In 2023, after discussions with Jennell Jaquays, the title of Jaquaying the Dungeon was changed to Xandering the Dungeon, as I’ve previously described in A Historical Note on Xandering. At the beginning of 2024, a little over a week ago as I write this post, Anne of DIY & Dragons wrote a blog post questioning the timeline of events I had described.
There were a number of accusations made as part of this post. Some of these accusations can be ascribed to a difference of opinion, honest confusion, and legitimate grievances, which I will address below. Others, however, were factually false.
After making a brief public statement regarding the factual inaccuracies in these accusations, I reached out to and was also reached out to by members of the RPG trans community, including Anne. Very meaningful and heartfelt conversations have been had, and I am deeply grateful to all of them for their time and their thoughtfulness.
One outcome of these conversations is that Anne has posted a retraction and correction of some of the statements made in her original post, which I encourage you to read to have a better understanding of both why Anne wrote her post and why the corrections we’re making are important: An Update on Jaquaysing.
Revisions have also been made to A Historical Note on Xandering in conjunction with this statement that will hopefully prevent similar confusion in the future.
In addition, I’ve been asked, by Anne and others, to address several specific questions at greater length.
Did Jennell invent the term xandering or ask you to remove her name from the term/article?
No. Nor, to be clear, have I ever claimed that she did.
Did the original version of the article use Jennell’s deadname?
Yes, because the article was written when Jennell was still using her deadname and had not yet identified as trans.
When Jennell identified as trans, I immediately began using her preferred name and her true pronouns in any new writing or conversation, but I did not go back and immediately revise older articles that mentioned her and her work to remove her deadname until Jennell specifically asked me to.
While I still believe there is easily ignored nuance and complexity to the issue of revising extant works, I regret waiting for Jennell to reach out to me because it hurt Jennell. What I should have done, given the prominence of the article, is reach out to her directly. This was an important lesson, and one that I’ve acted on several times since these events occurred in 2018 — e.g., contacting trans authors when reviewing works that were published under their deadnames to ascertain what credit I should use.
What is the specific timeline of your communication with Jennell regarding changes to the article?
In response to discussions with Jennell, there have been two major alterations to both the article and the Alexandrian website as a whole (since both the term and Jennell’s works are widely used and discussed on the site).
The first of these, as noted above, was in 2018. Jennell first reached out via a comment on the site, and we then exchanged private messages. I do not have records of these messages, but the outcome was that Jennell’s deadname would be removed from the site. This included deleting or updating text, graphics, and metadata. It also included deleting comments from readers of the site which included her deadname.
It may be important to note that this project took a little over a year to complete, as it included periodically rescanning the site with search engines to detect any hidden metadata or filenames on both the current and older versions of the site that still contained her deadname.
The second major alteration began in 2023, as I was preparing for the publication of So You Want To Be a Game Master. I’m going to number this sequence of events in an effort to make it as clear as possible:
- I reached out to Jennell regarding the use of the term “jaquaying.”
- Jennell reiterated her preference for the term “jaquaysing” (including the final S in her last name), but stressed that it was very important to her that no form of the term featuring her name but missing the final S be used.
- I let my publisher know that Jaquays wanted the term changed and that we should be careful to make sure no instances of the old term remained.
- This prompted a legal question about whether or not her name should be used for the term at all.
- In consultation with others — but, to be clear, not Jennell — it was determined that a new term should be used, and I created the term “xandering.”
- I let Jennell know that the term would be updated in the upcoming book and that the website would also be updated before the book came out. She thanked me for the update. This final communication took place in April 2023, and it would sadly be the last time I spoke with Jennell.
- The text of the book was then updated with the new term. I believe this was completed by the end of April, but it may have been early May. (Other proofreading and corrections were also being made throughout this time.)
- In September 2023, I began the process of updating the article and website.
- On November 1st, 2023, the change was announced and the website updated. Significant changes continued to be made for roughly the next two weeks, with additional changes being made thereafter as missed changes were reported.
- The book was released November 21st, 2023.
To reiterate, at no point in time did Jennell request the term “xandering,” participate in the creation of the term “xandering,” nor explicitly endorse or disapprove of the use of “xandering.”
Did Jennell know that the term would be updated in both the book and on the website?
Yes.
Would Jennell object to anyone using the term “jaquaysing”?
No. As I noted in my original statement, she preferred this version of the term to the original “jaquaying.”
In my discussions with Anne and others, however, it has become clear that my post was read by some to mean that Jennell was somehow hurt by people using “jaquaysing” or that she was upset with them for using it. This is horrifying to me and was in no way my intention.
To be as clear as possible: Using “jaquaysing” or advocating for its use is not the same thing as making violent threats. It’s the latter that Jennell and I both condemned, not the former.
If you are among those who were led to believe that you had hurt Jennell by using the term “jaquaysing” or that Jennell was upset with you for doing so, I want to reassure you in the strongest possible way that this is not the case and apologize for in any way contributing to that belief.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Beyond the scope of Anne’s original blog post, a significant number of other accusations have been made. These include:
- That Jennell Jaquays was a co-author of the original article and that I had removed her co-author credit.
- That the article plagiarized some earlier article or book written by Jennell Jaquays.
- That Jennell invented the term “jaquaying” and/or the term “xandering.”
- That the term “jaquaysing” predated my article and I was trying to “steal” it from someone.
- That Jennell demanded her name be removed from the article, or that I had claimed she did.
- That Jennell threatened to sue me, or that I had claimed she did.
- That I lied about being in communication with Jennell Jaquays.
- That I had removed all reference to Jennell Jaquays from the article and/or my book.
To be clear, Anne is not responsible for these false claims. In some cases, they are actually being repeated or created by people trying to “defend” me. It’s therefore important that they be explicitly addressed:
None of these things are true.
I have done my best to call out these mistruths when I have seen them on social media, and if you see them in the future, I’d appreciate your help in giving polite corrections.
However, while these factual corrections are important, I ultimately do not want them to distract us from what I consider a deeper and more meaningful truth that I have failed to address and which I believe must be understood.
It is not my place to express that truth, however, and I am very grateful that Ava Islam has given me permission to share her thoughts. Please take the time to read her words. They are important.
A STATEMENT BY AVA ISLAM
Dear Justin,
I’m hoping to start a dialogue with you in genuine good faith, and try to explain the context behind Anne’s blog post and why people are reacting the way they have. I can see from your end how that would be really blindsiding if, from your point of view, you’ve been trying to act ethically to the best of your ability. Let me share what I think mine and a lot of folks, including Anne’s, perspective and experience has been to cause this kind of reaction
To start on a personal note: I have been reading your blog since I was in high school. I read that original blog post about the style of dungeon design Jennell typified in Caverns of Thracia probably in 2013, at a time when I was really grappling with and beginning to figure out my gender identity. Your article is what introduced me to Jennell’s work.
So, on the one hand, as someone getting started in this community, it was incredibly heartening to see the pioneering importance of a trans woman in this field. Equally, however, it was just as disheartening to see that she was deadnamed in that article, even past the point where her transition was a matter of public record.
The old school scene, at least its centralized forums of conversation, felt decidedly different with regards to demographics back then, and trans acceptance broadly was at a much different place too. It was very difficult to try to have any conversation about Jennell’s work where she wasn’t being deadnamed and/or misgendered, and any attempt at correction was a fucking tedious, emotionally exhausting slog. Or the flipside, when trying to introduce someone to her work and referencing your article which had her deadname, it would inevitably draw questions or “corrections” when addressing her by her proper name and gender identity.
In fact, in terms of specific bad actors with a bigoted, transphobic agenda in the scene where Jennell’s name/identity became contested ground, we have had to contend with people like Melan/Gabor Lux, Prince of Nothing, and many others of that crowd who are explicitly reactionary and bigoted, especially towards trans people. But in Melan’s case especially, he managed to blend in and not get called out for so long until I explicitly had to document how he consistently deadnamed and misgendered Jennell, even while simultaneously holding up her work as an exemplar against which he compared, derided, and mocked the works of often marginalized designers.
In light of this, your longstanding refusal to update the articles until Jennell herself requested it was an incredibly sore spot for every trans woman in this scene I’ve ever talked to; we all noticed this, and to a T we all resented it. When you posted the article outlining your stance on updating her name, it just reinforced this. For better or for worse, you exemplified what all of us faced so often in every avenue of our lives, which is just the constant fight to basic dignity and respect for our personhood.
And you represented it in one of its most frustrating forms. For many of us, the kind of bigotry and transphobia we face from out and out bigots is one thing, but what often felt so much more insidious and hard to combat is the kind of detached, intellectual, liberal dehumanization about what constitutes basic standards of decency and respect when it comes to trans people. Of the attitude that words and ideas matter more than people; of the disposability of being valued for our contributions, but not our personhood. To this day I still find myself trying to convince so many people who should know better that its not okay to deadname someone just because you’re referring to a period in time where they hadn’t transitioned yet.
So when Jennell finally came in and corrected you, from our viewpoint it wasn’t a situation where we felt “good on you for doing the right thing”, it was a “god, fucking finally!” Judging from her tone in that comment, I think Jennell was also quite aggrieved in that moment. It still didn’t feel great though; there wasn’t a sense in which it felt like you understood what the issue actually was, broadly. There was no apology from you. And of course, there was no correction of “Jaquaying” to “Jaquaysing”.
In light of that context, of Jennell literally having to correct you on that matter, you still not fulfilling this ask of hers was baffling. The justifications you gave about the work or logistics it would require again seemed to miss the heart of the issue, getting bogged up in technicalities instead; it wasn’t about getting the record perfectly updated, it was about *acknowledgement* and *respect* and correcting your behaviour going forward; it was for showing up and actually standing by and supporting someone so in every other context where some weirdo or bigot would say “its Jaquaying not Jaquaysing” we could point and be like “Justin has acknowledged himself that he made a mistake in the spelling.”
At the end of the day, its a made up term which you came up with, and there’s no actual, enforceable obligation you had to change it. But in light of having kept it up with her deadname for so long, to not oblige this request felt incredibly disrespectful. And so I think for us in the community, that prevented the wound from how long it was kept up with her deadname from ever really healeing and any instance of “Jaquaying” became a sore spot that over time emotionally became conflated with the act of deadnaming itself.
So, before I move forward to the next part of the story, here’s a point I want to bring up: though you don’t know us, me, Anne, and several others aren’t just your average “internet rando” for lack of a better term. We’re not as well known as you but we are all known community members, as well as industry peers to some degree. Nor are we strangers to Jennell; we might not have been close friends with her, but we were connected on socials, and she was aware of and champions of our work. Genuinely, the high point of a career as my designer was when Jennell reached out to praise me about my book. She meant a lot to us; there was kinship and solidarity and mentorship there. Like Anne said in her post, she was one of our foremothers; this language might seem dramatic to you but in queer, and especially trans community, its not just figurative or symbolic. These things have very real meaning. And along with these also comes certain unspoken understandings and codes of conducts, ways in which we as women and especially as trans women know how to stick up for each other and have each other’s backs (you’ll notice there’s a lot of times where I’ve slipped into using “we”, and thats because, while I obviously can’t truly speak for anyone other than myself, I am relaying what is genuinely a very common experience).
What I’m getting at here is the way in which usage of “Jaquayed” vs “Jaquaysed” became a subject of debate. When you say there was harassment about it, I don’t know what you might specifically be referring to, but again let me give you what was basically my, and Anne, and many others’ experiences. We saw Jennell, herself, on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere expressing frustration with the misspelling of the term. We identified with that frustration, and we did what we generally do in this case, which is when one of us expresses her wishes, we carry that flag with us so she doesn’t have to fight that battle everywhere alone.
For my part, I don’t think anything I or any of my friends or peers did ever counted as harassment; we made a point to use Jaquaysed/Jaquaysing in any of our written work, and when we saw someone else using “Jaquayed” we would say “hey, Jennell prefers this.” No more, no less, no drawn out argumentation, and in no stronger terms than Jennell herself expressed. Over time, Jaquaysing with the s was gaining more and more traction in discussion that I saw. If this itself was upsetting to Jennell I’m really, truly, deeply regretful. My gut feeling says that it wasn’t, and she had an open line of communication to me any time if she felt it was; I’m going to wager moreso that the fact that this was conflict had gone on so long to the point that it was interminable. As trans people, so many aspects of our lives feel embattled; even the spaces that should be ours for play and relaxation are perenially marred with conflict. This is true of every trans person, and especially every trans woman, whom I know in this scene. My motivation in reaching out to you specifically is to try to do something, no matter how slight, towards making that no longer the case.
All of this is why “A Historical Note on Xandering” really left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. It felt like, by doing our best to respect Jennell’s public preference and stand in solidarity with her, we were being painted as people instigating a “harassment campaign” (and later being accused of putting words in her mouth). Then, the ambiguity of whether or not she had agreed to the change to the term “xandering” and being unable to confirm that since you were the only source vs her previously stated preferences. And the timing of it with her illness and then eventual death.
Ultimately, as Anne expressed to me privately, in her own words: “For me (and I’m realizing this somewhat in retrospect) the biggest issue was that what Justin said made people who respected Jennell feel like they could/should no longer say Jaquaysing because they respect her too much to go against her wishes.”
The optics of putting your own name in place of where a trans woman’s was around the time of her death is not good. I know you don’t mean it to be, I know you have no malice or ill-intent, or conspiracy, but it is erasure. I know also, that you wrote the essay, and that its theorizing is often misattributed to Jennell herself rather than you when that is not the case. I know you continue to credit and champion Jennell at every point. But it is still erasure.
You have seen, even in the wake of Anne writing her post and your response, how much information degrades on the internet. We live in a world where signal definitively lost the war to noise. By changing the name of the term itself, you are ensuring vast swathes of people you reach will never know about Jennell’s contributions and influences, will never discover her work the way so many people did prior when the term was Jaquaying/Jaquaysing. It took on a life outside of your post; even absent any mention of the article, just using the term would ensure that some people who didn’t otherwise know about Jennell would find out about her.
I understand why legally, you might want to avoid using her name when your book is going into print, but adopting your name instead of something more neutral like “Thracian” at the moment you stand to profit, which unfortunately coincides with the moment of Jennell’s passing, just ends up reading as the capstone in what has felt like a perennial saga of disrespect. The way you’ve responded to Anne, I think, has also not given people the inclination to give you the benefit of the doubt. For better or for worse, it reads as a continuation of a pattern of you dismissing trans women and their concerns. Charges of disingenousness, outrage farming, or click-baiting are especially egregious for those of us who know Anne, who has been a tireless caring and supportive community leader for many years who has always shunned the spotlight herself in favour of uplifting others, and who does not engage in this hobby in a commercial context or seeking renown. Her only aim was trying to preserve Jennell’s legacy, and continuing to make this hobby a welcoming place for any who might find inspiration in her memory.
I hope that is an aim we can all share.
AN APOLOGY
To Ava, Anne, and the wider trans community: I hear you and I understand.
What has resonated with me through my conversations is that there is a mismatch between my perception of events and the wider community’s perception of events because I have thought of these things primarily in the context of Jennell, and I have ignored the effect on the wider trans community.
So when I privately apologized to Jennell years ago and we mended our fences and then spent years in a distant, but friendly professional relationship — recommending each other for work and that sort of thing — I thought I had reached an understanding and healed any harms.
But I was ignorant of and ignoring the harm to a wider community.
A private communication cannot heal a public harm.
Therefore, to the trans community, let me say clearly and publicly:
I am very sorry for the harm that I’ve caused you.
That harm, and the pain it caused, is also what motivated Anne to write her original blog post. I have apologized to her privately for that, and I would like to now also do so publicly: I understand what motivated you to write your original blog post. I am very sorry that my actions have caused you pain. I am hopeful that these are the first steps towards making things, if not right, then better.
We are also in mourning for Jennell Jaquays, who was tragically taken from us and from her loving wife and family on January 10th, 2024. It’s a loss and a pain that we all share. But it’s also, as Anne wrote, “a loss to trans women in gaming, people like me, for whom Jennell’s example of how to be out, successful, and admired served as an inspiration, and as a reminder that we have a place, we belong, in a hobby and an industry that can sometimes seem quite hostile to our existence. Even those of us who didn’t know her knew of her, and we could look to her as an exemplar, and as someone whose presence cultivated a safer space. Every trans woman I know in gaming has been affected by her loss.”
Nothing and no one can replace Jennell Jaquays.
In her memory and honor, I ask you to join me in donating to her family’s memorial fund. I will also be supporting the Jennell Jaquays Memorial Game Jam and, at the recommendation of members of the trans community I’ve spoken with, making a recurring donation to Trans Lifeline in her honor.
