Victim and survivor

Stalked by a trans-antagonistic sociopath

The author at the 2015 San Francisco Trans March in Dolores Park, wearing a purple Trans March hoodie and looking over their shoulder. Photo by Chris van Breen.

It all started innocently enough.

There’s a singer-songwriter I know, Jonathan Mann (who is NOT the stalker I’m referring to in the subtitle, so don’t send him any hate mail; he is an ally and a great guy). Jonathan has written and published a new song every day since January 2009. He’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most consecutive days writing a song. There’s a Wikipedia page on him, which I’ve made some edits to, including a photo of Jonathan I took when we first met at Macworld Expo in 2011.

Jonathan Mann performing at Macworld Expo, January 2011. Photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 3.0.

In March 2016, I noticed that an anonymous editor had added a “notability” tag to Jonathan’s page, suggesting that he wasn’t important enough to be on Wikipedia. I added a link to the world record, removed the tag, and noted in my edit summary that if the editor disagreed with the removal, they should discuss it on the article’s talk page.

About ten days later, the anonymous editor restored the notability tag, without explanation. When I noticed this about a month later, I again removed the tag and invited the editor to discuss why they felt this musician wasn’t notable. An anonymous editor…