For those who don't know about the Attack Helicopter Story saga: Neon Yang and NK Jemisin harassed the writer Isabel Fall (a trans woman) for writing a queer mech story.
And harassment really dosen't do it justice becuase Fall was hospitalized for severe depression, and from what I've read has stopped their transition. Primarily becuase of intense gender disphoria brought on by Yang, Jemisin and their cretinous followers saying Fall must be a cis-man for writing this story. They didn't even read it, they just didn't like the title and invented a bizzare conspiracy theory that claimed Fall was a neo-nazi. Afterwards both of them gave a really shitty WhatApp apology and moved on with their lives, so much so that apparently Yang now has the gall to do this shit.
Is this just a case of mistaken identity? The title is "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter", and I can see how somebody could automatically assume the writer is just a chud
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Pretty much, the story went viral on Twitter and people just assumed it was mocking trans-people based on the title. On Clarkesworld where it was originally published, Falls bio just said she was born in 1988 and didn't mention she was a trans-woman, and she had no other internet presence, which some took to mean she was fake.
However, if you actually read the story it's unmistakable that she is trying to reappropriate a transphobic meme, and the story itself was an exploration of identity and expression and their weponization by the State.
And there were a lot of people online who appreciated the story and tried to defend Fall, which may have shifted the conversation if big names in the sci-fi world didn't use their influence to rally an online hate mob. Like in her apology, Jemisin literally said she never read the story and just assumed based on the title.
Which, given she made her career by dismantling tropes and critiquing the insular and white-male-centric foundations of her genre, is depressingly hypocritical of her.