A Statement from Purple Tinker re: Recent Events Monday, January 9, 2022 (Content warning: Transphobia, hate speech) Several days ago, I wrote a tweet complaining about past transphobic tweets by the Community Manager for Limited Run Games, a company from which I’ve bought thousands of dollars of merchandise. After an investigation, to their credit, Limited Run Games apparently fired this manager. Since then, I have been deluged with targeted online harassment. I’ve been called a “degenerate freak”, a “tr*nny f*ggot”, and a barrage of other slurs. A stranger emailed to say the supposed 41% suicide rate among trans people “isn’t high enough”. Another insinuated that it was a shame that I was born 100 years too late to be a victim of the Holocaust. There have also been veiled threats, such as the gmail user whose icon featured two crossed rifles, telling me “If I was you I'd stay in hiding.” The irony is that these people claim to support “free speech.” In fact, I used my freedom of speech in order to complain about this LRG employee in the first place. If the people directing abuse my way truly believed in free speech, I wouldn't be being targeted for using mine. What this is really about is their transphobia. They’ve deliberately mocked my appearance and contrasted it to that of the woman fired from LRG. This reinforces sexist tropes about what a woman “should” look like while ironically accusing me of misogyny for being “a man” who “got a woman fired”. Libs of TikTok has a long and well-documented history as a hate account spreading dangerous propaganda against trans people. Any cis person who follows them, or other well-known transphobic accounts, is immediately suspect of transphobia. Saying this is also exercising my free speech. It's my position that a company that wants my business shouldn't hire people who want to erase my existence, or that of their trans business partners or millions of trans gamers. Apparently, Limited Run Games agreed with this argument. If you have a problem with me saying it, you don't support free speech. You just hate transgender people. A Statement Against Grooming and Pedophilia These hard-right extremists are dragging out the tired old cliché of all LGBTQ+ people being paedophiles and groomers by accusing me personally of paedophilia. This is a defamatory, utterly baseless lie and this tactic only harms the pursuit of real paedophiles and child-groomers. In fact, one of the things I'm proudest of in my history of activism was blowing the whistle on a paedophilia scandal at a convention I formerly ran—one which my successors tried very hard to keep quiet. They refused to acknowledge the abuses of their former staffer and refused to provide help to the victims, so I stepped in and compensated the victims myself. I am resolutely against all sexual abuse and all child abuse, and the accusations of paedophilia are libelous and potentially actionable. In Conclusion It is notable that the right-wing accounts and outlets reporting on this story have tried very hard to make me, personally , the story. Videos and writeups with titles like “Trans Activist EXPOSED after getting Limited Run Games Community Manager FIRED!” read like National Enquirer headlines, and focus specifically on me But I’m not the story here. If there is a story at all, it is this: Limited Run Games works with many LGBTQ+ creators, has many LGBTQ+ customers, and have decided they aren’t comfortable with a Community Manager who makes LGBTQ+ people feel unsafe. There’s nothing newsworthy about a company firing someone they find to be a bad fit. In most US states, including North Carolina where LRG is based, employment is “at-will”. This means that it’s perfectly legal to fire someone for even a simple personality conflict. Ironically, the right-wing push for “at-will” employment over the decades was targeted at breaking unions and discriminating against POC, women, and the LGBTQ+ community, among others. This has led to one in four trans people reporting having been fired simply for being trans. Where’s the right-wing furor over those firings? Perhaps that’s the real story here: “Supporters of business rights get upset when business exercises its rights.” But, sadly, the far right would rather target one individual trans woman to fire up their base. My inbox is living proof of that.