If you, like any number of Transmasks, woke up to a real sh*t storm of Twitter yesterday, it probably didn’t take you long to put the pieces together. The story is long, winding and dirty, so guys, join in.
Last week, you might remember a particularly silly discourse surrounding a tweet by Transmask/non-binary author Ana Mardol. A since-deleted tweet essentially called it “enable” to ask people to read books, a take that was immediately deemed silly because, you know, audiobooks exist.
Over the weekend, some users revealed that Mardol—widely described as a “tenderer” online—works for arms maker and defense company Lockheed Martin. From there, things… got crazy.
holy shit anna fucking works for lockheed martin are you kidding me with this shit
– Bax J. Ferguson (they/elle o lx) (@baxstarjonmarie) 31 July 2022
Wake Up Babe There’s An Anna Mardol Lockheed Martin Legacy Hack Revealed On Twitter rn
— Crispin Gray (@crimzonfreak) 31 July 2022
Things got even more crazy when Mardol defended himself by saying that this job (the legacy job) was the only one he could get that would pay his medical bills. Which people were not buying even for a minute.
“This white handicapped man only took this job at this rogue company because it was the only job he could get to pay his medical bills.” So you think a white person’s life is more valuable than all the black and brown people abroad his work helps kill? is telling.
— elle belle (not famous lady) (@leitre elle) 1 August 2022
To complicate matters further, Anna Mardol was the driving force behind the pile-up and harassment at transwriter Isabel Falls after she published her 2020 story “I Sexually Identified an Attack Helicopter.” The intentions of the collapse were taken out of context, and the result was an emergency stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Those giving Ana Mardol more solidarity for being a nepotism hire on a major military contractor than Isabelle Fall for satirizing the military-industrial complex are transmissogyny in action.
— sarah (@sarahlicity) 31 July 2022
“The same Little Lord Fauntleroy, who announced the submission of a magazine that is akin to acts of murder, transpires it to Lockheed-Martin. You would laugh from any self-respecting writers room for pitching it.” pic.twitter.com/ZD6wARzwkr
— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) 31 July 2022
Everyone was talking throughout the kerfuffle.
Sorry to sneak into the Lockheed Martin thing, but I think it’s a perfect example of what most of the internet discourse is- projection. If you make accusations (of potential, of transphobia, etc.) you consider yourself wrong. Purity and purity-obsessed identity building through neglect of others
— Pe Moskovitz (@_pem_pem) 31 July 2022
The immeasurable capacity of people completely comfortable with morality or morality is to give empty, worrying moral and ethical “advice” that mostly serves to make it no one’s fault that anything bad happens in the world, in fact. Working out today.
— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) 31 July 2022
“no moral consumption under capitalism” i totally get it i feel like working at lockheed martin must be a hard line???
— Avery Edison (@aedison) 31 July 2022
As a Twitter personality who organizes mobs to attack small accounts, I’m no stranger to bombing the defenseless. So this summer I’m partnering with Lockheed Martin
— Isaac Butler (@parabasis) 31 July 2022
Tried to explain Ana Mardol’s point to my mostly offline wife and she divorced me before Lockheed Martin revealed
— Gerard Fagerberg (@jgfagerberg) 31 July 2022
Mardol is a great example of how utterly hollow and self-serving demonstrative neoliberalism is in the realms of art and the world at large. If your politics starts and ends on what you say to dominate Twitter, you’re not awake, you’re not engaged, you just want to feed your big head.
— Grouchiest Marquist (Ginger Wash)🔞🎨✍🎸 (@BAPostmaisdead) 31 July 2022
Mardol’s defenders also began calling any criticism of Mardol himself “competentist”. Joe… yes, no.
Crowdfunding for his mortgage and playing as a poor struggling man while working as a nepotism mercenary at Lockheed Martin for over a decade… couldn’t even imagine it for Twitter bingo cards
— elle belle (not famous lady) (@leitre elle) 31 July 2022
lmfao I’m sorry Ana Mardol worked at Lockheed Martin for 15 years? As an heirloom fare? A nepotism gig at the war crime factory? And people are saying capable of criticizing it? Is my CO detector working?
— kat (@punished_cait) 31 July 2022
The idea that it’s capable of criticizing someone for working at Lockheed Martin is absurd
Disability Justice Is Anti-War And Anti-Imperialism Or It’s Nothing
— Cyree Jarrelle (@cyreejarelle) 31 July 2022
If you’re tired, I don’t blame you. Basically, the moral of the story is that the more tender they are, the more hypocritical they are.
At this point I do not think it is unreasonable to view tenderers as a passively fascist fifth pillar within the broader queer culture.
— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) 1 August 2022
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