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So: It’s inexcusable that I didn’t post this last week, on International Violence Against Sex Workers Day #idevasw. I should have. But I want to post it now: my thoughts a recent controversy on #academictwitter, anonymity, and the different threats SWers and others face on here.
(Disclaimer upfront, which is no surprise to anyone looking at my bio: I’m a tenured, cis, white male in academia. I grew up with class privilege. So the deck’s been stacked for me. So read this thread in that context.)
I’m talking about the controversy that ensued about five weeks ago. It started when an adjunct professor and sex worker who tweets anonymously under the handle MistressSnowPhd posted a series of tweets about Dr. Syndee Wagner, an ECR.
Dr. Snow asserted that Dr. Wagner, a scholar of representations of Roma in early modern English lit, had lied about the fact that her family had come to the US to flee the Holocaust; they had, Dr. Snow asserted, arrived in the US earlier.
This assertion also cast doubt on Dr. Wagner’s claim to be of Roma descent, given how Dr. Wagner had talked about the story of her Roma ancestors fleeing to the US states. Dr. Snow provided scans of genealogical research to back up her claims.
Furthermore, given that Dr. Wagner had previously claimed that being Roma her made her a POC and not white, Dr. Snow’s assertions—for which she provided evidence—would show that Dr. Wagner had lied about her race.
This generated a great controversy, with plenty of people of twitter picking sides. (I would try to link to some of the most important tweets and threads but after 37 days that’s hard to do.)
Most of Dr. Wagner’s support came from scholars in medieval studies. They argued that 1) Dr. Snow, a white woman, was racist for attacking a WOC 2) that regardless of her intent, Dr. Snow’s “tone and tactics” were out of bounds and…
…3) her investigation of investigation of Dr. Wagner’s background did not substantiate Dr. Snow’s claims that Dr. Wagner was not Roma and were disgusting and out of bounds.
A few days after Dr. Snow posted her genealogical investigation, Dr. Wagner wrote a response on http://Medium.com . Dr. Wagner offered her side of the story and wrote about her Roma heritage. https://sydneeisanelf.medium.com/for-my-father-2451b2367fac
And here is where I get to the part about doxing sex workers and violence. Because Dr. Wagner stated in her piece that she engaged in an organized campaign and discovered Dr. Snow’s real name “as a means of stopping the harassment.”
She also wrote that she had elected not to contact Dr. Snow’s employer “out of respect for her privacy,” even as Dr. Wagner feared for her own safety and that of her employer.
These were *threats,” illegal in many states. Organizing a campaign to find Dr. Snow’s real name—the only way that might “stop the harassment” is if revealing this public information would damage Dr. Snow and make her shut up.
And by raising the possibility of contacting Dr. Snow’s employer? This, too, is a thinly veiled threat. Because it suggests that the only option Dr. Wagner had for herself was to reveal private information that would threaten Dr. Snow’s job.
This behavior is illegal in most states. And Dr. Wagner stated up front, right at the beginning of this controversy, that she engaged in this behavior and worked with other people to do so as well.
This is the kind of thing that gets SWers killed. Yes, it also can threaten employment and reputation. (Plenty of SWers have been fired when doxed.) But….It. Also. Gets. People. Killed.
Sex work is work. But the criminalization of sex work leaves SWers in an extremely precarious and vulnerable position. This has been well documented. (There are plenty of places to get more info, but that is another thread.)
At the time, none of Dr. Wagner’s supporters condemned her efforts. None of them admitted that doxing Dr. Snow put her life at risk. And there have been persistent efforts to dox Dr. Snow over the last five weeks.
Nearly all of Dr. Snow’s critics denied that there had ever been any threats of doxing at all—even though they there, in print, right at the beginning of the controversy.
(Just today someone said that they know Dr. Snow’s employer and were going to contact them in an attempt to get her fired.)
There have been other debates over time about academic power dynamics on twitter and why many grad students and other early career scholars choose to post from anonymous accounts. It’s for career protection, to be able to speak freely.
Without the protection of anonymity, ECR—especially BIPOC scholars—could find themselves in danger of retaliation for calling out the powerful in a profession that institutionally protects the racial status quo.
This is *absolutely* true and there is a good reason why many of the ECR in medieval studies—the overwhelming number of Dr. Snow’s critics were medievalists—spoke anonymously and worried about prof repercussions.
But—and I cannot stress this enough—the repercussions of being doxed were very, very, very different on each side. As I said—the medievalist ECR were anonymous to mitigate professional repercussions from this controversy.
Dr. Snow, though, faced a different threat from being doxed. As a SWer, being doxed could get her killed. That the academics involved in this controversy, many of whom consider themselves allies of SWers, failed to condemn doxing is abhorrent.
Encouraging people to dox a SWer is worse. And actually participating in it, well…it’s great if you can sleep at night calling yourself an “activist” as you score twitter points by threatening the life of a SWer and scholar.
