Hot Allostatic Load, a Rebuttal
Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2025 3:18 pm
The funny thing about the article written ten years ago by Porpentine, aside from it being incredibly long, is that despite it’s message, the only people who ever reference it, are the types of people the author warns against. The abusers, the abusive—The people who refuse to take accountability for their actions in harm they’ve caused against others, being rightfully criticized, and then coming out with a social media post, like, “Damn, I’ve been hot allostatic loaded!” And I’m writing this not as an analysis of the article itself, but as as condemnation of those who continue to trot it out as a shield from rightful criticism, and to hopefully reposition its meaning so that a new generation of trans people finally understand what this was all actually about.
I want to highlight HAL, because it seems to have largely gone over the heads of many. So much so that as of recently, on the enshitified Bluesky, a man recently referenced it in some criticism he was receiving for some ridiculous “take” or statement he made. I don’t even know what it was, or know that I want to investigate what the issue even was, as his timeline is so chronically online that I’d have to sit here for an hour or more trying to comb through and find the offending posts.
It’s wild to me. Wild because, “Hot Allostatic Load” is a piece specifically about, and analyzing the systemic abuse and the disappearing of, trans feminine individuals, and only trans feminine individuals, and it seems we’ve gone so far past the plot that now, HAL just means, “Someone was mean to me online,” for anyone who needs a little misdirection from whatever actually bad or nasty thing they’ve said, or done. And this includes Laurelai Bailey, known for so much abuse in trans feminine circles, the article could just be about things she’s done to other trans women, specifically.
But I want to tell a story. A story I’ve been talking about for years, at this point. Not that I think positioning it alongside references to Hot Allostatic Load will drum up anymore awareness of what’s happened than writing about this has, in the past, but just for … irony’s sake. Yeah. For irony.
In 2020, when Twitter was still used by regular people, rather than crypto-grifters and far-right extremists, I released the album, “Ride Eternal,” which exploded across the synthwave/darksynth scene, especially on Twitter. It hit the first page of bestselling darksynth music on Bandcamp for a few hours, and I was suddenly receiving some kind of attention to the work I’d done, and was doing.
This was all still during the time when I was in a bit of a struggling period in my life. Not that I’m not struggling now, but it was much worse back then. I was mostly isolated, mentally dealing with trauma thrust upon me by my previous job … for the crime of having come out as a trans woman. The crime of publicly beginning a medical transition. It took a year and a half of daily abuse and harassment for me to lose my grip on my own sanity, and I left. I left with hopes that I could separate myself from the abuse, and secure my own income, through a possibly misguided belief that building a virtual store in Second Life could be sustainable.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fi1gA-Cb86E?si=S9OFuhXz7PyQIU2k
Not that building a store in Second Life wasn’t fun, but an income of 15-20 USD per month from store sales is … uh, not an income.
Still dealing with anxiety and depression so severe, that going into public would cause me to freeze up and be immobile, I needed a new idea. And this anxiety wasn’t without merit. Part of it was obviously caused by the trauma I’d been subjected to. Other parts of it had to do with me lashing out in fear, in defense.
It had to do with my near abduction one night when I was out alone buying a pack of cigarettes at a gas station, and a strange man saw me sitting with the driver side door of the vehicle I was driving, open.
I remember clearly, he shouted slurs at me and came running for the door.
Yeah, that time I was almost disappeared for real.
Anyway, … I really liked Synthwave. I thought it would be cool if I could make it.
And so, that became the next thing. And from 2017 on-ward, I made album, after album, after album while I learned how to do things better; how to make music that actually sounded good, every single time.
To cut my musical journey saga short, this eventually led to what I consider my best selling album, Ride Eternal, in 2020.
But, being of a marginalized group, there is always the bad that comes with sudden extreme visibility.
This is how it started. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember what it was that he said initially that prompted him to misgender me in this way. The account I was posting on was deleted at least three years ago, along with the thousands of followers I once had. And, I want to note, especially, that he did eventually apologize for this. Months, or a year later? I also don’t remember how long that took.
It’s funny, though, that this is the only person who’s ever apologized for their heinous behavior in regard to things people have done to me, specifically.
But, of course, I stood up for myself. I shot back, and this was the ensuing response by not only other artists in the Twitter Synthwave scene, but other trans women.
To this day, it still makes me feel dizzy, angry, that none of the trans people who followed me, some of which I considered friends, came to my defense. Nobody jumped in and backed me up. Nobody said, “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you guys?”
Nobody had my back.
I was alone. Like I’ve always been.
It would be a massive understatement to say that I lost my mind. And, this doesn’t even capture the things that happened silently. The multiple men behind the online streaming radio station, that still operates to this day, nightride.fm, stealthily silencing me, blocking me, and, along with a slew of other artists, removing the reviews they’d posted on my albums over on Bandcamp.
I was erased from a music career that I spent, at that point, four years building. Four years, while I was dealing with trauma, and pain, and pulling myself out of the grips of Laurelai Bailey’s years-long manipulation and coercion. Broke, no money, no resources. And this was the straw the really sent me. That broke the camel’s back.
A disproportionate, violent reaction to a trans woman telling someone not to misgender her.
But I guess I deserved that. Just like I deserved to be harassed and abused from the moment I came out as trans. I deserved to lose everything I worked for. Deserved to sequester myself back into the closet, to return to the very corporation that traumatized me, because I dared to use my own voice in a way that I saw fit that other people didn’t like.
They don’t like when you’re not gentle with them in their hatred of you.
I’m the crazy one.
And ever since, and you can see it on my Bandcamp, I’ve never managed to pull back any of those connections I had. The audience I had. The reputation.
Heck, my own label ghosted me, and I haven’t heard from him since. He’s still in possession of files that I need if I’m ever to sell the physical version of Ride Eternal again. But, for all I know, he’s living in the desert with no internet connection.
And then the years passed. Twitter became a hell-hole. Bluesky opened. I joined. I got harassed when I asked a trans woman with a large following to censor herself a little bit when she addressed her followers with the t-slur (Bonnie).
Her numerous sycophants told me that nobody cares about how I feel about anything. My feelings do not matter.
So, I became a ghost.
I moved Mastodon instances. I got banned from a place I’d spent four years interacting with the community (hackers.town), because I had a mental break in response to a troll. I had a reaction to the constant bullshit that people must think I deserve to have thrust upon me.
I still have mental breaks, all of the time.
I moved to Threads, got banned by their AI for no reason.
I erected my own Fediverse instances, joined a few where the people are at least trustworthy enough not to zap my account for telling a troll to go fuck himself.
But, aside from the few who speak to me, the people I talk to in private, and the cool people on the Fediverse who do interact with me. Who do try to understand me.
I’m a ghost. Deep down I’ll always be a ghost.
None of the work I’ve done, none of what I’ve built matters all that much.
It’s a raindrop in a black hole.
And I blame all of those people. The ones who’ve never apologized. The ones who thought they could “mulch” me and make me disappear.
But I survived.
And I’m still here.
Is this what a “hot allostatic load” is?
I don’t know. I feel weary assigning myself something that so many have used as a misdirection for abuse.
But I can plainly tell you, the reader, that I’m not a happy person. I don’t sleep soundly. And I’ve never felt like I wasn’t alone. When Laurelai Bailey jumped into my notifications on Twitter years ago and told me that I’d be alone the rest of my life, I didn’t believe her at the time. But I’m starting to.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/thoughts/2025/1 ... tsit-load/
Quoted via Hot Allostatic Load at The New Inquiry.For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.
I want to highlight HAL, because it seems to have largely gone over the heads of many. So much so that as of recently, on the enshitified Bluesky, a man recently referenced it in some criticism he was receiving for some ridiculous “take” or statement he made. I don’t even know what it was, or know that I want to investigate what the issue even was, as his timeline is so chronically online that I’d have to sit here for an hour or more trying to comb through and find the offending posts.
It’s wild to me. Wild because, “Hot Allostatic Load” is a piece specifically about, and analyzing the systemic abuse and the disappearing of, trans feminine individuals, and only trans feminine individuals, and it seems we’ve gone so far past the plot that now, HAL just means, “Someone was mean to me online,” for anyone who needs a little misdirection from whatever actually bad or nasty thing they’ve said, or done. And this includes Laurelai Bailey, known for so much abuse in trans feminine circles, the article could just be about things she’s done to other trans women, specifically.
But I want to tell a story. A story I’ve been talking about for years, at this point. Not that I think positioning it alongside references to Hot Allostatic Load will drum up anymore awareness of what’s happened than writing about this has, in the past, but just for … irony’s sake. Yeah. For irony.
In 2020, when Twitter was still used by regular people, rather than crypto-grifters and far-right extremists, I released the album, “Ride Eternal,” which exploded across the synthwave/darksynth scene, especially on Twitter. It hit the first page of bestselling darksynth music on Bandcamp for a few hours, and I was suddenly receiving some kind of attention to the work I’d done, and was doing.
This was all still during the time when I was in a bit of a struggling period in my life. Not that I’m not struggling now, but it was much worse back then. I was mostly isolated, mentally dealing with trauma thrust upon me by my previous job … for the crime of having come out as a trans woman. The crime of publicly beginning a medical transition. It took a year and a half of daily abuse and harassment for me to lose my grip on my own sanity, and I left. I left with hopes that I could separate myself from the abuse, and secure my own income, through a possibly misguided belief that building a virtual store in Second Life could be sustainable.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fi1gA-Cb86E?si=S9OFuhXz7PyQIU2k
Not that building a store in Second Life wasn’t fun, but an income of 15-20 USD per month from store sales is … uh, not an income.
Still dealing with anxiety and depression so severe, that going into public would cause me to freeze up and be immobile, I needed a new idea. And this anxiety wasn’t without merit. Part of it was obviously caused by the trauma I’d been subjected to. Other parts of it had to do with me lashing out in fear, in defense.
It had to do with my near abduction one night when I was out alone buying a pack of cigarettes at a gas station, and a strange man saw me sitting with the driver side door of the vehicle I was driving, open.
I remember clearly, he shouted slurs at me and came running for the door.
Yeah, that time I was almost disappeared for real.
Anyway, … I really liked Synthwave. I thought it would be cool if I could make it.
And so, that became the next thing. And from 2017 on-ward, I made album, after album, after album while I learned how to do things better; how to make music that actually sounded good, every single time.
To cut my musical journey saga short, this eventually led to what I consider my best selling album, Ride Eternal, in 2020.
But, being of a marginalized group, there is always the bad that comes with sudden extreme visibility.
This is how it started. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember what it was that he said initially that prompted him to misgender me in this way. The account I was posting on was deleted at least three years ago, along with the thousands of followers I once had. And, I want to note, especially, that he did eventually apologize for this. Months, or a year later? I also don’t remember how long that took.
It’s funny, though, that this is the only person who’s ever apologized for their heinous behavior in regard to things people have done to me, specifically.
But, of course, I stood up for myself. I shot back, and this was the ensuing response by not only other artists in the Twitter Synthwave scene, but other trans women.
To this day, it still makes me feel dizzy, angry, that none of the trans people who followed me, some of which I considered friends, came to my defense. Nobody jumped in and backed me up. Nobody said, “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you guys?”
Nobody had my back.
I was alone. Like I’ve always been.
It would be a massive understatement to say that I lost my mind. And, this doesn’t even capture the things that happened silently. The multiple men behind the online streaming radio station, that still operates to this day, nightride.fm, stealthily silencing me, blocking me, and, along with a slew of other artists, removing the reviews they’d posted on my albums over on Bandcamp.
I was erased from a music career that I spent, at that point, four years building. Four years, while I was dealing with trauma, and pain, and pulling myself out of the grips of Laurelai Bailey’s years-long manipulation and coercion. Broke, no money, no resources. And this was the straw the really sent me. That broke the camel’s back.
A disproportionate, violent reaction to a trans woman telling someone not to misgender her.
But I guess I deserved that. Just like I deserved to be harassed and abused from the moment I came out as trans. I deserved to lose everything I worked for. Deserved to sequester myself back into the closet, to return to the very corporation that traumatized me, because I dared to use my own voice in a way that I saw fit that other people didn’t like.
They don’t like when you’re not gentle with them in their hatred of you.
I’m the crazy one.
And ever since, and you can see it on my Bandcamp, I’ve never managed to pull back any of those connections I had. The audience I had. The reputation.
Heck, my own label ghosted me, and I haven’t heard from him since. He’s still in possession of files that I need if I’m ever to sell the physical version of Ride Eternal again. But, for all I know, he’s living in the desert with no internet connection.
And then the years passed. Twitter became a hell-hole. Bluesky opened. I joined. I got harassed when I asked a trans woman with a large following to censor herself a little bit when she addressed her followers with the t-slur (Bonnie).
Her numerous sycophants told me that nobody cares about how I feel about anything. My feelings do not matter.
So, I became a ghost.
I moved Mastodon instances. I got banned from a place I’d spent four years interacting with the community (hackers.town), because I had a mental break in response to a troll. I had a reaction to the constant bullshit that people must think I deserve to have thrust upon me.
I still have mental breaks, all of the time.
I moved to Threads, got banned by their AI for no reason.
I erected my own Fediverse instances, joined a few where the people are at least trustworthy enough not to zap my account for telling a troll to go fuck himself.
But, aside from the few who speak to me, the people I talk to in private, and the cool people on the Fediverse who do interact with me. Who do try to understand me.
I’m a ghost. Deep down I’ll always be a ghost.
None of the work I’ve done, none of what I’ve built matters all that much.
It’s a raindrop in a black hole.
And I blame all of those people. The ones who’ve never apologized. The ones who thought they could “mulch” me and make me disappear.
But I survived.
And I’m still here.
Is this what a “hot allostatic load” is?
I don’t know. I feel weary assigning myself something that so many have used as a misdirection for abuse.
But I can plainly tell you, the reader, that I’m not a happy person. I don’t sleep soundly. And I’ve never felt like I wasn’t alone. When Laurelai Bailey jumped into my notifications on Twitter years ago and told me that I’d be alone the rest of my life, I didn’t believe her at the time. But I’m starting to.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/thoughts/2025/1 ... tsit-load/