Free speech
Do you know what "free speech" IS? Are you sure?
CONTENT WARNING:
This post is about abusers free to range on Substack, aka: abuse perpetuated once more. I do not go into details. It might be triggering anyway.
Here we go:
To the people demanding known rapists and even traffickers of human beings for violent abuse and exploitation not be banned from platforms like Substack — or even feeling strangely riled when people dare say we should at least all block them „because free speech“, waving that already oft-misused concept around like a tattered flag smeared with shit once more, which they seem rather willing to set on fire:
You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the concept(s) of fairness, rights, and tolerance here.
This is not a joke.
This is not some infringement upon “tolerance”.
This is not “free speech getting suppressed”.
On the contrary, even if you don’t recognize it:
This is free speech being exercised.
Right there. Right here.
A call for a ban on abusers is not some impingement to a holier-than-thou concept. It is not people being ridiculous. It is not people deserving of ridicule and mockery for exercising their rights by being told they were, somehow, infringing on someone else’s. You are misunderstanding free speech and tolerance, simple as that. Tolerance does not mean we accept and even respect absolutely anything. “Free speech” is not equivalent to granting abusers the right to claim fresh victims wherever they want or haunt old ones to supposedly safe spaces without facing backlash, and, yes, BANS. Blocks and bans are a PART of exercising free speech in action. Because:
Tolerance HAS to end when someone is laughing at it and openly violating people. Or it stops being tolerance.
and
Free speech
is not
a limitless protection of any- and everything anyone might claim.
Least of all granting ABUSE a platform by necessity.
Blocks and bans on open platforms being enacted on people *kicking basic decency in the dust* and much, much worse?
That is not an action *against* free speech — it is housekeeping.
It is maintenance in one of many spaces of a democratic free speech society so that truth doesn’t get buried under lies and hatred. You think abusers don’t block us from their spaces? What, they get the right to prevent us from home intrusions — but we don’t? Is that the world you advocate for, that you wanna live in?
Free speech needs accountability and protection of humanitarian rights to remain breathing instead of turning into rape culture silencing victims and survivors, enabling abuse by giving perpetrators free range.
I came to Substack because it promised something rare:
A space where people could simply write without drowning in noise, where boundaries mattered, where “safety” wasn’t just marketing — inviting especially introverts and survivors in by that very concept.
Now I open my feed and see an ABUSER with a whole system of exploitation to him in the top rankings. Rankings I didn’t even ask for to get shown.
Blocked them? The algorithm doesn’t care.
Their face, their brand, their recruitment pipeline—promoted into MY sightlines regardless of what I chose!
And that is being called “free speech”? No. That algorithm and system is selective. (+)
My “no” has just become decorative.
My trauma has now suddenly become “content discovery.”
This is not „free speech“.
What free speech actually does:
Free speech protects private belief, personal expression, the right to speak your truth.
***
What free speech does not and has NEVER done :
It does not guarantee anyone:
a platform
an algorithmic boost
forced exposure into spaces where survivors have tried to build safety
exemption from netiquette or house rules
exemption from bans or blocks no matter what they do, even after violent crimes
What Substack calls “neutrality” has changed fundamentally in this one move. It turns into a totally different business model by letting this persist:
override user blocks,
maximize engagement,
rent trauma back to us as “trending.”
The defenders show up fast, I see.
“This protects your speech too“, you claim.
As if my speech and a rapist’s recruitment are equivalent risks.
As if I haven’t been silenced by predators my whole life, getting DROWNED in their shouting, people letting it happen.
And worse: them amplifying it, starting to take their speech over into their own, reproducing HARM—and in effect silencing me and shutting me out via trauma and retraumatization.
Me, who has done *nothing* wrong. Nothing to deserve that. While the CRIMINAL gets a fucking platform to continue doing harm.
This is a repeating process we have seen before.
It repeats because people refuse to take a stand *against harm*. (#)
Where were you when victims actually needed protection? Where were you when victims’ voices needed amplification?
Where were you when we got told to stay silent
because the TRUTH is being equated with lies
while a RAPIST is free to spew hatred and demeaning commentary and lure in more, further, new victims, unchallenged?
Instead of being
simply
STOPPED.
blocked.
BAN
oh dear, oh no
yes, banned.
oh look, i said the “bad” word.
sue me.
Because RAPE does not deserve a PLATFORM
to shout its message from the rooftops.
Only some people now confuse a “ban”
with a crime
at the same time
that they demand FREEDOM
for the CRIME.
What?
So, who are you truly protecting there? Your comfort? Him? Me??
You weren’t there to protect when the crime was DONE.
Not “happened”. DONE.
DONE by a PERSON to another PERSON.
And now you suddenly think I need protecting from... what? Myself?
From wanting to choose what enters my field?
I know what silencing looks like. Trust me. I LIVED through that shit.
And it does NOT look like what you seem to think it looks like.
So let me tell you what it truly looks like:
It looks like decades of “jokes” that weren’t jokes.
Of “just asking questions” that taught people how to dehumanize.
Of platforms that let HARM scale while calling it discourse.
It looks like cortisol spikes at 2am
because the block I set now means nothing against the ranking algorithm.
And, somehow, you seem to find that funny. Funny.
Ha. Haha. We are all laughing, big time. Not.
Dear Substack,
you courted introverts and survivors with promises of refuge.
Now you have built infrastructure that hunts us for engagement instead.
That’s not a marketplace of ideas. It’s a fucking MINEFIELD.
A minefield where only some people step on explosives—and others profit from the blast radius.
And guess who it is again, who suffers?
The victims. The survivors.
The ones who have been harmed countless times before.
*Of course*.
Of course, it is us.
Because why the hell would you ban a RAPIST and TRAFFICKER of violence and abuse instead, eh?
Much better to have the victims multiplying further and the survivors retraumatized and leaving your platform in droves or raging against the unfairness buried in the very system because the tide has now swapped over to yet another “safe space” once more — only for even that outcry to feed the algorithm pushing the rapist as if they were being lauded.
Because this is what the world has now become everywhere, is it?
*More* vicious and harmful instead of less.
NO. Actually.
Nuhuh, my friend, that is not what is happening.
This is not “just how the world is”. Least of all “how it is supposed to be”. This is NOT the good thing you laud it to be. LABEL it as. MISlabel it as, more accurately.
And it is also not irrevocable.
This is not something that just “is”.
This happens ONLY when people don’t dare take a stand—and HIDE behind declarations of „but free speech“ instead.
If instead of kicking HARM out the door, we invite it IN.
IF. And only then.
Is that what you want? Really?
Because this is what you are doing by defending violence instead of defending victims FROM violence.
Violence starts in speech, not just in deed. With every new person lured in. With every person remaining ignorant of what these people are. With every person who gets their hate dropped into their ears. With every survivor who is now being hunted by their continued presence haunting them in a formerly safe space.
(#) They have driven us from Facebook. From Twitter. From TikTok.
And a lot of lesser-known platforms, too.
This is like a continued home invasion where the perpetrators follow you and no one is lifting a finger to stop them. Where even the police isn‘t doing their job.
They‘re currently trying to take over Insta (and, ironically, a large part of them not succeeding is ad spam being an even worse problem).
And seemingly now Substack, too.
And here you are, you upstanding example of a righteous citizen, suggesting we are supposed to just let that continue?
AKA: Shut our damn traps about it. Because speech is sooooo, so free—just not for us?
If your “free speech” requires my repeated injury,
then you’ve defined “freedom” so narrowly
it excludes *everyone* who already built sanctuary here.
Everyone who has been harmed before and paid for everyone else‘s silence.
Effectively asking us *again* to stay silent and invisible as a rapist takes over the room. I.e.: Asking us to pay for your *comfort* and „fun“ while we get further abused.
That is not free speech. That is not freedom.
That is freedom only for abusers.
Can you see the irony in your own words yet? No?
What if I phrase them like what your actions do?
„Don‘t you dare shut him out.
Leaving him here protects you.“
Can you see what they actually do now?
Gods forbid that people like you — yes, you, every single person who ever said such bullshit about “free speech” (*) and every single person accidentally stumbling into reading this, too, because none of us are exempt from what is taking place right around us — should be asked to take an actual stand against rapists and FOR survivors.
(*) Which, somehow, always seems to come from people either profiting from this, being abusers themselves, OR at the very least never having been subject to the harms of that wrongful definition of a good thing, the exploitation of it for causing harm. Funny how that goes, right?
That‘s against creature comforts, isn‘t it?
Because it is so *funny* to see them get the platform boosts into top rankings by uncaring algorithms that have no moral compass.
And somehow, „obviously“, that is more important than preventing actual HARM to survivors and even further victims being produced by these people.
Preventing it by something as simple as keeping a line and harsh limit against their outreach content. By refusing to handing them yet another platform to lure people in.
Because we need to PROTECT people who have done everything to cross lines and break other people‘s most intimate, private, physical rights of not being harmed?
Because somehow people taking every right away from innocents should never lose their rights in response, even just to rein them in?
We don’t dare incarcerate them — now we don’t even dare deny them yet another mouthpiece?
Seriously?
Is that your answer to all the harm they do?
Do you also wonder why they get away with so much?
Or are you simply fine with that being the case?
So let me rephrase:
You‘d rather look away — or worse: look in and laugh about the harm produced; because it is oh so funny?
Dear Substack, what I want is basic decency:
Algorithmic respect for blocks.
Opt-out from rankings.
Or—honestly, much preferred—actual platform ACCOUNTABILITY for harm amplification
Instead of hand-waving about “neutrality” while survivors leave (are basically forced into leaving) once more.
Your algorithm obviously yet lacks either a moral compass OR at the very least actual alignment with its users. ‘Gifting’ me abusers in my feed is NOT the same as the safe space for survivors I was looking for. How the hell does the system even confuse that? You programmed it very badly, it seems. But you did that. It means YOU can change it, too, dear Substack Team. And even more so — a human team to check for infringements is there for a reason. No? Human people at least should know the difference between survivors processing harm and abusers CAUSING harm.
One is in line with the guidelines. The other isn’t.
Hopefully.
Or are they? You riddle me that, Substack Team. Do you really want abusers in your top rankings? Is that the platform you are offering here?
Because this is not what I was promised. And if this is it, yes, then I will leave. And a lot of others, too, hopefully. And you’d be giving one more space over to the systemic perpetuation of abuse, thus exposing what YOU actually stand FOR: ABUSE.
Is that what you want to be known for?
This isn’t abstract.
This is my nervous system.
This is my capacity to write, to think, to build a home here.
And it is being eroded—by design—every time I see that face in a list
which I never asked to see in the first place.
Shut the rapists out, not the survivors!
How about that, for once?
I did not come here for abusers’ bullshit OR for people defending abusers = people who broke the most basic rights of other people, to not get violated.
I came here to write ROMANTIC FANTASY, for COMFORT, for all the world’s sake.
And, maybe, to connect with select people seeming safe enough, including other survivors. In a safe space that does NOT forcefeed me such shit. There is enough of that out the door. I do not need it here as well.
Yet another platform pushing abusers is SO MUCH not what I need.
Guess I’ll just be taking my mail list elsewhere if this continues. Because at least this option is still hard-baked into substack’s core system, for now. For anyone subscribed: Consider this a pre-warning.
Although I do hope it does not come to that. I had been rather enjoying it here so far until these current incidents. I would dearly miss the direct connection to other pubs I actually want in my feed all in one place instead of spread out again over godsknowhowmany sites.
I dearly hope Substack / Substack Team will do something about this.
If not…
Well. Any followers are happily invited to follow me over as well if I should have to leave this platform, too, after all. Somewhere free. For ACTUAL comfort.
( To Patreon (the FREE version!) and Storyban, for starters, since I already have a presence there as well. I guess I’ll have to research English literature platforms, not that forums are quite the same. Am working on my own website as well, behind the screens. Not that it would make up for what we had here so far. It’d be a sore loss. Was meant to be an additional thing.
Guess I might ask my hon if we can’t make our own thing. What does one have a direct pipeline for, after all, to people making such things… *goes into wistful musing )
—> If you know any good alternatives… let me know?
PS:
To the person who invoked „right to guns“ as the solution to street confrontation (*) :
(*) As if that had anything to do with this topic here in the first place…
… but sure, let‘s answer this derailment, too, because why not. It’s easy enough.
I suggest you look up the statistics about where gun violence is LESS prevalent:
Countries that openly BAN guns
(and have heavy screenings and security measures around it, e.g. where you get arrested, fined, and potentially incarcerated for even carrying a too-real-looking fake-gun in public)
OR
those where you can just buy them around the corner, not a real problem.
( Or if that is too much work, how about this tidbit right there:
Did you know that …
… your likelihood to be killed by your own weapon in a home invasion
is bigger
than the likelihood to be killed by someone bringing a gun to your home of their own?
….and your child
is more likely
to get killed by your own gun, be it accident or rage, even that child grabbing your gun and committing a mass shooting with it, than by an armed intruder? )
Also Known As:
The ‘protection’ creates the very danger it promises to solve.
You’re welcome. To that. Now kindly stay off my site.
Because I’ve had enough bull* in my life for the rest of my lifetime as is, even if I should somehow turn more than several centuries old.