I’m surprised at the amount of harassment I’ve endured since using the name Lilith.
It’s a somewhat popular name and all, and some people make the mistake of assuming I’m either a character from “The Binding of Isaac,” “Hazbin Hotel,” or “Diablo IV;” or that I am yet another trans activist using the name “Lilith” to be edgy.
One thing I’ve noticed lately, though, is a couple of very cryptic statements made to me via text chat in Team Fortress 2, about them “knowing what I am.” They never go anywhere beyond that, they just say that and that’s the end of it, but it’s unnerving to me at the very least. Like so many people from my past, who would say they “know what you did” or “know about your interests,” but when I ask them what they’re talking about they either say “you know full well what I’m talking about” (I don’t, actually, which is why I asked you in the first place) or if they mention what I supposedly did give a completely nonsense thing that I’ve never done.
Perhaps the most surprising part about this, though, is that I never received this much harassment when I was going by Inanna. I literally used to believe I was a fucking goddess, and nobody batted an eye. Believe that I’m Lilith, though, and everybody suddenly either absolutely adores me or absolutely despises me. I’ve also ended up getting friend requests from people I blocked over harassment that went way beyond the pale. I’ve ignored those and then cut off all communications with them.
I’m not even a popular person in life. I live alone, have no friends among my neighbors (no enemies either, though), and as an artist I’m really not all that important.
Interestingly enough, I’m also not harassed as an artist much, and when I am it’s over things that aren’t even the most objectionable stuff I’ve done. I mean, yes, I draw snuff on occasion, and I’ve been harassed over that a few times... but I also draw CUB PORN, basically kid characters, which is usually treated like it is far more objectionable. I can count on one finger how many times I’ve been harassed over cub porn. Even then, the harassment was an extension of the harasser’s attacks on a very popular cub artist on Twitter, after I defended the artist reminding the harasser that drawings aren’t real kids. Also, after he called me out, I laughed at him, called him an idiot, and thanked him for the free publicity. His tweet was down within a half-hour.
This has me wondering if the harassment isn’t therefore due to my popularity as a gamer. I main the Spy class, and am quite good at it. I’ve been maining it since 2011, over the course of five different Steam accounts (the first I lost the credentials for; the second I left due to false accusations thrown at me over an nsfw furry spray, as well as an honest negative review of “Hitman: Blood Money,” which earned me tons of backlash from fanboys who see that game as the Holy Grail of “Hitman” games; the third I left because the name felt wrong and I wanted to change it; the fourth for the same reason as the third; and now I’m on my fifth one, LilithTheElder. Hopefully this will also be my final and permanent one). Because of this love of the Spy class, I’ve grown really proficient in it, and I fear that this proficiency has turned me into a target. The accusation at the end of my second account happened immediately after I dominated the person who made it (and it was a bad one, too, like really really bad. He claimed that I was creating and distributing child pornography, of all things - an accusation that can get people murdered in real life. He got his “revenge” while I was standing around trying to defend myself from that... all so he could win a video game). I’ve also been accused of focusing people multiple times, despite doing nothing of the sort, and I’ve even been accused of cheating a couple times, though nothing ever came of it, I’ve never once been VAC banned, or even banned from a server for cheating. I did get banned from a server once over “unreasonable demands for proof” that a rule existed when I couldn’t read it due to the admin locking it behind three days’ worth of membership on an Internet forum (and really, who in their right mind expects you to be a member of their Internet forum for three days BEFORE allowing you to read the rules of said forum? Doesn’t being a member hinge on agreeing to obey the rules in the first place? How can you agree to rules you’re not allowed to read? ‘Unreasonable’ my white, scaly ass).
But it sure as hell wasn’t over cheating.
So my thought is that maybe the harassment I encounter in gaming has to do with my capabilities as a gamer? Not so much my popularity, but definitely my ability to rise in the scoreboard to the third, second, or in some cases even the very highest score... as a Spy, one of the weakest classes in the game but one that I absolutely love to play.
Similarly, the harassment I did receive over my art was over art that is my most popular, even if I don’t like to draw it anymore. I have a strong emotional connection to snuff art, especially involving dragons. As someone who was sabotaged in life and regularly falsely accused, I can empathize with the dragon as it often is seen as a servant of Satan rather than a simple animal trying to live its life. So when I draw snuff, I’m drawing the animal trying to live its life but being prevented from it by someone who sees it as not merely a hungry animal, but a vile soldier of Hell itself trying to blanket the land in darkness. I draw it from the dying individual’s viewpoint, not from the killer’s. Thus, I draw the dragon beautifully, and the knight is more of a prop than anything else. As a Dragonkin, this is especially helpful to me because it connects me not only to the reality of the animal being innocent, but also of being a cousin species to my own.
I have similar emotional ties to my other art, but not in the same way and certainly not to the same level of intensity. Thus, my snuff art is overall better looking, with more attention to detail, and more emotion. It is, based upon the view numbers from when I still uploaded it, my most viewed style of artwork.
It is also the artwork I’ve been most harassed over. One guy, who was Dragonkin, asked me why I could draw that stuff and call myself “dragonkin” and then blocked me before I could answer. Ironically, that same guy draws mostly snuff, involving dragons. This begs the question: why is it okay when he does it, but not when I do it?
I guess I’m slowly learning a valuable truth about Humanity in all of this. When I thought I was a literal god, no one seemed to care about my identity. When I learned that I am actually Lilith, harassment became a normal part of my life, with people constantly asking why I chose such a popular name and making cryptic insinuations while not actually telling me what their beef is with me.
When I drew snuff and still enjoyed it, it was the single most popular form of artwork that I drew, and I also ended up being harassed over it by other snuff artists who drew exactly the same kind of characters in the same situations.
Finally, being a Spy main in Team Fortress 2 and being really good at it, I’ve endured false accusations of focusing, hacking, and even of committing vile felonies that could get me killed if allowed to proliferate, and the harassment was so bad I abandoned my second Steam account as a result of the terror in my mind at the time. I’ve heard of people getting so angry at losing video games that they’ll send a SWAT team to the home of the person who beat them. I’ve been SWATted once, though over a disagreement on Twitter rather than a video game match. It’s always the person who’s better at the game than another who gets in trouble that way.
I’ve been told my entire life that I’m an incompetent, stupid, retarded, idiotic abomination by people who, in many ways, are just like the harassers I’ve mentioned in the paragraphs above. They didn’t do these things because I actually was any of those things, but because I excelled at something and was a threat to their dominance over the situation.
This is why nobody cared when I literally claimed to be the Goddess Inanna. I thought I was going to be locked up in an insane asylum for thinking I was a goddess. Yet Inanna is an obscure name, often erroneously hyphenated despite scholars admitting that Ishtar is a different person in the footnotes. I am one of the few people I’ve known who knows how to actually pronounce that name. I’ve heard people online try it and it reminded me of Seniors in high school “reading” lines from “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, and having to pronounce each individual letter of simple words like “stop” as if they were still in kindergarten. Searching for “Inanna” brings up either the goddess herself, her Akkadian counterpart Ishtar, actress Inanna Sarkis, or Anna, a town in Michigan (results in Google repeatedly say “in Anna, Michigan.”
No one mispronounces Lilith. The most people might do is add an extra L in the middle, and that’s it. The name is everywhere. There’s a villain named Lilith in at least two video games (The Binding of Isaac; Diablo IV), two characters named Lilith in TV shows (Hazbin Hotel; Frazier), and mythologies from two separate religions (Judaism; Sumerianism) in which Lilith is seen as a demon. Lilith is popular, and as such everyone knows who you’re talking about when you say it. Even the various fictional iterations of hir are connected to the myths in some way. Hazbin Hotel’s Lilith is, from what I’ve read, Satan’s former wife. In Diablo IV shi’s the main villain and again the wife of the devil. Even Frazier’s wife Lilith is a cold, creepy woman who is controlling and gives off a kind of a demonic vibe.
Plus, “Lilith” is also apparently a popular name in trans circles, which further raises that name’s visibility, especially with a lot of vocally hateful* types who play video games like TF2 (the sheer amount of Jew-hatred, racism, and Alex Jones wannabe “theories” I’ve encountered on some of those servers has me wondering how in the hell they’re still online).
So, popular name combined with being a good Spy main = being harassed more often? I think so, actually, yes.
But not because of my beliefs. I can openly say I’m the actual Lilith and not have to worry about people’s weird reactions... unless they think I’m trans, or lesbian, or gay, or just plain better at the game than they are.
~Lilith
*I wanted to say “conservative,” but there are plenty of conservatives in this day and age who aren’t like those people, and frankly I’m tired of the tendency I’ve seen online the last few years of lumping all people with conservative views together with the likes of Richard Spencer, David Duke, or Adolf Hitler. Not everyone who is right-wing is a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, no matter how much the current state of things (and especially today’s mainstream media) likes to paint them as one.
