Jill Bearup fight scene video

Posted 27th December 2021

Context and summary for people unfamiliar: I recently collaborated with someone who made transphobic posts years ago, but deleted those posts years ago. I wasn't aware until the video was complete.

What happened?

First up: I had no idea about this during production. I know Jill because I’ve made stuff for the network she was a part of, Standard. It’s a diverse network that includes several major trans YouTube creators and a lot of other allies. So something like “old transphobic posts” was far, far outside my expectations. I took her membership there as a “this person’s all clear” signal, and didn’t make any further searches before suggesting the video idea.

I understand that, partly as a result of this, Jill has just resigned from Standard.

When the trailer was published as part of a general update video, a couple of friends did give me a heads up, but also said the posts were years-old and long-deleted. I also had four emails from viewers, but they also included that the posts had been deleted. (And as the video with the trailer included a call for ideas, those emails were part of a flood of literally thousands of messages that it took weeks to triage.) My read on the situation was that Jill had once been in something of a radicalisation hole, but thankfully now had a wider circle of friends, and had come to the reasonable decision that quiet deletion of old posts was the best idea.

So at that point, when the video was already complete and announced, I figured my options were:

1. Pull the already-completed, already-trailed video. Which seemed an enormous overreaction to posts that were deleted years ago. That’d also be a terrible waste of time and money, along with wasting the talent of everyone who worked on the video. It would also ignite an inevitable firestorm of unhelpful arguments, expose a large amount of people to long-deleted transphobia, and establish an impossible precedent about vetting the entire history of everyone I work with in the future. (However, if someone’s default assumption is that deletion is a bad-faith cover-up rather than a disavowal, then I can see why this would seem to be the only acceptable option.)
2. Publish the video, but along with it, say anything or take any action whatsoever that would highlight the deleted posts. Same firestorm or worse, same unhelpful arguments that go nowhere, same exposure to long-deleted transphobia, same precedent. Only this time people are also angry because the video’s been published as well. And to make it worse, there are countless different actions I could take and things I could say, each of which would upset different sets of people because they’d think I should have said or done something more, less, or different.
3. Accept that the posts have been deleted, and that years-old deleted posts are not enough to justify action when it seemed from context that those posts don’t reflect Jill’s views any more. (And accept that I’m going to take a hit to my reputation from people who disagree.)

There is no single correct option there. In hindsight, I should have taken option D, ask Jill about it: but deleting the posts and being part of Standard seemed pretty clear to me, so in the pre-Christmas rush I picked option C.

Everyone draws their line of what’s acceptable just below what they’re doing: “sure, I’m okay with X, but at least I’m not okay with Y” — although, given I’m usually read as Default Man, it’s a fair argument that I probably draw my line lower than it could be. And for some people, picking option C will be enough of a single bad call for them to stop following my own stuff. If that’s you, I’m sorry.

What should I do?

So far I have been asked by different people to:

• delete the video quietly
• delete the video loudly
• mark the video as ‘unlisted’
• keep the video up but make another video
• keep the video up but add an apology
• keep the video up and add context, but not an apology
• release a public statement
• not do anything publicly at all, but apologise privately to people who ask

All those options are mutually exclusive, and each one will appease a few people and anger many more — no doubt including people who haven’t got the full context and are reacting based on several-versions-deep retellings, and people who hadn’t heard about it until reading this and are upset at finding out that my views don’t align with theirs. There is no good option, only the least worst.

So yesterday I did what I should have done earlier, and explicitly asked Jill if those deleted posts do still reflect her views. Her reply is complicated. I’m being vague because trying to summarise would be inaccurate and unfair, and would also spark unhelpful, endless debate. Talking — or not talking — publicly about her views is Jill’s decision to make. I hope she does eventually, and I hope there’s an apology involved, but I can’t do that here and I can’t do that for her.

In summary: no, Jill does not seem to hold all the views that people are ascribing to her, and I don’t believe she holds views that justify taking down an already-published video and disavowing her. But there are some things I definitely disagree with, and some things that are so far outside my sphere of knowledge that I would need to spend days or weeks researching before feeling even vaguely qualified to discuss them privately, let alone publicly.

So what am I doing about it?

Looking at the early AdSense numbers from YouTube, I estimate the video will make about $2,000 in ad revenue over its lifetime. Most of that has already happened. So I’m donating that amount to the Trevor Project. They're rated as “give with confidence” by Charity Navigator, and seem to be the most effective charity for helping LGBTQ youth. I'm also donating the same amount, £1,500, to Childline, the UK support network for children run by the NSPCC, which actively supports LGBTQ youth and which, as a charity, is dear to my heart. If the video ever earns more than that total, I’ll top up the donation, either to those charities, or to other appropriate ones.

A link to this page is also going above the fold in the description of the video.

For some people, this won’t be enough. For some people, this will already be too much. Like I said: there’s no good option, only the least worst.

Why did it take so long?

Please remember that this was handled at the speed of Christmas-break email, by people who have families.

I am not a PR department — I’m just a person.

What happens next?

I’ll continue to support trans and non-binary folks: family, friends and strangers alike. My own views on LGBT issues have hopefully been clear for a long time.

And I’ll make sure to do due-diligence in future, even for folks who are seemingly vouched for, or folks I know well. This should have been identified and resolved even before production began.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean I’m only going to be working with people who are absolutely squeaky-clean: that’s an impossible standard to hold! At some point, I probably will end up working again with someone who’s said or done questionable things in the past.

But I will try to draw my own line of “what’s acceptable” a little bit higher.