Alexandra Rowland And Bad Faith Accusations

This morning, writing twitter was blown up by a post from Alexandra Rowland accusing Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear of some nasty manipulative behavior. I have reason to believe that Rowland is acting in bad faith.

Seven or eight years ago, Rowland and I were in the same writing group. I didn't know them well, but we became Facebook friends because that's what you do. At some point after we fell out of contact with each other, they made a post about an affair with an influential older male who had lied about being in an open marriage and proceeded to manipulate and gaslight and emotionally abuse them.

I didn't know any of the people involved other than Rowland, but I was affected enough by Rowland’s post that I can still recall reading it all these years later. So when I saw Rowland's blog this morning, I assumed it was the same situation... except the dates weren't right. The Bear/Lynch events took place in 2016, but the post I remembered was older than that. So I went snooping around.

Rowland's original post that I'd read was taken down from FB, but they had cross-posted it to their tumblr on May 10, 2014--years before the Bear/Lynch relationship had happened. It told the same story with a lot of the same language, but with a completely different older man. I found that post this afternoon (Friday, June 26).

Some hours after I found Rowland’s post, they went back and edited the story, removing most of the details.

Fortunately, I took screencaps.

Here's the post as it was as of around 3pm this afternoon. I've blacked out the names, but C_____ and S______ are the same person, and T____ is that person's wife.

And this is what the post looks like now:

Look, accusations like Rowland's should be taken seriously. I'm not calling them a liar, but they're painting themself as a blameless innocent, and I don't think it's that simple. When someone displays a pattern of bad behavior, you have to question their motives. It's important to root out serial abusers if we're going to make the internet a better place, but all of those efforts can be undermined by a few who are acting in bad faith.

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