Hey, Gwen—I wanted to applaud your courage, authenticity, and thoughtfulness in writing this post. Unfortunately I don’t have time to go into it now due to some urgent work-related matters that need my attention, but I want you to know that I’ve independently generated several of what you’ve said (minus the part where Ziz is the moderate of the group—this still surprises me, but I suppose the experiences she faced would radicalize many) when first researching what happened in an effort to help Daniel Blank. It became very clear at the end of my research that he joined of his own free will and that the “vegan siths” (?) were originally not a cult but defamed as such by bad actors (thanks to Octavia’s brave confession). I’ve been meaning to write you something more in depth, but unfortunately lack the time currently—all I can say is that I strongly feel that the moderators should let you post under the same rules as anyone else, otherwise it does come off as a sign of the hypocrisy that you mentioned in another comment. The rest of us can decide how we engage based on our risk levels, etc.
Thank you so much for telling the truth even when it’s hard, and if you’ve gained complex PTSD from these horrific experiences, somatic therapies have been extremely conducive for my own healing (such as the half-salamander exercise, EMDR, etc.) and I hope you safely continue your very inspiring acts of kindness far into the future.
The press unfortunately has not been trying very hard to be accurate or fair to Ziz due to the extremely convoluted way she writes—she was definitely being maligned far more than she should be at the beginning to the point that I was interested in speaking up on what I had picked up on because it felt like a moral injury to do nothing about it. Unfortunately I did not have the emotional will or the time back then, and did not know anyone other than Ophelia and Daniel Blank personally (both of whom have been extremely kind to me and my friends). Even now it feels more like people are picking on Ziz’s writing style more than the content, since the “quotation marks” show that these may not be her words as much as Gwen’s (whom she clearly disagrees with here).
It is very rare for me to feel compelled to speak out (and apologies if this is not my place to say), but I do think it’s unfair to hold people to different standards of behavior when LessWrong is about judging ideas by their own merit rather than the person who made them.
Thanks for reading!