I Am The Monster

I've tried to write this piece a number of times. I've tried different angles, different "ways in," different ways to get at saying what I need to say. When it comes to most things, if I'm having this much trouble finding the right way to go about framing what I want to say, I just let it go for a little while. More often than not, if I let something sit, I find the right way to get at it more or less by happenstance. Something else I see or read or hear, causes it to click into place. It's the difference between wanting to say something and needing to say something though. I want to say a lot of things. I end up leaving rest as much as I don't. This is something I need to say though, and I can't leave it alone. 

I experienced an instance of sexual abuse as a child (referred to throughout as CSA, childhood sexual abuse). Please save your pity and whatever it is that creates the instinct for turning survivors stories into inspiration porn. I know the term "inspiration porn" is usually associated with physical disability, and I'm not trying to co-opt it or appropriate it, there's just not term for the concept as it applies to people who've survived things like sexual or physical abuse. It's worth saying people who survive these things do sometimes experience mental health repercussions which rise to the level of disability, and could be worth including. Inspiration porn is the best phrase we currently have to describe the concept, either way. I'm not saying this, I don't need to say this because I want or need the attention. I don't need or want the recognition or any of that based on an experience that was, be definition, outside of my control. 

I'm also not that inspiring. Nothing about me really is, so tamp that down, okay? 

I'm saying this because right now, there is a deluge of news and "content" tossing around the terms "grooming" and pedophilia. In this current context, these things are inextricably connected to the sexual abuse of children. This is happening because what passes for a conservative movement in the United States (a fascist movement in reality) is using them to target LGBTQ+ and their allies. The teaching that sexualities and gender identities other than heterosexuality and cis exist is being treated as if it is "grooming." LBGTQ+ people and anyone who support their full access equal personhood under the law are being accused of supporting "grooming" or pedophiles or being groomers and pedophiles themselves. 

It's not a good time to be someone who experienced childhood sexual abuse. It's akin to a nightmare to try to read or watch the news, to try to engage with social media, to go to places where people are gathered and current events might come up in conversation. This experience which creates a complicated waterfall of consequences in your life, which drastically effects your psychological and emotional well being, has been turned into the latest entry in the never ending rhetorical game we call the "culture wars." Part of surviving CSA is compartmentalization. I have very little faith in the idea there is some kind of healing or some kind of progression toward health which doesn't involve compartmentalizing this experience, even if it's just to be able to do whatever else it takes to be able to figure out how to be a whole person, who has also survived childhood sexual abuse. It has to go in the box, unless you know it's time to deal with it in some way. When you know it's time, with a therapist or possibly someone you're developing an intimate personal relationship with, you take it out, you do what you have to do with it or can do with it, and then it goes back. You don't do things like walk around the grocery store thinking about it or think about at work, if you can avoid it. Right now, the right are talking about "groomers" and pedophiles constantly. It isn't exactly constantly saying, "childhood sexual abuse," but it is so inextricably connected to the conversation and those ideas that it's impossible to escape from. You don't get to compartmentalize when the thing you're trying to put in the box is constantly being brought back to mind every time you turn around. 

It's also plainly obvious the reason these fascists (cosplaying as some mythological "average conservative American" to evade the reality that the average conservative supports fascism now) have spent years insulting and belittling people being triggered because they're trying to defend the culture of masculinity. The concept of being triggered has come to the popular consciousness because women have had platforms they've felt comfortable using to talk about their experiences with sexual assault, rape, CSA, and the many other things that can cause a person to experience triggers. The overwhelming majority of those experiences have been at the hands of men. The result has been to ridicule and insult people who talk about being triggered, because these fascist CHUDs want survivors to be silent. Are there people who in their new, unformed understanding of the concept of being triggered, have misused it? Yes. There are. That's not why being triggered has been turned into an insult though. There are lots of reasons to shake our heads or roll our eyes at what gets referred to as "Tumblr culture," and it's equally true things like Tumblr gave women the spaces and the anonymity to start developing communities where they could communicate with one another about things which were hidden for too long, even as feminism was ascendant in the 70's, 80's and 90's. There's a difference between knowing so many women have these experiences, and then being to actually talk to them and be able to see how many there are. Silence is the goal of weaponizing "triggered" into an insult. 

The ridicule and disdain the right has held for the psychological reality of people experiencing triggers is undeniable. They've even succeeded in pushing it into the discourse to a degree that people who aren't fascists or fascist enablers use it as an insult. "What are you triggered?" They've realized they need women in their coalition, so calling someone a pussy doesn't fly anymore, and they've just substituted triggered for the same general concept. Weak. You have to be weak to be triggered, is the way they use it. The thing is, people who experienced CSA are among those more likely to experience being triggered. So, what we're seeing is people who've spent at least a decade insulting and belittling the experiences and the difficulties of CSA, now suddenly attempting to make themselves out to be the great defenders, trying to prevent it. They're now simultaneously engaging in behavior that is triggering for people who've experienced CSA, belittling that they can be triggered, and trying to present themselves as some kind of valiant defenders. Somehow, we're not supposed to register the contrary notions that these people have been belittling survivors and their experience, and want to be recognized as being capable of preventing others from the same experience in the future. This is just the most superficial, surface level offense. It's the most blatant. 

This is part of why it's been so fraught for men who've experienced CSA, rape, sexual assault and abuse to try talking about our experience too. One the one hand, the discussion dominated by women, and considering what the reality is for women, this make sense. There needs to be space for women to talk about these experiences and we'd be a better society without fascists trying to terrorize and shame them into silence. Women who've experienced sexual violence need to be heard. We all need to hear them, and act on what we hear to make it a safer world for women. 

There's also been this assault on everyone who lives with the result of these experiences. It's understandable, given the culture we live in, and the way fascists turn every space into a toxic battleground, that women would feel defensive about men who've survived CSA and other sexual violence trying to take part in those conversations. The number of shit brained fascists who use, "Well what about men?" as a way to try to shut down women talking about their experiences makes it inevitable that women would be hurt or angry when men try to speak to their own experiences, even when it's in good faith. 

All of this can be true, and it can also be true that there are no good outcomes from men not having spaces to talk about these experiences and their consequences. The result, is an overwhelming silence from men who have experienced CSA and other forms of sexual violence. This silence is also a boon for those who want women to be silent. It's a consequence which favors them. It obscures the damage the norms surrounding gender do to male survivors, and prevents the presentation of the full picture of how destructive those norms and "traditional" masculinity are. It also obscures the degree to which gender norms and traditional masculinity are the source of sexual violence and CSA when men commit them against other men or boys (which is also the majority of cases). We don't consider it "gendered" violence when when men commit sexual violence or violence of any kind against other men or boys, even as it's often deeply rooted in the defense or reclamation of masculinity as part of their response to gender norms. The degree to which our concepts about masculinity center on domination and the license for violence is central to sexual violence between men and against boys, and should be something everyone who has experienced CSA can find common ground to address. 

At the next level, these fascists and their enablers are using the experience of CSA survivors as a bludgeon to further stigmatize and marginalize LGBTQ+ people. This is why I need to talk about this. I'm 45. I lived for 30 years with undiagnosed PTSD as the result of the incident of CSA. That I'm not among the number of suicides resulting from this tells me I can handle a bunch of ignorant, mindless assholes making fun of the fact that people like me can be triggered. It's not why I need to talk about this. 

I need to talk about this though, because when I look back at my experience with surviving, when my mental health has been at its worst and I've struggled with suicidal ideation and being able to take care of myself in the most basic sense, there have always been LGBTQ+ people there to demonstrate they believed I had value, and that I was alive meant something positive to them. They demonstrated that they believed I was deserving of love and the support of some basic human decency, whether or not I was a very broken human being who was incapable of meeting the social standards expected of an "adult." When I couldn't "man up and get my shit together," because I didn't even know what illness I was trying to treat, they were there. When emotional and psychological brokenness caused me to essentially burn down my life around me, destroying relationships, jobs, everything, and the rest of the people in my life were washing their hands of me because of the way they perceived what I was experiencing, it was LGBTQ+ people who extended a hand. 

Every treatment for anxiety and depression seemed failed, because they were symptoms of undiagnosed PTSD, not their own separate issues, and many cis hetero people in my life just couldn't believe that I wasn't somehow "addicted to chaos" or "too lazy to do the work" or whatever other euphemism we throw around when we can't grasp why people aren't getting better or don't appear to be trying to get better according to our subjective standards. If you are being treated for diabetes, but what you really have is leukemia, you're not going to get good results, but we rarely think of mental health care in those terms. I get it, I really do, and I don't fault them at all. I was tired of dealing with me, hence the constant suicidal ideation. I can fully understand why other people wouldn't want to either. I also recognize who didn't wash their hands of me, and chose to demonstrate that I had worth, and deserved to exist. What I owe to the LGBTQ+ people who've been part of my life is incalculable and a debt I don't know there is any way to possibly repay. 

This offensive against LGBTQ+ people is also about silence. In the last twenty years, the universalization of social media has meant all of the people who were being kept out of the cultural consciousness and who had to contend with institutional gatekeepers in order to have a platform have been able to make their own. It's not a coincidence we're seeing attacks on voting rights that target Black voters, the dissolution of the consensus that abortion is in fact a right, the entire industry built on the "cancel culture" canard, and this attack on LGBTQ+ people all at the same time. This is about power. Political and cultural power. Silence is the abdication of power or subjugation by power, and this is about using the cultural, political power of whiteness, Christian identity and heteronormativity, all of the things so long associated with "the average American," in order to silence this new, burgeoning sense of empowerment grown from the democratization of communication. It is about who gets to be considered "the average American" our institutions and politics both cater to and pander to. 

I'm in a somewhat unique position. Having the experience of mental health professionals saying, "Oh, well, you should have been diagnosed with PTSD thirty years ago," and learning that things I've spent three quarters of my life treating as character deficiencies, are actually cognitive disfunction common to PTSD, I've had to reconfigure and re-contextualize what I think about different periods in my life. It's taken a little while. It involved kind of giving up, and just existing. If I picked up anything in the years before, it was that trying harder isn't always the answer. It's kind of a shock to the system when you're confronted with a whole lot of who you think you are being based on faulty, inaccurate information. "Oh, wait. What you're saying is those years of suicidal ideation, hospitalizations and breakdowns weren't the result of me not trying hard enough to get and do better?" It's good, in one way, but it's no less of a shock. I don't know I can really express the depth of, "I'm not who I thought I was," that came with it. I don't really recommend having a full scale existential crisis while you're also trying to navigate a mental health crisis. We all do what we have to though. 

Part of this has been the realization that I don't matter. I'm a cis, hetero, and white male, so I have the privilege that comes with it. I have an easier time getting my foot in a lot of doors, and I've been given more chances than a lot of people who aren't cis, hetero, white and male would. It's a double edge sword though, because I'm also a person who experienced CSA, and is disabled by PTSD as a result. Imagine throwing a bunch of the symptoms of ADHD, autism and a weird psychological underpinning of worthlessness into a blender, and that's what I've been working with for 35 years. I can get in the doors, and I can get the chances, but I'm not normal, nor am I ever going to be "the average American." Because of this, I don't matter. 

There is no meritorious reason to listen to me either. I'm not some successful entrepreneur. I don't have an Ivy League education. I'm not a celebrated academic or an elected official. I'm not a revered, respected or even popular artist. There's nothing about me which sends the kind of cultural signal that says anyone should pay any attention to anything I say, do or want. In fact, some of who and what I am invites just the opposite. There are plenty of reasons people would use to discount anything I say, do or want. By our general cultural standards, I'm decidedly below average. I'm poor, with a mental illness, hoping like hell I can write something which will enable me to not spend my elderly years in abject poverty. People like me die broke and alone, by the millions every year. It's a pretty good indicator of our social status, because we don't fit the standard of "average American." 

The truth is, all of this is related to this same instinct to silence criticism of anything and anyone who helps keep this mythology about "the average American" going. It's all about who gets to matter, as evidenced by the ridiculous and bottomlessly hateful responses to the simple statement, Black Lives Matter. It means expanding the understanding of "average American," and that is something these hateful fucks will fight at every turn. If you don't fit that archetype, cis, white, hetero, gender conforming and contributing to capitalism, you're not supposed to matter. The forms this takes are different, but the further you get from "average American," the greater the number of things involved in communicating to you that you don't and are never going to matter. 

Here's something that does matter though. It's time for people who have experienced CSA step up, and step out. We have nothing to be ashamed of, and right now, our very existence is being used to target people who don't want anything more than what we want, to be able to exist as who we are and not be treated like we don't deserve the same consideration as "the average American."  It's not even our experience being used, just the fact that we exist. Our experience is being completely ignored at best, and at worst, being insulted, ridiculed and treated as if it is in itself a character deficiency. We do matter. 

What conservatives are doing is absolutely fucking unconscionable. They're using us as a bludgeon against LGBTQ+ people, aside from the fact that running around screaming about "groomers" and pedophiles into every camera and microphone they can is triggering to many of us. They're not standing up for the kind of mental health care system which gives people who've experienced CSA or other forms of sexual violence easy access to quality care. The issues people face in cases of rape almost invariably end up adding to that already deep trauma. They have actively opposed every measure which might improve it, for better than a decade. Still, they have the audacity to use the fact that there are people who have experienced CSA as their claimed motivation for targeting the LGBTQ+ community. This is why I needed to write this. 

There's been a taboo about people who've experienced sexual violence of any kind speaking about it. It's gotten better in no small part because of #MeToo, but it's not gone. There's a particular variety of asshole who will try to ridicule people who do. Whether it's "What were you wearing?" "They're just looking for attention" or whatever other horrible, soulless response, it's meant to silence. We've allowed these people, people who genuinely, morally and practically shouldn't matter, to continue to keep us quiet. It's understandable. I certainly won't like it if some CHUD reads this and decides the best thing they can do is start insulting the fact that I experienced CSA or I have PTSD or any of this. It'll suck, I'm sure. I can guaranteed that given what I've said here, if any of them see it, I'll get a few messages to the effect that I should now or should have at some point in the past kill myself. 

Fuck them. I'm still alive, and I have shit to do.  

The thing about the experience I've had in life is that the only thing they can take from me is my life. Everything else is beyond their reach, at this point. My dignity. My sense of self worth, all of it. Be very clear as well, take is all they do. They take. They subtract from the discourse, from the parameters of allowable ideas by terrorizing and bullying anyone who attempts to expand them in a way that threatens this "average American" mythology. They take pleasure in causing as widespread an amount of pain and vitriol as they can spread. It's all they do is take. They're trying to prevent LGBTQ+ people from being allowed to contribute to our culture and society. They're trying to make it okay to silence them, and to commit the violence that always comes with the vitriol these assholes spew. 

I decided to write this, for my own sense of dignity in relation to having experienced CSA and because I owe it to the LGBTQ+ people who have added to my life in ways that are unquantifiable. I've struggled in the last few years, with what the point of any of this is, writing. Why do I keep trying to write about anything related to current events? What am I bringing to the table no one else is better able to? Why am I dedicating time and energy to trying to highlight things which people obviously don't want to think about in anything other than the most superficial, self reverential way? Am I adding anything at all worthwhile to this absolute fucking shit show we call "politics" or "discourse"? Most of the time, the answer is basically, "I don't need to write this." 

This time, I needed to write this. I owe this to the LGBTQ+ people who've been in my life and at the point I needed it most, demonstrated I mattered, that I had value. I owed it to the generation of LGBTQ+ kids coming up, because they deserve better than most of us got. I owe it to myself, to not let some weird confluence of shame and fear about having experienced CSA to keep me from doing whatever I can to demonstrate they are valued. I owe it to my own sense of dignity to not let the fact that these fascist fucks are liable to try to weaponize my experiences against me. 

If you're reading this, and you've experienced CSA or any of the kinds of sexual violence these people have tried to belittle, demean your experience and your attempts to express it, give some serious consideration to it, and if you think you can, start speaking out. Start stepping up. Start speaking out. Stop letting these bigots use your existence while they demean and belittle your experience.