Picture Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Every day Beast/Getty Pictures
An obituary for the twentysomething anarchist sex-worker and author Anarqxista Goldman described a hero’s demise.
“Final evening our lovely, fiery affiliate, Anarqxista, received concerned in an argument between a younger lady and her violently abusive boyfriend,” learn the January obit, apparently written by residents of Goldman’s anarchist commune, The Nude Home. “Anarqxista confronted him in protection of the woman and was stabbed thrice within the course of. She died shortly afterwards from her accidents.”
Some members of the anarchist group provided condolences. Others raised considerations: Anarqxista Goldman? The identical on-line character who’d been scorned in anarchist circles final 12 months for showing to excuse baby intercourse abuse?
Then they made a extra alarming discovery. Anarqxista Goldman by no means existed. The enticing younger lady was truly the avatar for a fiftysomething British man who’d beforehand written about posing as younger girls on-line, significantly for “sexual gratification,” and who’d been run off Twitter for the same stunt three years earlier.
“Anarqxista Goldman” and an evolving set of usernames together with “Anarchagrrl” and “Dionysia Exarchopoulos” are pseudonyms for Andrew Peter Lloyd, 54. The accounts used photos of girls in lingerie to advertise Lloyd’s obscure music tasks and writings, even rebranding Lloyd’s autobiography as a female-written “novel.”
Reasonably than stay in “the Nude Home” in southern Europe, Lloyd lives in Nottingham, England. And Goldman’s profile image seems to have been lifted from an grownup web site, based on screenshots shared with The Every day Beast. The picture on the grownup web site is bigger than Goldman’s Twitter avatar, suggesting it's the authentic picture.
Reached through e-mail, Lloyd confirmed that he had operated the Goldman, Exarchopoulos, and Anarchagrrl accounts, however stated he’d created them in an effort to write books.
“I didn't create these names ‘to provoke sexual interactions’ nor have been the names created for sexual functions,” he wrote in a assertion. “[I cannot deny such activity took place on my accounts, however. It was far from just me who initiated it though.] ‘Anarqxista Goldman’, for instance, had a Twitter account I used to be very ineptly making an attempt to delete and finish this previous week in order that ‘she’ might be forgotten. The account started as merely a reputation to make use of [with no thought out ideas about where to take it] in September 2020 but it surely developed past something I might ever have imagined at the moment. In brief, it received out of hand. I concede that if I had recognized then the place it could find yourself now I might not have continued with it.”
“Anarqxista Goldman,” the newest of Lloyd’s personas, had amassed 1000's of Twitter followers and revealed 1000's of pages on the open-source Anarchist Library by the top of 2022. Posting racy pictures and claiming to stay in “The Nude Home,” Goldman posited herself as a voice on sexuality and anarchy. However Anarqxista Goldmanbecame persona non grata in some anarchist Twitter circles final Could when, throughout an argument about consent, she tweeted that the anarchist activists Becky Edelsohn and Alexander Berkman had had intercourse round 1907, when Edelsohn was 15 and Berkman was 37.
When Goldman’s anarchist interlocutor objected “omfg no a 15 12 months previous can’t consent to intercourse with a 37 12 months previous,” Goldman retorted “have you ever ever been a 15 12 months previous woman? As a result of I've. And it could piss me off quite a bit to know that tits on the Web have determined that a whole class of individuals have been denied company.”
The change sparked a lot backlash that Goldman quickly deserted Twitter for a “radical leftist anti-authoritarian server” on the social media web site Mastodon. The server’s moderators banned her that very same day. She got here again to Twitter.
Anarqxista Goldman’s return was not the primary time Lloyd had slunk again on-line amid accusations that he’d behaved improperly whereas posting as a younger, feminine anarchist. Till September 2020, he had operated an identical account known as “Anarchagrrl,” which went offline after on-line sleuths accused the account of posing as a girl whereas “soliciting girls for intercourse through DMs.” The nameless sleuths’ report contained screenshots of these alleged direct messages, by which Anarchagrrl seems to have provided to attach a girl with intercourse work purchasers, if the girl would pay her and provides her oral intercourse. (The lady declined.)
Reached for remark concerning the screenshots, Lloyd advised The Every day Beast that “I affirm that I could have authored these messages. However they don't seem to be what they appear. As you'll little question have gathered, I've an overactive creativeness. In my on-line chats I frankly simply make up tales and this pertains to certainly one of them. In that very same dialog I stated I lived in London. I by no means have. This dialog in truth led to the deletion of that account because the individual receiving them was understandably involved however, I say once more, it was all simply made up. I don’t actually have a checking account and nil credit score to my title.”
Even in 2020, Anarchagrrl’s ultimate tweets appeared to admit to the allegations. “Earlier at present after thorough investigation this account was seized by a small group of left wing accounts,” the Anarchagrrl account posted. “It transpired that the proprietor of this account was in truth a 51 12 months previous male pretending to be a younger feminine and in some circumstances asking for cash to solicit sexual interactions. After revealing delicate data to this male he agreed at hand over login particulars to us.”
Screenshots of Anarchagrrl’s previous tweets, reviewed by The Every day Beast, reveal that they beforehand redirected to a number of accounts for Lloyd’s varied music tasks. A few of Lloyd’s previous tweets selling these music tasks additionally remained on his Anarchagrrl account, together with tweets by which he referred to himself by title.
“Solely the thought of you is interesting to them, extra so once you’re useless,” certainly one of Lloyd’s Twitter followers noticed to him in 2014, when Lloyd was working beneath the names “13LFO” and “Geeky Disco.”
“That’s an fascinating level,” Lloyd responded. “They need the thought of Geeky Disco not the fact of Andrew Lloyd.”
In reality, most individuals didn't seem within the thought of his music mission. “Final 12 months I had 907 downloads of my albums and 2405 listens to my tracks (of which solely 344 have been listens to an entire monitor),” he wrote on his private weblog in 2016. To treatment the scenario, he wrote, he “borrowed” images he discovered of a “25 12 months previous feminine digital musician from Berlin” and made a Fb account selling his music beneath photos of the “good wanting younger lady with a bubbly character.”
He seems to have continued periodically working beneath feminine alter-egos, which developed and overlapped, ultimately reaching his Anarqxista Goldman persona. One prolific pseudonym linking Lloyd’s accounts is “Dionysia Exarchopoulos” (generally “Dionysia” or “Dionysia Ex” on the Anarchagrrl account or on his weblog).
As Exarchopoulos, Lloyd self-published a number of novels, which have been swiftly deleted from their on-line properties after anarchists on Mastodon linked Lloyd with Anarqxista Goldman. (The Every day Beast has reviewed archived variations.) Earlier than their deletion, Lloyd tried promoting the books’ movie rights through a London literary company, which lists one ebook in its Autumn 2019 rights catalog.
A blurb describes the ebook as “half ethical philosophy primer, half incel manifesto,” that includes a important character who “spends most of his time on-line, both pretending to be a girl for sexual gratification, or grooming younger girls on Tumblr in an effort to wheedle his means into their real-life area.”
Angel Belsey, Exarchopoulos’s former literary agent, advised The Every day Beast that she’d lengthy suspected Exarchopoulos was a pen title for a person. Belsey, who now runs an unbiased publishing home, hasn’t represented Exarchopoulos since 2020, and stated she discovered the brand new allegations towards Lloyd disturbing.
“I at all times knew Dionysia was virtually definitely a person who was cosplaying as a girl, however that did not trouble me; she wrote a extremely compelling—often surprising and disturbing—narrative in her Diogenes work, and to me the blurry strains between what was actual and what was fantasy have been what made me wish to characterize it,” Belsey advised The Every day Beast through e-mail. “I did say to [the literary agency’s founder] on the time that if I have been to satisfy up with Dionysia, I might solely accomplish that in a public place!”
The assembly by no means occurred, and Belsey stated she misplaced her contacts with Exarchopoulos after leaving the literary company. She nonetheless has direct messages from certainly one of Exarchopoulos’s previous Twitter accounts. The messages, she famous, recommend an creator a lot older than their early twenties.
In a single message Exarchopoulos famous a choice for Linux computer systems and famous that “Microsoft isn't my factor since about 2005.” Anarqxista Goldman would have been 10 years previous in 2005.
Exarchopoulos additionally wrote that “I had imagined most of these reviewing manuscripts have been younger, educated girls but it surely gained;t have an effect on what or how I write. If I can;t get previous the gatekeepers I'll maintain doing what I do regardless.”
Different, extra apparent proof hyperlinks Exarchopoulos to Lloyd—particularly that a few of Exarchopoulos’s self-published works (up to date with suggestive covers) have been beforehand revealed on-line beneath Lloyd’s personal title. One work, uploaded later beneath the Exarchopoulos pen title, is actually Lloyd’s autobiography.
And in certainly one of Exarchopoulos’s publications, the supposedly feminine creator acknowledges that “I'm a white, middle-aged male from the UK.”
Certainly one of Belsey’s associates stated she thought Exarchopoulos’s account beforehand represented its creator to be a person.
“I feel he was beforehand some odd however nice man who now appears to be pretending to be a girl,” the pal wrote to Belsey in June 2019, based on direct messages Belsey shared. “I'm not certain what's going on to be sincere.” (By the point of the message, Exarchopoulos’s account posed as a girl sharing racy pictures, however its biography linked to certainly one of Lloyd’s music mission.)
Anarqxista Goldman repeatedly tweetedthat she was Dionysia Exarchopoulos, linking to Exarchopoulos’s e-book as “my ebook” on a number of events, and referencing Lloyd’s autobiography as certainly one of her personal “novels.” However by 2022, she was insistent that she was a younger lady. She wrote in certainly one of her books that she had been led to anarchy after a person tricked her into posing for pornographic images. She tweeted that individuals (together with “soiled previous males”) message her for intercourse recommendation, which she would give. She even used her gender as a cudgel towards anarchists who objected to her age-of-consent views. These conflicts seem to have adopted the fictional author to the grave.
On Jan 11., her supposed comrades in “the Nude Home” introduced Goldman’s demise from her personal Twitter account. The Nude Home adopted with an extended obituary that contained Goldman’s “final writings” and described her demise by the hands of a knife-wielding home abuser.
The obituary was unconventional. “Anarqxista Goldman is useless and nobody will ever see her joyful, smiling, painted face once more or embrace her heat, welcoming physique that was so prepared to embrace. We're, in fact, heartbroken about this right here at The Nude Home, the southern European anarchist home the place she made her residence with us in March 2022,” it started.
The memorial went on to relitigate Goldman’s latest on-line arguments. After claiming that Goldman had saved a stranger from suicide on a seaside, the obituary continued that “It was unlucky, then, that there have been some folks on-line who merely misunderstood her and misdescribed her. This was significantly the case with regard to her views about youth sexuality, views she merely thought constant each with an anarchy that believes in neither legislation nor authorities — so how can there be ages of consent?” (This isn't according to most anarchist considering, which condemns sexual exploitation no matter its legality.)
The Every day Beast was unable to seek out any references to a collective known as “The Nude Home,” in addition to people who straight referenced Goldman and her social media. The Anarchist Library, which didn't return a request for remark, eliminated The Nude Home’s obituary for Goldman and, quickly thereafter, all of Goldman’s work from the location.
“Anarqxista can be laid to relaxation on Friday which can be her birthday,” her supposed Nude Home comrades introduced through her Twitter account. The date can be Lloyd’s birthday.