Gehayi

Gehayi (on LJ, DW, AO3 and Tumblr) is a long time self-righteous wanker with a thin social justice veneer, known for her “sporkings” of published fiction (at das_sporking which she co-mods) continued long after the trend had been run into the ground, her wanky history as the mod of Femgenficathon, the Fifty Shades of Grey spitefic she wrote as a Yuletide Treat and her general obnoxiousness.

As the sole moderator for Femgenficathon, a self described fest for “genfic, with women as the main characters” and “a much needed community to celebrate stories about women,” Gehayi decided to rule against including fics with Mary Sues, babies, and trans women. Emphatically:

This is a femgenficathon. It follows, therefore, that what you will be writing will be genfic, with women as the main characters.

For the purposes of this ficathon, “women” will be defined as “biological women and girls who remain biologically women and girls all the time.”

This means no pre-operative transsexuals. No drag queens. No male transvestites. Not as the lead or POV characters. Yes, such characters can be in the story. But they can't be the leads, or the POV characters.

Because, when you come right down to it, this is a ficathon about women. Not men who identify as women. Not men who feel like women trapped in a man's body. WOMEN.“

This rule stood until 2010, but not before Gehayi changed the rules in 2009 to be even more aggressively disingenuous about her reasons for excluding canonical trans women (and conflating them with drag queens/characters with more ambiguous canonical gender identity) from her fest.

What about men who identify as women? Can I write about one of them?

No.

But that's not fair! If they identify as women, they should have a place here!

No, it's not fair. I freely admit that. And honestly, there are characters I wish that I had a place for here in the ficathon. Bree from Transamerica. Angel Dumott Schunard from Rent. Chi Chi Rodriguez from To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmarr. Wanda from Sandman.

The problem is, I can't let these characters in without opening the doors to people who want to write about other male characters. And make no mistake, that is an issue. Every year I get writers eagerly e-mailing me, asking if they can possibly write the following:

* a canonically male character who, by some means, has been turned into a woman against his will
* a canonically male character acquiring forced empathy with the women in his circle/world/universe
* an AU in which a canonically male character was born female in his universe
* a canonically male character who wants to be female
* a canonically male character mulling over the problems of being a woman
* a canonically male character going from extreme chauvinism to enlightenment in his dealings with women

Have you noticed who the lead character is in each of these cases?

A canonically male character.

To admit male characters who identify as women would be politically correct…but it would also open the doors to admitting ALL male characters. For, ultimately, it would come down to one person's interpretation–“well, I think that Draco Malfoy/Dean Winchester/Sherlock Holmes/Fitzwilliam Darcy/Roy Mustang/Ichigo Kurosaki/Discworld's Death/et cetera has always identified as a woman!”

She also deleted a fic about Ginny Weasley from the comm because it “romanticized stay-at-home motherhood.”

Some of you may have noticed that **catsintheattic**'s story, It's My Life, about Ginny Weasley giving up her job and becoming much happier as a stay-at-home mother, is now gone.

This does not reflect the quality of the story. And, in fact, there's nothing wrong with such a choice in real life.

The problem is that this is the wrong fest for such a story.

When I founded **femgenficathon** in 2005, it was in response to seeing story after story about Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Lily and so on putting aside their dreams and hopes to find the perfect man, marry him, and be the mother to his children. While, again, there is nothing wrong with this story, I began to feel that every other story was being drowned out. That girls were only seeing themselves as girlfriends, wives and mothers. I began to feel that girls were only seeing one possible future.

So I founded this ficathon, whose tagline is “Stories About Women Can Focus on More Than Love.” As I've always emphasized, women do not have to be the adjuncts in someone else's story. That they have their own stories to tell.

http://catsintheattic.livejournal.com/profile**catsintheattic**'s story was the kind of story that caused me to found the fest in the first place.”

Some FFA discussion here and _coal discussion here.

“I don't know what the hell was up with the 50 Shades of Grey fic last year. It was not at all clear from the request that the recipient wanted something bashing the book, and what they got was basically a fictionalized sporking.”
— Nonnie, Oct. 21, 2013

In 2012, Gehayi wrote a Yuletide treat based off a request for E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Though there's no love lost on meme or _coal for the book series, many found the fic tasteless, tryhard and full of nasty undertones, and there was a great deal of confusion over whether it was what the recipient had actually asked for.

When asked in 2013 why some coalies were avoiding being matched with Gehayi, one replied,

She wrote a super irritating, mean-spirited 50 Shades of Grey fic last year that was fawned over despite the fic containing rampant slut-shaming, blatant misuse of SJ buzzwords (she threw around “ablism” without apparently having any clue what it meant, and waffled hilariously when called on it), and an ending that featured the main character being pressured into a relationship she didn't really seem to want or understand. It was also proudly tagged “female character of color” when the only female character of color in the entire story was a magical genie who appeared for a few paragraphs in the beginning to grant the wishes of the white protagonist before disappearing.

It wasn't quite as vicious as the shorter 50 Shades fic from the same year, but it was pretty bad and the fact that it was so high-profile was even worse.

On Dec. 12, 2015, in a thread about writing advice posts made by Dreamwidth user melannen, several nonnies were outraged at comments made by Gehayi about the musical Hamilton.

• “Way to show you haven't even fucking listened to the musical!”
• “Gehayi will always and forever Not Get It. I think she admits down the page that the song did mention it, but because her thing is hating something and then developing reasons to continue hating it, she changes to 'but the song says she did it for him so it doesn't count'.”

• “I've hated her ever since she whined about straight writers being excluded from receiving LAMBDA Literary Award, if I remember that wank right. Maybe I'm a SJW for not letting that go, but, like, cry me a river, gehayi.”
• “Apparently she put in a Yuletide request for a Madoka Magica fic last year…unfortunately I'm not a Madoka fan so the details are a bit fuzzy, but it was something like “I'd really like to see X issue explored more in a fic, as we never got to see it in canon!” when X was the focus of a major plot arc. People were theorizing that she'd never actually seen the show.”
• “I can't imagine being as much of an SJW parody as Gehayi is. 'Please don't demonize this character who was in the book for four seconds and did nothing except torture children during that timespan.'”
• “I've always been delighted by people on here disliking gehayi just because I once wrote her 13K of fic that even got pretty solidly recced but could she be arsed to leave me a comment? No. So hearing other people talk about her other issues makes me feel better.”