[An old friend once wrote a blog post with “Burning Bridges” as the title, so maybe the credit for the above goes to him.]

I’m not really brave enough for this.

Something I’ve noticed – mostly at Eroticon, but in conversation with others too – is that there is a bit of a difference in how European and American bloggers handle controversy.

What?

Evidently I’m not talking about everyone here, but I’m not the only one who sees this: American bloggers are zealous. They see something that needs to be called out and they’ll do so. Immediately. To the outsider it may look like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s just the blogger getting something done before it becomes more of a problem. This can be good, evidently; the now-infamous Screaming O talk at Woodhull is a great example.

But to me it seems a little dangerous. If you’e going through life constantly looking for something to call out it seems a touch paranoid. And, of course, if you find something and leap on it without any prior research, then there’s always the problem that you’ll do more harm than good.

European bloggers are a touch more reserved. If one of us seems something troubling then we are more likely to try and fix it quietly than start a massive social media pile-on. I’m a European blogger and I’ve never knowingly tried to start anything, although if there’s already something going on a few of us will probably join in (the Inigo More post is a good example of that).

But what do I, a nervous British blogger, do when I notice something that I find abhorrent? Do I fall silent in favour of silence meaning security? Do I call the cavalry and initiate a brawl I don’t wish to happen or participate in? Or do I take on the issue myself, possibly solving it but just as possibly making matters worse?

Specifically, do I want to risk burning a bridge, even if it’s one I wish were no longer there?

It’s difficult.

So what?

A couple of months ago I noticed a fellow sex blogger – one I’ve met, befriended and previously had a lot of respect for – posting something questionable on Twitter (or 𝕏 or whatever it’s called now). I scrolled through her tweets – maybe this was satire and in response to something else – but saw a few more. And then I opened her replies tab.

Oh boy.

Most direct quotes are too sickening to post here, but they are all things that make me tremble. Constant references to trans people trying to brainwash children. References to refugees as “gimmegrants” and migrants as “illegals”, saying we need to get rid of them all to “protect our country”. At one point she verbatim said that

this wokey nonsense has got to stop

in response to a story about a trans person wanting to be called by their preferred pronoun.

And then I knew I needed to do something. Other than remove them from my blogroll, of course, which I’d already done.

Now what?

It’s difficult enough to deal with this stuff from Tory bigots and you already expect it from known transphobes like Graham Linehan and JKR. It’s much more difficult, however, when it’s from someone you used to like, and even moreso when it’s a sex blogger… whatever has happened to our community, the fact remains that we were all nominally banging the same drum.

This is not what I would usually expect.

Earlier on today I finally posted on Mastodon and Bluesky saying the following:

I don’t want to stay silent any more. But I don’t want to cause a fuss.

A sex blogger most of us know has been airing and sharing abhorrent views on X and this has gone unchallenged.

Most of you are following her.

Message me if you want to know who.

@innocentlb

Some of me wonders whether or not this was the right thing to do. Part of me wanted to do the “American” thing of putting her name and details verbatim on all my platforms, but I didn’t want to do that. Another part wanted to do the “European” thing of quiet outrage and soft indignation, but ethically I felt like I couldn’t do that.

So I took the middle road: I offered the information, and to those who asked I posted her blogging pseudonym and Twitter @, offering screenshots to those who had no access.

And so far this has seemed like the best course of action. I didn’t know how much uptake this would have, but it has been more than I expected. I was envisioning one, maybe two, curious people, but as I type this, more than eleven people have asked. All of them have gone on to respond, once they’ve seen the content, in the same horrified, disbelieving way that I did.

And what?

As far as burning bridges is concerned, it’s very rare that I’ll meet and get on with someone that I’ll end up never wanting to see again. I’m a social person and I’m genuinely quite protective of the friendships I’ve made. Fair enough, it may be different with 47 or Robinson or H or Mini – they are friends in real life, there’s much more physical contact there. Nevertheless, I’ve met this blogger; I’ve talked to her; I’ve hugged her, even.

But even I have my limit, and in this case – rare though it may be for a European blogger, even more so for a British one, and perhaps much more so for me – it has been hit by this person.

I am not going to post her identity here.

But my offer still stands. If you want to know, ask. I hope you do. I hope it makes its way around. And I hope everyone ends up knowing.

Above all, I hope she realises she was wrong. If she does, and she apologises, and makes more of an effort, then maybe it won’t have been worth burning that bridge after all.

All I can do is hope, in the end.