Joey Brite Threatens Exulansic, with discussion of Coercive Control Tactics

Get her pretty name outta my mouth, or else!

I had been debating publishing this essay. Perhaps sleeping dogs could lie, I thought. Now I see that it is critically important that people know that we are dealing with coercive control tactics. Those using them have now demonstrated that they have no boundaries about who will be on the receiving end of those tactics. If you get in their way, you get a threat. Now, I have every reason to make sure the world knows that Joey Brite wants to shut Exulansic up, with patriarchy’s help if necessary, to cover up what she did to Ute Heggen, Grass Widow.

I woke up the morning of 4/11 to Ute’s doxxer, Joey Brite, texting me that if I do not “STFU” - shut the F—— up - about her, and what she did, she was going to get a court of law to legally restrain me from speaking the truth. “Sierra: STFU about me or I will get a restraining order on you.” Apparently, when women say things Joey does not like, her first thought is, “how can I use patriarchal systems to remove this woman’s freedom in order to silence her?” I am no longer a fan of this alleged feminist creator.

Joey did this because she has a bug up her crass about Ute’s alleged failure to consistently use Joey’s preferred adverb (“religiously”) when discussing her well-established, long-practiced religious preference of “Jewish.” Joey told me this in an email. I am not sure whether she herself identifies as any form of Jewish. She accepts Jewish converts and permits them to refer to themselves as Jewish, as long as they make a point to say “religiously Jewish” every time, even after context has been established. Coercive. Control.

When threatening me did not work, Joey opted to email a colleague of mine with a truly bizarre, manful theory about my real reasons for turning on her: she rejected me in New York City. It was a “very specific rejection.” Now I am “obssessed” as well as “hot and bothered.” So let’s go into what went down in New York because it was weird then, and the fact that it’s being DARVO’d now is incredible to me. Before I got to New York, Joey pushed me to stay in a particular hotel with her near the conference. She also asked whether I “planned to hook up with anyone at the conference,” which I’m only questioning in retrospect.

I have had men book queen size beds in shared rooms, thinking they could pressure me into sharing a bed that way. I also remember elevatorgate. Out of prudence, I opted to stay at a very inconvenient hotel (The Jane, room 420). The Jane is an old shipping hotel, meaning the rooms were designed for male sailors. It is a cute hotel with maze-like hallways and communal bathrooms and showers. It was also cheaper, perhaps because it required me to stick a piece of metal in the wall if I wanted my room to have electricity.

Having arrived in New York, I let Joey know, as we had talked about meeting up the evening before this conference. She offered me to ‘stick with her.’ Now, I had only met Joey once before, and I would not say that our interactions exceeded the boundaries of a professional acquaintanceship. So I was quite surprised by her tone in a voice text message responding to my notification that I had arrived at the hotel and had not made other plans (because I anticipated making plans with her).

I told her I had arrived at the hotel, and that my plans ended at that point. She told me that it was ‘like pulling teeth’ talking to me. “What do you mean your plans ended when you got to the hotel?” This felt like negging, a strategy taught by ‘pick-up artists’ to destabilize a woman’s sense of confidence and security in order to make her more vulnerable to manipulation tactics. I responded to this by restating that I merely meant I had not made plans, and then I asked her what her plans were. She then informed me she had already made other plans with other people!

She then made plans with me for the following morning, which she later canceled. I was working on Boston Children’s Hell, and so I did not mind. She then initiated a plan with me and Karen Davis to have a conversation on video following the conference. However, she subsequently decided to exclude me from that, also, so she and Karen went off to “debrief” alone. I went out stickering with other conference attendees and had a wonderful time. Later that night, at about 11 PM, Joey texted me asking me the address of my hotel. This was supposedly in response to discovering that we would be sharing a flight back to SFO, and therefore we had decided to share a cab, so I gave her the address. However, what concerned me is that she also said that she could be at my hotel in 15 minutes. Then, after I sent the address, she sent back a winky smiley. I felt called to clarify that we were discussing tomorrow and that she would not be coming over that night.

Please keep this behavior in mind as you evaluate the mindset of a person who would go after a person over which sect of Judaism they practice. The purpose of consistently saying “religiously Jewish” is to self-invalidate, in this case performatively, to avoid coercive control tactics being applied by Joey Brite. It is just as irrational as the people telling me I am not permitted to refer to myself as a pathologist because I am a speech-language pathologist. “Speech-language” is not a prefix that negates, but rather, it specifies. A civil engineer is an engineer. A plastic surgeon is a surgeon. A speech pathologist is a pathologist. We diagnose and treat disorders on the basis of examinations of tissue and bodily fluids, in vivo, as they are functioning. I would put a person’s tongue or brain on a slide to examine it if I could put it back later, but I can’t, therefore our field practices pathology via other methods.

There are inherent limitations to the kind of treatments an SLP can provide to a living patient without harming them more than we are helping them. That’s why the profession is called “pathology.” A religiously Jewish person is a Jewish person. I didn’t name my profession “pathology’ and Ute didn’t name her form of Judaism, “Judaism,” and holding us accountable for the fact that you disagree with the generalization of the nomenclature is moronic. These people have the strange notion that I can be corralled into participation OR non-participation with their scheme, via coercive control tactics. “Coercive control” is broadly the category of actions, strategies, and feints, used by abusers to covertly or overtly signal to and condition a target into a certain course of behavior and a certain pattern of responses, with the intention of altering their normal way of being in the world and their standard course of conduct, so that they may be controlled by the abuser using deniable signaling. Coercive control is defined as an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.* This may include:

Isolating you from friends and family [such as through a smear campaign on social media or seeking to recruit your children against you]

Depriving you of basic needs, such as food

Monitoring your time

Monitoring you […]

Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, such as where you can go, who you can see, what you can wear and when you can sleep [how you can practice and describe your religion]

Depriving you access to support services, such as medical services [psychiatrically hospitalizing someone denies them their freedom which limits their access to other medical services they may be regularly getting ]

Repeatedly putting you down, such as saying you’re worthless

Humiliating, degrading or dehumanising you

Controlling your finances

Making threats or intimidating you [Telling me if I do not stop speaking out, the controller will “get a restraining order on” me]

In the wake of Utegate, several people on the social media platform, Gettr, have attempted to shame me into silence with a version of the comment, “Stop talking about this because it’s got nothing to do with you.” The implication of that statement is that I am being rude in some way, or self-absorbed - that I am some nosy busybody woman who should mind my own irrelevance. I ought to redirect myself to housework, or perhaps a baby. This is after people involved have sent me so-called private conversations and attempted to recruit me into relevance. It would seem I am only supposed to see myself as irrelevant when I am not playing along with this or that side’s scheme.

I was accused by one of “defending crazy-ass behavior” [citation needed], “calling it sane” [receipts please], and “dismissing the victim” [who has been dismissed?]. This person, @coconutcastanet, was attempting to get me to believe that that person who contacted Ute’s ex-husband in order to recruit him to help her hospitalize Ute, suggesting in the process, that this was a means to prevent public scrutiny of himself, was done in Ute’s best interests only. Did she threaten me to help me, too? @coconutcastanet’s feint here, echoed by another commenter, was that there was some purity of intentions, when these folx have clear, known-to-be-racially-and-religiously-motivated malice towards Ute. I refuse to help either the ripple-nippled or the cone-nippled in their race war.

Though I at no point wanted this, I was sent information about contact which was made to Ute’s family, apparently initiated by Joey Brite, connecting the dots between the AGP ex-husband written about extensively and unflatteringly in the memoir, and the memoir’s release date of imminently. I have published this contact in part on my Gettr @exulansic. I HAD decided not to release the name of the person I consider to have doxxed Ute, and I have also removed private information about Alix that was included by Joey Brite and emailed to Ute’s relatives.

This is the same information that Ute is being condemned for releasing, her dynastic name. The release of that name has been cited as a reason Alix may leave activism and which has been said to have put her life at risk to have publicized. So I was very surprised to see Joey disclose her name so casually to people who grew inside of the wicked grass witch of the north east. I wanted to dampen, not resonate, so I was not putting her on blast until she made the independent choice to attempt to coercively control my speech and behavior by threatening me with a restraining order if I keep exercising my civil rights. Joey had told Ute’s son that “the gloves were coming off.” Well, my gloves stay on because I don’t touch pieces of shit with my bare hands.

Consider the following exchange, which was sent to me via email by Joey Brite.
Sierra, I wanted to share with you privately a discovery regarding Ute - 

I located one of her sons - he's a [job] in [location]. I sent him a nice, professional email alerting him to the fact that his mother has and is still endangering the life of another woman (Alix) who is in Israel. I told him it's because she's angry that this Jewish woman doesn't recognize Ute as a 'real' Jew and instead of simply kissing off the woman, she's chosen to dox her. Ute's exposing her as put her life at real risk of physical harm. I begged him to see if I could get him to please intervene and try and stop his mother in some way and that I would step it up to legal action if she persists in this abuse.

This was our exchange - PLEASE DO NOT SHARE WITH ANYONE as we haven't decided yet what to do & he's supposed to get back to me tomorrow:

• CONFIDENTIAL: Your mother is STILL endangering a Jewish woman in Israel

Hello Mr. ———, As you probably have heard, I did reach out to your brother and father. This has become a desperate situation as this woman in Israel is being doxxed - so exposed that the religious work she's been doing for almost a year has come to a halt and a target has been placed on her back. I'm writing to see if you have had any 'heads up' that your mother is about to release an autobiography that is mainly based on her reaction to the former marriage she had with your father. During the two weeks leading up to this release, she had begun doing some serious doxxing online of this Jewish woman and placed her in grave personal danger. Why did Ute do this? Simply because the woman rejected her rejected as being a 'real' Jew. More than one person stated this as well but also lent her support acknowledging her feelings of being hurt by the divorce. But this had led to her going on a witch hunt & gathering others online to create a cyber mob. I I'm wondering if you could help quell this situation at all. I ask that you keep this confidential until you and I speak, if you are agreeable to that. There are several of us who are reaching out to see if you might have any influence to stop her ongoing harassment and activities to help avoid this becoming even more public. I'm sure the book being released will prove problematic for you & your family as is. She began deleting a lot of her posts from her blog last night that contained the names - mine included - where she used 'attacker' and 'abuser' to describe us, then she began going after another American Jew who has converted also. She claimed her book is now going into a re-editing stage but doesn't say why.  Then, just a few hours later, she's naming the name of the Israeli woman and doxxing her again. I respectfully ask you to get this STOPPED immediately or we will be taking legal action against her and this would expose your father & brother to more public scrutiny that none of you deserve. We believe your mother is extremely unstable and is on a melt-down stage and may need hospitalization. I have hired a private investigator and am totally serious about trying to keep this private for the next few hours, but after that, the gloves are off I'm afraid. Please do reach out me. This is really placing my dear colleague in extreme danger in her country. Rabbi ——— is traveling now and another Rabbi will likely get involved. We'd like this resolved before it becomes harsher as she's obviously in extreme psychological distress. Respectfully and thanks ahead for your consideration, joey brite

Rosemary Kennedy, sister to John F. Kennedy, was lobotomized in order to spare her male politician relatives the possible public embarrassment of her alleged emotional illness. A psychiatrist put a butter knife into her brain and swished it around until the extremely delicate, sensitive, and responsive wet crystal of her personality, that formed slowly over decades in response to a lifetime of experiences of beauty and warmth, had been reduced to undifferentiated neuromush. She spent the rest of her life in an institution, reliant on caregivers for daily life activities, unable to speak. There is no excuse for this kind of poppycock from a self-proclaimed feminist, let alone an activist. Shame on Joey Brite and all her enablers in this campaign to persecute a woman merely for a sincere profession and practice of a Jewish faith tradition.

When is the first time Joey suggested to Alix that Alix should comment on Ute’s Jewishness? Is the tail wagging the dog, here? Are we all being conned by a larger force that does not want a book about an AGP’s behavior published, or who might be seeking to punish Ute? Is Ute being called a faking pretender for a different reason that we’ve been led to believe? Many have openly likened Ute’s pursuit of Judaism to an AGP wearing silicon womanface, lurking in a loo, ready to offer a tampon. Rosemary’s baby brother faced similar stigma for being a Catholic in a majority-Protestant country. I’ve been told this debate is nothing like anti-papism. This is clearly the Jewish equivalent of anti-papism. The Irish flag is called the Tricolor for a reason, and that reason is that Catholics and Protestants disagree on who the true Christians are. Since the question relies on divine opinion, it is unresolvable, and therefore I don’t want to hear about it. Keep it in synagogue.

@coconutcastanet on Gettr claims that I am only objecting to this action against Ute because I must fear people contacting my family and doing the same to me. If it is not reasonable for me to fear enraged internet people (who have lost all perspective on the fact that Ute has a civil right as an American to practice her faith as-is) contacting my family and attempting to re-enact the movie Gaslight, it is not reasonable for Alix to be distressed that Ute contacted a rabbi with the same name. I happen to agree that Alix was right to be distressed by that behavior. That was a concerning action and I would have been unsettled if I heard that someone did that to me, because I would view it as likely part of a larger pattern of following behaviors.

And it should be recognized that Ute was reacting to something quite vicious. That does not justify it, but it does suggest her behavior may be self-limiting, whereas I fully expect to find out that Joey has instigated campaigns like this against other Jewish women in other scenes. She also seems to have an issue with racially diverse natives. I am genuinely starting to wonder if she is deep satire, attempting to make feminists look like sex racists. So I want to be very clear, that I find her behavior to be an abhorrent pursuit. She should apologize to Ute, and me, and just stop. My other point is that we need one community standard to rule them all. I would like there to be community mores against behaviors likely to unjustifiably cause a reasonable person to feel harassed and stalked.

The suggestion is, further, that if I were to keep up this loud-mouthery, I risk losing status - a reminder that there are secret rules about what I can and cannot comment on in my environment. I am not truly free. I am under their control. Now, I am apparently even risking a restraining order for speaking the truth. Despite the very public nature of the dispute - which is how I came to be aware of it - I have been commanded to see this as some sort of private matter, and to bite my tongue. That is a way that abuse is often defended. This invokes a psycholinguistic frame of a lovers’ quarrel or spat, something between two parties who will likely reconcile. If I get involved, I will only make it worse, and risk having it turned onto me. Better to let them work it out, the idea goes.

The most likely person to harm a woman is her male family member, partner or ex-partner. Ignoring the abuse because it has nothing to do with me may mean she is found by the river next week, cold after many hours, and beyond my help at that point. The machinations of patriarchal oppression of women are interpersonal and individualized, and sometimes, patriarchy deputizes women, or women self-deputize. Turning a blind eye because this isn’t really about me, after all, may collaborate with something wretched. Even if this were some private relationship matter, that is no reason for a sensible adult to look the other way when they notice the pattern of abusive behavior or coercive control tactics. You do not have to turn a blind eye and bite your tongue. You can have standards for what you will and will not accept, even from friends, in your presence and in your awareness, and you can voice your disapproval early and often.

If you train people to expect hearing “no” from you, they won’t be as surprised to hear it. Plus, you’ll find out early on if this person respects you enough to hear you out or if they imagine they can persuade you that they are in charge of you via exploitation of social-pragmatic language signaling. Joey Brite does not respect the fact that I am not her subordinate, but her peer, and therefore when I insist on being respected as a peer, her response is to attempt to subordinate me. That has apparently worked often enough in the past that it seems like a viable strategy in the current moment.

As you are writing the check for the private investigator, that should be your clue that your intent is, perhaps, to doxx someone, invade their privacy, and expose them to some form of harm, whether interpersonal, psychological, financial, emotional, reputational, occupational, or physical. Unless you are trying to find them because they’re missing, it is very unlikely that you have good intentions. The individual who did that, and then sent me this information - Joey Brite - including the full name, photo, location, and job of one of Ute’s adult children, told me not to tell anyone pending the response from two additional family members and possibly a phone conversation with the son who did respond. We have all heard the warning: If this is a psychiatric emergency, hang up, and dial 911, or go to the nearest hospital.

Do not tell me to keep her psychiatric emergency a secret, and expect me to believe you believe your stated intentions. I have personally spoken to Ute on the phone multiple times during this debacle, and I can attest to the fact that although she is hurt, she has been composed, regulated, logical, calm, and coherent, for the duration of extended interviews at random times.

Any of us - any woman, especially - could be treated this way by someone angry about something we said on the internet. I know it. Joey Brite knows it. @coconutcastanet knows it. That is why @coconutcastanets went there when I condemned the behavior. She thought, oh, I bet she’s sensitive about that for a reason. I bet I can scare her. I’ll wave the weapon in her face next. That’ll bring her in line. Wrong! That is why Joey thought that threatening to tattle to the court system would scare me. Let’s go!

I have no interest in helping with such a hateful campaign, even passively. I offered her my relatives’ contact info if she wanted to get a statement from them about me. I was told, “this isn’t about you.” @Coconutcastanet then called me a sociopath engaging in DARVO. It may not be about me today, but community mores are there for a reason, and that is to protect all of us from extreme behavior by setting expectations early and often. Mores are like a behavioral vaccine. I asked her if Kim Petras was paying her to be the kind of woman that makes misandry seem like an illogical response.

These are shaming, coercive control tactics intended to signal to me that I am getting uppity and I have exceeded the boundaries of my social positioning. This sort of psychological boxing-in can, in a healthy environment, help to regulate community behavior, but in an unhealthy environment, one which seeks to oppress and marginalize certain groups, can be weaponized against members of specific groups. I have left my area, and gone and involved myself with something about - a preposition derived from the concept of encirclement or being surrounded - another unrelated party. I’ve disobeyed and broken the rules. But I did not involve myself. I was involved, by Joey, and she now seeks to tell me what role I can play in this farce I have been invited to passively or actively support. No thanks. If you invite me on your stage during a production like this, I will not play my assigned role. Once I am on your stage, it becomes a morality play. I will not be silenced by your threats.

I support Ute’s general right to call a rabbi with a hypothetical question about anonymous people, but I don’t think she should have shared Alix’s name. I support both of them in defining and practicing their religion with other people who believe the same things they do. If you want me to make some determination of who the real Jews are, the answer is that Hashem is a very old myth and therefore you will have to Hashare the brand name in a secular and pluralistic society, as it long ago entered the public domain.