Ann Leckie, unfortunately, is one of those “separate art from the artist” people for me.

I’ve liked her work a lot, but not her Twitter behavior.

I don’t feel like grabbing the exact details (they might still exist in her Twitter, she left it up for over a year, unless she got rid of it during this more recent Twitter enshittification period), but a few years back she went off on the trans community when Mercedes Lackey won an award.

Basically, the trans community (and their allies) were venting/crying out in pain on Twitter when it broke Mercedes Lackey got an award, as Lackey had said some hurtful stuff in the past and Lackey getting an award prompted renewed talk about Lackey’s works and her past words, and then on the tails of that, in the PRESENT, Lackey’s husband Larry Dixon showed up and freshly doubled down on some of it. (Somewhere along the line, it was said, paraphrased, that nobody was bigger “drama queens” than the trans community. So you can imagine why that’d provoke outrage suddenly streaming across Ann Leckie’s Twitter feed.)

And Ann Leckie seemed to miss some of the context (she responded slow, like a day or so behind) and went off on people who I guess she felt were being mean to Mercedes Lackey in her feed. She basically jumped in and said in this moralizing, fatuous way that it was never okay to say certain things about people. Basically, a big moral finger-wagging, right at trans folks and allies. Complete with some “don’t twist my words” when people who were largely level-headed tried to talk to her.

My belief is that she saw herself in Mercedes Lackey (someone who’d seemingly supported the queer community in her past work, who was now getting criticism from readers in that same community) and that’s why she went charging to her defense like a knight and didn’t stop to consider WHY the trans community was voicing “mean” stuff in Lackey’s direction. And why things maybe weren’t as black-and-white as she was making it.

It left a bad taste in my mouth, because Ann Leckie went to all this trouble enshrining the plight of (for example) tea-picking debt slave workers in poor countries in her books, has a drug addict as a supporting character, and has tons of genderqueer and neurodivergent stuff in her books, but she couldn’t stop for two seconds to think about why someone who is trans, and who might be living in a dangerous situation with their only outlet is books (or might have trans friends who are), might object to an author known for writing about queer issues saying hurtful stuff about people like them and their community. And how it might be more merciful or useful to stop and listen to the pain, even if it’s using harsh words, than to chide them for saying mean things.

I think Ann Leckie felt empathy for Mercedes Lackey as a fellow author, and feared that people online would criticize HER for similar things, and that fear of HER possibly being criticized basically meant she centered herself and her pain when she saw people being upset with Mercedes Lackey, while shrouding it in a moral finger-wagging lesson, instead of stopping to step back and figure out WHY trans people were so upset.

And so, after having seen that play out before my eyes, it just made me question some of the themes in Ann Leckie’s books.

It happened another time too, a few years prior to the Lackey thing, but I remember even less of that one so I’m unwilling to get too much into it. I just remember noting it seemed more a reaction due to an author being piled on/criticized, combined with some big holes in her understanding of the situation.

It’s just really weird to know her books seem to address a lot of important issues about power between different types of people, and culture, and gender–but in the real world with real people, she’ll side with the author if there’s the slightest hint of a “pile on”, even if that’s not actually what’s necessarily what’s going on.