Responding To My Hit Piece: The Tragedy Of Forest Van Slyke
I understand challenging people’s world view makes them uncomfortable, and J.D Riley's hit piece is a clear representation of that.
Five months ago when I was being bullied to the brink of death, someone wrote a hit piece about me. The thing about being cancelled is that the degradation doesn’t just happen in that moment and then you carry on with your life; it leaves a mark in the form of search results. So now whenever I make a new friend or go on a date or meet that person’s parents, I’ll have to worry if they googled me and found the defamatory essay titled, hi i’m racist – The Tragedy of Forest Van Slyke thanks to somebody named J.D Riley. J.D is a thirty-something with a locked Twitter account of 246 followers and a penchant for throwing other writers under the bus.
After digging myself out of my grave and making the painful decision every day to keep working on my career despite people like J.D bullying me, I’m proud of the strength and patience I’ve nurtured. It takes everything in me to deal with the fact that human beings can be so cruel and keep seeing the good in the world. If anything, I’m certainly a stronger person than those who hide behind avatars and think Substack is a gossip rag. Considering “saint_riley” publicly stated that she has a “Nahtzee snuff kink” in her bio on Twitter, it’s interesting she’s spending her time calling me racist. But people project what they are onto others and all that.
I’m not going to stoop to J.D’s level and examine why I think she decided to spend her time writing libel about me, but I will address her badly researched claims. “Forest is fairly certain that autists who have been conditioned to consider their disability as disabling are…wrong.” It doesn’t take much to look at my posts, videos and books to see that I’ve never said autistic people aren’t disabled. People often confuse me saying that autistic people aren’t disordered to be the same as saying we’re not disabled, but at this point I’ve corrected it so many times I’m starting to think it’s deliberate mischaracterization. In her piece J.D uses the term differently abled, which makes me want to throw up. But she redeems herself by calling me “philosopher Forest.” Even though it’s tongue in cheek, I’ve never thought about calling myself a philosopher like my favorite writers. But maybe I should start.
J.D writes, “Forest states that they will ‘help you learn to love yourself and improve your life.’ Just. Like. That.” Except I didn’t say just like that, hence it’s not in a quotation. At least J.D has the decency to not put things I didn’t say in quotes like so many people on Twitter, but this is a good indication that the rest of her essay will be filled with projection. In my book, Finding Autistic Joy, I say it’s a guide and not a quick fix because I know people, including myself, are wary of self-help books. But of course you can’t expect people who write hit pieces about you to actually read your books. It’s telling J.D refers to being autistic as those who struggle with autism spectrum disorder. Most of the people who have a problem with me are threatened by the work I do trying to empower other autistic people because allistic society sees something wrong with us.
“These are things that preachers promise. These are things that charismatic leaders claim. That’s an incredible ability to have – to simply be able to state that as though it is a given to be able to do that and to mean it so genuinely.” The only incredible thing is the words J.D is putting in my mouth. There’s nothing grandiose about wanting to help other autistic people learn to love themselves in a society that thinks we “suffer from autism” instead of seeing us as simply having a different neurotype.
I was too hasty to assume J.D, who apparently published multiple books, knows how to use quotes, as she calls me “guru” as if I would ever use that term. It’s clear she’s only read the summary of my book and at least the front page of my website, as she continues to confuse projection for research. She says I have an us VS them mentality – referring to allistic (non autistic) people VS autistic people. If she read any of my work she’d know that this is a baseless claim since I often talk about how we need to learn to work together with allistic people. J.D says something feels off and asks if it’s my brashness – which is confusing but I suppose not surprising since autistic people like me are often told this.
“According to Forest, this is an important book and it has lots of useful information in it…so how are Forest’s communication skills with the wider world? After an examination of their social media, Forest probably shouldn’t be the example for how to decode allistic communication or even autistic communication since well, theirs sucks. Whoops – that’s what felt off-kilter before and it wasn’t just your allistic hindbrain reading into it.” What an original thing to say about an autistic person who’s constantly misunderstood because of the way they communicate. How dare an autistic person try to help other autistic people navigate allistic society despite their own struggles. That “tingle at the back of your skull?” That’s your ableism.
Speaking of ableism, here’s J.D projecting again: “Forest went on to explain that to expect an autistic person (who writes books on how to communicate effectively with allistic people) to not be racist was, in fact, ableist.” Despite what people heard in their heads on Twitter, I’ve never actually said being autistic makes people racist nor did I imply it (because I don’t imply things). What I was trying to explain was that autistic people struggle with subtext and can’t know everything that will offend people. In turn, we can be racist without meaning to, especially in this cultural climate of woke racism, and instantly jumping to calling us racist because of the way our neurotype can’t see subtext is ableist. But like J.D says, I’m tired of identity politics and I’m not here to play tit for tat. I’m also not here for the lie that I support the book The Bell Curve, as sharing a video of an interview about how it was misinterpreted doesn’t mean it’s an endorsement. There’s no way I could even know if I support the book as I’ve never read it. But this is another popular claim that’s used to make people think I’m racist to discredit me.
J.D goes on to project that being autistic has disabled me to the point of being gullible to the words of racists, and that perhaps I shouldn’t be writing books. “Nevertheless, if this were the case, if we truly take Forest at their word that their racism is fully upon the shoulders of their autism…perhaps they should not be writing books other autists are supposed to read for advice.” It’s interesting that she says “take their word” as if they’re my words, not her’s. J.D is keeping with the tradition of allistic society invalidating autistic people simply because we think differently, and we can see by the next paragraph where she goes in for the kill: “The true tragedy of Forest is in seeing in real time someone folding in upon themselves as a result of social rejection—the cancelation-to-bitter- disillusioned-rightwing-nutball pipeline is stark against the background of their inability to refocus, reprioritize, and reflect.” So basically I’m a “nutball” for having different opinions than the woke mob I was once part of and you shouldn’t believe anything I say.
“Forest’s tweets devolve into lamentations about ‘woke culture’ and ‘cancelation,’ and their new ‘PTSD’ they’ve developed from being called a white supremacist (join the club, weirdo) on the internet.” What does J.D mean “join the club?” Does she mean the club she’s in because she has a – *checks notes* – Nahtzee snuff kink? It’s actually not normal for people to be called white supremacists and nobody should be okay with that kind of abuse. Being called a white supremacist is a very serious accusation, because unlike the woke idea that we live in a white supremacist culture, it literally means someone who thinks white people are superior – and it’s horrible for so many people to mischaracterize you like that.
“We get it, you think you’re smart,” J.D says, referencing my essay The Loneliness Of The Intellectual about how having the nerve to talk about things that unnerve people often leads to dehumanization and ostracization. And I’ll give her that; at this point I think I must be a fucking genius because so many people online behave like fucking idiots. But J.D seems to think I think I’m smart simply because I talk about being an intellectual, which is someone who discusses ideas, and perhaps she feels insecure about the word like many people do. It’s a lot easier to write a hit piece under an avatar than to talk about controversial ideas that lead to people writing hit pieces about you. I understand challenging people’s world view makes them uncomfortable, and J.D Riley’s hit piece is a clear representation of that. The only tragedy here is the cruelty of human beings.
If you enjoyed this essay, consider sending Forest a tip.