Doing the Right Thing
How stacking Good Karma Creates a Better World
Trigger Warning: This post contains references to instances of identity theft, fraud, and transphobia.
Doing the right thing, it isn’t always easy, but it can lead to better outcomes. Sometimes it can ask a lot of us. It could be that doing the right thing means doing something against your own interests, doing something that will hurt someone you care about or hasn’t done anything to hurt you but you know it’s in their best interests. It could be that doing the right thing means you have to be brave when you don’t feel it, or over come any emotions that might lead you down the wrong path.
In my case last week it was the latter. Time for a story and just to reiterate the trigger warnings above this does contain references to transphobia, fraud and identity theft.
Anyway, we begin with a message sent from a prospective client who asked if I would be interested in narrating their audiobook, however the message did contain an odd request. Rather than an audiobook sample, they wanted to hear both my masculine voice and feminine voice - I took this to mean the voice I use when performing estrogen led characters, of course there isn’t one single voice but, I digress. I asked for clarification and told them what I tell most clients which is that I can provide a sample read of their book up to 2 minutes long to give them a general idea of how it would sound. They responded saying that would be fine, but again demanded a read in both a masc and femme voice.
The situation clarified itself once I read the extract.
The book itself is a very obvious piece of alt right propaganda, I will spare you the name of it for reasons that will be made clear later. In essence it claims to use “science” and “logic” through the lens of ahem "Psychology”. To be clear, anyone reading this extract, who has even a modicum of knowledge regarding gender theory or the transgender experience will know within the first paragraph that the author has absolutely no clue what they ar talking about. It is obvious that they have done absolutely no research, let alone approached the book with the knowledge of a qualified psychologist.
However, I didn’t get quite that far. I was already a little overwhelmed, which may have accounted for my initial reaction. However with the rest of the world shining a spotlight on my community, demonizing us, claiming our very existence is fiction, I have always held my work to be one of the few realms this fascist agenda couldn’t touch me. I felt violated, powerless and even more so furious that anyone would have the audacity to put this - let’s call it what it is - word vomit on a page, market it to an already inflamed and uneducated audience in the name of naked profiteering and then approach a trans non-binary person to fucking read it for them! I’m getting angry again just thinking about it.
Anyway, long story short I stormed into my garage and laid into my punch bag like it could absorb all the hate, rage, desperate fear and insecurity I felt in that moment and in return promise me safety. I walked in afterwards to the shocked faces of my Dungeons and Dragons group who were sure I was getting ready to murder all of their characters. They consoled me, we played D&D, I felt a bit better, (their characters are all still very much alive).
The next day, saner heads prevailed. I read the extract in full. I laughed. I actually laughed at how inane and ridiculous it was, how… poorly written. Cogs turned, I began to ask questions.
The “author” was credited as a psychology professor at a university in the US, now I don’t have a PhD, nor have i read any PhD level work, but this didn’t read like the work of a scholar. It read like zealous nonsense, poorly written zealous nonsense I might add. I ran the text through a few AI detectors and found it was in fact human work, however it still didn’t sit right. So I began researching.
My first search turned up the book itself, only available on Amazon, specifically Amazon’s main .com sight and Amazon.in (that’s their Indian localized site). Red flags started waving. What is a seemingly respected psychology professor based in the US doing publishing a book in India?
I then looked into the professor and the origins of the original message. As it turns out the message originated in Pakistan. A few searches on the professor however turned up very little in relation to the book, he has written a novel, a work of fiction which is quite good by all accounts. Nothing however regarding anti-trans propaganda or even any studies in his research publication have anything to do with transgender research.
This is the reason I chose not to share the title of the book. I am of the opinion that the professor’s name has been fraudulently co-opted to lend the book some level of legitimacy.
But wait, there’s more!
I was also speculative about the name used by the original sender. Again I shan’t be sharing the name but let’s just say it was an unusual name for someone of Middle Eastern origins. More research turned up one individual, an author from the US who again, writes fiction with absolutely no relevance to the book I had been sent.
I set to work. I contacted both the author and the professor and explained the situation, attaching screenshots of my conversation and a link to the book itself. I felt that even if there was nothing they could do against the individual in question, at the very least they would be aware of it and could be prepared should any kind of negative press reach their doorsteps.
I haven’t heard back from the professor, there could be any number of reasons as to why he might not have responded as of yet, however my next step is to inform the school so that they can warn him and support him, should my theories prove correct.
However I did receive an email from the author who was very grateful to me for taking the effort to contact her. This is where the title of this post comes in, they listened to my reels and we now have a working relationship with projects being planned for the future.
Now this post isn’t to say abandon altruism and ask what certain acts can do for you. It’s two lessons in one:
Don’t let anger, hate or other extreme emotional responses disable you. Think before you act.
Bad situations can lead to better outcomes.
Do what is right, just fucking do it.
I never expected to get work out of my actions. In actual fact I expected to maybe get a nice message back, but ultimately leave a bad taste and be forever labelled as the bearer of bad news. But doing the right thing builds foundations in your life, career, relationships. Some people call it karma. I don’t really subscribe to the whole mystical forces thing, but I do know that karma - as with many Buddhist ideas - is a tangible thing, something which can be seen and measured throughout society and human interaction. It might not build up a luck reserve to eventually win the lottery, but it teaches people who you are, someone they want to have a round them, someone they can trust, a person who can be relied on and that they want to give their most precious resource to.
Time.
That is worth way, way more in every aspect of your life and hopefully, if enough of us realise that it’s much better to work with people we trust, I dunno, maybe the world could be better.
Happy trails friends.
Johnny x
#karma #gooddeeds #transrights #lgbtq #actor
