I can’t find her on Facebook anymore.
She hasn’t updated her blog or Twitter.
She never answered my WhatsApp message.
I think she is gone.
I haven’t said goodbye in over 15 years.
And I don’t know how to feel about this.
I hope she just disappeared.
But I’ll have my answer once I just search for her name.
Two weeks ago, I had to leave an online space.
It was an oasis-in-a-desert type of online space. If you’re in a marginalized group, you know exactly the space I am talking about: the kind where it’s a safe haven, a group to contrast the harshness of the rest of the platform. No microaggressions (hopefully), calling in (as opposed to calling out) where it’s warranted (and the concerns actually heard), but most importantly: you get to be yourself.
In this instance, I was able to be Black without worrying about the white gaze; I could be unfiltered without creative code words to talk about my experiences.
Then the cishets ruined my chill. As usual.
As tempted as I am to relay in excruciating detail, I’ll hold my tongue on the specifics. Because honestly, I’ve done this song and dance too many times to not collapse it into one narrative. But one thing stood out to me about all this, is that this space tried.
They specifically noted in their guidelines that anti-queer sentiment was not tolerated. And yet, a post by a trans woman turned ugly real fast when a cisgender heterosexual man commented the usual transphobic notion that trans women might try to trick him into sleeping with them.
And the only people calling him out (and in my case, cussing him out) were other transgender people. The mods stepped in late into the game after the heavy lifting was already done. And after we used the dedicated venting space to, well, vent about this incident, the mods suggested we become mods ourselves.
Months later and that suggestion still bothers me. Because, holy shit, instead of taking out the fucking trash you gotta make your minority in a minority do your dirty work? You couldn’t do your own due diligence, as a mod and self-proclaimed ally, to clean up the mess your peers have made?
Listen.
I’m all for education. I’m all for people getting called out or in. I’m all for spaces that allow growth from being told bluntly or sweetly that you’re wrong, and this is why, and you should stop doing that.
But it’d be nice to let the rest of us know about it, first.
Because if I knew my membership dues were tolerating willful ignorance and sealioning under the guise of Educating Them, I would not have bothered joining.
Because if I knew this space was just going to be a sea of unchecked bigotry that I would have to wade through constantly because the moderators don’t care about the safety and well-being of all of their members, I would have scrolled past.
Because (and this has to be in threes), if you’re so committed to not throwing anyone out of the group, even if they have repeatedly spouted harmful rhetoric, even if they have repeatedly made the space unsafe for some members, then I would have told you to fuck off.
I am a fierce defender of the spaces I call mine.
While I do agree with spaces that are a little forgiving for people that don’t know better (or simply didn’t know), my tolerance tends to be lower than most for two reasons. Both have me occasionally clash with how some spaces are ran:
And for my spaces, I run them differently: there is room to grow but the safety of my members is paramount. And if a member is constantly making others unsafe or otherwise jeopardizes their well-being, well. They’ll just have to learn elsewhere.
It crystalizes into my first rule: No one’s safety is worth anyone else’s lessons.
And if a space appears to not adhere to this, I just leave. I fight too many battles as it is. Some, alone, and I don’t want to add another where the tide may be against me.
The last comment I replied to was somesuch bullshit about trans women. At this point he was a broken record of willful ignorance. I’ve lost track of my comments, and how many people have tried talking to him. And there were more like him that wouldn’t be thrown off the island, so to speak.
So I said, simply, “shut up.”
And I left the group.
And before you knew it, two seven months have passed by. I had no drafts or throwbacks to throw into the queue, so the silence lingered.
A bit has happened since then: we’ve moved to a bigger and better house, I received my vaccination (edit: and booster!), I saw folks I haven’t seen in the past year, saw my LDR girlfriend for the first time in about five years (long story, so that’ll be a separate post), I also reconnected with someone special (again, perhaps, a separate post), caught up with a dear old friend at a tiny birthday party… and the job has been the same, despite the promotion and raise that came with it.
I’ve been finally catching up on IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and I can say– as someone that lived and breathed Archie Sonic (and SatAM, and Jaleel White’s VA career, and the games for someone who never owned a SEGA system) I’ve missed Sonic comics.
Ah, yes, and this wasn’t just any move: I wasn’t moving out of my parent’s house thrice (so I had practice), nor was I moving alone and only had me to worry about.
It was a lot of frustrating moving parts. Packing all the fragile things. Figuring out which perishables to take. Attempting to organize, only for it to fall into chaos in the garage. Misplaced boxes. Packing the mugs. Wrestling the cats. Losing power cords. Dropping a heavy box of board games on your foot.
But, again, we did it. And we hired movers for the big stuff this time.
My initial response is to say that said move was the most exciting thing to happen to me so far this year.
And here is where I re-calibrate my definition of “excitement,” because, sure, moving and painting are always exciting, but it takes a backseat to how I feel about some important people in my life. Moving and painting just made me tired. What got my heart beating was how we had all interacted– sharing podcasts, listening to Daft Punk, accidentally coming across A Wonk and getting bopped upside the head for it (figuratively).
Granted, this was Stuff I Already Knew after living with them for two years prior. But in the context of expanding into a new space it was exciting nonetheless.
I am happy at home.
But I am also tired.
As I brushed upon earlier, work has been… the same. But also, the strain of working in a pandemic for almost two years has been felt for quite some time now. The workload has been punishing, the pay is ridiculous, and many have been moving on to other pastures.
And I hope to be one of them, soon.
Because despite my aforementioned promotion, things have been largely the same and I have stagnated. Which could possibly be overlooked if I liked my job more… and if the pay was better… and if that one coworker would stop pissing all of us off… if the environment wasn’t so toxic… if there was actual upward mobility…
And the fatigue of being in this pandemic, as well. The misinformation, the tempers, the Trumpers, the just existing, the covid scares, all of it. I’m too tired to even elaborate on this but IYKYK. And all I know is there’s a therapist appointment in my immediate future.
Because of that, mostly, I haven’t been writing. Or doing much else. There’s been quite a bit of Youtube and Blanket Nesting.
At least Animal Crossing: New Horizons finally has some new content. I’ll go chew on that.
