Oct 21 2014
The Consequences of Stalking: Why So Many Took a Stand Against the Author-Stalker
Over the weekend, this article by author Kathleen Hale was published in the Guardian. In it, she describes her deteriorating mental stability and her obsessive compulsions that led to ultimately to her stalking a reviewer to her home in person and to her workplace via several invasive phone calls.
And some people hailed her as a hero for confronting an “online bully” whose major crime was a negative review.
“No one was hurt,” they said, “except maybe the author, who was just defending herself against online bullies.”
Which, as should be painfully evident by the author’s own confessional article, is the bullshittiest of bullshit.
Today, someone pointed me to this review. At the bottom, the reviewer says that she was assaulted by the author, who stalked her to her workplace and then hit her so hard over the head with a wine bottle that she nearly passed out and required stitches. She has photographs of the damage done here (warning: graphic) and gives a more detailed account here.
As I said in my previous post, I’m sure Kathleen Hale meant the blogger she stalked no physical harm. In fact, she seemed to have a twisted idea that they could be friends. She very well may find all this hullabaloo about her article ridiculous because she knows she wouldn’t turn stalking into assault. But no one else knows that, especially not the stalking victim, and by her own repeated confession, her mental stability is questionable.
But here’s the thing. The author who attacked the blogger who was assaulted a few days ago? He also wrote an article about stalking. [Link to article redacted at the request of the stalking victim.] He also felt that he could be friends (and romantic partners) with the person he was stalking. He also saw nothing wrong with what he did.
We take a stand against stalking because it escalates. We take a stand because people deserve their right to privacy–and their right to opinions. We take a stand because it is not right to cause someone else fear or harm, and it’s fucking ridiculous that this is not universally acknowledged.