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Trans Cartoonist Cancels Canadian Book Launch, Moves Home After Being Attacked On-Line

Published Fri, 19 May 2017 12:00:36 -0500

Sophie Labelle is a trans woman, of Montreal, Canada, who creates the online comic strip Assigned Male, which focuses on trans and trans activist issues. It is often polemic, but also cute and often thought provoking. Last week she published her latest collection, Dating Tips for Trans and Queer Weirdos and was planning a book launch in Halifax.

However, she has decided to cancel that launch after receiving numerous death threats, after an orchestrated online attack began last weekend. She was doxxed with her home address being repeatedly posted on-line, alongside Nazi imagery, with her website being hacked. As she flew into Halifax, with messages from people threatening to show up at the book launch en masse to crash it, as well as threats made to the host of the event, she decided to cancel and return home. She took down the site as well as her social media, recently starting to put it back up again.

She told MetroNews that "they have a very clear eugenics agenda where they use Nazi imagery to promote their transphobic, homophobic and racist views" adding "A lot of Islamaphobia is mixed with that, as one of the main characters from my comic is Muslim and Arab."

If you have a strong stomach, you can see examples of some of the hate-posting here, here and here. There's only so far I'm going to go down that rabbit hole today.

As a result of the doxxing, she is moving house. She wrote on Facebook,

Though posting on Tumblr she confirmed (translated from French) that "I am currently safe and my roommate and I will have moved by the end of the week."

Those who want to help can use Sophie's Patreon or contribute to her relocation directly with Paypal to sophie@assignedmale.com. Her work can be bought here.

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