I think you’re misrepresenting me to say that I’m arguing the ends justify the means. Understanding is a quality oft strained, and in the rush to judge Chloe Sagal for her deception, people always seem to be tacitly suggesting that she deserved everything that happened to her– the hate mobs unto death. I’m not saying that you yourself are doing this, but ask yourself why your fixation is on whether or not we condemn the deception– instead of this:

Why must a woman’s mistake be so irredeemably and mercilessly punished? And why must we accept so impoverished a state of moral affairs that everything that happened to Chloe Sagal is what passes for “justice”?

Note, I am not arguing that this was right– though I do dispute your over-precise definition of lifesaving here, as one person remarked the fact that she nearly killed herself in despair over the feeling that all avenues were now closed to her rather proves that a path to surgery *may well have been lifesaving.*

As to Chloe making the choice to make it public, that is an argument I addressed in my article. My point being that you and others treat Chloe as the only person with the power to make a moral choice and sole responsibility for what it entails– as if Allistair and everyone who attacked her with violent, vicious, and bigoted rhetoric did not *also* make choices to which responsibility and accountability must accrue.

Here’s what one commenter on Destructoid has said:

“Alister did fuck up, but who hasn’t at some point in their lives? The feeling I got from his tweets wasn’t that he was happy or felt “pious” in outing her, but that it was his last resort (someone he was at least moderately close to did attempt suicide in a very public venue; poorly thought out emotional responses are to be expected). He was wrong in doing so, but it happened. Allister told the truth, perhaps it wasn’t the time to do it, but that’s pretty much all he did. If someone makes an honest mistake (pun sort of intended, who doesn’t love puns?) with good intentions I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

This is the tenor of more reasonable people in this discussion and I find it interesting; “yes, he made a mistake but we should forgive him,” versus “CHLOE MADE A MISTAKE, BURN HER, DIE!” Do you see what I’m getting at?

I am not arguing that Chloe has zero accountability. My argument is that due to subtle prejudices we forget that everyone else involved has equal or greater accountability, and that while there will be a time for us to parse out the exact nature of Chloe’s responsibility, it is not while she is lying in a hospital bed at the lowest hour of her life– and it’s a discussion she herself should be a part of as a full, recovered person when she’s up to it.

Also, thank you for commenting and for disagreeing in a respectful manner.

Hold on. This sentence is where the logic of this post falls apart. She misrepresented and committed fraud about the purpose of her crowdsourcing campaign. This whole post seems to be written with the view that the “ends justify the means,” i.e. it’s OK to do this if you are transgendered and in desperate need of help. Let me go out on a limb and say that it is never OK to commit fraud and misrepresent to people giving you money out of charity. SRS may be in one sense “life-saving” surgery, but the term “life-saving” has a very specific meaning i.e. “preventing imminent death,” a meaning she invoked with her story about a car accident and shrapnel. And sexual identity is a personal issue, but Chloe MADE it into a public issue. The moment when she set up a fraudulent campaign to support SRS, her sexuality became part of the story.

Chloe Sagal deserves our sympathy because she clearly needs help, and honestly her story breaks my heart, but her actions were clearly wrong. Allistair Pinsof mishandled things, and I wish he would not have taken to Twitter for his comments

“[the surgery] was non-vital, in the sense that her body would go on even if her mind couldn’t let it. But I understand you.” The last line was written to a woman criticising the fact that he diminished Sagal’s vital need”

The reply was in fact to two men, not a woman. Not a big deal, but just a small factual innacuracy.

Like I said, *IF* she did. Not she did, but IF. And that’s just it, plenty of people do think bad think about and intend. But she wasn’t just thinking about it, she made the Indiegogo and said what she did. That’s acting on it. So *IF* she did intend to use it towards SRS, then she was in the wrong to make the page.

Here being in a rough spot doesn’t make it alright to do something like that. Truthfully, we’ll probably never know the truth on this matter. So yes, Allistair Pinsof was absolutely in the wrong, but there’s every possibility that Chloe was also in the wrong, arguably more so.

Is it unreasonable to ask for a degree of empathy and consideration for someone who is obviously in a really tough place? Yes, if Chloe had actually done the things she is now publicly accused of intending to do, that would be bad. But she didn’t. This is the core of what makes this whole mess a real problem: The situation was escalated by a careless, imprecise and overly public response to a perceived threat, not an actual threat. Even if the core goal is to prevent Indiegogo backers from being defrauded of funds, there are reasonable ways to do this that don’t involve outing a vulnerable person based on your understanding of their intent.

2) Even if Chloe “harmed” anybody with her dishonesty, it was an impersonal dishonesty that would affect people’s wallets, and said money was refunded when indiegogo changed their minds. Also, she was clearly in a depressed state already; depressed people don’t always act rationally.

Alistair committed harm by breaching the trust of a suicidally depressed woman who probably could use a larger support network right now. Said breach of trust seems selfish rather than empathetic. This is not to say that Alistair might not also be acting out of a sense of desperation, but I currently have no evidence to suggest that Alistair IS depressed. But said breach of trust cannot be “refunded,” as with the indiegogo funds.

3) I don’t want anybody to “hate” Alistair, but I will take a stand against his lack of empathy and those who support his lack of empathy. This doesn’t mean I expect him to be canned, or anything that drastic, but a simple “we’re sorry” probably wouldn’t cut it either. This situation needs to be resolved, and it needs to be clearly explained why Alistair’s actions were wrong.

That said, Allistair Pinsof was also in the wrong for the way he handled things. Taking an incredibly private matter and making it so public isn’t the way to handle something like this.

I want to first and foremost thank you for coming here and responding so thoughtfully to my article — and indeed for reading it in the first place.

I do not expect you to respond and fully respect your wishes to not further engage in discussions around this; for what it’s worth, I think that’s probably for the best. Nevertheless I will reply to the things you’ve said here in ways that I hope will productively further understanding and discussion elsewhere, amongst others, since your words here will doubtless be cited and quoted elsewhere.

I accept and agree that there were consequences to Ms. Sagal’s actions that hurt IndieGogo’s reputation and thus the credibility of other people in need whose campaigns were not signal boosted. I am sensitive to that; I’m not going to argue that point as it would be morally bankrupt of me to do so, frankly.

But here’s why I wrote this article with the focus and emphasis I did:

The feeling that one was defrauded *because* they do not believe SRS was lifesaving and thus constitutes a stain on IndieGogo’s reputation is a huge part of the problem. The proof is in the pudding, really; one only needs to see the hate directed at her by the internet justice mob, the revulsion, the rage, the disgust, *this* is why she did something that we can agree was ethically dubious, something wrong that may well have hurt other worthy causes. Yet all the hatred directed at her shows why she might have been afraid to come out with this openly.

There are enough people out there, including other trans women, who can explain at length why her IndieGogo campaign was ultimately handled in the wrong way. I felt that the gap that needed filling was this: compassion and understanding for what would make that seem like an option for someone, as well as asking the important question with which I closed. Is her near-death, her continued depression and dysphoria, any kind of “justice” worthy of the name?

To whatever extent I appeared to excuse her behaviour, that’s why. My interest is in helping her recover, and gaining understanding for her, rather than feeding the void of rage about how horrible she is for “theft” and “crimes” and “stealing” and all manner of fraud; that would not have been a novel contribution to this discussion.

Nor a compassionate one. She is my sister, and I am willing to take the heat for this article for that.

In other words, while I can see that what she did was wrong, I still want to and am fully willing to embrace her– and defend her from others whose idea of punishment vastly, vastly outsizes the reality of this situation. She’s my sister. I trust you know what one ought to do for one’s sister– and that’s defend them through thick and thin.

I thank you for updating me on Chloe’s situation and obviously my thoughts, love, and best wishes are with her. As I said, there is a whole army of us waiting to welcome her home and give her a community where she can gather strength and rebuild, loved and accepted as her true self.

For your part, it may be best to step back from all this. I understand this wasn’t an easy time for you; my thoughts, however, remain with the fact that it was a much, much worse time for Chloe– this may rank as the lowest point of her life and it is this which I prefer to focus on. But, Mr. Pinsof, you go with my fondest wishes and I hope we can all grow from this. I do not think you an evil person or a villain as some have claimed, and I hope you can believe that.

In the final analysis it may be best to leave the “mission” to Chloe, her friends, loved ones, and community.

Best wishes,

Katherine Cross

I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize for the first tweet you quoted. In my efforts to provide clarity on the complicated situation with Chloe — as those outside the trans community may need more clarity than others — I was brash. In hindsight, I wish I took a gentler approach that would have conveyed the situation while not disrespecting the trans community.

I am relieved knowing IndieGoGo’s name has been cleared and the way has been paved for future legitimate charities to appear there, as witnessing the well being poisoned was troubling — it got worse than people suspect, there was a kid dying from Lymphoma and it wasn’t getting reported on in the game community because Chloe’s illegitimate post the week before; it scared people away and it was a real shitty thing. Just as I couldn’t stomach seeing Chloe not getting the support she was asking for, when I first met her, I can’t stomach seeing people in need of help being doubted or denied because of her actions not being cleared — in the future, maybe Chloe will even post a charity for her SRS on IGG, as I and her friends once encouraged her to do. That’s all I wanted out of this. I don’t think it’s necessary to scam or steal money for SRS and I think it’s damaging to suggest that’s a acceptable thing to do — there are repercussions to these actions that affect more than just the individual, who may deserve help but not in an effort that hurts others.

So many people were eager to help Chloe and still are — in fact, even more now despite the awful surrounding circumstances. You are a wonderful person to see past Chloe’s actions and recognize that she is just desperate for some love and support.

Chloe is alive with her friends, right now. I hate how me revealing the truth hurt her and the trans community as she once thought she would do herself with her apology. But maybe this is all for the best, as she was so close to coming out and now people will hate me instead of her. Right now is the time for positive role models such as yourself and http://gamersagainstbigotry.org/ to help ease the noise and anger. I will not be discussing this further, as it’s in poor taste to further explain myself.

It’s true I write for a site, but my interactions with Chloe were a personal mission. I let her know I would not publish anything about her on any site. My plan was for her was to come out on her own terms on Jezebel, Take This, or someplace with a welcoming community. Her teacher can verify this as can my chat logs and email history, though I will not be sharing any for the time being to keep her identity and location safe (in this sense, I have not “outed” her in the way some suggested.)

I will be forwarding letters of support to Chloe I received to Gamers Against Bigotry and encourage others to send any there as well.

Once more, I’d like to apologize to the trans* community for the upset that has come from my actions. Part of me wishes I never got involved, but I still believe in the best in people. I still believe in Chloe.