This is where I become actually invested, and upset. I’ll admit my biases place me firmly on Octavia’s side in all this, but for now I’ll let the data speak for itself.
Here is a post in which LB publishes a scathing takedown of an individual known as 12, who at the time was a moderator of the eightpoints instance. The whole thing reads about as riddled with DARVO as anything else we’ve seen here today, and makes a lot of unsubstantiated (i.e., undocumented) claims about 12’s actions as a person. I cannot speak for these actions one way or another, and frankly I’m so tired of research at this point. 12 might be evil, or a saint, I really don’t care. (It’s also worth pointing out this final sentence that feels a bit icky)
What is clear, and what caught my attention, was her claim that 12 “is associating with a cult that’s confirmed to have two kills to its name and has actively shielded a cis man raping his way through the west coast trans community,” and further, “seeking to emulate and ideologically align with Slimepriestess/Octavia Nouzen,” and most scathingly, “a cult leader, an abuser, an exploiter of vulnerable women.”
What an intense claim! This Octavia person must be sorta awful.
In the post, LB decries Octavia’s “ideology” and states that, “I believe in restorative justice. I would like that to be true, but its not. Octavia is still engaging in cult like behavior as well as continuing down a toxic path. It just looks different on the surface than it used to, thats all. Multiple attempts were made to hold Octavia accountable and Octavia disarmed them by feigning interest in change while keeping the core behavior of indoctrination of vulnerable trans women.”
Very interesting remarks coming from LB, based on what we’ve seen so far, but let’s take a closer look at what Octavia’s role in all of this actually was, shall we?
In the linked post, included by LB herself, another user by the name aflowerbynoothername discusses the link between Octavia Nouzen, known also as hive, ra, or slimepriestess, and one John David Pressman. Aflower describes how John created an abusive cult following, weaponized a subset of the rationalist community against a group of marginalized & vulnerable trans women, and manipulated the facts such that many involved found themselves on very much the wrong side of things. This culminated in the murder of a girl named Emma, and the full story is worth a read on its own. Many of those involved have held up Emma’s death as something of a warning tale for trans communities, and this is something Octavia herself has been transparent about for as long as i’ve been aware of her, as she has expressed immense regret and sorrow over her part in things. She and many others were victims of one man’s abuse, as is seen countless times over in cults like this. According to Nouzen (image), she had “joined the rationalist discord and (John) saw me asking about Ziz. He almost immediately linked to Zizians and behaved in a way consistent with the representation in that post.” The post Octavia mentions (linked by aflower in her post and can be found here) goes into further detail about John’s obsession with Ziz herself, and the vast amounts of lies & manipulation he committed. As a final point of clarification, Octavia’s current beliefs, both in her own words and as one can plainly see from any amount of research into her ideals, diverge significantly with that supposedly espoused by John David Pressman.
I’ll let the posts in question speak for themselves, but I think even a cursory read makes it very clear who are the aggressors and who are the victims.
The idea that LB could read this post and decide to use the situation surrounding Octavia’s abuse at the hands of John David Pressman, effectively & inherently weaponizing Emma’s death, in order to takedown an unrelated moderator of an instance she’d already been removed from, in order to… well that part’s unclear. Garner favor with the mod team that had already ousted her over previous concerns? Get revenge on a person she saw as involved in her downfall? Establish herself as a valuable & exclusive authority that can weed through such deception? As of now I don’t have an answer. I just can’t imagine one that’s satisfying enough to make this acceptable.