so summer of 2018 i moved to baltimore and was seeking new friends. i knew julia beck and kacie mills and laura brewer from the internet so i contacted them and they invited me to dinner at kacie and laura’s house. at dinner they discussed various actions they wanted to do around baltimore including defacing orioles billboards (because they represented male idolatry), attending an event at ottobar which the event dj had advertised on facebook including the line “terfs will be hung by their necks” wearing shirts that said “if you call any woman a terf you’re a misogynist” (to challenge the hanging threat), and marching in the pride parade with the mayor carrying inflammatory signs (which julia had been invited to do because she was serving on the mayors lgbt commission, which she signed up for in order to agitate the trans activists also serving). i declined to join on any of these proposed actions because they were poorly conceived and seemed likely to end in someone being punched in the face, no thanks. julia asked if i would take photos and i said i would if i attended the parade. there was no discussion of concealing their identities, the only concern they brought up was that they might get punched.

on the day of the parade julia called me repeatedly and texted me asking if i would come line up for the parade with them and take photos. i said i would take photos when the parade got closer to where i was at the time. she persisted, saying she thought they’d probably get kicked out of the parade before then or beat up by trans activists because of their signs. i didn’t know what was on the signs  so i wasn’t really worried about either event and i said i’d see her when the parade was closer. when they arrived i took a bunch of photos, as requested, and the parade ended shortly after. julia texted me again asking me to meet them at the end of the parade lineup before they had to leave because they were still worried about getting punched. i sent her the photos i had taken and went on with my day.

the next day, after the internet had exploded over the action, i met up with julia. i asked her if she was going to take credit for her action or make some kind of clarifying statement about why they had done it. she said no, but that she wouldn’t deny if it someone identified her. baltimore is a small city so it’s not surprising that people recognized them from the photos others posted online and later posted their names. after julia was identified she called me and left me a voicemail in which she said she was panicking over being identified, which i found odd considering she had asked me to show up and take photos. i would have thought she’d be grateful she wasn’t actually harmed, but apparently she wanted to make a vague public statement with no accountability.

anyway, she used the photos i took in her article about being baltimore’s most hated lesbian. so i guess she was pleased with how that all turned out.