Anonymous
10/16/2021 09:57
Subject: Bad Art Friend
Do people really believe that when a white person is discriminated against solely based on their race, that it's not racism?
I'd never argue that it's as "bad" or damaging as when other races are the brunt of this because white people still have some protection generally speaking, but I'm so confused how "discriminating on the basis of race" somehow now includes "unless that race is white" in which case you deserve everything that comes to you.
I'd never argue that it's as "bad" or damaging as when other races are the brunt of this because white people still have some protection generally speaking, but I'm so confused how "discriminating on the basis of race" somehow now includes "unless that race is white" in which case you deserve everything that comes to you.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 09:43
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Re: the race angle
The issue for me is that Dawn really never did anything to Sonya. By all accounts, Dawn liked and admired and was respectful toward Sonya and the other POC in her writing community. But it was not mutual and Sonya did not like or admire or respect Dawn. But instead of just steering clear of her or staying neutral but not overly friendly towards her, Sonya was incredibly solicitous of Dawn's friendship. And I know sometimes POC feel obligated to be friendly to white people because of power dynamics, but they really were not at play here. Dawn was not a powerful or influential person in this world at all. Sonya wasn't trying to take classes with Dawn, Dawn was not an editor or publisher nor did she run events or serve as a gatekeeper for anything Sony might have wanted or needed access to. The opposite, actually! Sonya was much better connected and in actual positions of authority (like running the Muse conference and other leadership roles at Grubstreet). So Sonya had zero reason to feel like she had to befriend Dawn. I think she's just two-faced and insincere, and that this appears to be a really common personality problem in this community based on other people's behavior.
Dawn's "sin" that is getting her accused of racism is being hurt/confused when Sonya's mask dropped and Dawn saw that they were not actually friends. That's not "white womens tears." That's a normal response to noticing that someone who has always been really pleasant to your face, called you a friend, socialized with you in many settings, etc., is suddenly acting like they hate you. It's not racism.
Sonya brought all this on herself and is trying to use the general mist of racism to cover it up. But no -- even POC sometimes just have crap personalities and do weird, hurtful, or unethical things. It's okay to get mad at a POC for being a crap friend, for instance, or to call them out for treating you like crap. Really! That's fine. Walking on eggshells and acting like someone can't just be a typical human pile of excrement because they have experienced racism is silly. POC are just people and they can be as petty, mean, small, and limited as anyone else. They can't get together and conduct institutional racism, but that's not what we're talking about here.
The issue for me is that Dawn really never did anything to Sonya. By all accounts, Dawn liked and admired and was respectful toward Sonya and the other POC in her writing community. But it was not mutual and Sonya did not like or admire or respect Dawn. But instead of just steering clear of her or staying neutral but not overly friendly towards her, Sonya was incredibly solicitous of Dawn's friendship. And I know sometimes POC feel obligated to be friendly to white people because of power dynamics, but they really were not at play here. Dawn was not a powerful or influential person in this world at all. Sonya wasn't trying to take classes with Dawn, Dawn was not an editor or publisher nor did she run events or serve as a gatekeeper for anything Sony might have wanted or needed access to. The opposite, actually! Sonya was much better connected and in actual positions of authority (like running the Muse conference and other leadership roles at Grubstreet). So Sonya had zero reason to feel like she had to befriend Dawn. I think she's just two-faced and insincere, and that this appears to be a really common personality problem in this community based on other people's behavior.
Dawn's "sin" that is getting her accused of racism is being hurt/confused when Sonya's mask dropped and Dawn saw that they were not actually friends. That's not "white womens tears." That's a normal response to noticing that someone who has always been really pleasant to your face, called you a friend, socialized with you in many settings, etc., is suddenly acting like they hate you. It's not racism.
Sonya brought all this on herself and is trying to use the general mist of racism to cover it up. But no -- even POC sometimes just have crap personalities and do weird, hurtful, or unethical things. It's okay to get mad at a POC for being a crap friend, for instance, or to call them out for treating you like crap. Really! That's fine. Walking on eggshells and acting like someone can't just be a typical human pile of excrement because they have experienced racism is silly. POC are just people and they can be as petty, mean, small, and limited as anyone else. They can't get together and conduct institutional racism, but that's not what we're talking about here.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 09:33
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I am PP of above post. I meant to say racism against white women (or men) should be discussed - but put my parentheses in the wrong place which changed the meaning of my sentence. This typo is worth correcting because I don’t think the racism is there in the same way as being racist against white men. There’s less power dynamic there (which is not to say it’s ok to make bigoted or racially charged comments). It’s just that I don’t see this nearly as much. White women are the brunt more often.
I'm a white woman and I just want to say I disagree with this. I don't think white women (or men) can experience racism and I don't think there's anything in this story that can be called racism (and I'm firmly on the side of Dorland who I think was badly treated and misrepresented).
Instead, I think what happens is that people in positions of power will use the language and culture of anti-racist activist in order to abuse their power. I have seen it with white men who revel in being able to call white women Karens -- it's just misogyny, but they are excited to have a social justice-approved tool to enact misogyny against white women. I am suspicious of any white person who uses the phrase "Karen" (and it's always a middle aged or older white woman, it's interesting how young and beautiful white women are never Karens let's think about why) to discredit a white woman they don't like. I don't feel the same when POC use it (usually) because I do think that historically white women have used their special status to enact violence against POC and as a white woman I think we need to be aware of and reckon with that.
But this situation is unique because the POC in this story are in a position of real power and authority and I think they are abusing the Karen concept, and the ideas of white saviourism and white womens tears, to abuse their power. It's interesting because I don't think this is that common, but it is happening here. Again, I don't think this is racism -- I actually think what Larson, Ng, and to a lesser extent Gay and some others on Twitter, are doing is damaging to the anti-racist movement because it's a misuse of anti-racist language to try and hurt someone who has not done something racist, who has not engaged in white saviourism, and who is not using "white womens tears" to hurt anyone. I think they are being incredibly short sighted.
But again, there's no such thing as anti-white racism. It's just a misappropriation of social justice ideas.
This is quoted PP. I actually agree with you for the most part. I don’t know if it’s racism but what I think gets interesting is that in this case, there *is* a power dynamic. It’s not what we traditionally see in systemic, institutional racism (which I would agree the bad art friend is not). The power in question is the force of social disapproval in certain circles of a white person challenging a POC. Those with power (the established literati and more importantly the gatekeepers employed by and controlling of the influential Grub Street). Is it wokeness run amok? I’m no Fox News reader and I think most of these cancel culture articles are just socially divisive tempests in a teapot but here we’ve got such willingness to cancel Dawn for coming after a POC even when the power differential is stacked against Dawn and even where Dawn has been I think conclusively established as the wronged party. You could be right this is not racism in it’s true sense - but is it racist for a published powerful writer to make racial slurs, (white woman tears, PSL) then simultaneously gatekeeper the same white writer out of the community that would be pretty key to her success judging by how many of the not particularly profound writers got published with hefty advances for mediocre work (sure seems like cronyism?). It’s hard to explain which is why you may think we disagree but really maybe I’m just using imprecise terms.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 09:14
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:I am PP of above post. I meant to say racism against white women (or men) should be discussed - but put my parentheses in the wrong place which changed the meaning of my sentence. This typo is worth correcting because I don’t think the racism is there in the same way as being racist against white men. There’s less power dynamic there (which is not to say it’s ok to make bigoted or racially charged comments). It’s just that I don’t see this nearly as much. White women are the brunt more often.
I'm a white woman and I just want to say I disagree with this. I don't think white women (or men) can experience racism and I don't think there's anything in this story that can be called racism (and I'm firmly on the side of Dorland who I think was badly treated and misrepresented).
Instead, I think what happens is that people in positions of power will use the language and culture of anti-racist activist in order to abuse their power. I have seen it with white men who revel in being able to call white women Karens -- it's just misogyny, but they are excited to have a social justice-approved tool to enact misogyny against white women. I am suspicious of any white person who uses the phrase "Karen" (and it's always a middle aged or older white woman, it's interesting how young and beautiful white women are never Karens let's think about why) to discredit a white woman they don't like. I don't feel the same when POC use it (usually) because I do think that historically white women have used their special status to enact violence against POC and as a white woman I think we need to be aware of and reckon with that.
But this situation is unique because the POC in this story are in a position of real power and authority and I think they are abusing the Karen concept, and the ideas of white saviourism and white womens tears, to abuse their power. It's interesting because I don't think this is that common, but it is happening here. Again, I don't think this is racism -- I actually think what Larson, Ng, and to a lesser extent Gay and some others on Twitter, are doing is damaging to the anti-racist movement because it's a misuse of anti-racist language to try and hurt someone who has not done something racist, who has not engaged in white saviourism, and who is not using "white womens tears" to hurt anyone. I think they are being incredibly short sighted.
But again, there's no such thing as anti-white racism. It's just a misappropriation of social justice ideas.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 09:04
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
The reason I am obsessed with this story is that something kind of similar happened to me (different kind of community, different art form, and I have never done anything as amazing as donating a kidney to a total stranger, so not exactly the same, but similar) and in the end I had to let it go for the sake of my own mental health. I just walked away, shut down my Facebook account, and stopped talking to or interacting it with anyone involved in that community. It was hard but I had the support of a decent therapist and my husband and other friends, and in the end I think it saved me because like Dorland I had also started self harming. Plus being gaslit to that degree doesn't just make you feel crazy. When people you trust gaslight you long enough and seriously enough, I think it actually does make you lose your grasp on reality a bit. I reached a point where I just felt incapable of evaluating if someone was being genuine, if they actually liked me, or if I could trust them. I did not feel I could trust my instincts because for years these people had smiled at me and acted supportive and kind when they were anything but, and I had lost my touchstones for what a genuine person looked like, or what a real friendship felt like.
I am much better now but I lost my relationship to a artistic endeavor in which I had invested years of my life and considerable amounts of training (including both time and money). It was very costly. I also don't feel like I'll ever be 100% over what happened. I still struggle to trust people and keep everyone, including my spouse, my friends, and my therapist, at arms length. I have this protective shell now that no one can crack because I am afraid of what would happen if I did. There are other psychological issues as well. My experience, like Dawn's, involved an incident of sexual harassment that still impacts my ability to enjoy sex, for instance. I sometimes hit an unexpected trigger (like, I don't know, a 5000 word story in the NYT Mag about a remarkable similar story) that really shakes me and makes it hard to work or function as a mom or in my social life. I am incredibly tough and have ways to cope with all of this but I will never forgive those people for doing this, for forcing me to have to be this tough.
Also, it's really hard to make art when you have your trust and vulnerability exploited this way. Being an artist requires vulnerability. Losing that is brutal.
So I'm obsessed because I've been through this, but also because I admire that Dawn has not given up. And I hope she doesn't. I hope her book comes out, but more than that, I hope she finds a way to make something out of this specific experience. I am rooting for her because doing so is a way of also rooting for myself.
Also, people on this website are often really dismissive of the idea that adults can behave this way (the "mean girl" behavior as some describe it), and it is a relief to have a very clear example that yes, of course they do! People can be unbelievably cruel in the weirdest, smallest, pettiest ways. Even people you admire, even people who seem nice otherwise. I feel like this story demonstrates the degree to which those of us who have had experiences like this have been gaslit for years, not just by the people who harmed us but by others who simply didn't believe that kind of harm was possible.
I am much better now but I lost my relationship to a artistic endeavor in which I had invested years of my life and considerable amounts of training (including both time and money). It was very costly. I also don't feel like I'll ever be 100% over what happened. I still struggle to trust people and keep everyone, including my spouse, my friends, and my therapist, at arms length. I have this protective shell now that no one can crack because I am afraid of what would happen if I did. There are other psychological issues as well. My experience, like Dawn's, involved an incident of sexual harassment that still impacts my ability to enjoy sex, for instance. I sometimes hit an unexpected trigger (like, I don't know, a 5000 word story in the NYT Mag about a remarkable similar story) that really shakes me and makes it hard to work or function as a mom or in my social life. I am incredibly tough and have ways to cope with all of this but I will never forgive those people for doing this, for forcing me to have to be this tough.
Also, it's really hard to make art when you have your trust and vulnerability exploited this way. Being an artist requires vulnerability. Losing that is brutal.
So I'm obsessed because I've been through this, but also because I admire that Dawn has not given up. And I hope she doesn't. I hope her book comes out, but more than that, I hope she finds a way to make something out of this specific experience. I am rooting for her because doing so is a way of also rooting for myself.
Also, people on this website are often really dismissive of the idea that adults can behave this way (the "mean girl" behavior as some describe it), and it is a relief to have a very clear example that yes, of course they do! People can be unbelievably cruel in the weirdest, smallest, pettiest ways. Even people you admire, even people who seem nice otherwise. I feel like this story demonstrates the degree to which those of us who have had experiences like this have been gaslit for years, not just by the people who harmed us but by others who simply didn't believe that kind of harm was possible.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 08:55
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
I am PP of above post. I meant to say racism against white women (or men) should be discussed - but put my parentheses in the wrong place which changed the meaning of my sentence. This typo is worth correcting because I don’t think the racism is there in the same way as being racist against white men. There’s less power dynamic there (which is not to say it’s ok to make bigoted or racially charged comments). It’s just that I don’t see this nearly as much. White women are the brunt more often.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 08:51
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
I took yesterday “off” from reading and posting and was worried this thread would die. Is there a way to organize some letters or edits to Wikipedia that helps with accountability? Because at some point otherwise the story will fade like the Sarah Dressen story fades. So much is wrapped up here, so many layers/degrees of bad from the lack of social penalty of making racially charged comments (“Kennedy’s” PSL). Imagine a white person used a typically black name and one of the stereotypical (and very harmful) food preferences of POC? I understand racism is about power, but I also think when you have a group of authors deliberately positioning being an underrepresented race as a defense, that’s both disgusting to the other members of the Poc Community as well as, well, racist in the true, power dynamic sense. And trust me I get - absolutely - that one is a paper cut and the other a hemorrhage and am NOT trying to equate the pervasive systemic racism that POC face with this collection of small aggressions and interpersonal / unique power plays where being a WW is brought in as a negative (for Dawn, did it hurt her career?). So there’s that - and I think we need a conversation at the national level that racially derisive comments toward white men (or women) get some scrutiny. Turnabout may feel like fair play but are we not all diminished in kicking others?
Next thing I want to say is the people who abused their power, levying any racial issues aside, must be accountable. Alison Murphy, Chris castellani - are they going to remain employees? Or is the Grub Street writers going to do some investigation and change a process and maybe (maybe) issue a reprimand without removing the problematic board and staff? Seems to me the community is sufficiently insular and wagon circled that it will be the latter unless we (maybe those of us on this thread, certainly kidneygate Twitter thread, etc) keep the attention up.
These authors involved absolutely should have a “controversies” section. How are they getting this removed? I run a small organization and a disgruntled employee once distorted our wiki page and I had a hell of a time getting it fixed - never was able to remove some of it. So how is it that these powerful authors can get real articles removed?
Will Celeste Ng face any blowback? How about Jennifer De Leon?
The call outs need to keep happening - none of these corrupt institutions which are also mired in groupthink will change unless we force them to change. I think that’s why this thread is 81 pages. So many elements touch so many of us because they’re festering in the environment right now. For me what happened to dawn is triggering because so many small scale incidents - similar to some that have touched me - are all represented in one story.
Thank ALL of you for this thread.
Next thing I want to say is the people who abused their power, levying any racial issues aside, must be accountable. Alison Murphy, Chris castellani - are they going to remain employees? Or is the Grub Street writers going to do some investigation and change a process and maybe (maybe) issue a reprimand without removing the problematic board and staff? Seems to me the community is sufficiently insular and wagon circled that it will be the latter unless we (maybe those of us on this thread, certainly kidneygate Twitter thread, etc) keep the attention up.
These authors involved absolutely should have a “controversies” section. How are they getting this removed? I run a small organization and a disgruntled employee once distorted our wiki page and I had a hell of a time getting it fixed - never was able to remove some of it. So how is it that these powerful authors can get real articles removed?
Will Celeste Ng face any blowback? How about Jennifer De Leon?
The call outs need to keep happening - none of these corrupt institutions which are also mired in groupthink will change unless we force them to change. I think that’s why this thread is 81 pages. So many elements touch so many of us because they’re festering in the environment right now. For me what happened to dawn is triggering because so many small scale incidents - similar to some that have touched me - are all represented in one story.
Thank ALL of you for this thread.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 08:18
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Ok, so some key details from the court filings that provide a lot more context around why Dawn originally reached out to Sonya.
The NYT article makes it sound like she literally emailed to ask why Sonya hadn't been liking her Facebook posts. Which I agree would be deranged. That's not what happened. Here it is:
- Dawn starts FB group, posts stuff there
- Dawn donates kidney
- Sonya and several other Grubstreet "friends" look at every post in the group (which Dawn can see she is doing as admin of the private group) but does not interact with them. But Dawn says nothing.
- Dawn attends a writing conference with Sonya and several other people from Grubstreet (Sonya was actually running the conference). Dawn has known these folks for years, and several of them are in that private FB group, and she knows they have been looking at the posts because she has seen it. Including Sonya, who has looked at all of them. Keep in mind, Dawn donated the kidney not that long before the conference (less than a year). But as Dawn interacts with people at the conference, no one says anything about the kidney donation even though she knows they've read her posts about it. She gets a weird vibe from this.
- A mutual friend posts on Facebook that Sonya read a short story at a reading that was about kidney donation and tags both Dawn and Sonya in it. Dawn is surprised.
- Dawn emails Sonya to follow up on seeing her at the Muse conference and includes one sentence where she says that she heard Sonya had written a story about kidney donation, thinks that's cool, and asks if she could read it. She says nothing about the FB group in this email.
- Sonya replies (lies) that the story isn't ready yet (the story has already been recorded for release on Audible at this point) and that it was merely inspired by Dawn's donation but not based on it (also a lie -- at this point the story includes Dawn's letter verbatim and Sonya has only recently changed the characters name from "Dawn" to "Rose)
- THEN Dawn replies with an email noting that she was surprised to hear about Sonya's story because she had noticed that Sonya had been reading but not interacting with Dawn's posts about her own kidney donation, and that Dawn had wondered if maybe Sonya didn't approve of the donation. At no point does Dawn say Sonya should have been liking or commenting on the posts -- she simply notes that since Sonya had not interacted with the posts, it was surprising to Dawn that Sonya was interested enough in the topic of organ donation to write a story about it.
Sorry for the detail but this is all right there in the court filing, including texts of these emails. When you read it, Dawn's actions come off as incredibly reasonable! She does not seem needy at all. If anything, it seems like she's just trying to figure out if she should remove Sonya from the private FB group (which is the opposite of needy -- she is trying to observe someone else's boundaries). She does seem a bit miffed that Sonya has not acknowledged her kidney donation in any way, but... this seems reasonable when you read Sonya's emails, which are very friendly and familiar.
The description of these events in the NYT is frankly bizarre, and fully buys into Sonya's (false) version of events that Dawn emailed her out of the blue to ask why she wasn't liking her kidney posts. But if you read the emails, this never happened. The fact that Kolker describes it that way in the article is just plain false.
Thank you for the timeline and stating this.
Some of us (ok, only me it seems) have only read the NYT story, and it reads no-thing like you've written here.
Yes, based on the NYT story, I thought Dawn was obsessively watching her Facebook posts to see who commented and who didn't -- then having the unmitigated gall to reach out to those who hadn't praised her enough.
In the article, she wholeheartedly came across as someone who was greatly lacking in self awareness, social prowess, and she was exhibiting some massively cringeworthy attention-seeking behavior.
Add that to the fact that the NYT story sort of implies or makes it seem like Dawn was obsessively searching the internet 24/7 for anything related to Larson and her work, once the co-worker from Grubb Street told her about Larson's kidney related story (otherwise how would Dawn have known about ALL of those updates about Larson's book?).
In reality though, what the NYT had failed to distinguish was that Dawn had probably simply set up a Google alert using parameters such as "Sonya Larson + kidney".
That was incredibly smart of Dawn, as it ensured that she would be notified the second that ANYTHING was posted on the internet with those words linked together, and she'd get that email alert instantaneously (I'm making the assumption that's how Dawn found out about each of Larson's book updates so quickly after they were released? God knows her "friends" at Grub Street certainly weren't giving her a heads up (with the exception of the one guy who set everything in motion originally).
But, I guess pragmatically setting up a google alert is far too practical & boring to be mentioned by the NYT -- best to amp up the drama and run with the angle that she was obsessively searching the internet 24/7 for any whiff of Larson's story.
This story is so exploitive and it has such predatory feels, it went as far as to report on Dawn's history of slapping herself during self-harm attacks. I felt so icky and like *I* was violating her trust (and some kind of hippa laws) as I was reading the way they reported it, so I cannot imagine how frustrating & emotional it must be for Dawn to read articles such as this.
Compared to what you all have provided, this story seems super crafty & duplicitous.
It appears like they took extensive liberties with the truth, and combined it with straight up layers of deception -- if not outright lies.
All that, just to sell a few papers (or whatever the futuristic version of that quote is?)
Just to get more clicks?
The truth & reality are shockingly different than what the NYT story offered, and that is SO exceedingly frustrating... especially now, after reading all of the timelines & updates that they somehow forgot to provide (but thankfully you all did!).
I'm just really very sorry that I'm literally now walking into this story, 80+ pages in.
I've most definitely derailed you all since my initial comment yesterday, discussing things you've already covered probably in the first 20 pages of the thread.
I really did WANT to try to read the whole thread through... but damn, 80 pages is daunting!
Thank you to all of you who've provided me/us with the actual facts, details and (gasp!) truth, rather than simply regurgitating an already re-spun & salacious story (the story that I naively fell for).
Most of all, thank you for everything you've done to ensure that the truth gets out (including the (respectful) schooling of someone who quite literally stumbled face first into an 80 page long thread and (unintentionally) decided to derail it completely).
You're all doing God's work (and I'm an atheist!).
Anonymous
10/16/2021 06:43
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:Ok, so some key details from the court filings that provide a lot more context around why Dawn originally reached out to Sonya.
The NYT article makes it sound like she literally emailed to ask why Sonya hadn't been liking her Facebook posts. Which I agree would be deranged. That's not what happened. Here it is:
- Dawn starts FB group, posts stuff there
- Dawn donates kidney
- Sonya and several other Grubstreet "friends" look at every post in the group (which Dawn can see she is doing as admin of the private group) but does not interact with them. But Dawn says nothing.
- Dawn attends a writing conference with Sonya and several other people from Grubstreet (Sonya was actually running the conference). Dawn has known these folks for years, and several of them are in that private FB group, and she knows they have been looking at the posts because she has seen it. Including Sonya, who has looked at all of them. Keep in mind, Dawn donated the kidney not that long before the conference (less than a year). But as Dawn interacts with people at the conference, no one says anything about the kidney donation even though she knows they've read her posts about it. She gets a weird vibe from this.
- A mutual friend posts on Facebook that Sonya read a short story at a reading that was about kidney donation and tags both Dawn and Sonya in it. Dawn is surprised.
- Dawn emails Sonya to follow up on seeing her at the Muse conference and includes one sentence where she says that she heard Sonya had written a story about kidney donation, thinks that's cool, and asks if she could read it. She says nothing about the FB group in this email.
- Sonya replies (lies) that the story isn't ready yet (the story has already been recorded for release on Audible at this point) and that it was merely inspired by Dawn's donation but not based on it (also a lie -- at this point the story includes Dawn's letter verbatim and Sonya has only recently changed the characters name from "Dawn" to "Rose)
- THEN Dawn replies with an email noting that she was surprised to hear about Sonya's story because she had noticed that Sonya had been reading but not interacting with Dawn's posts about her own kidney donation, and that Dawn had wondered if maybe Sonya didn't approve of the donation. At no point does Dawn say Sonya should have been liking or commenting on the posts -- she simply notes that since Sonya had not interacted with the posts, it was surprising to Dawn that Sonya was interested enough in the topic of organ donation to write a story about it.
Sorry for the detail but this is all right there in the court filing, including texts of these emails. When you read it, Dawn's actions come off as incredibly reasonable! She does not seem needy at all. If anything, it seems like she's just trying to figure out if she should remove Sonya from the private FB group (which is the opposite of needy -- she is trying to observe someone else's boundaries). She does seem a bit miffed that Sonya has not acknowledged her kidney donation in any way, but... this seems reasonable when you read Sonya's emails, which are very friendly and familiar.
The description of these events in the NYT is frankly bizarre, and fully buys into Sonya's (false) version of events that Dawn emailed her out of the blue to ask why she wasn't liking her kidney posts. But if you read the emails, this never happened. The fact that Kolker describes it that way in the article is just plain false.
Thank you for the timeline and stating this.
Some of us (ok, only me it seems) have only read the NYT story, and it reads no-thing like you've written here.
Yes, based on the NYT story, I thought Dawn was obsessively watching her Facebook posts to see who commented and who didn't -- then having the unmitigated gall to reach out to those who hadn't praised her enough.
In the article, she wholeheartedly came across as someone who was greatly lacking in self awareness, social prowess, and she was exhibiting some massively cringeworthy attention-seeking behavior.
Add that to the fact that the NYT story sort of implies or makes it seem like Dawn was obsessively searching the internet 24/7 for anything related to Larson and her work, once the co-worker from Grubb Street told her about Larson's kidney related story (otherwise how would Dawn have known about ALL of those updates about Larson's book?).
In reality though, what the NYT had failed to distinguish was that Dawn had probably simply set up a Google alert using parameters such as "Sonya Larson + kidney".
That was incredibly smart of Dawn, as it ensured that she would be notified the second that ANYTHING was posted on the internet with those words linked together, and she'd get that email alert instantaneously (I'm making the assumption that's how Dawn found out about each of Larson's book updates so quickly after they were released? God knows her "friends" at Grub Street certainly weren't giving her a heads up (with the exception of the one guy who set everything in motion originally).
But, I guess pragmatically setting up a google alert is far too practical & boring to be mentioned by the NYT -- best to amp up the drama and run with the angle that she was obsessively searching the internet 24/7 for any whiff of Larson's story.
This story is so exploitive and it has such predatory feels, it went as far as to report on Dawn's history of slapping herself during self-harm attacks. I felt so icky and like *I* was violating her trust (and some kind of hippa laws) as I was reading the way they reported it, so I cannot imagine how frustrating & emotional it must be for Dawn to read articles such as this.
Compared to what you all have provided, this story seems super crafty & duplicitous.
It appears like they took extensive liberties with the truth, and combined it with straight up layers of deception -- if not outright lies.
All that, just to sell a few papers (or whatever the futuristic version of that quote is?)
Just to get more clicks?
The truth & reality are shockingly different than what the NYT story offered, and that is SO exceedingly frustrating... especially now, after reading all of the timelines & updates that they somehow forgot to provide (but thankfully you all did!).
I'm just really very sorry that I'm literally now walking into this story, 80+ pages in.
I've most definitely derailed you all since my initial comment yesterday, discussing things you've already covered probably in the first 20 pages of the thread.
I really did WANT to try to read the whole thread through... but damn, 80 pages is daunting!
Thank you to all of you who've provided me/us with the actual facts, details and (gasp!) truth, rather than simply regurgitating an already re-spun & salacious story (the story that I naively fell for).
Most of all, thank you for everything you've done to ensure that the truth gets out (including the (respectful) schooling of someone who quite literally stumbled face first into an 80 page long thread and (unintentionally) decided to derail it completely).
You're all doing God's work (and I'm an atheist!).
Anonymous
10/16/2021 05:06
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:
Anyone want to tell her that it's not just a black person being singled out? White people are calling out the actions of white people, too. This Piper blog is nailing them all. And it has nothing to do about race.
https://piperbookblog.com/bad-art-friend-author-becky-tuch-apologizes-and-leaves-chunky-monkeys-writing-group/
https://piperbookblog.com/bad-art-friend-alison-murphy-chunky-monkeys-member-is-a-big-problem-for-grubstreet-writers-organization/
https://piperbookblog.com/author-christopher-castellani-vows-to-exact-revenge-on-fellow-writer-and-grubstreet-instructor/
I agree with the writer of this blog, however...
I have a criticism, and I really don't mean for it to sound petty.
This writer, while very talented, should be proofreading his/her work before posting them to their blog, as there are a number of spelling errors that should have been easy for them to spot (you cannot simply perform a spell check, because "where" is spelled correctly, however the word the writer should have used was "were", for example).
Admittedly, I don't know who this writer is -- I only read their blog because a pp posted the link.
However, regardless if they're a struggling writer, or someone that's up & coming, or even someone who's been published... this blog is probably receiving more traffic/attention than usual, as the subject matter they are writing about is this case (it seems like everyone is talking about this case right now).
If this toxic & ugly situation has taught us anything, it's that writer's especially can be HYPER critical of one another, and I'm afraid this writer would get mocked or not taken seriously, simply because they didn't take the time to catch some amateurish spelling errors. 🤷♀️
Anonymous
10/16/2021 04:33
Subject: Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
I just got around to reading the article, and while I feel for Dawn and everything she's been through... I could not stop thinking about the fact that she reached out to the people in the Facebook group she created (to praise her kidney donation) to ask them why they weren't liking her posts more?
Yeah, so that was needy and showed poor boundaries and is not great social media behavior.
But that’s also all it was: Socially awkward.
It was not bullying, it was not wholesale lying, it was not plagiarism.
- Dawn defender
Again this is completely inaccurate. Completely. How many times are we going to do this in this thread?
Lol. It’s not. Even when I am being gaslight and lied to, I don’t send FB messages asking someone to explain or offer insight or clarify. But I am cold — I cut losses, i block, i ghost — and yes I am a creative who has had work outright stolen. Dawn is open and seeking; her concerns are and were legitimate. I said I was on her team and that Sonya was a lying plagiarizing baddie.
The post said there was no plagiarism and it’s not clear to me at all that Dawn is the one with bad boundaries.
No lie, I admire what you’re calling “coldness” because on the other hand, she who just pays things dust must live in a peaceful state of mind. And I admire that.
I'm not the pp you quoted, but I think you may have misread what this pp said.
She was saying that Dawn was needy and showed poor boundaries & it wasn't great social media behavior.
But she also said "THAT ’s ALL IT WAS: Socially awkward".
The pp said (referring to Dawn):
"It was not bullying, it was not wholesale lying, it was not plagiarism."
Basically the pp was saying that Dawn wasn't any of those things, and all she was guilty of was being socially awkward -- unlike Larson who DID do all of those things to Dawn (bullying, lying, plagiarism).
I just wanted to help clear that up, because it sounds like you two are very much in the same camp... in defense of Dawn. 🙂
Oh, and btw PPP, I'm the same way as you.
When I don't like someone, they know it, there is no confusion.
Nobody has ever accused me of being fake, lol.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 02:57
Subject: Bad Art Friend
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
I just got around to reading the article, and while I feel for Dawn and everything she's been through... I could not stop thinking about the fact that she reached out to the people in the Facebook group she created (to praise her kidney donation) to ask them why they weren't liking her posts more?
Yeah, so that was needy and showed poor boundaries and is not great social media behavior.
But that’s also all it was: Socially awkward.
It was not bullying, it was not wholesale lying, it was not plagiarism.
- Dawn defender
Again this is completely inaccurate. Completely. How many times are we going to do this in this thread?
Sorry, which part is inaccurate?
All of it.
She didn’t ask why she wasn’t liking the posts - she saw that Sonya was reading everything by FB metrics auto-displayed for her, and Larson was the only person doing this without otherwise interacting/saying anything, and at this point, Sonya was also acting like she barely remembered Dorland donated the kidney.
Larson and the Grubs in Chunky Monkey were in the equivalent of HR and upper management when they were shit-talking, including talks about siccing writers of color on her, and calling her a pestilence. This included people who investigate HR complaints.
Courtney Milan who of course clerked for the 9th circuit’s greatest nightmare, and writes romance, explained part of the MAD element of the lawsuit, but several lawyers who specialize in these kinds of claims contend it meets every definition of plagiarism.
I'm the original person you quoted in the bold above... what you're saying in your bolded text wasn't in the article at all.
I was referencing the article when I wrote that and the article was all I had to go on, as I had no other frame of reference, and the article made ZERO mention of what you wrote in bold... nothing of the sort.
As I said earlier, I wish the article would have made mention of ANY of those things, as it's going to taint the opinion of readers when they read the article.
In the article, Dawn comes across as attention seeking, greatly lacking in self awareness & incredibly polarizing, because it basically says that Dawn created a Facebook group with the specific intent of getting others to laud & admire her, but then she started calling people out for not liking her posts & congratulating her enough.
That was written at the very beginning of the article, so it left a really bad taste in my mouth for Dawn for the entirety of the article.
If you didn't know all of the background knowledge that you do, you might think it sounded strange also.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 02:31
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
Any observer must wonder whether actual talent or artistry plays into this profession whatsoever or whether it's just wholly a matter of being able to schmooze into ~the inner circle~.
How many great books have languished in the face of these people's very personal and very petty judgment and scorn?
Anonymous
10/16/2021 01:22
Subject: Bad Art Friend
Oh and I meant to add, I really hate how this is framed as a "mean girls" thing when Castellani's behavior as the Artistic Director of GS was so incredibly egregious.
The worst actors in this entire thing have been some of the men. It's just Kolker's deeply sexist framing that makes it into a mean girl catfight.
The worst actors in this entire thing have been some of the men. It's just Kolker's deeply sexist framing that makes it into a mean girl catfight.
Anonymous
10/16/2021 01:15
Subject: Re:Bad Art Friend
There is a Wikipedia editing war going on Chris Castellani's Wikipedia page. Someone tried to add a reference to Castellani's role at Grub Street and what he did with respect to Dorland, but it got removed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Christopher_Castellani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Christopher_Castellani