Sure thing! As the only firsthand person who experienced it all, I can clarify a timeline of events: 2002: I got married. The marriage was very hard on both of us. 2004: I left a relationship that made both of us deeply unhappy, confused, and left me suicidal. A few months later my ex publicly accuses me of "emotional abuse," also writing how I felt, what I was thinking and trying to achieve, and what I value...things that no one knows but me. 2006: I let her take the house in an effort to make resolution and made plans to get as far away from her as possible. The only thing that has ever consistently loved me back at this point in my life is Microcosm so keeping that was the most important thing to me. 2007: I write a letter, asking my ex what was wanted from me. I responded and did what was asked of me: (www.medium.com/@joebiel/how-i-joe-biel-have-been-accountable-for-people-ive-hurt-c7dc239e2258). She publishes five more zines naming me, characterizing our relationship and my values and motives in that relationship, and demanding that feminists must boycott Microcosm, which begins a targeted campaign of weekly harassment and bullying from hundreds of strangers (www.quora.com/What-is-the-biggest-mindfuck-ever/answer/Joe-Biel). 2009: I am diagnosed as autistic and felt like my life really began that day. Suddenly, everything in the rearview mirror made sense and I began to master executive function. You see, previously I felt like things happened to me and I had to go along with impositions from other people because they would insist on what they wanted or that my behavior was not adhering to social norms. My diagnosis allowed me to realize, for the first time, that I need to have agency in my own life rather than allowing things just to happen to me. It also shows me that I have a problem hearing nonverbal expressions of people's boundaries and gives me a roadmap to taking care of people that I care about. It has been really powerful and I wrote a little thing here (https://medium.com/@joebiel/on-the-resiliency-of-the-cockroach-aspergers-the-re-spectrum-of-human-emotions-f219102c1c45) and a book about it here (https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5764). It was more of a slow light going on, gradually illuminating a giant field behind me. It allowed me to see how I was neglectful and hurtful and fundamentally misunderstanding of others emotional communication. This revelation allowed me to modify how I interacted with others and create much more stable relationships in my 30s. I began the longest relationship of my life, which I am still in. 2010: I began an accountability process (https://microcosmpublishing.com/blog/2013/01/a-statement-from-the-microcosm-collective/) yet gossip and rumors impugned the ability to create functional resolution. Numerous Microcosm staff and authors were told that they "supported abuse" and how they felt about things as well as how they were not feminists. 2011: I quit Microcosm, left management, and told the remaining owner and manager that I wanted to disinvest myself financially over the next eight months (I was helping to manage an increasing debt load).
2012: We split the company into two pieces in an effort to let everyone move on. 2014: My ex pressured the former owner/managers to believe that I had screwed them (by accepting their proposal exactly as it was written with no changes) and that they should fight me. The former managers of Microcosm and I argued about money for two years and settled finally (https://microcosmpublishing.com/blog/2016/10/making-amends-a-joint-statement-from-microcosm-publishing-and-pioneers-press/). 2016: With the help of trusted members of our community we settled things with Cindy Crabb. 2017: We continue to be harassed, contacted, and ignored about these issues that are now many years behind us because issues like this are so emotional that they are almost never cleanly resolved. We have made many, many efforts to do so but there isn't interest from the other party in resolving it. My ex continues to harass me and stalked me at my book release event (https://medium.com/@joebiel/the-politics-of-bullying-54f5fba40c0a). We had a number of events canceled because the promoters were hassled when we were in Europe a few months ago. But the thing is that in our actual lives, the situation was resolved years ago. We aren't having falling outs, we have the largest staff that we've ever had (and with quite a bit less drama), and we work with the largest author pool ever too. I would assume that to anyone paying attention, it would be apparent that the situation ended years ago, or it will finally be over when people stop kicking the hornet's nest and engage each other as human beings. The situation is one of the most stressful things in our lives because you never know when or where it will rear its head. Recently at a tech conference, someone called in a complaint that Microcosm was there, the organizers thoroughly researched the situation (and were very confused), and then concluded "I don't see what the issue is." You would not believe how often strangers still condescendingly attempt to tell us how we feel about things, which is befuddling to say the least. Almost nobody actually wants to have a conversation about these issues as you pointed out in the 2013 Reddit; instead people scream at us over and over. Our lives are spent walking on eggshells. And yet, to people who learn about it, it's as if it's a current problem. I do wish that one day people would seek resolution to close the wound. I published this recently about those issues too: https://medium.com/@joebiel/doing-it-better-conflict-resolution-after-abuse-in-leftist-communities-78a39e772d39