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Raunchel

A newer Dutch-born member of AH.com, Raunchel currently lives abroad. She joined in March 2014.

She was very popular as a poster and helpful to many story writers while writing many of her own.

Unfortunately, Raunchel was banned at the beginning of July 2017, in a thread about feminism she herself started, for repeatedly admitting to holding open prejudices towards transgendered individuals, even claiming they are a "danger and menace" to feminism. Her banning was initially just a kick. It was a bit controversial among some site members, but largelly ceased to be after she contacted the admin again via private messages and told him directly she refuses to let go of her prejudices. She was perma-banned for that confession.

Aside from that, Raunchel was also criticised for starting what was to be a showcase, core thread for feminist discussion, but only promoting the sort of feminism she liked, to the exclusion of other feminists, transgendered women and certain men. Worse yet, she was needlessly couching the whole discussion in rather aggressive imagery and undertones from the very first post (which included a woman with a gun, and Raunchel's own weird claims that feminists should take up arms and engage in violence if necessary). In light of her earlier confessions about being a former radical feminist who once supported the idea of segregating men and women, her odd antics tended to sour the early discussion, even though it was otherwise friendly. Raunchel had in the past confessed to have had a very strict upbringing. Engaging in a very narrow vision of feminism she preferred in her adult years was somewhat understandable due to her personal past, but many AH.commers found the prejudices she developed due to this to be really distasteful and dishonest, giving an otherwise good cause a bad name. Many women and transgendered women on the site were, to put it mildly, skeptical of her claims about the superiority of more militant and more exclusionary forms of feminism, and her implicit or explicit shaming of those who supported more conventional, widely accepting feminism.

Somewhat later after her initial ban, Raunchel returned under a shameless sockpuppet (“Chilisauce”) and demanded that most of her fiction on the site be permanently deleted. The mods obliged and removed her threads, then Ian banned her again, for good. People were sad to see her writing go, but they were not exactly pleased she kept refusing to acknowledge she was banned for insulting others, and kept playing the victim card. She even kept claiming the sort of radical feminism she dreamt up is the only way forward and that gender itself (including the transgendered, apparently) was devised as some evil plot against women like her. The sockpuppet's backpedalling on not supporting violence against those she disliked was also odd, given her previous promotion of a rather militant vision, that sounded like it had more to do with NRA fantasies than contemporary feminism.

A lesson to be learnt: Raunchel's history on AH.com is a textbook example of why simply supporting something good doesn't give you a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to respecting other people. Even if you yourself were put-upon in the past. Raunchel's story on AH.com is all the sadder that she was otherwise an intelligent and rather sensitive individual, and was well liked for good reasons. She definitely should have known better, but refused to. Therefore, never forget that affording others respect and courtesy, and not dismissing them as some sort of bogeymen, is just as important as supporting a good cause. Especially if it's a genuinely worthy cause like feminism, equality of men and women, and equality of genders.


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offtopic/raunchel.txt · Last modified: 2019/03/29 15:13 by 127.0.0.1

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