Thread: As the discovery of court docs from Bad Art Friend reveal, Celeste Ng leveraged her professional power & networks to undermine Dawn Dorland while also encouraging Sonya Larson to profit off Dorland's content. I suspect Celeste Ng has been doing something similar to me. 1/
Unlike Robert Kolker's NYT piece—which I think did a disservice to the truth by not being chronological—I'm going to do a mostly chronological approach here. So Celeste Ng's name won't show up until a few tweets in. First, I'll need to explain an Asian American issue. 2/
In 2018, I made a comic addressing racism & misogyny in AsAm spaces, asking AsAm men & women to not participate in toxic, bigoted behavior towards each other. At the time, vitriolic online battles were constantly happening between two groups of extremists—and AsAms knew it. 3/
My comic & its accompanying analysis was a sincere effort to do my part to use my platform for good & encourage better behavior. I wasn't surprised to get backlash from extremists on both sides. What surprised me was how established AsAms revealed themselves as extremists too. 4/
More importantly, the "women's side" of extremists escalated into harassment, slander, & ultimately blacklisting me in major AsAm spaces. (It's worth noting that both sides have AsAm participants of all genders in them.) They did this because I addressed a major taboo truth. 5/
The taboo truth is that racist white men weaponize AsAm genders to keep us divided. The 1942-43 Mixed Marriage Policy of Japanese Internment camps provides an explicit roadmap for this divide, as discussed in this comic and thread I made. 6/
After I posted my comic Reconciliasian, I was approached by Jessica Prois (now at NBC Asian America) to write an essay expanding on its concept—she said she loved it. I turned it down. Based on the harassment I got for the comic, I worried the vitriol would get worse. 7/
Months after Reconciliasian, I was surprised & hurt that Celeste Ng published an article on a similar topic—but only through the lens of AsAm women, & more insidiously, pushing the extremist view that only AsAm women are harmed and harassed. Jessica Prois edited the piece. 8/
Just like how Kolker's article buried the reveal of Sonya Larson’s plagiarism of Dawn Dorland’s work, Celeste Ng's article buried the reveal that she made racist anti-Asian comments about Asian men. Her article framed the backlash as being about her marriage, not her comments. 9/
There's no doubt that Celeste Ng was harassed. As a victim of harassment myself I know how awful that is. The problem is Ng used the article to spin the narrative away from taking full accountability for her racist comments & exacerbated it by punching down on Asian men more. 10/
Over the next few years, Celeste Ng campaigned to broadly paint Asian men as "MRAsians" instead of saying sorry. She never mentions she's been harassed by Asian women as well—incidentally, by many of the same people who harassed me for Reconciliasian. 11/
Men of all races are misogynist, but the term "MRAsian" promotes the white supremacist idea that Asian men are *more* misogynist, uniquely bigoted in a way that other men—specifically, white men—are not. And that leads to violence against Asian men. 12/ asamnews.com/2021/08/26/cou…
Due to the power of her platform, Celeste Ng has likely contributed the most to normalizing the term "MRAsian" in AsAm & non-Asian circles, giving Asian extremists exactly what they want: a career-ending accusation to be used on anyone they don't like. 13/
What's telling is that AsAm extremists never racialize white men's misogyny—there's no "MRAryan" equivalent. Ironically the AsAms who harass me also called Celeste Ng an “MRAsian,” revealing that the term is just a knee-jerk reaction used to slander an opponent. 14/
The problem with slandering is it works. Meanwhile, I constantly get harassed by actual white male Nazis & MRAs. Nazis deface my art with swastikas & Hitler, post my photos to denigrate my looks & edit my comics to simulate me getting sexual assaulted. 15/ knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/j…
In AsAm spaces, I've publicly documented the harassment, slander, & blacklisting as each player reveals themselves. So while Celeste Ng isn't solely responsible for how I'm being mistreated, I'm aware of her strong connections to the AsAms doing it. 16/
I don't have subpoenaed group chats to prove I'm getting blacklisted, but like Dawn Dorland, my gut is telling me it's happening. I hope people can connect the dots & see Celeste Ng likely has a pattern of escalating harm instead of owning up to her behavior. That's alarming. 17/
I know my comics tackle difficult subjects that can make people uncomfortable—that's the point, anti-Asian racism is uncomfortable. The problem is when the people who aren't ready for the conversation are the ones who have the power to censor it. 18/18

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Joshua Luna

Joshua Luna Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Joshua_Luna

7 Oct
Thread: As an AsAm creator, I want to talk about how framing the Bad Art Friend story as a white woman vs. AsAm woman fails to account for the ways power & privilege intersect here, & that the people using this framing are harming the AsAm community & don't care that they are. 1/
Sonya Larson got caught plagiarizing. That's a fact. It doesn't matter what she or anyone else thinks about Dawn Dorland—Larson crossed a professional ethical line, & admitted it herself. But the violation of professional ethics likely goes deeper than what's caught on paper. 2/
Sonya Larson's group chat wasn't with "friends," but with fellow writing professionals who have a lot of power in their field. It's hard to believe their distaste for Dorland stopped at socially ignoring her. It's possible they were also blacklisting her before this conflict. 3/
Read 10 tweets
24 Sep
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts from a Black perspective. I think it's important for AsAms to acknowledge how the Asian gender divide isn't just an intra-community issue that only affects us, but also affects the Black community & other groups of color. Thread: 1/
It's important to hold Asian men & other MOC accountable for patriarchal misogyny, but not via rhetoric that invites racist white men to weaponize that accountability & justify their violence against MOC. Same thing with critiquing racist women—it should be done w/o misogyny. 2/
Unfortunately, that's not the current mainstream approach. When Asian men’s misogyny is discussed, it’s frequently blamed on Asianness & not manhood. This gives white men a safe space to reinforce racism against MOC. Here's a recent example. 3/
CW: Anti-Asian & Anti-Black racism
Read 9 tweets
17 Sep
Thread: In 2018, I made a comic addressing racism & misogyny in AsAm spaces & asked AsAm men & women to not participate in toxic, bigoted behavior towards each other. Since then, Jenn Fang (Reappropriate) has enabled harassment towards me & helped slander me as an "MRAsian." 1/ ImageImage
I don't allow reposts of my comics in part because it's a frequent strategy of Nazis to warp the messaging that implicates them & instead slander me. So to see fellow AsAms do it is disgusting. Yet that's what Jenn Fang & her harasser friends did to my comic Reconciliasian. 2/
I made a sincere effort to tackle a complex, painful topic to encourage empathy & maturity. Jenn Fang & Heath Wong didn't reciprocate that sincerity. They reposted my comic & left out its full analysis—which is disingenuous at best & malicious at worst. 3/
Read 7 tweets
18 Aug
For AsAms who feel inclined to defend Roslyn Talusan from white people, she was a primary participant in inciting a harassment campaign against me for making AsAm comics. She helped sabotage my Mulan essay, only to later publish her own on the same topic (and get paid for it). 1/
So not only did she help spread slander against me in order to permanently destroy my career and make sure no one in marginalized spaces would platform me, but she financially benefited from the harm she caused. The irony is she said a Filipino shouldn't write about Mulan. 2/
I also had to turn down an offer of rep from a literary agent because of a connection with her. I honestly don't know the full extent of how many resources & opportunities I lost because of her & her toxic harasser friends, but even with the ones I can identify, it's a lot. 3/
Read 5 tweets
31 May
#APAHM Thread: #StopAsianHate is meaningless until we acknowledge white men as the architects of anti-Asian racism, & the blueprints they use to divide the Asian community & sabotage progress. 1/

(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna)
Understanding anti-Asian racism means connecting its history in the US with its history in Asia, instead of treating them separately. US imperialism, war, & colonization abroad directly informs the racism AsAms experience because the goal is the same: divide, conquer, & kill. 2/
White men used war to split Korea & Vietnam in two, & divide AsAms the same way. One blueprint of the U.S.'s domestic anti-Asian strategy is the Mixed Marriage Policy of 1942-1943. Implemented during Japanese Internment, it gave certain Asians special exemptions to leave camp. 3/
Read 24 tweets
5 Apr
Thread: When you think of Mormons, you probably think of whiteness—and you'd be correct, since 93% are white. What you don't think of is Filipinx.

And yet, for two years, I was a Mormon. 1/

(Don't repost my art. Retweets are appreciated. Support my work patreon.com/joshualuna)
Before this, I grew up in a loosely Catholic upbringing and rarely went to church. But after my dad left the U.S. Navy and our family, we moved back to the U.S. and lived with cousins who were Mormons. There, we were regularly visited by missionaries, and eventually converted. 2/
Much like being a Navy brat, converting was less of a choice & more of a package family deal. I just went along with it to make everyone happy. But what I didn't know was that going from kind-of-Catholic to Mormon was stepping out of the kiddie pool & going in the deep end. 3/
Read 11 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(