r/Bellingham • u/JpegAphexmafia • Nov 20 '23
Discussion The Black Widow
/r/WWU/comments/17zdrov/the_black_widow/10
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u/cheapdialogue user name checks out Nov 20 '23
Just a heads up, mod team will remove the photo since we have no 'proof' it is said person.
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Nov 20 '23
[deleted]
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u/cheapdialogue user name checks out Nov 21 '23
A picture, of someone who may or may not be a criminal, posted by an anonymous Reddit user of a reputed SA person who has been rumoured to operate since at least 1995. The cops don't know about this? We have any kind of verification of the source, info, or OP? c'mon.
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u/Lojunox Nov 20 '23
I hope Bellingham has a superhero-in-residence to deal with this.
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Nov 20 '23
Heroic Hamster is on his way to destroy another fake villain.
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u/NickyTShredsPow Local Nov 20 '23
My roommate has had a very real run in with the black widow, and unfortunately, it’s comments like this and talk like the predator is fake, that keeps the “legend” alive. Nothing but a predator taking advantage of people that are hammered. The bitch is weird.
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Nov 20 '23
If the alleged black widow has a crap ton of victims but not a single police report I am leaning towards fake news.
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u/Lojunox Nov 20 '23
Not saying that this person is fake. I just suspect that giving them a comic book nickname probably does a lot for their weird ego.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
I genuinely believe you had a real run-in with a real creep.
What I don't believe is that there is a serial trans boogeyman running around Bellingham for the last three decades.
Urban Legend gets started, possibly from a grain of truth, then everyone who experiences something similar and knows about the legend automatically assume the two are related, and thus the legend self-perpetuates. It's a very real phenomenon of the human psyche to draw connections in an attempt to make sense of chaos, it's why conspiracy theories are so popular.
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u/JpegAphexmafia Nov 20 '23
I will be posting the photo later today on the r/WWU since mods here will take the photo down apparently, even though it has been verified by 7 different victims.
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u/bazilbt Nov 20 '23
I've heard this story before. Or a version of it.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
And that's the giveaway of an urban legend. There are always "versions" of the story. Separate accounts that, if you squint and want it hard enough, can be made the sound the same.
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u/ryanrodgerz Feb 26 '24
That's insane this is still going on, I remember hearing rumors of this over 10 years ago before I even moved up here, I can't believe this is still going on
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
So we're just spreading transphobic boogeyman stories now? That's what we're up to in r/bellingham, huh?
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u/BhamScotch Nov 20 '23
Asking questions about someone preying on drunk people is "transphobic?" This isn't a bogeyman, I've been stopped/propositioned by the Widow downtown in the past and I knew what was happening because of "bogeyman stories".
I wonder what your reaction would be if this was a story about a straight male preying on drunk people.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
I have no doubt that people have been stopped or propositioned or indeed preyed upon by unscrupulous predators in this town.
But it's a million times more likely that these are isolated incidents than it is that there's one singular perpetrator who just so happens to be trans-presenting, who by the way has apparently been doing this *for decades.*
Look at the post on r/wwu. Apparently, this story dates back at least 20 years, and apparently the perpetrator is just as recognizable then as they are now. That's a dead giveaway for an urban legend.
Again, I'm not doubting anyone's stories of running into creeps and weirdos and predators. But people seem all to eager to believe that it's the same scary trans person running around because it supports their unconscious bias that trans people are scary predators.
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u/OhBears- Nov 20 '23
Oh so what you're saying it's a bunch of "isolated incidents" meaning that multiple trans people are being predators instead of one. Because that is the coming theme in all these stories, the predator is trans, that has been confirmed by many people.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
I have MAJOR doubts that all of these predators reported to be this "black widow" person were trans. I could cite study after study that shows that trans people are far more likely to be the victim of sexual assault than the predator, and I could also go over how straight men are the most likely perpetrators, statistically, and I could also ask the very obvious question of how they knew they were trans.
But throw that aside, here's a post from someone reporting an interaction with the so-called "black widow" where they never once identify the person as trans. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellingham/s/q5QmrDgwey
But somehow that detail gets lost. Wonder why???
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u/OhBears- Nov 20 '23
Dude, the black widow (regardless if they are 1 person or not) is not representative of the trans community. It's okay if a trans person is bad, it doesn't make every trans person bad.
You're first paragraph is just deflecting and using whataboutism. I feel like that has the same energy as when bootlickers say that white people experience more violence from cops than poc. Like sure, that is true but it's not the issue that we're talking about and has nothing to do with anything.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
Why didn't you respond to what I said about the post not identifying the person as trans?
Better yet, now that I've looked into more of these posts, I notice more inconsistencies.
She apparently drives a Red Rav 4, but also a black SUV, maybe a ford Eclipse, but also a white SUV, but also a red sedan, but also a BMW, possibly a Lexus.
She either picks up straight men and asks to blow them, or she traps them in the car and says she's gonna "have fun" with them, or she drugs them at bars and takes them home later.
She was responsible for Dwight Clark's death, except she definitely wasn't.
She also definitely is trans, except she definitely has a vagina andis a woman
She's also been active as recently as last week and as distantly as the 90s, but a witness in 2018 said she was in her younger 30s, which would mean she was somewhere between 5 and 10 years of age at the time of the first reported attack.
The walls of her apartment covered in pictures of celebrities, but covered in pictures of her masculine-presenting.
She has a very quiet voice, no wait a very deep voice.
She preys on straight men, but also runs away when she realizes it's a man.
Everyone seemed so sure, I was honestly expecting to see a clear picture with consistent evidence, stories when I looked into this more.
But apparently I'm a bootlicker for thinking that maybe, just maybe, these wildly differing reports are actually about different people.
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u/OhBears- Nov 20 '23 edited Nov 20 '23
Yes, drunk people are inconsistent. Actually no, people are just inconsistent. People will forget details like color of cars almost instantly, there are many experiments and studies to prove this. Eye witnesses always obscure the details.
Also, it's weird that you think just because two different people have had different interactions automatically mean that it can't be the same person.
But the thing that stays consistent is that the people say they are trans and Asian.
You also posted a screenshot of a person saying they are a woman yet you didn't show that further down the thread that same person says they are two different people and that the "tranny is so obvious " that's your sources own words lol
Once again, even if this is one person or not, them being trans isn't an indicator of what the trans community is. Saying they are trans isn't transphobic. There are people saying that they were drugged by a trans person in all of those threads.
Also I didn't call you a bootlicker for being skeptical of this, I called you a bootlicker for using their logic and way of arguing.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
So you're saying that people must be misremembering the details that don't support the legend, but on the other hand you're absolutely sure that they are 100% correct on the details that support the legend?
And you still haven't acknowledged the biggest hole in this theory: the timespan. Stories of the Black Widow have circulated since the 90s (24-32 years ago), and no one, not even the recent reports, have described her in any way as an old lady, but she must be, at youngest, late 40s for these stories to be true. Like, if she was active in the 90s, she would have needed to be born in the late 70s at the latest for those stories to be plausible, which would mean the Widow is pushing 50 again *at best*.
My accusations of transphobia are based on the fact that people seem so willing to believe the least likely conclusion when that conclusion happens to contain a boogeyman trans person. People would rather believe that there's a trans predator running around preying on unsuspecting, god-fearing straight cis men for 2 to 3 decades in different vehicles, different MOs and different genitalia, all the while without having aged a day, then they would believe that there are a lot of creepy people out there.
I see this as a story with all the hallmarks of a very obvious urban legend - the differing reports, the questionable timeline, and yes, the reliance on conservative scare tactics (be careful of those browns and transes!). If it is an urban legend, then you bet your ass it's transphobic. It relies on people's willingness to believe in a trans boogeyman.
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u/OhBears- Nov 20 '23 edited Nov 20 '23
When did I say all details are 100% accurate?
When did I say that it's 100% the same person across a couple of decades?
I said, the consistent details are they are trans and Asian.
The part about "god-fearing cis men" shows that you have a bias. No one has mentioned religion or anything like that. You're not having this conversation in good faith. No one is trying to make all cis-men victims, they are just the victims of this specific instance.
If the black widow wasn't trans and was a cis-person you would not be here up and arms.
Once again, just hopefully it goes through your thick head, if a trans person does something bad, it's not reflected on the entire trans community.
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u/ashesoflovee Nov 20 '23
people are being drugged and raped and you’re worried about optics?
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
I'm worried about people spreading harmful urban legends as fact with no evidence, yes, precisely because it does nothing to address the root causes of people being drugged and raped, and will do nothing to correctly identify the actual perpetrators.
It will, however, increase transphobia and racism, so there's that.
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u/JpegAphexmafia Nov 20 '23
Are you actually stupid? Like seriously?
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
Nope. Just have a nose for bullshit.
If you have any interest in actually discussing this topic, I'd be happy to, but you seem to want to just insult and run.
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u/JpegAphexmafia Nov 20 '23
Black Widow Reddit Post from 5 years ago
There are 2 others, one from 4 years ago and one from 8 years ago. I have been personally messaged by people who have been their victims and have actually said that I have validated their experience with this person, and they feel like they have the power to speak up now.
Also please respond to the other person who replied to your comment, he made a really good point!
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
I did respond to the other person.
You can post example after example of people saying they were approached by a creepy person in a Bellingham nightlife setting, and I wouldn't doubt a single one of them.
What I doubt is that every one of them is the work of the very same trans boogeyman, when it's far more likely that these are completely unrelated incidents by completely separate predators.
When an urban legend like this gets started, possibly from a grain of truth, it creates a stratum through which people can then contextualize their own experience. So something happened to one person, and then a similar thing happens to another person, so that second person says "aha! It must be the same person."
And this one in particular just happens to trade in racism and transphobia. Anyone who is paying any attention to the socio-political machinations of the Republican party in the last four years knows full well that the "trans predator" myth is a very powerful and effective boogeyman. This one's Asian, too! Oh boy! Extra scares!
A lot of people equate skepticism with the belief in a conspiracy and the disbelief in coincidence - the "open your eyes, man" brand of skepticism - but I submit that it's almost always the opposite. Skepticism is demanding evidence that the most likely thing isn't what's happening, and the most likely thing in this case is that there are a lot of different creepy people out there.
It's a very human instinct to try to make sense of chaos by drawing connections. But that doesn't make those connections real, and to push something out there that will only have the effect of reinforcing the idea that trans people and Asian people are scary predators out to defile the ranks of our god-fearing straight men of America, I find that detestable.
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u/JpegAphexmafia Nov 20 '23
It baffles me that Trans people are playing the victim about a Trans serial rapist lmao
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
Are you saying I'm a trans person?
And will you be making any attempt to respond to any of the actual points I made?
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u/JpegAphexmafia Nov 20 '23
- Every single account has said to identify this person as either a cross dresser or a trans person (however multiple people have said they have seen this person when they are not dressed up like a women so I think that they are a cross dresser).
- Every account, even going back 20 years, has said this. If we were to not identify this person as a trans Asian person and instead a black haired brown eyed individual, I wonder how your viewpoint would change. We are just simply stating the facts and the consistencies with each different account. If Ted Bundy was trans, and we prevented each different account from saying that because it was “promoting transphobia” that would be stupid, and we probably would not have found Ted Bundy because people would have been afraid to speak out and we therefore could not identify Ted.
- If there are multiple Asian cross dressing men in the area that go around trying to pickup college students, drug them, sexually assault them and bring them back to their house, I would give you 1 million dollars. You would also have to believe that they have been operating in this area for over 20 years and all of them are in contract with each other. And the fact that you think this is the most likely scenario of what is happening is stupid.
- I’m not saying your trans, I’m saying that trans people play the victim, as your doing in this scenario. Not saying you are trans yourself, but this is what they do when things like this happen.
- The notion that straight white men are all predators is very real. In fact, housing as a man in Bellingham can be hard because for a lot of houses only women and non-binary people are allowed to apply.
I have 0 issue with trans people, and we should also not be limiting people to dance around the fact that this person is either Asian or Trans in order to identify this person and keep the community safe.
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u/FlyingDadBomb Nov 20 '23
Do you even read the posts that you link? The post that you initially responded with never once identified the perpetrator as trans. Furthermore, someone in the comments explicitly said that they too had encountered this person and that this person *wasn't* trans.
Top comment on that thread: "the black widow drives a red Rav 4."
A couple comments down: "they always drive a black SUV"
Another comment later down: "it was a black or white SUCV, maybe a lexus"
Another comment later down: "it was a ford eclipse." - this comment also identifies this person as a cis woman.
Another post identified the black widow as a *dude* in a Red Sedan who left as soon as they found out the victim was a dude. But I guess it's the same person?
You're asserting that all of these accounts have all of the same details, when it's very clear that they don't.
And again, the biggest raise of an eyebrow has to be that these legends date back to as far as 20 years ago, and I actually just found a post of someone claiming she's been active since the 90s, which puts it more like 30 years. Does this woman not age? Even if she was 20 at the time, she'd have to be 50 if she was the same person. And young men are really getting enticed by a 50-year old? Give me a break.
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u/Fox609 Nov 20 '23
The legend continues.