It's because the PMC struggle for relative social status leaves no room for morality, or even self-awareness. One's income and access to future opportunities (and ability to avoid falling into the working class) depends completely on controlling a share of a fixed-size pool of social capital, so social competition is ruthless, and there is no place for empathy or regrets.

Dumb question: does queer mech story mean like a specific thing I don’t know about or is it literally a story about like gay robots?

Any more info on Jemisin's involvement? Specific tweets, etc.?

This story still enrages me so much. Fall’s story was astoundingly good; a blend of radical politics and queer expression in a hard SF shell that you rarely see. She was literally one of the queer pioneers into a side of the genre that had been frequently hostile to queerness. She should have won a Hugo and a Nebula for it.

I’ll never read Jemisin again after the shit she pulled, I regret every dollar ever spent on her books. What a monstrous cruelty that, which the particularly angry part of me can’t help but fixate on, cut down what could have been a NAME in the field. Utter disgust for these fuckers.