Laura J. Mixon and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, among others."[6] Other fans take issue with this characterization,[7][citation needed] especially since Mamatas publicly connected the two pseuds before Mixon's report was published.

2020-2021: Isabel Fall & Further Testimonies

In June 2020, YA/SFF novelist Rin Chupeco wrote a public Twitter thread identifying themself as a past target of harassment from Requires Hate/Winterfox. [8]

In January 2020, trans SF author Isabel Fall published her controversial short story I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter online. She immediately received such a volume of harassment from readers and fellow authors in response that she asked her publisher to take the story down and checked herself into a psychiatric ward for thoughts of self-harm and suicide.[9] During the harassment, a user on fail_fandomanon noted Sriduangkaew took great offence to a suggestion that she’d written the story.[10] A Wordpress commenter linked to a Twitter thread criticising the story which Sriduangkaew had quote-retweeted with her own criticisms,[11] although the quote-retweets have since been deleted.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding Isabel Fall, fans have discussed Winterfox's involvement,[12] highlighting how certain individuals in her close circle were responsible for some of the worst dogpiling of Fall, including the person who spread the '1988 as a Nazi dogwhistle’ rumour.[13][14] This individual's connection to Winterfox and her modus operandi was also discussed on Metafilter:

The person who brought 1988 as a sure sign that Isabel Fall is a Nazi into the dialogue has a quote from Winterfox/requires hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew in their twitter bio and appears to be pretty tight with them. All of this is entirely within the Requires Hate playbook. Especially the pivot to blaming Isabel Fall for bringing it upon themselves. Target selection is extremely Requires Hate as well. [15]

In October 2021, an ex-fan on Tumblr detailed Sriduangkaew’s and her circle’s involvement in the harassment of Fall, claiming that Sriduangkaew was initially loud in denouncing Fall’s story but that she immediately ceased involvement when public opinion turned in Fall’s favour.[16] In January 2024, in an apparent reversal of her previous stance towards Fall, Sriduangkaew referred to YA Twitter's harassment of another trans woman as ‘Isabel Fall’-ing.[17]

2022

In November 2022, Sridauangkaew implicitly encouraged her Twitter followers to DDOS a Mastodon instance run by a Twitter user who had disagreed with her.[18] This Twitter user was most likely impertinence, who runs the Mastodon instance FederatedFandom.net and was blocked by Winterfox and her friends for calling Winterfox a derogatory name in November 2022.[19]

2023

Sriduangkaew criticized Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura in March 2023 for their depictions of problematic relationship tropes. She has volunteered Gunsmith Cats as an alternative:

Occasionally think about how one of the very first lesbian characters I ever encountered was in Gunsmith Cats. She's tall, broad-shouldered, an expert martial artist, and keeps a harem of nubile girls whom she hypnotizes with drugs into her sex slaves and assassins. This turned out far more formative for me than Sailor Uranus and Neptune. :p

benjanun_s on Twitter, March 10 2023[20]

In August 2023, she described women who enjoy M/M as "slobbering dogs,"[21] but took a more positive stance on men enjoying F/F, since there was a chance those men could turn out to be trans women.[22]

Some Fic and Essays

  • skyehawke :: archives :: :: Author :: Winterfox, Archived version (2004, 2005)
    • From My Little Black Heart, essay (2794 words) ("On: writing pet peeves, common pitfalls. With: heartless cruelty, much snark, and extreme prejudice." - "Show/Tell, Preaching" and "Melee Combat") (3 reviews) (offline) (2004)
    • The Shadows You Cast, Star Wars fiction (51503 words) ("Knights of the Old Republic. To combat madness, Revan must regain her memories. To do this, she must contend with powers she cannot fight. But in a galaxy turned against her, how much is a woman's sanity worth?") (0 reviews) (offline) (2004)
    • A King's Trial, Lord of the Rings fiction (1226) (The king has finally returned to Gondor, claiming a throne long vacant. But is everyone truly happy? What if there are people still loyal to the late Steward?") (0 reviews) (offline) (2004)
  • Fanfiction.net no fanworks listed (joined July 19, 2012)

Further Reading

2004

2014

2015

2016

2017

2023

References

  1. ^ Is Requireshate (aka Winterfox, Acrackedmoon, Pyrofennic) about to be exposed?, Archived version, blog post by Will Shetterly, August 2, 2014.
  2. ^ "Anyway, Benjanun Sriduangkaew used to blog under the name Requires Only That You Hate.... I am writing this on ello because nobody reads ello." untitled post by mamatas - ello, Archived version
  3. ^ Aja Romano. Acclaimed sci-fi writer exposed as notorious Internet troll, Archived version, The Daily Dot, Nov 12, 2014.
  4. ^ Benjanun Sriduangkaew apologises, Archived version, blog post by Martin Wisse, October 20, 2014.
  5. ^ apologies and finality, Archived version, posted October 15, 2014.
  6. ^ Six Months and Counting, medium post by Sridauangkew, Mar 12, 2015. archived.
  7. ^ comment at File 770, March 13, 2015: "What a bunch of bullshit.... Anyone who believes what she says about her own behavior is a fool." Benjanun Sriduangkaew Counterattacks, Archived version
  8. ^ Rin Chupeco on Twitter: Sorry, guys. But if you are friends with Benjanun S. I am going to soft block you now. No exceptions. / You see, while you’re rehabilitating her shitty actions while she was winterfox and Requires Hate, you forget some of the people she targeted became authors themselves / Like me., Archived version. Wayback Machine copy. 27 Jun 2020.
  9. ^ How Twitter can ruin a life. Vox entry about Isabel Fall’s harassment, written by Emily St James, 30 Jun 2021.
  10. ^ As for "Helicopter," she pissed and moaned about it when it came out, in particular because someone wondered if she hadwritten it (she really took offense to that), Archived version. 21 Oct 2020.
  11. ^ Wordpress comment: On the latter point Benjanun Sriduangkaew retweeted a thread heavily critical of the story, Archived version. 12 Jan 2020.
  12. ^ winterfox, also one of the parties who dogpiled Isabel Fall, turned out to be the bored daughter of Thai oligarchs, whose billionaire uncle was in the top 20 richest people in Thailand, Archived version. _antifalockhart on Twitter, 3 Aug 2022.
  13. ^ She may try to hide it these days but Winterfox/RequiresHate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew's circle was responsible for some of the worst dogpiling of Isabel Fall in 2020., Archived versionyaguruma-blog on Tumblr, 27 Dec 2023.
  14. ^ screenshots, Archived version. by atomicthumbs on Twitter. 16 Jan 2020.
  15. ^ Metafilter thread. 17 Jan 2020., Archived version
  16. ^ ex-fan: so B.S. was pretty loud in denouncing the story during the first part of the isabel fall furore., Archived version. By an ex-fan on Tumblr, 4 Oct 2021.
  17. ^ BS on Twitter: “Still not over YA twitter trying to Isabel Fall a trans woman of color tbh. Her latest book came out yesterday, with literally no marketing.”, Archived version. Jan 3, 2024.
  18. ^ @benjanun_s on Twitter: Probably the funniest thing about little mastodon instances is that, unless the owner spends a lot on AWS etc, they're the easiest thing in the world to DDOS into the ground., Archived version, Nov 24, 2022.
  19. ^ Untitled Tumblr post by stopthatimp (Jun 19, 2023): "I am also blocked on one of Stitch’s accounts on my own public account, probably (though I don’t know for sure) because I called their friend winterfox a cunt to her face last November." (archive link)
  20. ^ archive link
  21. ^ @benjunun_s on Twitter: I also suspect that Guel is a little too brown for that fandom of slobbering dogs, since they largely project onto and fantasize about pale-skinned men., Archived version, Aug 20, 2023.
  22. ^ @benjanun_s on Twitter: Men being into F/F can be good actually because some of them turn out not to be men., Archived version, Aug 26, 2023.
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