Tag: community

Well, I’ve revived the site I haven’t used for at least five years (and attempted to give it the barest minimum of updates), for a damn near novella-length essay. Of course, the topic is community-related, once again. This time, it’s related to the Northeast Thing and the fallout of bad behavior at the event (which, of course, has taken several stages and forms).

I know that writing about this publicly is going to make some people really annoyed, to put it mildly, so I’m going to do a switcharoo and cover why I’m taking this specific approach, and then cover the groundwork of what’s going on.

Why am I handling this the way that I am?

There are a couple of reasons that I’m addressing this series of incidents the way that I am, publicly, in this post:

• I’ve spent the last 15+ years working in tech, as a non-technical person¹ that is not a cis dude. The tech industry has a host of well-documented problems around every type of bigotry under the sun, and for the entire time I’ve been in tech, there have been ongoing discussions around codes of conduct, behavior at industry events, repercussions of said behavior, implicit bias and how it affects our behavior at events and in the workplace, etc. Based on what I’ve seen over the last few months, it’s very clear to me that there is more dialogue needed along similar lines as it applies to pagan events in general (and heathen events in specific).
• Along similar lines, it has been my experience in many community spaces that handling things privately very often protects people who have done harmful things, whether intentionally or not. This is not to say that going public always goes better, but in instances where someone’s personal safety is not on the line, I think there is merit in a public discussion. It’s very easy to pretend that something is not a big deal and that it’s just a few people upset for no reason when people don’t know the full story and when that full story hasn’t been shared. Conversely, it’s a lot harder to dismiss the impact of someone’s behavior when people outside of that person’s immediate friend circle can see it.
• Handling things privately in multiple 1:1 (or panel-style) conversations takes significantly more emotional and mental effort. This post was a lot of work, but it’s certainly less psychic damage to me to write it, share it, and let people who are willing to discuss in good faith come to me, than it is to attempt to make my case, individually, with multiple people and experience being shut down, ignored, talked over, condescended to, etc. repeatedly. (Not to say that I think that would be a universal reaction, but I do think it would happen at least a few times, and frankly I don’t want to deal with it.)
• One thing that has been said multiple times throughout — including in public — is that people on our “side” have not made any clear statements about specific problems or solutions. This is not true. My hope is that addressing this publicly will disincentivize people to continue saying that and provide an easy counterpoint to anyone who does continue saying so.
• At this point, I honestly am not sure if people who have been around the northeast heathen community for a while or who are directly involved with the Northeast Thing realize how truly awful things look from an “outsider’s” POV. It is my hope that laying things out like this, even if it doesn’t change minds, brings more understanding and empathy as to why I and others feel the way we do.

And, last but not least, because I care about creating safer communities in all aspects of my life. I would hope that that would be apparent, but given that I have been repeatedly described as trying to turn people against each other and tear communities apart, I wanted to say that point blank. I’m invested in creating a safer community and safer events, even if I’m not personally there to see it.

I also want to add that I recognize that a lot of people have worked very hard to make NET a good event, and that the event is volunteer run. I genuinely think a lot of the planning committee is doing the best they can with what they have and that there are very few actual bad actors involved. One key tension point, both internally and externally, seems to be around how the event started (a celebration with friends) vs. what it’s grown into (an open heathen community event). I have been treating it as the latter, which I think is fair based on their site. Either way, it’s my impression that this particular incident has been a series of decisions made by different people in, if not actual isolation, then perhaps without looking at the whole picture, and that it’s created a clusterfuck of a domino effect.

I am reminded of when I was recovering from top surgery in 2023 and somehow hit every single weak link in the patient care chain, resulting in:

• My severe hematoma being overlooked at both my follow-up and when I called/sent emails on a Friday (because I wanted to get it looked at before the weekend)
• Me being left to suffer in increasingly excruciating amounts of pain for several days
• The office team initially trying to blow me off when I told them I wanted to make an appointment ASAP
• My partner throwing an absolute fit on the phone while I was curled in the fetal position from the pain, resulting in them agreeing to see me that day
• The staff suddenly realizing how bad it was when my blood pressure was a solid 70 points higher than the previous week and my breathing was obviously labored (over a cup of blood sitting on your lungs will do that to you) and attempting to address the issue…
• …but still sending me home without any more pain meds, which I didn’t get until the next day when I saw the surgeon himself

The thing is, this office is known for genuinely doing their best to help trans patients. You don’t open a trans care clinic in Texas if you don’t care — it means dealing with bomb threats, death threats, and constant attempts by legislators to shut you down. That doesn’t mean they didn’t screw the pooch at multiple junctures. It just means they didn’t mean to. When I emailed the patient care coordinator about the experience, he was extremely apologetic and gave me a list of things that would be done to make sure that didn’t happen to anyone else, because regardless of intention, it was still a deeply unpleasant experience. A friend of mine had a different complication after their top surgery a few months later, and they were dealt with much more promptly, which gives me hope that my pain wasn’t for naught, and I have the same hope here.

And for what it’s worth, I don’t actually intend to fully go at this with the attitude that the above image might imply. I needed a title and it felt appropriate, given how often marginalized people are told we need to be nicer, more patient, etc. and/or how often we have negative attributes ascribed to us for standing up for ourselves, which has also been true at multiple points throughout this experience.

In this essay, I will…

There is a lot to cover here, and I’m going to do my best to do so without turning this into an absolute behemoth of a post (no promises). (Update: lol. oops.) For those who need a tldr and/or some grounding context, here you go:

Dramatis personae

• The Northeast Thing, aka NET: The second-largest heathen event in the country (as far as I know, after Trothmoot), an outgrowth of the East Coast Thing (aka ECT). The ECT/NET schism happened in 2020, due to (again, as far as I know) disagreements over COVID-safe policies. The open-air altars/mini temples at NET are referred to as “vés” and the entire area where all of the vés are at is referred to as “the véstead.”
• Elizabeth Sandifer, aka El: A writer (critic and ex-academic) who ran a workshop at NET this year called “Heretical Heathenry.” She’s a trans woman.
• Penn Wiggins: El’s husband, also a writer (music critic, though), also trans. Has previously run the Sága vé at NET.
• Garrett: My partner/fiancé/favorite person (I promise not to use the last one when referring to him in this piece). Also trans.
• Me: Your host. Heathen since 2008, pagan before that, writer (both fiction & non) for fun, writer & marketer by trade. Moved to New Jersey from Texas (where I had lived in Austin for 15 years) with Garrett over the summer, fleeing anti-trans legislation. Because I am (you guessed it) also trans.
• David/Dave Carron: Involved with running both NET and ECT (I believe since the beginning of ECT). Currently the president of NET. Formerly associated with the Troth and ran for board this year (but lost). Someone people have known for 20 years.
• Ristandi: Occult pseudonym of the 2024 workshop coordinator, who is also on the NET planning committee. I am not sure how long he’s been on the NET committee (or if he was involved in ECT), but my understanding is that he’s been active in heathenry for 20+ years and he certainly seems pretty entrenched in the regional community.

The story thus far

NET 2024

• NET 2024 took place from 8/21-25
• On 8/24, El gave a talk titled “Heretical Heathenry”
  • You can read the description of her talk on page 16 of the 2024 NET schedule
  • You can see the text of her talk here and the slides of her talk here
• This talk was disrupted as soon as the Q&A portion started, by both Ristandi and David Carron, to the extent that multiple people left the workshop in tears.
• It’s worth noting that there were two similar workshops on the schedule (both on page 15 of the NET schedule), both run by people involved with NET, which David did not attend, and which Ristandi did not disrupt.
• I also personally think it’s worth noting that trans and queer attendees were disproportionately affected by the disruption and I have heard more than one of them refer to it as genuinely triggering due to how aggressive Dave and Ristandi became.

El shares her talk, submits complaint

• After the event, on August 25th, El posted the text of her talk in the Northeast Heathen Community Facebook group. Dave was very quick to comment on it and continue disrupting the conversation, arguing along a couple of bizarre rhetorical lines. He then threatened to lock the comments on the thread when people pushed back on his comments.
• This behavior prompted El to submit an official complaint on August 26th, which was dismissed on the grounds that the disruption was not “sustained” and that behavior outside of the event is not covered under the event’s code of conduct. Later, this complaint would be repeatedly described by NET leadership as centering on accusations of bigotry and/or transphobia.

NET statement, resulting hellthread, mediation

• When the official NET account posted about the issue in the Northeast Heathen Community Facebook group on September 12th, I and several other people pushed back on their interpretation of events and their decision. The comment thread got really nasty, really fast, and was locked by group admins.
• After that mess, one of the NET planning committee members (and a general leader in the community) started a mediation process behind the scenes, which did not involve El directly, but did involve a close friend of El’s (and myself, in the interest of transparency).
• On October 27th, NET posted an official statement about the mediation and the result. The “weregild” offered as accountability and making amends for David’s behavior and the hurt that was caused was a two-hour continuing education panel with nonbinary attorneys discussing their workplace experiences and “volunteering for” the workshop committee². Ellery and Patty, the two other people involved in the mediation, also joined the workshop committee.
• El submitted that, as the primary person harmed and someone who has a background in academic research as well as running conferences, she could be permitted to join the workshop committee as well, and was told no.

El does not go quietly, the rules are changed

• El wrote and posted Exiting the Draugr Castle on 11/25, which discusses her background in heathenry and previous experiences at the event, along with covering this entire saga. She posted 11:27 in Sokvabekkr on 11/29. (Both essays take a pretty…acidic tone. Which we will discuss more later.)
• El received notice on 12/16 that she was banned from NET 2025, because of complaints about her essay. Which is fascinating, given that (as you may recall) she had previously been told quite specifically that behavior outside of the event is not governed by the event code of conduct.
• Her husband, Penn, wrote about the experience from his POV here. If others write their own accounts, I’ll do my best to update with links.
• On January 1, Garrett sent in his formal complaint to the NET planning committee. We received a response on January 23rd, effectively dismissing the complaint. You can read his redacted complaint here and see the response and other details here.
• On March 4th, Anna Rose posted her statement.

If you want the more detailed version of events, here’s what I’ve got:

• NET 2024
• El shares her talk
  • A brief aside about screenshots:
• El submits complaint, is blown off
• NET statement, resulting hellthread
  • Unconscious bias: the new “spectral evidence”
  • Behavior of NET leadership in hellthread
  • Trans people mentioning transphobia makes people mad
• Mediation efforts & results
• El does not go quietly into that good night (the essay)
• Suddenly, the rules are different (and enforceable)
• A longer aside about screenshots, power imbalances, & social punishment
  • To screenshot or not to screenshot
• Recurring themes throughout this experience
  • Glaring flaws in the Code of Conduct and enforcement of it
  • Lack of transparency
  • Lack of awareness
  • Double standards
    • Intentions ascribed & weight given to impact
  • David Carron’s behavior
  • The impact of these patterns
• But seriously, why are you doing this?
• Thanks for coming to my TED talk
• Postscript/update: There is no war in Ba Sing Se
• Further reading and resources
  • Implicit bias
  • Transphobia
    • Transmisogyny
  • Codes of conduct
    • Examples
    • Enforcement policies & processes
  • Impact vs. intent
  • Tone-policing

A quick aside: Obviously I have a specific take on this series of events. I have, however, done my best to clarify throughout what is my opinion vs. what is actual fact and to back up those assertions with extensive documentation, so that the reader can draw their own conclusions and isn’t forced to take my POV as the sole source of truth.

A note from Garrett before we begin

Garrett has submitted his own private complaint with the NET planning committee, but we wanted to make it clear that both of us were involved in the public efforts and the private ones, and that we used different tactics to suit our different strengths. In his words:

I’d like to chime in here as Miche’s partner and say that I cosign on everything laid out in this statement. The decision for this piece to be published publicly was one we both agreed on, and we discussed the pros/cons of that approach along with the inclusion of screenshots pretty extensively before settling on this. I also agree with the tone of the piece, in both the places where it is sympathetic and where it is critical. I think it’s important to show the hurt and frustration that this series of events has caused without casting NET in a light that is irredeemable. We know most everyone is just trying their best here, and I hope this piece is not used to vilify Miche as if they are a bad actor attacking this event, because that’s not what’s happening. We are in this together, in solidarity.

Without further ado, let’s start wading into this bullshit swamp.

NET 2024

At every doorway,
before you enter,
you should look around,
you should take a good look around—
for you never know
where your enemies
might be seated within.
— Havamal 1 (Crawford translation)

I have been pagan for more of my life than not, and heathen since roughly 2008. I was a deeply weird kid who liked to talk to trees and was absolutely thrilled to discover words like “animism” and “paganism” — words that felt like coming home. I was part of a kindred in Texas, which became looser over time as several members left the state (and I also got divorced from a fellow member, which puts a bit of a damper on group hangs). My fiancé and I are both trans, and relocated from Texas to New Jersey earlier this year, fleeing the increasingly hostile environment.

I was really excited to be closer to heathen communities that were a bit more trustworthy than you can generally find in Texas. I didn’t encounter anyone who openly identified as a white supremacist (low fucking bar), but did encounter people who were AFA apologists on the regs (this was pre-2016, but let’s face it: the writing had been on the wall for a while). Generally, at any random heathen event, the best I could hope for was encountering socially-liberal-ish libertarians who wouldn’t openly spew hatred and bad politics at me, and the worst I could encounter was…a lot worse than that.

As you can imagine, I was pretty amped at the thought of being around a new heathen community and…not fully being able to let my guard down, per se. As a trans+queer person with C/PTSD, neurodivergence, and leftist politics going on, that is simply not something I get to do very often. But at least not be completely braced for white supremacist talking points 24/7 — that sounded really nice, you know? On top of that general excitement, I’d heard great stuff about NET (a lot of it from the previously mentioned close friend), so I was excited to give it a go, even if it was a bit of a financial stretch with the recent costs of the move.

Overall, I would say that I largely had a good experience. There were a few things that I found somewhere on the range from “something to make a mental note of” to “mildly off putting:”

• There were…a lot. A lot. Of antifascist slogans on t-shirts. Which, in a vacuum, is great! I, too, fucking hate fascism. I have, in fact, been tear-gassed by literal neo-Nazis while counter-protesting at Charlottesville in 2017 (and then again while protesting in 2020, although those fascists didn’t have their swastika gear quite so visible). But, as a rule, just like I’m a little suspicious of any group of cis men that has a lot of “I’m a feminist” “I’m one of the good guys” rhetoric/merch going on, I’m typically pretty wary of white people who are making a huge fuss about how much they hate Nazis, when nobody was presuming they did like Nazis, when I have not seen how they actually react when confronted with racism and/or fascist talking points.
• On the first day, Garrett attended the “Welcome to NET” workshop, presented by David Carron with additional commentary by Mike Smith. There were a few things that my partner relayed to me that raised an eyebrow. One thing in particular was that, towards the end of the workshop during the Q&A, an older gay man in the audience shared his experiences around homophobia in the past in pagan and heathen spaces. Mike cut him off — not due to time (or at least not explicitly stating as such), but because (paraphrasing here) he [Mike] has been a member of the community for 30 years and has never seen anything like that in this community and they work really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. To put it mildly, I am deeply skeptical of a cishet white man’s ability to thoroughly assess any level of bias on his own. If nothing else, by the very nature of bigotry, he is significantly less likely to see that type of bias or bad behavior because it won’t be directed at him, similar to how white people often don’t see racism.
• I was a little surprised that, when I asked a question about white heathens’ duty to fight systemic racism as relates to the ørlog of our community and religion, I got a fairly pat non-answer from a man wearing one of the aforementioned antifascist shirts. To me, that seems like something we could engage with a little more, if everyone here is really that on board the “Nazis are bad” train.
• There were more references to Thorsson and the Rune Gild than I’m generally looking to be around. I’m not a fan of Paxson and certainly not looking to defend her actions, but I found it weird that multiple people felt the need to give a large disclaimer before so much as referencing her, but did not go to the same lengths before referencing Thorsson or talking about being in the Rune Gild³.

On Saturday, I was feeling pretty brain-fried, so I decided to sit out El’s workshop. I knew something was amiss immediately after, though, because someone came up to the person I was talking to, visibly upset, and said that things went off the rails. I didn’t know this person very well and I didn’t want to be nosy, so I peaced out. Not long after, my partner and I wandered up to the axe-throwing and archery area, my situational-awareness/distress radar got the better of me when I saw an upset person, and I walked up to the very new acquaintance who was clearly distraught and asked if she was okay.

The conversation we had with her made me both angry and heartbroken on her behalf. The behavior she described as experiencing at the workshop seemed both completely beyond the pale and absolutely unacceptable in a spiritual space, even in a workshop/discussion setting. Someone who shows up in good faith and tries to participate in a conversation does not deserve to be belittled, condescended to, or yelled at, especially when it comes to being pedantic about semantics.

Later, we ran into Ristandi and my partner said something to him about the above person being upset. Ristandi said something like, “well, this is like Valhalla, that’s what we do, right? We tear each other apart and then go get food and eat in the same hall together.” I’ve since learned that this phrase is a holdover from the older days of the community (not just the event), intended to refer to the strength of the community to overcome obstacles. While Ristandi may have been referring to how issues were handled in the past, my thought at the time was that it hardly seemed like either an acknowledgement of poor behavior or a description of an event that I want to be a part of, especially with strangers⁴.

Overall, though, both my partner and I had a good experience. We had multiple people reassure us that we would have a much better time here than we did in Texas and that this was a deeply inclusive community. We did have a few cishet people tell us all about how many queer and trans people attend (which frankly always makes me suspicious, due to the lack of reliable perception that privileged people tend to have, i.e., the gender perception gap), but it seemed like it was coming from a really well-meaning place and it did seem like there was care given about making the event inclusive. I had some really powerful spiritual experiences there. I really, truly cannot overstate how much I wish none of this other stuff had happened, so that those memories and experiences wouldn’t be overshadowed by it.

El shares her talk

It’s best for a fool
to keep his mouth shut
among other people.
No one will know
he knows nothing,
if he says nothing.
An ignorant man
doesn’t know how little he knows,
no matter how much he talks.
— Havamal 27

On August 25th, after arriving back at home, El posted a link to the text of her workshop. You can see the post and ensuing discussion here.

A brief aside about screenshots:

Especially because of things that happen later in this godsforsaken saga, I want to explain why I’m using direct screenshots from a semi-closed Facebook group⁵. I really waffled on this a lot — it makes sense to me, but I’m well aware that it will probably be used against me and to call me a hypocrite. However, it genuinely felt like a lose-lose scenario: either I include the screenshots and get called a hypocrite, or I don’t include them, attempt to summarize the scenario, and get told that I’m not being accurate or that I’m presenting a biased account. Given that my stated goal here is to present as much direct evidence as possible to explain what the problems are as I see them and why I see them that way, the compromise I settled on was to:

• Include direct screenshots
• Black out profile pictures and last names, along with first names that are especially identifying (except for the first initial)
• Removing/not including comments that do not directly relate to the topic of this specific incident (in these screenshots, that includes comments that discuss El’s talk in a more personal or spiritually-oriented way)

I have no doubt that this compromise will probably still piss people off, but c’est la vie. Either way, comments left by NET planning committee members are in red, rather than black.

At any rate, as you can see, David pretty immediately jumped in to be hostile and condescending to El in a way that feels out of left field. The thrust of his comment, at least to me, reads as implying that El was intentionally starting trouble, that she’s responsible for his reaction (and presumably Ristandi’s), and that it’s somehow her fault people left in tears (including, again, Penn, her husband).

When El points out that it was David and Ristandi’s behavior that drove people out of the class, David’s reply starts with, “We all need to take responsibility for our own actions. This was your class. You can’t throw gasoline around and expect others to have more responsibility then [sic] you.” He also threatened to lock the post from further comments, if it didn’t provide “more light than heat.” At multiple points, David outright says or implies that El’s only goal is starting arguments, seemingly either because he cannot understand the point of her talk or because there weren’t concrete takeaways/action steps listed in the talk. (It’s worth pointing out that that was the case for many of the workshops I attended at NET, and none of them have been treated in this way.) And, notably, David appears to completely ignore one of the people who left in tears, when said person tagged him directly in responding to correct his account.

I think the ensuing conversation and the text of El’s talk speak for themselves. There were clearly people in the thread who did enjoy the talk and who thanked El for sharing it. To be honest, I read El’s talk and was deeply confused about what all the fuss was over. I literally searched for Fenris in the doc, because I couldn’t figure out where the argument that El was suggesting Fenris be included on the vé stead was coming from. (There are no mentions of him in the text of the talk, in case you were curious.)

I’ve also seen multiple people, over the course of the last few months, refer to El’s talk as arguing that the NET leadership, specifically, gets to decide what’s heretical and what isn’t. Since this was not in the text of her talk, I was very confused by this. Throughout my sleuthing, the only things I have been able to find referencing this are:

• After David initially shared his thoughts (which, by all accounts, started out from a place of being belligerent and only got worse from there), and another person shared their thoughts, El stated that a faith doesn’t need to have a central organizational structure or orthodoxy to have community norms. For example, since NET has a planning committee who decides what is represented in the véstead and at the main ritual, there is a power dynamic behind those norms.
• There was apparently another exchange where David spoke at length about how there aren’t authority figures in heathenry and no one has any power in heathenry. El’s response was something along the lines of, “But you see how it looks that it’s the people on the planning committee who are telling me, ‘No, it’s okay, we don’t have any power.’”

I have a hard time seeing how it’s fair to blame her for this comment or claim that it was at the center of her talk. As far as I can tell, the only reason she said it was in direct response to an audience member with obvious social power exercising that social power to disrupt the workshop and act like a jerk in public. The only reference in her original talk to NET or anyone involved with the planning committee is as follows:

Sure there’s the Troth and their account of the lore, and there’s scholars like Ristandi who can piece together what historical pagans believed for us, but there’s no central, primary authority that can decide what is and isn’t heretical.

In her post-script, added after the event, she does say:

…while heathenry is refreshingly anarchic, there are still structures of power. We have organizations like the Troth, the Rune-Gild, or the organizers of events like Northeast Thing, all of whom have impact on the boundaries of what is and isn’t considered acceptable within the larger heathen community. And notably, those are three overlapping groups with different positions on issues. But there’s still a de facto boundary between what views are acceptable within the community and what views aren’t. Is it a fuzzy boundary? Of course it is. But it’s still there, and it necessarily becomes less fuzzy when it comes time to join in frith and worship.

This does not seem like a particularly wild statement to me, given that there are multiple people involved with NET who are authors, public figures, have held leadership positions at national organizations, etc. They obviously have some ability to influence how the community feels about given topics. Honestly, given how this has all played out, it’s pretty funny that one of the arguments (both at the time and that I’ve heard since) is that NET and everyone associated with it lacks any kind of social power or sway.

My main takeaway from El’s talk was that boundaries around what is socially or communally acceptable will be drawn whether we do it intentionally or not. When we let those boundaries happen without intention, we are more likely to create boundaries that cut out people we may not intend to. One clear example of this is Loki bans, which used to be much more common than they are now and, whether intended or not, created an environment where queer and trans people often felt unwelcome, given that Loki has a habit of collecting us. (I still have no earthly idea why this was such a controversial concept.)

El submits complaint, is blown off

It’s a strong door
that ought to open
to let everyone in.
Give a visitor something,
or he will call
every curse down upon your limbs.
— Havamal 136

After the behavior in the Facebook thread, El submitted an official complaint on August 26th, initially through Facebook messenger (as there isn’t any stated process for submitting complaints on the NET site, or wasn’t at the time), after which the conversation moved to email. In the interest of removing extra text from this post, I’ve put her complaint here for you to read, rather than including it in full here.

As I referenced above, I have done my best to do due diligence here. I’ve read and included El’s original complaint, along with reading the ensuing email thread (directly forwarded, so not hearsay). I’ve talked to multiple people who were there and read statements that were provided to the committee. There are clearly several issues going on here, so I’ll summarize what stood out to me from everything I have read.

One, the topic of unconscious or implicit bias has come up at multiple points throughout this experience. I am not sure why this is such a sticking point, given that “all of us have unconscious biases” is not a new or controversial take (and certainly has a lot of studies backing it up, across multiple axes of oppression). At no point in El’s complaint did she say, “I think David came into my workshop with the express intent of singling me out because I am trans, and that Ristandi behaved with open hostility towards queer people because they are queer.” In fact, she says, “this was, whether by intent or not, hazing.” (Emphasis added is mine.)

What she does do is reference that these actions have disproportionately impacted the trans and queer attendees, which is a totally fair thing to do. In one of the best examples of code of conduct enforcement procedures I could find, the second question under the “Impact” section of “Evaluating a Report” reads as follows:

Does this behavior negatively impact a marginalized group in our community? Is the reporter a person from a marginalized group in our community? How is the reporter being negatively impacted by the reported person’s behavior? Are members of the marginalized group likely to disengage with the community if no action was taken on this report?

This is important because it’s extremely difficult to prove that someone has bad intentions, but the impact of David and Ristandi’s actions are clear. This is why “impact trumps intent” is such a common (and frankly, basic) phrase/concept in spaces with a focus on addressing inequity.

There is also the fact that this behavior happened multiple times, over multiple places and venues. There was the initial workshop disruption. There was the “discussion” afterwards, which included David (who is, remember, a lawyer) interrupting a woman to tell her, presumably not knowing jack shit about her background, that she isn’t qualified to talk about the topic she wrote her dissertation on. That behavior alone should be enough to cause serious concern about implicit bias — as someone who has observed a lot of grade-A tech bro behavior, that is incredibly not okay and is such obvious 101-level mansplaining that I don’t even know what else to say about it.

And then, of course, there is his behavior on Facebook after the event, which…if you don’t want to describe it as “harassment,” I would hope you could at least agree that calling it “openly hostile” is fairly accurate.

Also, I want to call special attention to “I would encourage whoever ends up addressing this complaint to actively seek out the accounts of people who were there for it.” Just remember that for later.

At any rate, El submitted her complaint and was told that it was being investigated by the board of elders, sans David. She heard back roughly a week later. The cliff notes of the initial response are:

• Only actions that happen at NET are covered under the Code of Conduct, so they can’t take any of David’s Facebook behavior into account.
• That means “the question then is if harassment of a discriminatory nature was done.” I’m not sure why the focus is specifically on harassment being of a discriminatory nature, vs. harassment or disruption in general, given that the code of conduct specifically includes “deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of rituals, workshops, or other events…” under the definition of harassment.
• Six witnesses were interviewed, five of them ones that El suggested, and there’s an emphasis that most of these witnesses are members of the LGBTQ+ community.
• Since none of the accounts mentioned discriminatory language or rhetoric or harassment of a discriminatory nature, David did not violate the CoC’s terms for harassment.
• There’s also a bizarre line about how El’s “complaint also named Ristandi as failing to act against the harassment of a discriminatory nature of the event,” (which, as you can read above, is uh…not the case?) and says “As no harassment was found to have occurred, no action will be taken against him.”
• The email does end with a pretty weaksauce (IMO) note about how clearly stronger moderation and parameters around “potentially contentious issues” are needed and that they will work on that.

Understandably, El was confused by this response and asked why the focus was on discriminatory harassment when the code of conduct does not specify discriminatory harassment and does specify that “sustained disruption of workshops” is a form of harassment. She also asked about the reasoning behind the “only things done at the event count” ruling, given that she was aware of at least one person being refused attendance based on their Facebook posts, and that such a guideline would fly in the face of event safety best practices.

The response, which I would personally consider condescending bordering on snarky, says that the first part of El’s workshop (before the Q&A portion) wasn’t interrupted, and therefore, the disruption was not sustained and does not violate the CoC. It also says that yes, an attendee receiving text messages of a harassing nature from another community member would not be considered a violation of the CoC and would not be acted on by the board or considered in a complaint about harassment — only whatever behavior took place at NET would be considered.⁶

The email also has a line that reads “eyewitness accounts that were solicited (almost exclusively from attendees you recommended).” This is part of what makes the email sound condescending to me, because I don’t understand the relevance of this statement. Not only did El never say that her witness list was comprehensive, she specifically encouraged the investigation committee to contact other witnesses. Having read multiple statements, at least one of them referenced multiple additional witnesses who were not contacted about their experience, including one who was misgendered by both David and Ristandi multiple times. Why is it supposed to appease El that the board largely contacted witnesses she suggested? This line implies it was done out of deference to her, which is…a stretch, to say the least. To me (especially, again, having read some of the statements), it looks more like they couldn’t be bothered contacting additional people and doing a full and thorough investigation into the actions of their fellow executive board member.

If you want to see screenshots of the full emails, here’s the initial complaint findings email, here’s El’s response and the response to her.

I am genuinely not sure what else to add here because:

• Saying that disruptive behavior that started 25-30m into a 60m workshop and continued for the rest of the time doesn’t count as “sustained” feels absurd on its face to me and I would love to see clarification on exactly what does count as “sustained,” if that doesn’t do it
• The safety issues with “no, only at NET” seem very obvious to me and I would hope would be obvious to others

To me, this looks like repeatedly moving the goalposts to protect a fellow member of the executive board. Maybe that’s cynical, but again, having read multiple statements and talked to multiple people who were there, I have no earthly clue how anyone could look at the evidence and be like “yep, nah, this is all fine, no actions needed here,” even before you take Dave’s egregious behavior on Facebook into account.

NET statement, resulting hellthread

A stupid man
and an undisciplined one
laughs at everything.
He hasn’t learned
a lesson that would do him good:
he himself isn’t flawless.
— Havamal 22

On 9/12/2024, the official NET account posted in the Northeast Heathen Community Facebook group, sharing the following statement:

The ensuing comment thread was, to not put too fine a point on it, a clusterfuck. But you don’t have to take my word for it — see for yourself. I’ve followed the same protocol as before, with the addition of marking pink brackets around particularly egregious comments.

Some particularly noteworthy parts:

• David either outright lying or badly attempting to gaslight us (I don’t know which), multiple times, including claiming that he apologized for his behavior at the workshop in the earlier Facebook thread. (Marked in green in the screenshots)
• David — who is, again, the current president of the board and one of the founding members of this event — saying “Are you suggesting that everything I say to any trans is suspect? Anything said by a trans beyond reproach?” This is…incredibly basic 101-level errors in talking about trans people. He never apologized for using this language when it was pointed out by myself and someone else that it was inappropriate, doubling down and saying “I used the language in the response given. If that was offensive or derogatory, that was certainly not the intent.”⁷ (Because again, somehow intent is the most important thing here. But also, of course, nobody else ever used that language in the thread, so that was another lie from Dave.)
• El’s complaint was repeatedly described (including by members of NET leadership) as centering around Dave being a bigot or around intentional transphobia, which is not true, as you can read for yourself above.
• There was a consistent refrain of “turning people against each other” and “I’ve known X for Y years,” as though having a complaint is inherently malicious, or knowing someone for a certain length of time means they can’t ever act like a douchebag.
• Tone-policing ad nauseam, or, in other words, “I’d be more inclined to listen to you if you weren’t being so mean.” Tone-policing is consistently leveraged against marginalized people to curtail their discussions of oppression or microaggressions, until said discussions are more comfortable for the people who don’t have to experience said oppressions/microaggressions. (See the “Tone policing” in the resources section for more information.)
• Multiple attempts to describe frith in ways that more closely resemble abusive family dynamics than anything else. You know — the person talking about the problem is the one making the problem, we should all just stop arguing and get a pint, by telling me you’re disappointed in my lack of action you’ve hurt my feelings and that makes you the bad guy, actually, etc.
• A thinly-veiled threat in the form of, “If I continue to see my kinsman Dave dragged through the mud here then I can tell you that my gloves are coming off and it will get ugly. It doesn’t need to go there.”
• One of my personal favorites: someone describing “unconscious bias” (which is, again, a pretty accepted scientific fact) as the new “spectral evidence.” Because someone criticizing David’s behavior is the same as people litigating whether or not he should be burned at the stake based on hallucinations.

Unconscious bias: the new “spectral evidence”

Since we’re ending on the note of spectral evidence, I want to call out some extremely clear examples of unconscious bias throughout the thread:

• There were a lot of references to our “agenda,” which is…certainly a choice of words, in a country where “the gay agenda” and “the trans agenda” has been slung around for literally decades now.
• Tone policing, again — our tone, attitude, words, etc. were consistently criticized, but not a single one of the cisgender people in the thread (including the ones saying openly hateful things or actively threatening us) was chastised. Not fucking once.
• People seemingly saw trans people and went straight to “oh my GODS they want MONSTERS at our EVENTS!” This is wild given that literally none of us were advocating in the thread for including entities like Surtr or Fenrir, and El also wasn’t advocating for that in her original talk. Trans people (and to a lesser extent, queer people) have historically been depicted as monstrous in pop culture and associated with things the monstrous, disgusting, or other than human. This association of trans people with disgust or “impurity” has a direct impact on the way we are treated in our day to day lives. It was genuinely kind of fascinating (in a trainwreck sort of way) watching people take a specific subcultural taboo and transpose it onto the broader societal context of associating trans people with monsters.

A specific very clear example is this part of Mark’s comment, where he tags El, saying:

As it turns out, in the original thread that he was referencing, this was what he said:

To recap:

• El very clearly tried to create a thoughtful post about “the Loki issue” that addressed her concerns without upsetting people
• Mark responded at the time saying that he appreciated her post and her follow-up comments
• But somehow, the way Mark remembers El is clearly as that loud bitchy troublemaking trans lady, to the point that he describe his comment as “trying to appease” her and says “drama follows [her] around”

Are you seriously going to tell me implicit bias doesn’t exist and isn’t affecting this conversation?

The way that people reacted to the very concept of implicit bias really puts us in a bind (that could very easily be repeated in the future, whether with trans people or a different marginalized group). If we mention that someone’s actions had a disproportionate effect on marginalized people, then the conversation turns to defending that person’s moral character. If we stress implicit or unconscious bias, we’re told it’s spectral evidence (and/or that we’re outright accusing people of bigotry). If we don’t mention any of these things, it’s easier to dismiss the overall impact of someone’s actions. What options for recourse does that leave us? How is that a fair position to put us in?

Behavior of NET leadership in hellthread

During the ensuing conversation, Garrett directly tagged several members of the planning committee in an attempt to get somebody (other than Dave) to say something, which seems to have been perceived as an attack by several of the people tagged. There were several responses I was deeply unimpressed with, but also some thoughtful responses in there, and I am grateful for that.

That said, I’ll never stop laughing about a man who both owns and wears a John Brown Gun Club shirt saying “stop throwing haymakers” without a hint of irony. (Not a very John Brown Gun Club take, if you ask me.) He then turned around and posted gushing praise of Dave on his personal Facebook. This created the opportunity for a circle-jerk where multiple NET planning committee members who did not see fit to comment on the hellthread did see fit to join in and gush about what a great guy Dave is. I guess the biggest communal priority was soothing Dave’s ego after *checks notes* six trans people criticized something he did, all of whom were subsequently attacked by multiple people and who did not get literally any show of community support.

Meanwhile, Garrett had a member of the planning committee tell him privately that he was one of the only ones on “the transgender side of the argument” that seemed interested in solutions rather than conflict. That’s interesting, since I don’t think Garrett was any more or less aggressive than the rest of us, but he is arguably the most cis-passing, normie-looking (said with great affection) one of us. At least one other member of the planning committee messaged him to check on him within a few days. In that timeframe, no one affiliated with NET reached out to me, Penn, El, or Anna to check on us, and the only person who reached out to Ellery was the one who started the mediation process.

One of the many things that still deeply upsets me is that not only did nobody else in NET leadership comment at all until being tagged, at no point did any of them intervene to say that the way we were being treated was not okay and that the things people were saying were not okay. Something as simple as “Listen, I don’t agree with the allegations of implicit bias happening here, but what you’re saying is not acceptable either,” would have gone a long way towards me being able to take the repeated statements about the importance of inclusion seriously. I can understand why leaving a comment like that wasn’t an immediate impulse, but I also hope that others can understand how hurtful and isolating that felt. I would also hope that people affiliated with NET would recognize that all of this is especially hurtful, considering that the entire discussion was jumpstarted by a post from the official NET Facebook page.⁸

The lack of pushback from NET leadership certainly wasn’t because nobody saw those comments. In fact, Ristandi — you remember Ristandi, the workshop coordinator who was reportedly frothing at the mouth during the Q&A section of El’s talk? He is, for extra context, a cishet white man who is also a member of the Rune Gild.⁹ Anyways, he was certainly lurking in the thread, reading comments, and even liking a few.

Among the comments that Ristandi saw fit to like were Jennifer’s comment that starts with “Wow. All these panties in a twist,” has scare quotes around “inclusiveness” and “safe space,” and includes such choice bits as:

• “One thing I can tell you is if you say you felt UNSAFE in any space at NET I call bullshit and you are just beating a drum to feel recognized and justified in being a douchebag.”
• “I don’t care about any of the above choices…about anything that makes you feel different or special or whatever from the next person.” (where “above choices” refers to “identity/gender/sexual proclivities,” so we’re back to “being trans or queer is a choice,” I guess — something that is reiterated in multiple of Jennifer’s comments, that no cis person corrected)
• “those that are pushing this issue and demanding they get what they want…or their own way are just fucking toddlers throwing a tantrum”
• Lots of references to Asatru in ALL CAPS, for emphasis I guess? Because Asatru is the be-all end-all of heathenry?¹⁰
• “If you are using the correct definition of unsafe space that any dictionary prior to the kinder gentler bullshit definition is.” (admittedly I can’t fully parse this sentence, but it seems to be some unhinged boomer-esque ranting about safe spaces and the dictionary being woke now)

To top it all off, the comment ends with “If you truly feel that NET folks in charge of the event are against you.. then go find a different space to do your thing. Stop trying to bend others to your will , stop trying to pit people who have known and loved each other for well over 20 yrs against each other.”

Which is really at the crux of it all, isn’t it? Expressing concerns about a decision made by the leadership team of an event you attended (and paid good money to do so, and would like to continue attending) apparently constitutes saying that the people in charge of the event are unequivocally against you, along with trying to “bend others to your will” and “pit people … against each other.” And of course, there’s an added reminder of how long they’ve all known each other, as though any of us could forget that we had clearly intruded into the heathen Asatru equivalent of the good ol’ boys club.

At any rate, it seems that talking to marginalized community members with a sincere concern like Jennifer does here is part of this whole Valhalla “we’re assholes to each other and then we get drunk” thing in Ristandi’s eyes. Again, I can’t say I’m interested in participating in that party.

There were several sus comments that members of the NET planning committee thought had enough merit to “like” (without participating in the conversation), including yet more tone-policing, David’s “any trans” comment, David attacking El for…having a Patreon?, and Greg (a former member of the NET executive board) asking if “asking questions about a class” is “somehow an attack on [El] as a person,” or Greg saying that “this whole affair is unnecessarily hostile.” (More tone-policing, again.)

There were also some really horrible, blatantly awful comments, like Jennifer’s, or the man posting popcorn gifs and laugh reacting at multiple of our comments. When I scoped out the people leaving those comments, and the people who saw fit to like, love, or laugh at said comments, the vast majority of both commenters and people reacting are friends with anywhere from 3-10 members of the NET planning committee.

My point here is not “I think that the sum of someone’s personality and attitudes can be conveyed in a few clicks on Facebook.” But I do think that there is a very clear pattern of behavior here around getting defensive, tone policing, and ignoring things that are uncomfortable (whether that’s people you know being assholes or people conveying problems you’d rather not look at or deal with).

And also? I don’t fucking know any of these people. The only behavior I have that I can draw conclusions off of is the behavior I can see, including when people feel comfortable associating with the people acting like shitbirds. As someone still getting the lay of the land, I’m looking around and thinking things like, “How safe is this person to go to an event with? How safe am I sleeping in a cabin that this person has access to? How safe am I leaving an unattended drink with this person?” And, as everyone was so keen to point out, they’ve known these people for 20 years and I haven’t.

So what am I supposed to do — trust some internet strangers (who are behaving like unrepentant assholes) when they say “this person would NEVER!,” or trust the conclusions I draw based on the behavior I can see with my own two goddamn eyes?

Trans people mentioning transphobia makes people mad

The entire conversation (if you can call it that) was obviously deeply unpleasant and upsetting. All of the trans people were repeatedly described as belligerent, aggressive, etc., while we were openly being mocked by people using completely unacceptable language and rhetoric — none of whom were chastised even in the slightest. The closest thing that comes to that was some vague “people on both sides” rhetoric. Notably, David did not once threaten to shut down the post, even though I would say it was certifiably providing more heat than light, especially as compared to the first thread.

Aside from being an absolutely dogshit experience, it did not do anything to clarify whether harassment has to be discriminatory in nature to count as harassment. Additionally, multiple people affiliated with NET (including Dave himself) claimed that El’s complaint centered entirely around him being a bigot, which is simply not true. One member actually said that the harassment was being “conflated to a hate crime.” This may have been referencing how heated the thread was overall, but it is still deeply frustrating given that we kept emphasizing that we were talking about unconscious bias and that regardless of intention, the impact disproportionately affected trans and queer people. Apparently, the mere mention of implicit bias as a concept is enough to make people circle the wagons and refuse to hear a single word more. Shield wall for thee, but not for me. (If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. I am trying to keep this focused on the facts, but there was damage done and pretending it didn’t hurt doesn’t help anyone.)

I want to highlight specifically that describing El’s complaint as something that it wasn’t, or describing any/all of us as saying things that we were not saying, is not only frustrating and unfair, it makes us look untrustworthy and vindictive, which plays into stereotypes around trans people. Trans people are regularly depicted and/or perceived as being deceptive, duplicitous, and mentally ill, with these perceptions (and ensuing prejudice and potential violence) affecting trans women specifically.

It’s also especially fucked up that this was going on, given that — to my knowledge — nobody in NET leadership outside of the executive board had read the complaint at this point. This is still the case for anyone who hasn’t actively sought it out, and yet, many of them have made comments both publicly and privately about the contents of the complaint. 

And, of course, there was the repeated referencing of trans people on the committee. By my count, out of 21 committee members, five are trans.¹¹ Out of those, two of them were not on the committee at the time of the hellthread and were added afterwards. The other three people could, in my opinion, all be considered very cis-passing, and two out of the three are AFAB people, who are (as far as I know) married to cis men. I mention this because a relationship that looks heterosexual (even if it’s not) is typically treated differently than a visibly queer relationship. A heterosexual-appearing relationship also affords more safety for the people in said relationship.¹² None of this is intended to invalidate someone’s identity, and I am saying all of this as someone who has experienced a lot of varying scenarios when it comes to being read as straight vs. queer and cis vs. trans.

One final note: as far as I know, there are no trans women or anyone who identifies as transfemme on the committee, which is relevant specifically in the case of El’s treatment and the potential role of transmisogyny.

This is a complex topic, and frankly, this post is already incredibly long, so we can’t really dive into it. But I will say that I’ve existed on multiple points on the gender appearance spectrum, ranging from “cis woman in a relationship with a cis man, always read as straight” to “vaguely androgynous (but like, in a cute and non-threatening way) femme-leaning person in a relationship with a woman” to “androgynous in the threatening way, not catered to the male gaze, that often elicits anger and confusion.” These are all very different experiences. And you get treated very differently by people as a result.

Even in Austin, the ”blue bastion” of Texas, I did not realize how much low-key hostility I was getting on a regular basis until we visited Philly to see if we wanted to move to the area. Which is kind of stupid of me, maybe, given that I planned most of my outings around access to safe bathrooms (after that time in the burbs I got yelled at in one, and the increasing amount of stink-eye I got regardless of which bathroom I used). But you know, frog, meet boiling water. The difference in treatment and experiences between Garrett and I has often been both obvious and harsh.

Again, this is not to say that someone being cis-passing or in a relationship that will be read as “straight” makes them any less trans. It does mean that their lived experience is vastly different than my current one, which is, again, different from someone elses’. It means that they are more likely to be taken seriously, less likely to be read as hostile or overreacting, and generally less likely to be othered (in general — factors like race, disability, etc. do still exist, of course) than people who are visibly trans. Once you spend the majority of your waking hours interacting with the world as a visibly trans person, the difference in treatment is absolutely undeniable.

On top of that, you have the added factor of transmisogyny — the specific blend of transphobia and misogyny that trans women and transfemme people experience, different from generalized transphobia that other trans people experience. For one, trans women regularly find themselves shut out of spaces, often over being perceived as hostile, angry, or other words that can be used to imply they aren’t sufficiently feminine.

At the end of the day, though, it actually doesn’t matter to me whether this fiasco was caused or exacerbated by El being a trans woman, or by El being “newer” or less established or less friendly with the in-crowd (whether in general or simply less established than Dave in specific). Same applies to any of us.

The thing is, newer, younger, and less established people are disproportionately likely to be marginalized in some way, since, you know, these subcultures used to be actively hostile to marginalized people. If there is a bias against those factors, it’s going to look really bad a lot of the time and you should probably revisit it if you want to consider yourself inclusive and welcoming. It also puts marginalized people in this impossible position when the argument is “if she’d been around longer, she would have earned more respect.” How many years of microaggressions, misgendering, and paying for a hotel room (on top of the event ticket) to get access to a private bathroom should someone have to endure before their opinion matters?

Mediation efforts & results

I know an eighth spell;
it would be useful
for anyone to learn it.
When hate arises
between any two people,
I can cool their tempers.
— Havamal 153

So, the Facebook thread was a horrible mess and got locked. Afterwards, Patty, who is a member of the planning committee¹³, started a mediation process between David, Patty, and Ellery (who is a close friend of El as well as me, in the interest of disclosure). The results of the mediation were announced on October 27 in a Facebook post.

To summarize, David took a two-hour continuing education panel with nonbinary attorneys discussing their workplace experiences. He also “volunteered for” the workshop committee, ostensibly to learn to create better workshop environments. Ellery and Patty, the two other people involved in the mediation, also joined the workshop committee, and Patty volunteered to help improve the harassment policies.

I want to stress that I really appreciate the effort that went into the mediation process — especially knowing that there was a lot of personal upheaval going around — and that I know mediation inherently involves compromise and is just…going to be unsatisfying a lot of the time.

The issues that I saw were that:

• To me, making amends means doing work that is proportional to the impact of your actions. Taking a two-hour class does not, in my opinion, make up for repeated incidents over the period of several weeks where someone acted unacceptably (even before you get into the implicit bias) and then doubled down on those actions, over and over again.
• The action(s) taken do not feel specific to the problematic behavior. I don’t know what all was covered in the panel, but it looks only surface-level relevant, at best, and to the cynic in me, it looks like that was a “well, let’s see what’s available to take in the rest of the year that seems at least vaguely related” action. Something specific to implicit bias or transmisogyny would have made more sense to me.
• It feels like giving David more power. As far as I understand, things are decided upon by votes and there isn’t a hierarchy on any one given committee, so I don’t know if he actually has been given measurably more power (especially since, as noted, it seems like plenty of people were already standing by ready to defend damn near anything he said or did, so I’m not sure being on the workshop committee would affect that). But, if nothing else, I do think it’s a bad look from the outside, because it looks like a reward and like being given more power over the very thing he derailed so horribly.

Overall, to me, it just fell a little short on the accountability front. That said, of course I hoped that this would be the last of it, that behavior would change and we could all move on.

I do wonder what the difference was in the mediation, since David was so unwilling to listen to anyone else or back down even a little on Facebook. Again, we run into a problem where, if someone is only willing to hear feedback from people who are older or more established than them, or even equally established, that’s going to cut a lot of marginalized people out of decision making processes and leave them without any recourse for their voices being heard. That problem is only magnified when someone who either won’t listen to newer people or won’t listen to them unless someone they respect is in the room is also in a position of power.

As I noted earlier, after these results were announced, El submitted a request to be added to the workshop committee and was told no. I understand there’s a process for being added to the planning committee (which is a requirement for joining any subcommittees). I also understand why El would be upset. At the end of the day, my personal opinion is that it would have been better for either David and El to both be added or neither of them to be added.

El does not go quietly into that good night (the essay)

Men become friends
when they can share
their minds with one another,
Anything is better
than the company of liars:
a real friend will disagree with you openly.
— Havamal 124

On November 25th, El wrote and posted Exiting the Draugr Castle, which discusses her background in heathenry and previous experiences at both NET and ECT, along with covering this entire saga. She posted 11:27 in Sokvabekkr, something of a follow-up, on 11/29.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which I agree with El and where our experiences have been shared, so this is a good time to cover a few of the ways in which we differ:

First off, if I put on my professional marketer hat, I think writing something this harsh was a strategic mistake. When you come out swinging that hard, you give up a lot of your negotiating power — there’s no leverage left, you already left it all out on the field. It also makes it easier for people to paint you as a crazy person or a vengeful brat who will never be happy, no matter what. (I can hear El in my head saying, “yeah, but they’re going to do that anyways — case in point: they already did,” which is also a fair point.)

I’m also pretty sure that negotiating wasn’t El’s goal, which is another area where we differ. My impression is that El is fed up with communal heathenry at large and that Draugr Castle was an essay about the disappointment she’d experienced in heathen spaces — an exit interview, if you will. I don’t know if El thinks that heathenry as a whole (and spaces like NET in specific) are fixable, and I don’t know how much interest she has in fixing the issues (at least, fixing them and then participating in the spaces again herself). I think that the issues run deep¹⁴, but that pushing back against them while also trying to build something better is the only option that feels right to me. I know I very well may never be truly welcome at NET again, but my hope is that I can still do something to improve the event for future attendees, and that discussing these issues in detail and in public can help others who want to run events learn how to avoid similar issues for themselves.

And honestly, overall, the essay was just too mean for me. I get it as an exercise in catharsis, but it’s definitely not something I would publish.

When it comes to Kyle in specific (referred to as the Quisling in El’s essays), I was also not sure what to make of him at first, to be honest. He does have a tattoo that is way too close to a swastika for my taste (even if that’s not what it actually is¹⁵) and that initially gave me pause. It was pretty clear he wasn’t a white supremacist, but I still have concerns about white people trying to reclaim anything close to that imagery. There were a few small things that made me wonder if I had got off on the wrong foot with him, and there were other things that did look like politicking to me in a way that I wasn’t super comfortable with. However, after talking to him more, my impression of him is overall very positive.

I did attend both of the lore chats, and if I’m being honest, I did not actually think to press him on doing lore chats that were obviously inspired by someone elses’ mistreatment and whether he had talked to that person. I wish I had said something, because I think that’s a fair thing to push back on and if I was in El’s shoes, I’d probably be salty about it, too.

Overall, despite my initial reservations, his heart is in the right place and he’s doing his best as far as I can tell, even if I disagree with him on both tactics and theory sometimes. I really don’t think Kyle deserves to be referred to in a way that references collaborating with Nazis. I also know that he has since reached out and done what he can to mend bridges with Penn. I very much respect that, and think that it speaks to a willingness to set aside a bruised ego in pursuit of a greater community good. We could use more people willing to do that, and certainly more leaders willing to do so.¹⁶

I’m also uncomfortable with sharing screenshots of Facebook posts in more public forums. I previously had an abusive ex use one of her friends to stalk me on social media (even though I had blocked her everywhere). If you’ve ever had something similar happen, the thought of someone sharing things that you didn’t intend for public consumption, without your consent, can be deeply triggering.

At the end of the day, I don’t agree with everything El said in her essay (or has said or done since), and I wouldn’t have done or said the same things, but I do understand where it came from and I’m fully capable of feeling empathy around it. As Penn eloquently puts it in his own musings on the topic, for El, it was a means to get “the accountability they refused to give her peacefully through means that were consistent with the rules as they’d been explained to her.” And this idea that marginalized people have to be calm and polite, all the time, even after being repeatedly mistreated, is toxic and unfair. (Gods know there have been plenty of other people who haven’t been calm, quiet, or polite throughout this.)

Of course, as we all know, the story does not end with El’s essay.

Suddenly, the rules are different (and enforceable)

I counsel you, Loddfáfnir,
if you’ll take my advice,
you’ll profit if you learn it,
it’ll do you good if you remember it:
Never spite a guest
nor spit at his entrance—
treat a poor wanderer well.
— Havamal 135

Here’s the letter than El received on 12/16:

There’s a lot to unpack here and unfortunately just throwing away the whole suitcase would be counter to my goal, so let’s get into this dirty laundry.

We write to inform you that your attendance at Northeast Thing in 2025 will not be permitted. This does not extend to other members of your household.

This line is clearly referencing Penn, who, as El stated in her essay, is disabled and cannot attend NET without El’s support. The planning committee would know this, as they have to submit accommodation requests when they attend (and, again, it was referenced in the post, which they obviously read).

This decision results from the investigation and adjudication of complaints made against you about a series of public and intentionally malicious activities in which you have persistently engaged against Northeast Thing, its Executive Board, and numerous members of its Planning Committee and wider community…

I’m curious what “a series” refers to here — if there is something else being referred to aside from the two essays linked above. Same question for “persistently.”

…not the least of which included thinly veiled personal attacks against upwards of a dozen people…

By my count, there are 10 people who are either NET attendees or planning committee members referenced in El’s essay, which is less than I would expect for it being described as “upwards of a dozen.” There are others referenced who are not regular attendees — is that an actionable offense?

I am also curious how “thinly veiled personal attacks” is being defined and how that’s going to be evenly applied in the future. Where’s the line? Is gossiping okay as long as you don’t do it in public? Is making snarky comments in public against the rules, if it’s about someone who goes to (or is on the committee of) NET? Or someone who doesn’t go to NET but is friends with people on the committee? Because if those are the standards for bannable offenses, I’ve seen multiple people (including some on the committee) violate them repeatedly.

…and the appending of a targeted curse against the community.

Look, I know this is going to be a matter of opinion, but I am a pretty woo-friendly heathen and I would not consider the last section of El’s post an actual curse. It is, in my opinion, clearly a rhetorical device being used in a cheeky manner, given the juxtaposition of section ending, subheader, and new section starting:

It is also very specifically not directed at “the community.” The only people who are referenced singularly are people who have (at least according to El’s account) directly acted against her or otherwise acted in a shameful way. Everyone who is referenced individually is “cursed” with things like rain, a metaphorical bear, or having to tell one of their students that Edred Thorsson actually sucks shit. The only people mentioned collectively are here:

May all the other cowards
Who sat and let this happen
Just feel really shitty about themselves
Or have some entertaining mishap
At your discretion

Which, again. I’ve seen worse things on Facebook. Some of them were in the hellthread. Is insulting people in public and sarcastically wishing them ill only an offense when it’s in poem format?

We have determined that these activities are in direct violation of the Northeast Thing Code of Conduct, specifically point 5 of the Anti- harassment Policy, which can be reviewed here: https://northeastthing.com/code-of-conduct/

Now this is fascinating, given that, when El sent in a complaint about David’s behavior, she was explicitly told that the code of conduct doesn’t cover behavior outside of the event, and as of September 5th, the code of conduct didn’t include point 5. It seems as though that point was added in response to El’s complaints (precisely when I’m not sure), the rule updated was never announced anywhere, and then the brand new rule was turned against a trans woman who, not three months prior, had lodged a complaint against the president of the event, and been told there was nothing to be done about it.

This is also after El was told that the behavior at the workshop wasn’t explicitly discriminatory and therefore could not be acted on, but that doesn’t seem to apply to the complaint against her. Point 5 (as you’ll see below) is almost exclusively about bigotry, but does have “intentionally malicious” stuck on the end — I’m not sure why it’s being given more weight than “sustained disruption” was in El’s complaint process. Again, very much not a good look.

We’re going to get more into codes of conduct soon, but while we’re here and it’s relevant, let’s take a look at the point being referenced:

While this Code of Conduct is intended to inform the behavior of attendees of the Northeast Thing while at the event, certain exceptions to its application may be made by the Executive Board on a case-by-case basis.  In an effort to protect the community and maintain the frith at the Thing, admission to the event may be denied to any individual or group with a known history of engaging in unethical, illegal, racist, homophobic/transphobic, or other intentionally malicious activities taking place outside of the Event.

One thing that jumps out at me here is “a known history.” What constitutes a known history? What is El’s known history of engaging in intentionally malicious activities?

• If someone attends an AFA event and I report them, will they be banned from NET? Do they have to attend more than one? What’s the cutoff for length of time between “attending an AFA event” and “being welcome at NET”?
• If someone’s husband carried around a Confederate flag mug for years, and then said hypothetical someone liked a bunch of shitty transphobic comments in a Facebook thread, is that enough to ban them or their husband?
• Is posting gifs laughing at trans people and their concerns enough to ban them? Or repeatedly “laugh” reacting their comments?
• Is threatening trans people for “dragging [a kinsman] through the mud” a bannable offense?
• Is being a member of the Rune Gild and choosing to describe it as “an organization of outsiders” while deflecting valid criticism of the organization, and then going and liking transphobic content on Facebook?
• Is lurking in a private Discord server and spreading rumors based on what people say there, or screenshotting comments to take them out of context and pass them around, in addition to liking a bunch of shitty transphobic comments in public?

From where I stand, literally every single one of these contributes to an unsafe environment and is much worse than writing a mean, long-ass essay with snarky pseudonyms and personal gossip in it. But I sincerely doubt that if I submitted a complaint based on any of them that it would be taken anywhere near as seriously as the complaints submitted against El.

On the flip side, this makes it sound like a “one-off” racist act¹⁷ wouldn’t be enough to be banned from NET. But would two? Because by my count, that’s El’s “known history.” And, again, as we’ve already covered, putting “intentionally” in here is dangerous, because assigning intent is subjective. Typically, when someone is friends with a person or experiences the same privileges that they do, they’re more likely to assume good intent behind behavior, which is often not how it feels to those on the receiving end of said behavior. It’s also notable that El was not asked for a statement on what her intent actually was, so any and all conclusions about her intent were decided in a vacuum (except for the context of “she’s been really mean to Dave” and any existing biases the deciding committee has). When I asked if she had ever been asked about her intentions, she said no, and offered this statement.

We believe your presence at Northeast Thing 2025 would create a tense, hostile environment that would not foster a frithful event.

I thought frith was about the community? Do five people get to decide who will create a tense environment and who will create a frithful one? How much do the opinions of people who haven’t been around for 10 years count? Because from where I’m sitting, I can think of multiple people who have done more to create a tense, hostile environment than El.

Your actions have ensured that only those perspectives you favor have permeated the online Heathen sphere while unfairly alienating members of the Northeast Thing community from those spaces.

My first thought upon reading this, as a marketing professional, was “that’s a lot of words to say, ‘we’re mad that you’re better at PR than we are.’” Snark aside, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s look at this idea that El is some kind of all-powerful magician that can ensure only perspectives she favors permeate the online heathen sphere. This takes us all the way back to my second point under “Why am I addressing it this way?” This wording makes it sound like the problem is that El made NET look bad in public. In reality, what happened is that El described her experiences (yes, in a biased and subjective manner, because that’s how that goes) and other people read that description and thought “wow, this does not paint a great picture of this event.”

Again — it’s a lot easier to dismiss wrongdoing when it’s addressed in private and you can tell yourself it’s just a handful of disgruntled people, as compared to when it’s discussed in public and other people can look at what has happened and draw their own conclusions. Of course, as in this case, you could look at other people making their own decisions based on someone sharing their experience, and decide to punish the person speaking about their experiences instead of choosing to revisit your positions.

It’s also kind of a funny Schrödinger’s writer situation. Is El a crazy brat that’s just talking to herself in public and that nobody cares about? Or, again, is she some kind of influencer that can whisper in someone’s ear and make them magically hate people?

The “unfair alienation” referenced here presumably is a member of the NET planning committee not being accepted into a Facebook group. My understanding is that this is at least partially because of what El wrote, but in larger part because said person is heavily associated with the Troth and the people who run the Facebook group are leery of interacting with Troth leadership. I would also submit that if someone had a problem with that, they should probably talk to the moderators of the Facebook group, instead of assigning all blame to El.

These actions do not support your claim that you hope for the continued improvement and evolution of Northeast Thing.

Ah yes, because if you criticize something or someone in public, that means you don’t want improvement or change. (Very familiar from all the times I’ve been told I shouldn’t say anything bad about Democrats, because at least they’re trying!)

These last two points in particular set a really dangerous precedent, in my opinion. First off, it’s very clear that a lot of this letter (and a lot of point #5 in particular) is super subjective, and I personally do not trust it to be enforced equally. For example, El found herself removed from the Northeast Heathen Community Facebook group (and completely blocked from rejoining), which is admin’d by two members of the NET planning committee (one of which is Dave), without any communication and without the knowledge of at least one other admin. Why is that okay, but someone being denied entry to a Facebook group isn’t? Is that not unfairly alienating El from a communal space?

And is it a coincidence that this kicking/banning happened right before the ban letter arrived? I’m guessing not, given that most of the planning committee knew that a complaint had been lodged against El, and could probably see the writing on the wall about how that was going to go. Why not use your admin powers to remove her from a Facebook group, right before banning her from an event so she can’t lodge a complaint under the code of conduct you’re currently weaponizing against her? Nothing unethical going on there, and no horrible behavioral precedents being set for the future, for sure.

(CW for repeated references to rape and sexual assault throughout the next five paragraphs, last reference is in the second to last paragraph of this section)

Second, it is really genuinely fucked up to ban people from your event under the reasoning of “you made us look bad in public.” I am 100% sure that this was not the intention, but after everything I’ve seen at events ranging from tech conferences to punk shows, my immediate thought when I read this was, “ah, so if someone got raped at NET, would they be punished for talking about it in public?”

Unfortunately, that’s not hyperbole — it’s my actual reaction based on my actual lived experiences. At any event, not just NET, the scenario of someone getting assaulted is far more likely than people often think. This is true regardless of how long you’ve known these people, as most rapists have people they’ve known for 5, 10, or 20 years and yet, they are still rapists. And because lack of reading comprehension seems to be a running theme: this is explicitly not me implying that any one person who attends or is affiliated with NET is a creep. I am also explicitly not trying to say that they were thinking of this scenario when they wrote or enforced this rule.

What I am saying is that I and other people I know have been treated as troublemakers and threatened with (and faced) social consequences for sharing concerns and/or experiences around rape and sexual assault when it comes to specific events or communities. I am saying that, statistically, the odds are that someone will be raped, sexually assaulted, or sexually harassed at NET at some point. This is not down to anything specific about NET, but rather because all of these things are incredibly common and you probably know a rapist (whether you know it or not). I would have these concerns (and be speaking them) about any event that sent a banning letter that included that phrasing.

A complicating factor is that issues of misconduct are almost never cut and dry (as is evidenced by this entire experience). As a society, we have a very specific image of what rape and sexual assault look like, and the reality that many people experience doesn’t fit that cultural image. This influences all of us to the point that many survivors struggle to recognize themselves as such, because they were coerced with words instead of violence or because they knew their assaulter.

So what if reported misconduct didn’t fit the social stereotypes we have around sexual assault? What if, instead, it’s just that the guy you’ve been friends with for 15 years was drunk, and got a little handsy, and doesn’t remember it the next morning? Or maybe he cornered someone (but I’m sure he didn’t realize he was cornering them, he was just really into the conversation, you know?) and said something that made them uncomfortable? What if the person reporting it isn’t well-liked in the community, or has a reputation (whether earned or not¹⁸) as a “gossip” or “troublemaker”? What if they had also been drinking? How seriously would those experiences be taken? How would they be investigated? Would they feel safe filing. a complaint if they had been drinking, or were aware they have a reputation, or knew that the person they’re reporting has been around longer than them?

In short: how are we supposed to trust that the bigger issues will be handled well, when the small ones aren’t? If you are so completely unwilling to believe that your buddy is capable of acting based on implicit bias (something that literally all of us have), then why on god’s Ymir’s green earth would I trust that something more egregious will be taken seriously? After all, if you don’t think he’s capable of acting from a place of unconscious bias, you certainly don’t think he’s capable of full-blown assault or of saying something hateful on purpose.

I’m using sexual misconduct as an example because, unfortunately, it is such a common one to run into at events, both from staff and other attendees.¹⁹ However, these critiques apply across the board of systemic oppressions. I have repeatedly felt as though people think I only care about this incident because I am also “a trans,” but I would be just as (if not more) loud and angry if the implicit bias was being pointed in a different direction. The rhetoric that has been presented thus far could have “transphobia” swapped out for literally any other kind of systemic oppression and I don’t have any reason to believe things would have played out differently. If this exact series of incidents repeated itself, but the person at the center of the controversy was Black, it certainly seems to me that everything would have played out exactly the same — which, for a majority white religion with a Nazi problem, is really bad.

Also, this is a bit of an aside, but I think it’s worth noting that El describes multiple microaggressions and bad experiences in her essay, and literally not once have I seen anyone criticizing the essay acknowledge that. Not that I’m surprised to see them completely ignored after how the conversation about implicit bias went.

A longer aside about screenshots, power imbalances, & social punishment

Be a friend
to your friend,
and repay each gift with a gift.
Repay laughter
with laughter,
repay treachery with treachery.
— Havamal 42

Earlier, I referenced that I knew including screenshots would be contentious — you’re about to find out why.

On 11/26, someone shared El’s essay in the Fellowship of Fire & Ice Discord server, and El joined the server on 11/27, with Penn following suit close after. Given the entire thing of FoFI is examining how dismantling oppressive power structures can interact with and inform heathen spirituality, it’s not shocking that there’s been a lot of lively discussion around the points raised in El’s essay and the ensuing fallout.

In fact, as near as we can tell, there’s a non-zero likelihood that El’s commentary in the Discord server is part of what got her banned from NET. Neither I nor Garrett have been able to confirm or deny that, given that El was never told what the specific boundaries of the complaint lodged against her were. The factors that make us think that’s a strong possibility are the wording around “online spaces” in the complaint, along with referring to “a series of” and “persistent” actions (which, to my mind, would be more than two). Again, we can’t confirm this, but it seems more plausible than I wish it did.

I touched on this some above but:

• That sets a very dangerous precedent, especially with how fuzzy and ill-articulated the boundaries and processes have shown themself to be thus far.
• What exactly makes the conversations in an invite-only Discord server actionable and problematic, but conversations on Facebook okay? The Discord server has less than 500 members, but there are multiple members of the planning committee with Facebook friend counts ranging from 1-2k. Why is being snarky on Facebook to a larger audience, many of whom are also heathen, acceptable but being snarky (while also talking about actual mistreatment) in an invite-only space with significantly less people to see it not okay?

Whoever the snitch is,²⁰ they clearly have a direct line to a lot of NET leadership and also work fast, given that gossip is being spread based on messages literally within 15-30m of them being posted. This has also, to some extent, impacted my partner and I. As far as I can tell (because nobody has actually communicated with us about this, at any point), people are mad at us in general because of not being quiet about our thoughts (again, in a closed Discord server), but there’s a specific series of comments I made on 12/16 that seem to be a real sticking point.

I said, in reference to El’s banning letter:

also “thinly veiled personal attacks” maybe don’t be a drunk dumbass at a huge spiritual gathering if you don’t want people to know you’ve been a drunk dumbass at a huge spiritual gathering

It seems that this was taken as an attack on any one person, but it was meant as a general comment. A lot of the bad behavior El describes in her essay happened when the person doing it was drunk, and a lot of unappealing and/or annoying behavior that I saw at NET also happened while the person doing it was drunk. There was a lot of drinking, and as someone who has had a front-row seat to watching alcoholism in action and the ensuing destruction, my tolerance for people being shitfaced drunk and annoying about it is admittedly pretty low.

I then repeated something I had been told by a friend (not El, which I think has been the assumption) about Kat M of the planning committee being drunk to the point of swaying on her feet during the opening ritual one year. Later, my partner was reminded that Kat had had a death in the family directly prior to NET 2023.²¹ The next time it came up in the channel, about 48 hours after my initial comment, Garrett and I both immediately stated that context, as did El when it came up a week later.

And like, you know what? Obviously, with that context, that’s a really asinine thing to say. I wish I had never said it and I’m sorry that I did. However, I cannot apologize directly to Kat, because she has blocked me. If we had not been able to put the pieces together, we would have no idea why Garrett and I were removed from communal spaces and blocked by multiple members of the NET planning committee, which makes it very difficult to apologize for or correct my mistake. It bears repeating that at no point did anyone decide to give us grace on this (which feels like a marked contrast to the amount of grace we’ve been expected to give others).

Now that I’ve said I do wish I hadn’t said it and I am sorry, I’d like to point out that double standards seem to be a consistent theme here. It is absolutely fascinating to me that the context of someone’s personal life details is expected knowledge and very important, but the context of “marginalized people will always be better at spotting implicit bias that affects them than privileged people” doesn’t seem to matter. Nor does the general background context of “the United States is rapidly barreling towards fascism and trans people are very high on the list of public targets, to the point that 50%+ of the country is actively not safe for them to live in and public officials started blaming the election loss on them within 24 hours.”

The more personal context of “Garrett and Miche moved here in June from across the country after being driven out of their home of many years²² by a state government that actively wants trans people to die and the increasingly hostile environment fostered by said state government, even in supposedly safe cities” also doesn’t seem to matter. And that last piece of information is something I told pretty much anyone at NET who asked what brought us to the northeast and also referenced at multiple points in the hellthread. Genuinely, if someone wanted to make a case study of implicit bias ripple effects and double standards caused by them, they would be hard pressed to find clearer examples.

To screenshot or not to screenshot

Since El has shared screenshots of her own, and since I also shared screenshots earlier in this post, I want to take a moment to explain why I have the stance I do. I do understand how the difference in reaction to screenshotting could look hypocritical out of context but obviously, I also think context is deeply important, or I wouldn’t be spending my time and your’s on this essay.

People who are upset about El’s treatment (including El herself) are not a monolith. I have told both El and Kyle²³ that I’m not necessarily a fan of sharing Facebook posts, partially because of the aforementioned experience where I was social media stalked by an ex, who had a friend sending her screenshots of my every move, so she could turn around and use that information to fuel lies about me. (How’s that for new information that changes the context of what you’ve said and done? I’ll be waiting on the same apology that I gave Kat above. Not holding my breath, though.)

At the same time, there is a very clear contextual difference and power dynamic difference between these two scenarios:

1. El having and/or sharing a screenshot of a Facebook post that has some 2000 people who can see it
2. Someone taking things that are said in a closed space with less than 500 members out of context and passing them around to people with quite a lot of situational power locally (and frankly nationally too), and those screenshots or misquotes being used to justify icing marginalized people out of community

It’s not about lack of willingness to stand behind words. Everything I’ve said in the server I’d say to someone’s face (a lot of it made it into this essay). It’s about the power dynamics involved and how someone has used their access to a closed space to punish marginalized people for having thoughts and feelings that they deem inappropriate. And also, notably, the same people who have a problem with screenshotting or “rumor-mongering” when El does it do not have a problem when their friend is doing it.

It honestly feels very weirdly culty. It’s not enough to not be making a fuss in public (up until now, anyways), we also have to never express any feelings we may or may not have in any space with more than one non-approved person, apparently. Break that rule and we’re persona non grata. It’s also an extremely bad look on the transphobia front, to be clear, and doesn’t do anything to assuage concerns about implicit biases, but even aside from that…surely it’s apparent that this is just weird, right?

When the discussion around whether it was hypocritical or not came up, Ryan Smith and Maia (both co-founders of the Fellowship and admins on the Discord server) said a few things in the server that I thought were also exceptionally good responses worth quoting, so I got their permission to add them here — emphasis added is mine:

Via Maia:

I want you all to take screenshots and share them with anyone you think can help if you experience abuse here. If it’s at the hands of another member, share it with leadership. If it’s at the hands of leadership and you don’t feel like you can share it with the other leadership here, then take it where you need to take it. 
What will never be good behavior, whether anyone agreed to privacy or not, is taking screenshots and sharing them, simply for the purpose of making what is said in this space accessible to the people who have harmed those complaining in our space. There’s a bit of a double bind in that everything you type on the internet could be read back to you in court — and at the same time, this is an invite only space and you agreed to good behavior to get into it. 

Via Ryan:

I also want to second what Maia said. We are at this specific juncture and the broader place in our movement because of a consistent failure to call out and deal with bad actors in positions of power. Silence is not peace and treating the two as the same is what gives space for the worst elements to run amok.

Recurring themes throughout this experience

Two men will defeat one;
your tongue can endanger your head.
In every hand hidden by a cloak,
I expect to see a weapon.
— Havamal 73

With that, we’re brought up to the present day, as I furiously write this essay in hopes that I can finish it before anything else happens that I’ll have to document. That was my retelling of the events that have happened thus far, with the most glaring issues pointed out along the way. There are a few things that have been such consistent issues that I think they should be called out on their own, which I will attempt to do in a slightly more abbreviated manner than the rest of this post. These issues include:

Glaring flaws in the Code of Conduct and enforcement of it

As someone coming from tech, where codes of conduct and enforcing them have been a huge topic of discussion for years now, the way that the code of conduct has been written and enforced is disappointing, to say the least.

The biggest issue that I see with the code of conduct itself as written is that intention is referenced multiple times. Those times include “deliberate acts of intimidation,” “being intentionally crude and offensive,” “comments directly intended to belittle, offend, or cause discomfort,” and “deliberate misgendering.” I have discussed at length why focusing strictly on intention is problematic, so I won’t be doing it again. I will add that a cis person’s idea of deliberate misgendering and a trans person’s idea of deliberate misgendering are often very different.

Questions and issues I have after researching how the CoC complaint and enforcement process was handled over the last four months:

• Is there a process in place to prevent retaliatory complaints? Especially given that the rule change was never publicly announced, the only people who would know about it would be the ones working on it. I know for a fact that even some people on the planning committee who didn’t know about the rules update until El was banned. What is there to stop David (or someone else on the committee) from immediately sending in a complaint about El, based on a rule that didn’t exist when there was a complaint about him and that she doesn’t know about? What are the checks and balances there?
• Why weren’t more witnesses contacted? One of the statements I read referenced at least four additional witnesses, and as far as I know, none of those people were contacted or asked to give a statement. The investigation appears to have consisted of five witnesses El suggested and one other witness. One of the witnesses referenced in the statement (but not contacted by the investigation committee) was misgendered multiple times by both David and Ristandi, which would presumably be valuable context to have in light of an investigation around the impact of their behaviors on LGBTQ+ people. Said witness wasn’t even aware there was a complaint process in place to handle issues like that, in fact.
• Why was the rest of the executive committee — consisting largely of people who have known David for multiple years — permitted to investigate a complaint around him? Why were no other voices added? How was impartiality ensured throughout this process?
• Why isn’t there an appeal process for complaints?
• Why did other members of the NET planning committee feel confident making comments about El’s complaint and the content thereof, both publicly and privately, when they hadn’t read it? What information were they basing their comments on? If the reason the complaint wasn’t shared with others was privacy concerns, then why did planning committee members make comments about its contents without having read it? 
• Is there a documented process for handling code of conduct complaints, evaluating said complaints, and enforcing the code of conduct? Why isn’t it public?
• Can you submit a complaint on behalf of someone else?
• Do people volunteer for investigation committees or are they assigned?
• How do you handle a complaint submitted by someone on the planning committee and/or executive board, vs. one submitted by an attendee?

I want to add “how on earth do you justify claiming that unconscious bias isn’t a factor when David saw fit to mansplain a subject to a woman with an advanced degree in it?” but as far as I can tell, the subject of unconscious bias was never addressed substantially at all. Honestly, I would also argue that behavior like that constitutes concrete bias and that anyone who feels emboldened enough to pull that shit in 2024 is almost certainly behaving badly in other ways.

The code of conduct issues (and everything around them) are one of the things I find the most deeply frustrating about this entire thing, because to be frank, this is at least a partially-solved problem. I know that I do have a specific background that I’m sure helped here, but with an hour or so of research, I was able to find the following:

Example Code of Conduct Enforcement Procedures

These include a list of conflict of interest policies, an established process for handling a report, a specific checklist of factors to use when evaluating a report (which includes not only evaluating if the action disproportionately impacted marginalized people, but also if it involves a community leader), action steps for proposing a behavioral modification plan and consequences, and a process for following up with a reported person (incredibly absent in El’s banning process) as well as following up with a reporter. On a brief skim, there is no reason that this couldn’t be used almost verbatim in NET’s processes.

I also found many other resources, which I have added to the “further reading and resources” section at the end of this post.

In short, based on what I have observed, I cannot trust that if I reported something, it would be taken seriously (especially if it involves a member of the “old guard,” so to speak), or that I won’t be publicly mocked and harassed. There is no way anyone can promise me that wouldn’t happen, because it is exactly what happened here.

Lack of transparency

There is a general lack of transparency when it comes to what the processes and procedures are that go into running NET and making decisions about the event, including but not limited to how the vés are chosen, how people make it to the planning committee, how decisions are made about workshops, and what the vetting process is for workshops, speakers, and/or attendees. Garrett and I have been trying to figure out how things work and what the rhyme/reason is for months, and are still getting different stories from different people. It seems that the lack of transparency also affects people working within the committees, as different people are told different things and there doesn’t seem to be a single source of truth for processes, documenting complaints, etc.

Overall, there is clearly a preference for handling things quietly and in private, which I understand when there’s a safety or privacy issue involved. I do also understand this may be something of a generational gap. But, in general, this level of opacity is not how most organizations are run any more. And personally, when I see this level of focus on privacy and doing things behind the scenes, my immediate concern is a lack of accountability or consequences for bad actors and creation of a “missing stair” issue, because that is often the practical result of a lack of transparency, even if it’s not intentional.

Lack of awareness

There seems to, overall, be a lack of awareness as to how things look, feel, and sound to “outsiders” or newcomers, as well as a lack of awareness around the overall power dynamics involved in situations like this. For example, I have heard people say that David doesn’t technically have any more power than anyone else, despite being the named President of NET — but practically, it doesn’t seem like anyone has a ton of power to rein him in.

I also understand that NET is a volunteer-run event, but many of the people on the planning committee have well-established academic backgrounds, have written books, and/or are former Troth leadership (which, at least to me, comes with a certain amount of perceived clout and recognition from the wider community, even if they are no longer associated with the Troth). To act like Garrett or El or I have the same amount of situational or social power in the context of heathen communities (and specifically the northeast heathen community) is simply untrue.

When our complaints were raised, we consistently faced comments about how these people have known each other for 10, 15, 20 years, which is not a level of clout we have (or can ever have, due to the nature of linear time — I will never be able to catch up to David’s years of being in the northeast). It is very clear that our voices, opinions, and thoughts count for less than those of people who are more established and have been here longer. Pretending that these dynamics don’t exist and that we’re all existing on a level playing field doesn’t do anyone any good.

It is also very clear that there have been people on the “inside” of NET pointing out how bad all of this looks, calling for more accountability, etc., who have been repeatedly shut down. The fact that they’ve been shut down only shows a further lack of awareness around optics and implicit bias.

Double standards

I’m sure there are some that I’m forgetting, but here are the patterns around double standards that I’ve noticed:

• Context: As discussed at length above, it seems that the context around other people and their personal lives is incredibly important, but the context for us doesn’t matter — even when some of that context (rising transphobia and fascism, for example) is not personal context and is something that anyone involved in running an “inclusive” event should know.
• Tone: Throughout everything from El’s initial talk to the hellthread up until now, our tone has consistently been criticized as too angry, too harsh, too aggressive, too divisive, we’re not being understanding enough, etc. And when it comes to hearing from trans people, it seems that the voices who get lifted up are those most willing to watch their tone. Meanwhile, I’ve seen multiple people describe David and Ristandi as yelling, red-faced, and literally frothing at the mouth during El’s talk, but they have received little to no public rebuke for that behavior, nor for any of the behavior since. Neither did the people saying awful things in the hellthread.
• Guilt by association: Penn and Anna have been unfriended, blocked, and iced out of group spaces, without any communication, by multiple people, even before (or without, in Anna’s case) saying anything publicly about how El has been treated. Garrett and I have experienced similar treatment, to a lesser degree, even before the gossip/screenshot mill started. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like the woman whose husband carried around a Confederate flag mug for years has faced any social consequences.
• Alienation from community spaces: El is being held responsible for any perceived social impacts on NET leadership or committee members, to the point that it’s mentioned in the letter banning her. Meanwhile, El, Penn, Anna, Garrett, and I have all faced social consequences, including removal from community spaces without any warning or communication — in El’s case, a large community space that is explicitly not run by or officially affiliated with NET.

Intentions ascribed & weight given to impact

This one gets its own special callout because the issues are so thorough and numerous here. On the intentions front, David’s (and others) intentions have consistently been cast in the best light possible — even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, the marginalized people on “the other side” of this issue haven’t been treated with the same benefit of the doubt at almost any turn. There are multiple examples of this in the hellthread, some of which I directly referenced above.

From the jump, David’s intentions have been assumed to be positive, or at least neutral, but El’s have been assumed to be malicious, vindictive, and deceitful (which, as we have already covered, plays into a lot of stereotypes around trans people and specifically trans women). This is a clear throughline, continuing from the way her talk was received and reacted to, to the way people reacted to (and remembered) her in the hellthread, to the reactions to her essay. People have assumed that she’s engaging in bad faith the entire time, and while I can understand that when it comes to the essay, there were a lot of things that happened before that where I simply do not think this distrust is warranted (and where, again, it smacks of both clique politics and implicit bias).

Another specific example is a disabled trans man of color, who made an offhand comment in the F&I Discord (“Patty was very anti Loki for many years, from what i’ve been told.”) without any follow-up commentary or snark. I have seen this one comment described as everything from “talking shit” to “rumor mongering” and I know that people have taken action in response to those descriptions (and weirdly, the furor didn’t start until nearly a week after the initial comment was made²⁴).

On the other hand, whoever is spreading gossip and taking screenshots from the Discord server is somehow still in good stead with everyone, including people at NET leadership. They even get covered for with comments like, “well, I didn’t actually see it from a screenshot, someone told it to me.” Weird that that behavior is okay, but a trans person repeating something they were told is not acceptable and is treated as the height of intentionally malicious behavior (which applies to both the above comment and mine about Kat).

When it comes to the impact of behavior, the impact of David’s behavior has been consistently downplayed, where the impact of El’s behavior has…well…honestly, largely not been stated. The only thing in the banning letter that even remotely references the impact of or harm caused by her behavior is the “alienating from community spaces” comment (and I’ve already covered at length why that’s an unfair double standard). If you compare this to El’s complaint and how clearly she articulates the impact of David and Ristandi’s behavior, the difference is stark. 

This is especially galling, given that there is no way the executive committee could have fairly assessed the impact of David & Ristandi’s behavior. After all, they didn’t thoroughly investigate it, sticking largely to the witness list of five people that El provided (all of whom were at the class, since the committee chose to ignore the bad behavior on Facebook). What’s the impact of El’s essay? Her “curse”? It’s never stated. There were certainly more people present at El’s workshop than were referenced in her essay, and the committee is in no place to assess how many of them were harmed or to what degree, because they didn’t even ask. The only harm assessment (AFAIK) was the 5-6 witnesses contacted. This, once again, gives the impression that some peoples’ feelings, intentions, and complaints matter significantly more so than others.

David Carron’s behavior

Most of these patterns are structural and I have done my best to not make this a hit piece about David specifically, because it’s extremely clear that a lot of what’s happened has been caused by problems with the overall way things are done, not any one person. However, I do think his behavior has been egregious enough (and others have covered for it enough) that it deserves its own section to specifically point out exactly how much bad behavior has been excused and ignored.

To recap:

• He attended the workshop, seemingly because he wanted to derail the Q&A based on the title alone
• He proceeded to be disruptive and derail the workshop with yelling and belligerent takes that had nothing to do with the text of the talk itself, promoting an environment of hostility that affected multiple marginalized members of the community and was actively triggering for several people
• After the talk, he continued to be belligerent, interrupting, talking over, and mansplaining to community members (including the incident I’ve referenced a few times now)
• He declined a mediation attempt he had previously offered when approached the next day by El
• He continued to attack El when she shared the talk on Facebook, even though she did not say anything inflammatory or attacking towards him when sharing the talk
• He ignored it when one of the community members who had left crying tagged him in the comments of El’s Facebook post, after being upset that David was blaming El for their reaction
• He attacked multiple trans people in the course of the hellthread, including using completely unacceptable language to speak about trans people and refusing to apologize for doing so
• He also openly lied about what he and others had/hadn’t said/done in the hellthread and ignored anyone who called him on his lies
• He did not once even attempt to rein in anyone saying horribly transphobic bullshit or threatening trans people on his behalf on the hellthread
• As far as I can tell, he was only willing to even start to unpack his actions and the impact of them after being approached by someone with significant standing in the community

He did sit through the mediation process and take the two-hour class. Those are the only neutral-to-positive actions I can find throughout the course of this. Outside of the direct context of this series of incidents, I have seen him go weirdly hard at yet another trans person (who, interestingly, in their response, brought up feeling like David’s previous behavior towards them had been biased) for no reason. He has also made repeated snarky comments in public or semi-public spaces referencing those of us with complaints.

Most recently, on a public Facebook post, he left this comment:

I don’t care if it was intentional or not, this comment is weirdly full of dogwhistles (and a glaringly obvious typo):

• Referring to Asatru as “traditional,” which is an exceptionally loaded word in the context of our current political climate (especially as refers to LGBTQ+ people)
• Saying that Asatru has more morals than “the greater pan-pagan movement” when the biggest thing that Asatru is known for is harboring bigots and the most well-known national organization that has “Asatru” in the name is a registered hate group
• And, of course, “the greater pan-pagan movement” is known to be a relatively safe space for LGBTQ+ people, barring the occasional TERF-y groups

Nearly a full 24 hours later, despite zero comments from El in the meantime (and after a follow-up question he ignored), he comes back and leaves this comment:

My issues with this, at a glance:

• Weird obsession with El — why come back to a thread significantly later to attack someone, when the comment you’re replying to was there when you left the first comment?
• Referring to El as abusive reads like classic DARVO (I mean…reading the full summary, a lot of it is familiar)
• “I acted.” Is this David taking credit for submitting the complaint that got El banned? It’s clearly him taking credit for something, but I’m not sure what.
• Again, saying that El has zero interest in solving problems, only wants to stir the pot, and hasn’t articulated any actual issues. Which is patently false, if you’ve been following along and even half-paying attention.

I responded to his comment with the following:

As of writing, over four days later, he has not replied. (This is what I have come to expect when he’s pushed for details or clarification, or caught in a lie.)

As of writing, El, Penn, Garrett, and I have had gossip spread about us and specific actions taken against us, either because of guilt by association or because of speaking about our feelings in an invite-only space (or both). Meanwhile, David is saying things like this with his entire chest, in public, and if anyone is even trying to rein him in, they’re doing it behind the scenes (and clearly not doing a very good job of it). More double standards.

He clearly doesn’t think much about what he says before he says it — and why would he? He’s done this whole entire list of things and not once has he faced any consequences or actually been held accountable. And this man is the president of NET?

The impact of these patterns

Again, I’ve said it multiple times throughout, but I want to say it again: I know that there are a lot of people working on NET who are genuinely doing their best. Okay? I know. I know it’s a labor of love and a lot of work. I know it’s really hard to see someone criticize something you’ve worked so hard on, especially when they’re someone you don’t know very well. I understand where the knee jerk reaction comes from, I really do. I just wish there had been more interrogation of that knee jerk reaction throughout this entire process and that the people who were trying to interrogate it were listened to.

Because despite what everyone’s intentions are, the impact of the behavior and attitudes I’m looking at, including:

• “It’s okay when my buddy screenshots conversations and shares them, but not when this person that I don’t like does it”
• “There’s no reason to push back on someone saying that ‘implicit bias is the new spectral evidence,’ or to criticize someone saying that being trans or queer is a choice”
• Everything else I’ve outlined above

…is that I walk away feeling like this is not a community that cares about actively doing the hard, annoying, boring work of creating and perpetuating a safe space.

The impression that is left on me after viewing all of this behavior is that this is a community that’s fine with people being quietly problematic (in ways that prop up harmful systems, attitudes, and behaviors) — or not so quietly problematic, in some cases. At the same time, it seems this community is not fine with marginalized people being loud, imperfect, and angry when they encounter said problematic behavior, and that people who fall into that (very subjective) category will be punished. That is not a dichotomy I’m on board with ethically or morally, and it is also, again, a dangerous precedent to set.

And all of this is against a backdrop of an ever-rising fascist tide and all the things that that entails. There will only be more people fleeing hostile environments to come to places like NET, looking for a safe haven. If you devalue newer attendees, then you are inherently going to create a less inclusive, more insular community, because newer attendees are more likely to be marginalized. If this is how newer attendees are treated if/when they go against the grain, you’re only going to create a more and more cliquey environment that reinforces its own unconscious biases. These things are true whether that’s your intention or not.

It’s also a known fact that fascists actively try to infiltrate spaces that are seen as vulnerable or easily exploited, with the express intention of radicalizing people and drawing them away. If you do not think there is a strong possibility of that happening in any heathen community or event, you’re kidding yourself. And wearing “FTN” shirts isn’t going to prevent that.

This event takes place in a country where the supposed opposition party feels comfortable throwing trans people under the bus and multiple members publicly scapegoated us for losing the election. We live in a country where a supposedly left-leaning publication thinks that if we’re nicer, maybe people will stop trying to kill us. If an event wants to be safe for trans people to attend — all trans people, not just the ones that you personally know and like (and knew before they came out)²⁵ — then it is not enough to simply say that’s the case. We need to see action that backs it up. And I simply have not seen that type of action taken consistently throughout the course of this series of incidents.

But seriously, why are you doing this?

An unwise man
thinks he’ll live forever
if only he can avoid a fight,
but old age
will give him no peace,
even if weapons do.
— Havamal 16

I’ve already talked about why I’m approaching this issue (or series of issues) the way that I am (publicly, with evidence, why I included the evidence I did, etc.). But you might still be wondering why I’m doing this at all.

In 2017, I started working on fiction podcasts and became an active participant in at least one corner of the aptly-named audio drama community on Twitter and Discord. I spent the next two years working in earnest to be a good-faith community participant, boosting others wherever I could (both personally and professionally, including helping with crowdfunding for those in pretty dire positions), and offering feedback (and taking action) that I thought would create a more equitable, more enjoyable space for everyone.

In return, I was subtweeted, iced out of friendships and groups, and, at one point, discovered that someone was being viciously bullied due to nothing but a perceived connection to me (cinematic parallels). That discovery upset me to the point of nausea, and I pulled out of a lot of community spaces, because the thought of anyone being treated badly on my account (and then that treatment being ignored by others, because it was one of the Cool Kids™ doing it) was too much to bear.

Over the course of those two years, I regularly approached people that I perceived as having a problem with me and asked if we were good, or expressed my concerns to others, and was consistently told that I was just being anxious and nobody had any problem with me.

In early 2020, the shit hit the fan, as another cruel Cool Kid launched a smear campaign against a dear friend of mine, who coincidentally happens to be a trans woman. This had been a long time coming and I had seen it all unfolding behind the scenes, including screenshots of DMs that directly disproved the allegations against my friend. I still waited to see if Cool Kid had anything to say that I didn’t know. As much as I loved my friend, I knew that it was at least theoretically possible that there was information I didn’t have.

That was not the case. But, because of CK’s position in the community, I had to watch a witch hunt unfold, where people actively attacked my friend and removed her from paying gigs (ones that she desperately needed), without any kind of third-party or impartial investigation or even a handwaved attempt at one.

I did what I do and pulled aggro, loudly defending my friend in public. Which worked, both in that it did make some people put on the brakes and in that my friend was no longer the sole target of the mob. The whole thing was ludicrous, but honestly? Also heartbreaking. It was incredibly clear that people had never liked me, or my friend, or our other friends that were too gender non-conforming and not “nice” enough about it. It was equally clear that they were using this incident as an opportunity to air their dislike and blame it on us being, among other things, “toxically masculine.”²⁶ (Yes, that was a real thing that was really said, and yes, there’s definitely a lot to unpack there.)

I spent two years of my life trying in earnest to help people who couldn’t wait to spit on me as soon as someone else told them it was the right thing to do. I was fresh on the heels of a deeply traumatizing breakup and finding out about the above-referenced social media stalking, which added a fun element of living in fear that my ex was going to somehow see this mess and decide to make it worse for the fun of it, because fuck me I guess.

The whole thing was deeply steeped in transmisogyny, in addition to garden-variety transphobia/homophobia/misogyny. It did eventually die down, but not before the harassment and lies got so bad²⁷ that I had to make a statement. I would invite you to check out the section titled “As far as my character goes.” This is a very low bar, but despite knowing that all of this furor was based on completely false allegations, my response contained considerably more thought, consideration, and nuance than I have seen from David at any point during this debacle.

I have also been working in tech for ~15 years at this point, first as someone who looked like a very femme-presenting woman, then as a publicly queer person, now as a publicly queer and trans person. I have had multiple men follow me to Twitter to harass me after I said wild things like, “no, you can’t make rape jokes in this group for tech networking.” I have repeatedly found myself pushed out of tech spaces while being promised it’s not about any of these things. Hell, in two separate jobs I was targeted by my managers in ways that were so clearly motivated by bias (and a lack of understanding worker’s rights laws) that they were legally actionable, all while said managers swore up, down, and backwards that there was definitely no bias involved.²⁸

So no, I don’t have a lot of patience for this scenario. It’s deeply, infuriatingly familiar. I could play the rest of this song with my eyes shut.

Writing this essay and putting together all of this extensive documentation, with the same energy I’d approach documenting an HR complaint (while simultaneously contacting an employment lawyer), has been very time-consuming and not exactly fun. Why am I doing it, then? Precisely because of how familiar it all is, and because I’ve been the focus of similar issues more times than I’d like to count and I know how shitty it feels, and because I’m still getting hit by the shrapnel even if I’m not the main focus right now, and most importantly, because I think it’s the right thing to do.

If I’m being honest, I would probably be doing this even if I didn’t like El at all. I do like her, but more importantly, it is my personal deeply-held belief that we should fight bias whenever we see it and shore up our weak areas as a community before they’re exploited to hell and back, because people deserve safe community spaces and gods know we need them right now.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

When you recognize evil,
call it evil,
and give your enemies no peace.
— Havamal 127

At this point, I hope it is clear why I feel that there are obvious, deep-seated problems in how NET is being run as an event and a community. All of the information that I have — which I have presented here as exhaustively as possible — points to a very clear pattern of bias and double standards in action and impact, despite (hopefully) good intentions.

As for me, I will always stand in solidarity with the person who has less structural power in any given situation, unless they are very clearly in the wrong. Yes, even if they’ve been kind of an asshole on occasion. Someone does not have to be a perfect victim, who lays still and silent while being repeatedly attacked, for me to have empathy with them and stand in solidarity with them. This situation is no different.

At the end of the day, if you don’t like El, that’s fine. We do not all have to be besties to attend an event together. There are plenty of people that I don’t like, but I can still be civil to them and even have sympathy for them when they experience something genuinely bad. The problem arises when a complaint submitted by someone that isn’t universally liked (especially one submitted against someone with more standing in the community), is treated differently than a complaint submitted by someone more well-liked (especially if it’s against someone who isn’t universally liked). And that, to me, seems like what has happened here. El isn’t one of the popular kids, so she gets treated like this, even though (at least IMO), there are cis women on the planning committee who are just as abrasive as she is, if not more so. As I said above, if you want to run your event like a party for your friends, you can do that, but you should stop marketing it as an inclusive event for the broader community.

When it comes to the future, I know that I’m in no position to make any kind of demands. That’s fine by me, because frankly I don’t have any interest in speaking to people as though they’re children or I’m their boss (a position that I wish had held true in how myself, my partner, and others had been treated). It has been made abundantly clear to me that my opinions are not needed or wanted, as far as many members of NET leadership and the broader community are concerned.

That said, I have no interest in returning to NET if this is the way things will be run. The thought of paying $600 in tickets between my partner and I, plus another several hundred dollars in gas, dog boarding, and cat sitting, for the privilege of going to an event where a non-zero amount of leadership has been actively unfriendly to me and where I know I will have little to no recourse if I’m harassed or mistreated, is less than appealing. I understand that things used to be worse and that they’ve improved, but that is hardly a compelling argument to me, when I was promised something leagues better than what I experienced in Texas and I got more of the same.

For me to be willing to consider attending in 2025, El’s ban would need to be revisited and there would need to be some measure of accountability taken and amends made on the parts of David, Ristandi, and all members of the NET planning committee who have participated in shielding them from the consequences of their actions.

For me to be an enthusiastic attendee, some combination of the below would do it:

• Revamping the Code of Conduct and enforcement procedures to more carefully account for implicit biases and their impact, as well as to overall be more thorough and more impartial
• Training on implicit biases and their impact for the entire NET planning committee team
• Training on inclusive language across the board for the entire NET planning committee team
• A clear commitment to increasing transparency around what the established processes are, how decisions are made, and when those decisions/processes/rules are changed

I am hoping for a positive outcome, but I’m not betting on it, because I am tired of being disappointed. To be honest, I will be pleasantly surprised if the reaction is anything other than a continuation or escalation of the low-key smear campaign that’s already happened. (The bar is in Hel. Níðhöggr is chewing on it.) Until some effort of improvement is made, though, I cannot recommend NET as an event to attend, particularly if you are a member of vulnerable and marginalized communities.

Postscript/update: There is no war in Ba Sing Se

Better to have a home,
even if it’s little—
everyone should call somewhere “home.”
Your heart will be wounded
if you have to beg for every meal
from somebody else.
— Havamal 37

I’m writing this on March 3, 2025, 60 days after publishing the initial post and sharing it on Facebook. Since then, I’ve had several people reach out to me both publicly and privately to thank me for writing it. On January 1, Garrett submitted a formal complaint on behalf of both of us. Part of the point in doing things this way is that, as I referenced multiple times above, tone-policing has been a consistent issue, as well as any kind of public or even semi-public commentary (no matter how gently worded) being immediately perceived as an aggressive attack. We wanted to give them a chance to show that they could do better when approached in the way (formally, politely, privately) they say they want to be approached.

However, as you’re probably guessing given the title of this update, that was not the case. Here’s the response we received on January 23:

Our response:

You can see Garrett’s full statement on the situation and these updates here on Facebook, or here if you’re not on Facebook. You can read the full complaint (with redactions for privacy as needed) here. Other email screenshots and documentation are here.

I don’t really know what else to say at this point, except that I am disappointed and frustrated, so I’ll quote Garrett:

There were multiple points brought up in my complaint that the response from NET’s Committee did not see fit to even address, or that they chose to address in a vague way without substantiating evidence. Some examples: 

• The fact the the Code of Conduct change could clearly be defined as harassment via the “weaponizing the Code of Conduct” rule
• The fact that “intent” is listed on many of the rules, but the intent of those who pushed back against the Committee’s decisions has been ignored at best and treated as malicious at worst
• The fact that, prior to the events of this past six months—which all started with David and Ristandi’s misconduct—Elizabeth had no “known history” of engaging in unethical, illegal, racist, homophobic/transphobic, or other intentionally malicious activities taking place outside of the Event. And yet this was the rule she was banned based on.
• The deliberate acts of misbehavior on the part of David and Ristandi, as well as the very clear pattern of bias outlined in this document regarding this situation, that have all gone unaddressed.

I am not saying there hasn’t been progress, but statements like the one I received make me feel like the work I put in to submit this complaint isn’t valuable to the Committee that runs this event. I know not everyone feels that way, so what little ire I have energy left to give to this situation isn’t for them. It’s for the ones who feel they’ve done enough, they’ve spent enough time on this, they are tired and they want to just be able to move on and wash their hands of the whole affair. …

I will reiterate this: we are ALL tired. I am tired of having my existence threatened by the govt of the country I live in. I am tired of people who know how to say the right words to look like a fighter, but don’t know how to fight when it actually comes time to fight. I am tired of people whose allyship is selective to the environments they deem worthy or most valuable, as a cishet person. But when a trans person tells them that this fight is important, too, we are asked “well it’s hard, can’t you just put yourself in my shoes for a minute?”

Despite the outcome and the public statements, I know for a fact that there are people on the planning committee who share our concerns to at least some degree, and who have been repeatedly talked over and shut down. So: 

• The NET planning committee (which, again, has no trans women on it) feels so confident as to say that they have never exhibited any kind of bias towards trans women ²⁹
• People “on the inside” who speak up with concerns otherwise are regularly shut down or spoken over
• “Outsiders” who have questions or concerns are taken in the worst faith possible and dismissed

Given all of this, I have no idea how anyone is supposed to take their expressed commitment³⁰ to “making [NET] a safe, enjoyable, and memorable Thing for all” seriously. Especially when it’s followed by saying that public disclosure of any processes around how the code of conduct is supposed to work, how complaints are investigated or enforced, what steps are taken to ensure impartiality throughout, etc., is “against industry best practices.” Which is a completely untrue and somewhat baffling statement. We didn’t ask for tax statements or somebody’s SSN, we asked for transparency around how their own code of conduct is designed, interpreted, and enforced. Not to mention, both of us are well-established professionals in our own fields who are well aware of what current best practices are around event safety, as I feel I have amply demonstrated throughout this piece. 

I know it’s probably easy right now to look at the world on fire and wonder why this bullshit heathen drama matters. That’s a great question — for the NET planning committee. With the world on fire, fascism running rampant, and marginalized people in your own communities being thrown under the bus left and right, why wouldn’t it be worth it to self-introspect on how you can create a safer and more welcoming space? Why wouldn’t you want to make sure that you’re doing everything humanly possible to hold the leaders in your community accountable? 

Speaking as someone who is a front-line target of the current administration, it feels like there’s an expectation to be grateful for whatever crumbs and empty words are given to me, even if there’s no concrete action steps given and the words are dripping with condescension. Because, you know, they aren’t shouting slurs at me and they say they hate Nazis! Didn’t you see their t-shirts? After all, what more could I possibly want?

Saying you’re committed to inclusion and wearing snarky t-shirts is not enough to make me feel safe at your event in rural Pennsylvania with a bunch of strangers. Not least because, after this, I already know many of those strangers would not have my back, especially if the person coming at me has been around long enough to be granted diplomatic immunity. 

Telling us over and over and over again that there is no problem at all and never has been and “thanks for your feedback but we were already working on that” — all of this behavior gives me zero faith that future incidents will be handled with the care they deserve. And when I, and others in my community, are under attack everywhere else in public life, by actual fascist government forces that actually want us literally fucking dead, the least we deserve is to feel safe and welcome in our spiritual spaces. It is not enough to say “this is a safe space,” you have to take proactive action to make it so. 

I want to call special attention to Brianna’s comment on Garrett’s most recent post (she also left a very solid one on my post back in January): 

It is clear to me that, despite attempts to portray otherwise, I (and Garrett, and Penn, and El, and…) am not the only one who sees a problem here. I can only hope that someday the voices of the people who actually want to address the problems at hand are either numerous enough or loud enough to warrant being listened to in the eyes of others.

Further reading and resources

Implicit bias

Understanding Unconscious Bias

Defeating Unconscious Bias: The Role of a Structured, Reflective, and Interactive Workshop

The Science of Implicit Bias and How to Combat It

The Psychology of Unconscious Bias

Unconscious Bias and the Public Servant: What can we do to overcome unconscious bias?

Unconscious racial bias goes deep—regardless of views on equality

The good, the bad, and the ugly of implicit bias (focused on women in STEM fields)

Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review

Implicit-Bias Remedies: Treating Discriminatory Bias as a Public-Health Problem

Transphobia

How to tell someone you know they’re being transphobic

Myths and Facts: Battling Disinformation About Transgender Rights

Supporting the Transgender People in Your Life: A Guide to Being a Good Ally

In flux between identities: the mental health impacts of transphobia

Transgender Stigma and Health: A Critical Review of Stigma Determinants, Mechanisms, and Interventions

Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion

Predictors of anti-transgender attitudes: Identity-confusion and deception as aspects of distrust

Distrusted disclosures: Deception drives anti-transgender but not anti-atheist prejudice

Transmisogyny

Transmisogyny 101: What It Is and What We Can Do About It

Confronting Transmisogyny in Today’s World

A Massive Study of 16,000 Participants in 23 Countries Finds People Are More Prejudiced Against Trans Women Than Trans Men

The impact of discrimination on the mental health of trans*female youth and the protective effect of parental support

Codes of conduct

Your Guide to Organizing an Amazing Community Conference (has example processes & documents that can be used as needed)

A very thorough set of resources, including a free e-book on responding to CoC reports & self-led training materials

Safety First PDX Code of Conduct Resources

Why and How to Develop an Event Code of Conduct

Codes of Conduct 101 + FAQ

How Tech Codes of Conduct Fail

A Code of Conduct is Not Enough

Code of Conduct Evaluations

Enforcement policies & processes

Example enforcement procedures (with additional resources at the bottom)

CERF Event Code of Conduct Implementation Plan

Conference Anti-Harassment: Responding to Reports

Impact vs. intent

How “Good Intent” Undermines Diversity & Inclusion

Aligning Intent & Impact: Countering Micro-Aggressions

Intent vs. Impact: Why Your Intentions Don’t Really Matter

Impact Trumps Intent: Micro-Aggressions in the Workplace

Tone-policing

What Is Tone Policing? The Problem with Gatekeeping Emotions

‘Lower your voice’: How tone-policing is used to silence people of colour

No, We Won’t Calm Down – Tone Policing Is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege

Fuck you, you’re wrong: the case against tone policing

Update log

In the interest of transparency, I’ll keep a list of any updates here:

January 5, 2025: Removed empty bullet in table of contents, added footnote 15 to clarify details about Kyle’s tattoo that provide context, updated description of affected person in the “Intentions ascribed & weight given to impact” section per their request (“disabled Black trans man” -> “disabled trans man of color”), minor rewording to sentences in last paragraph of same section.

March 4, 2025: Added postscript/update after original end of essay and two corresponding footnotes, updated table of contents to link to that section.

March 5, 2025: Added Anna Rose’s statement to the story thus far, along with a link to Garrett’s complaint and to the postscript/update. Fixed a few minor typos and weird formatting in some of the Havamal verses that had added extra blank lines.

1. This means that I am not a software developer or someone working directly with code. There is often a social hierarchy in tech, where people who work directly with code or are otherwise considered “technical” are treated with more respect and given more sway than people who don’t. ↩︎
2. People who are members of the planning committee can typically join any sub-committees they want to, as the sub-committees are dissolved at the end of NET and reformed in October/November meetings. I put “volunteered for” in quotes because, given that context, that reads to me as effectively giving himself more power. ↩︎
3. Edred Thorsson, aka Stephen Flowers, is one of the longest-standing figureheads of heathenry in America. He founded the Rune Gild and was one of the original co-founders of the Troth (previously the Ring of Troth), leaving in 1995. He is friendly enough with Stephen McNallen (founder of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a recognized hate group) that the AFA owns the rights to many of his books and he wrote a promo blurb for McNallen’s 2015 book. Additional reading: source 1, source 2. ↩︎
4. This is apparently also what Ristandi said at the end of El’s workshop. Per El, “I’m still not clear on what about my workshop flagged it as being about tearing each other apart.” ↩︎
5. The group is set to “private,” meaning that only members can see who else is a member and any content posted in the group, and “visible,” meaning that anyone can find the group. ↩︎
6. It was later confirmed to El that this decision had been made on the fly, in response to her asking questions. ↩︎
7. I stand by the comment I left at the time, which said, “Regardless of your intention, that was the effect. There is absolutely no reason that someone on the board of an event that bills itself as inclusive (and also bills itself as actively trying to be more trans-friendly) shouldn’t know 101-level language about how to refer to trans people. Also, as Anna notes, that was not the language in the response given, Ellery did not say “a trans” in reference to a person anywhere in their response, nor did anyone else.” ↩︎
8. And possibly motivated by a Wild Hunt post by El discussing her POV on the experience that had been scheduled to go up the next day, before it got canceled. This gives the appearance that the statement was posted with the goal of cutting El off at the knees. Then, when multiple trans members of the community were being dogpiled on and sniped at, there was no official statement or pushback on that. ↩︎
9. A fact that he was, by all accounts, very loud about when being disruptive during El’s workshop, describing it as “an organization that some attendees would disapprove of,” rather than “an organization founded and still heavily influenced by a known Nazi-sympathizer who also runs a publishing press with a thinly veiled swastika as a logo.” ↩︎
10. This is probably as good a place as any to note that there are a lot of people who have issues with the word “Asatru” due to the perceived focus on the Aesir at the exclusion of the Vanir or other entities, as well as the term being used to justify excluding any “non-Norse” deities, whether from non-Germanic pantheons or Germanic-but-not-Norse. (This is often enforced extremely unevenly and not thought about critically, given that there are deities attested to in certain Scandinavian countries and not others, but that’s an aside.) I personally tend to tread more warily in spaces that are insistent on describing themselves as specifically Asatru, as in my experience, there is more of a focus on doing things in a specific accepted way and more of an overall “old school” conservative vibe, on multiple fronts. ↩︎
11. I am using the loosest definition of “trans” possible here, because I am not sure who on the committee specifically identifies as trans (vs nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, etc., which are all often put under the trans umbrella). ↩︎
12. Additionally, a relationship that looks like a “traditional” marriage (again, regardless of whether or not it actually is) is at less threat from the state. ↩︎
13. And who, for the record, has — as far as I can tell — acted with a lot of integrity and sincerity throughout the course of all of this, and is one of the few people that has made me feel like positive change can happen. ↩︎
14. To be clear, not just with NET, but with heathenry as a whole. There’s a lot of still-packed Christian baggage, refusal to think critically about white privilege or other privileges, lack of consideration for how concepts like animism should inform the way we move in the world and interact with not just the environment, but other people, and so on. ↩︎
15. It’s a ginfaxi symbol, an Icelandic stave to ensure victory in wrestling. I later learned Kyle and his husband have been to Iceland, which I believe was part of the inspiration for it. ↩︎
16. I ran the initial draft of this essay by El to make sure I wasn’t misrepresenting anything to her recollection, and she did have this to add about Kyle: “I’d like to second much of this. Kyle has behaved with admirable professionalism, especially in the wake of “11:27 in Sokkvabekkr.” We share many communities, including the Troth communities, and he’s been willing to engage with me, publicly cordial, and, perhaps most significantly unblocked me on Facebook as soon as I submitted a request to join the Troth group, which I think shows a real commitment to his responsibilities over his personal feelings. While I still have significant differences and grievances with him, I think the heathen community would be an even worse place without his leadership.” ↩︎
17. Which, to be clear, I don’t believe is terribly likely — when people do something that is blatantly racist (or otherwise bigoted), it’s usually part of a larger pattern, they’re just good at hiding it. ↩︎
18. This is another reason that critically discussing and thinking about implicit bias is so important, because it inevitably has an impact someone’s reputation and how others perceive them, which in turn affects things like this. ↩︎
19. This list encompasses sexist incidents as a broad category, but there are plenty of examples of sexual assault. ↩︎
20. It’s possible there are multiple, of course, but based on how things have gone down I strongly suspect there’s one primary bad actor. I also strongly suspect I know who that bad actor is, but don’t have concrete proof. That’s the only reason they aren’t named here, given that they are arguably an active danger to marginalized people around them and clearly don’t care much for respecting community boundaries. ↩︎
21. I say “reminded” because Kat referenced this in her comment in the hellthread, so theoretically we could have known/remembered this, but I also maintain that expecting us to remember a detail like that months later is kind of insane. ↩︎
22. I lived in Austin for 15 years. It was the first home I chose for myself. ↩︎
23. Because Garrett and I are both friends with Kyle, believe it or not, since he can handle nuance well enough to understand where we’re coming from and not judge us for the things we do disagree on. ↩︎
24. Which, to me, speaks to a high level of intentional shit-stirring and malicious behavior. If the comment was that big of a deal, why not spread it around immediately? Why wait nearly a full week to do it? ↩︎
25. Including people who are visibly trans, disabled and/or neurodivergent, and don’t fit within cisgender beauty norms or dress in a way that fits the gender binary. ↩︎
26. Also “woke punk” which is incredibly hilarious in its idiocy and does make me laugh when I remember it. ↩︎
27. CK was literally referring to me as a white supremacist, in public, with my full name. ↩︎
28. I still regularly get notes from former coworkers thanking me for taking steps to make sure the ADA was actually enforced on our team when I left. ↩︎
29. To be fair, they actually say they see “no sustained pattern,” which to my mind begs its own questions but ¯\(ツ)/¯ ↩︎
30. Quote taken from the CoC page. Probably worth noting that at some point between 1/1/2025 and 3/3/2025, the note about sending an email to the NET Executive Board was added. It is unclear what the process should be if the complaint is about someone on the executive board. ↩︎