Three Em Dashes

I proved that I wrote my work. What I cannot prove is why so many of you wanted the accusation to be true.

So recently the “fine” people over at Substack have implemented Pangram and while I despise this program and the Ai witch hunts we have over here.

So I’ve decided to submit my latest article “White Trans women stop being racist” as someone who has been subjected to Ai witch hunts multiple times.

Here is the results:

I didn't write my own essay on three em dashes.

I won.

Like waiting for the internet to put another woman on trial. To prove the reasonableness of her published words, I subjected myself to a level of scrutiny no one should endure: exposing drafts, edit history, timestamps, working notes and credibility for all to see.

I was the accused and months of an AI detector as a crime lab

They never bothered to inquire as to my writing process. They dismissed years of pre-published work, how I often publicly evolved my opinions, craptastic drafts that they were based on, or the edits required to transform them into essays. They put my work into a software, got a score back and believed in that score above the voice of a Black trans woman discussing her own creative labour.

The 'technodictation' evidence against me was nothing new: a number spit out by code that cannot tell who struck the keys.

One program examined 664 words and insisted that 54 percent originated from AI. Sounds terrible until you read the fine print. It dropped a solitary red flag. Its certainty was low. The overall conclusion regarding my "AI writing style" was that I'd used three em dashes.

Three.

It seems that punctuation has sentience and is holding it down on Black feminist work behind my byline.

That was it. Software spit out a number, the number looked like science and the people who had already made their decisions about me treated it as evidence. No one asked, But what does the tool ACTUALLY do? Not a single critic mentioned that these tools are mutually contradictory, treat editing like criminal activity, and make normal writing behaviors signals of deception.

The accusation did a job, so evidence became whatever could fit into a screenshot.

I said I wrote it.

That should've ended things.

Instead, I could reveal all of it to public view: version histories, timestamps, even rough drafts with ugly sentences left intact and comments that walked through every single revision. People I do not know rifled through my files like a landlord allowed to finally look inside. My word meant nothing, so I had to turn my creativity into a public display.

And I won.

I'm speaking out about this win because I worked damn hard for it. You made the accusation publicly. You mocked me publicly. This victory does not simply fade into a 24-hour story. Thanks for saying this: You don't build a scaffold in the town square and slide the pardon through someone's doorway.

The charge fell apart.

But of course I win and that does not get back the time spent validating what should never have needed validation.

I'm not relieved. I'm wounded.

I was so recently exposed, it seemed my believability had plunged lower than whatever number floated next to my name on a website somewhere. In fact the ones who were the first to take that number/tweet from an obscure place and feed it into a machine, easily able to recite definitions of transmisogyny, more than happy to lecture about surveillance and systems of control (and sure enough all used a tweet screenshot as their permission slip come Monday), these same people usually get up close and personal with Black women's words.

It was not that I'd run text through software. That was that there was no way I could have created the work.

Every piece. Every argument. The ideas I synthesised and nicknamed. The lines people cited to me endlessly for months. Everything became suddenly questionable. My productivity seemed off. My word choice seemed off. My pace seemed off. I was good—probably a little too good–at throwing footnotes into group chat humor.

As my writing improved the more people swore it could not be real.

This isn't new. Black women only get to make art at the speeds and levels that others say is believable. Somebody somewhere suffers and so you're only allowed to succeed until your success costs somebody something. Unless it happens with such frequency and bite or is seen that it's hard to ignore, speech doesn't bother you. Then someone turns up and tells us that the voice is not our own.

And they constitute that suspicion as accountability.

I watched people with zero writing experience become linguistic experts overnight because they would much rather write that conclusion than investigate it directly. I saw my normal style stuff get assigned "ai signatures." Pacing was proof. Punctuation was proof. Output was proof. Consistency was proof.

It was rigged because everything in my defense I had said was turned into more evidence against me.

The most plaintiff cry as they march in is poorly, the book I'm using AI poorly.

I mean come on obviously, I suppose this is being used by AI.

Share the drafts and they are most likely fakes.

This explanation of my process, too perfect.

They weren't asking anything. They had already made up their mind, they were looking for reasons.

The justification vanished.

I wrote it.

Bundle of Styx was made in drip and drams, over heartbreak and public attacks, through months when Ko-fi bought groceries, through the earliest mornings when I got up at 4 AM to write because thousands of people were waiting for me to succeed or countdown my failure.

No software can measure that. They cannot keep track of the years it took to sculpt a voice. It cannot tally up sore pages, put back together chapters moved about, thoughts I carried in my head for weeks or what it speeds to make your life a song.

It counted three em dashes.

My audience understood me.

So absolutely, I'm celebrating. I'm still standing. The work remains. It's mine. The case is finished.

What's owed is an apology.

Not some mumbo-jumbo confusion statement. Not an essay about AI and authenticity Not everyone claiming good intentions. Not a nod-nod-silent thumbs-up on this article.

An actual apology, written and posted right where the accusation was made.

You accused a Black trans woman of lying.

She told the truth.

You made sure that she had to meet a level of accomplishment too high, and so she did.

Well done. The girl beat your machine.

Now read mine. It just talks about one thing, and you already know.

Say it in that place — the one you said the other thing.

I wrote it.

Oh and btw here is the Ai results for this article you racist pieces of shit.

I have more than earned my place as a black woman in the writing space despite the cries of the mediocre white academia and I’ve earned a paid sub and a donation over to

https://ko-fi.com/bundleofstyyx