This is being talked about again with multiple people asking me to explain, so I guess I have to.

Way back in 2012, my fiancee Margret and I joined in criticizing some lolicon anime (strike witches), when Margret mentioned that the sexualization of teenage girls had always been a problem in the magical girl genre, including even beloved series like Sailor Moon. I guess people thought she was saying this in order to defend lolicon, like she was implying it wasn’t a big deal or something, because a woman in the thread reblogged her Sailor Moon remark with a mocking gif and Margret was immediately deluged with hate mail about her being a “dumb bitch” and “garbage” and so forth.

I took the OP to be deliberately “siccing” followers on Margret and it turned into a huge fight with tons of people piling on to both sides, Margret and I called multiple people the c-word, which neither of us use anymore and agree is sexist to use as an expletive, something that had never occured to us prior. We got increasingly angry every time anyone insulted the other. It was a mess, I kept trying to get the last word in and explain and re-explain myself, everyone involved was getting anon hate, my tags were flooded with stuff by more unrelated people about us being socially inept trash and I just wanted it to stop. I tried to message the same woman through the IM info she had listed on her profile thinking we could talk it out and “solve our differences” but instead she felt stalked by me messaging her off tumblr, which I really didn’t realize was a possibility and I’m so sorry for, I had resolved a lot of fights that way, I just didn’t think about the possibility that it came off creepy until then.

This all faded until two years later, some time in summer 2014, when I woke up to a flood of new hate mail in my tags and inbox saying I was disgusting trash, that I should drop dead or disappear, that I was gross and ugly and deranged. I had a massive anxiety attack, I had no idea what was going on, and I’d spent that same week defending myself from a band of unrelated trolls, so I believed this was their doing.

It turned out to trace back to a post simply saying “bogleech sexually harasses women, including me, don’t reblog from him.” I didn’t recognize the username and a filter made it look to me like the blog was deleted, so I thought for SURE it was one of the trolls, case closed, and still in a confused panic thought I just had to explain that to people who were signal boosting it.

This set off a new post from someone else saying I was deliberately spreading misinformation about someone I victimized, and that I was a dangerous predator. Thus ensued more panic attacks, more desperate attempts on my part to explain and defend myself that only got more awkward and incoherent, and loads more people who knew neither me nor the original poster getting involved and adding their own elaborations either in her defense or mine, eventually driving her, margret and I all off of tumblr.

I still do not know what the sexual harassment was. I’ve never expressed sexual interest in a stranger even jokingly, and the only things I’ve ever said online that had sexual themes were some insults like “take a lemon bath and stick a porcupine up your ass” to other people I also thought were just trolls. That’s not something I do anymore because I know “hyperbole” isn’t actually an excuse, and I don’t know of any such thing I said in the 2012 fight.

Other rumors that started included:

-That I was transphobic, even though I didn’t know she was a trans woman.
-That I  sent my users to attack people, even though the fights were already going on before I woke up that day.
-That I had a bunch of sock puppet accounts both then and in the original fight, when I only had one personal sideblog that plainly advertised it was mine.
-That I waited until she quit tumblr to apologize and ask my followers to drop it, when she was still talking to me some time after that and I thought we were patching things up.
-That Margret was someone I invented to make it look like I was in a relationship.

None of these rumors were even started or endorsed by the OP. This was all when it grew bigger than either of us and just as many distorted things cropped up about her from usernames neither of us even followed or vice-versa.

In the end, enough people told me to die for something I had no recollection of doing that I started to doubt my reality, and I began feeling suicidal for the first time in years.

Three years ago I went overboard defending someone I love, but I never tried to trigger or threaten anyone. It still made someone feel that way. I falsely blamed her for her followers threatening us years ago. I know that’s my fault. I tried to apologize and made it worse.

I still don’t know what I said or did that made someone feel sexually harassed, that never was explained. Was it the c-word? Were more users taken as side accounts of mine? I just know I fucked up and upset someone badly by demonizing her for something she was really only a small part of, I wish there was any way I could take that back or make it up.