Glowing Reputations and Followings are Often Precursors to #MeToo Moments

Once upon a time, there lived a kinky event host and consent activist we’ll call Steampunk. He knew all the right things; all the complicated and wise things, so I would have recommended him to any sub in those days. I considered him vetted because thousands had attended his events. Thousands knew and trusted him, so surely there couldn’t be silenced victims on the outskirts waiting to share their stories.

Except there were. They just hadn’t spoken out yet.

After years of activism, Steampunk had his own #MeToo moment. Many came forward to share how he’d broken his play partners’ hard limits, sexually harassed event attendees, and offered to pay his staff in the form of sexual favours.

His consent violations made it all the way onto The Daily Beast. His community snatched all his events from him, or he gave them up voluntarily. Who recalls those kinds of details? There is one thing I do remember, though: The long, apologetic Fetlife post he wrote to hold himself accountable for his predatory actions. He admitted to all of it and he was very, very sorry. Most of them are when they get caught.

I don’t remember all of his admissions. I only remember the way they changed me. That was the year I learned that the things people teach are not always the things they practice.

Post #MeToo, Steampunk vanished from the kink scene for six years. Recently, he popped up in the media again for allegedly defrauding event vendors and marrying someone who’d been underage for most of their relationship.

I jumped into a Steampunk Google hole and landed up at one of his blogs. He is calling the 2018 Fetlife accusations lies and has titled the events “The Fake Me Too”. He’s deleted his apologies and admissions, then covered his tracks so thoroughly that someone created a website to share his deleted posts.

Steampunk has positioned himself as the victim of his own story—someone who’s still waiting for the scene to uncover proof of his inequities as though that proof hasn’t already been offered or admitted to. It was almost as though none of it had even happened. He’s just an innocent guy who was mobbed by a kink site.

I’ve learned a few things since 2018. The truth always outs. If it’s outted before, it will out again, over… and over… and over, and so Steampunk has found himself in the same position he was in a few years later, facing even more accusations of dishonesty, scamming, and sexual predation. I don’t write about those kinds of stories as often as I used to. They happen so regularly they seem like bread and butter these days, and nobody talks about ordinary things like that.

It’s ordinary for consent activists to violate consent en masse.

It’s ordinary for them to admit to their actions in order to save face.

It’s ordinary for the masses to believe them.

It’s ordinary for sexual predators to go back on their apologies when the mobs die down, and it’s ordinary for them to delete their online history and try to make a new beginning. It’s ordinary for them to blame their victims for their reputational losses and ordinary for them to claim innocence after admitting guilt.

Given enough time, most of them show up again a year or two later with sparkly new profiles and usernames, and so we have to use whisper campaigns to warn people of who they really are.

I’m writing this post because I think you should know how much credence to give predators' apologies and thousands-strong followings. Glowing references and reputations are often precursors of #MeToo moments, and the next one might involve you. We are not safe. We have to personally vet our partners.