This is mostly copied and pasted from a venting channel in a Discord server.
Yesterday I put two and two together and realized two different occasions when childhood traumas have resulted in really bad times for me without realizing it at the time. There's a repeating pattern in my life of approaching authority figures with a problem, and getting punished for it.
And I don't just mean, like, "there's black mold in the walls" and getting retaliation for pointing that out by getting kicked out of the apartment, it's something less explicable.
In early grade school, this gang of five bullies, same age as me, I still remember all their names, decided I was their very favorite target. Every recess was a constant effort on my part not to attract their attention. I would skip any recess I could, but the resistance to me doing so was always very stiff. And the teacher out on the grounds was not on my side. So this one time they surrounded me on the baseball diamond, all five of them, all of them taller and faster than me. I'd try to run one way, they'd come together to block my way, try to dash another, they all move to block that way, and they started to close in. And as the recess bells rang and everyone else filed in, we were the only ones out there, visible to half the school even once they filed inside because the school overlooked the field and the diamond. And they finally closed in on me and beat the living shit outta me.
Bearing in mind this is the same five-member gang who (cw half-assed attempted child-on-child homicide) threw me into traffic on the busy street adjoining the school. At the time I regarded it as a reasonable escalation of their existing behavior. Why not, after all? Merely terrorizing and beating the shit out of me every recess was getting diminishing returns, it always does. You have to escalate. Hate needs fuel.
So naturally I'd approach the principal and such, right? Tell a teacher or whatever? Always the same response any time I got beaten up: I would be put in detention with them for "fighting."
It's a repeating pattern throughout my life. I get hurt, I try to report it to an authority figure, they punish me, sometimes exclusively me, for bringing it to their attention. They'd glare daggers at me throughout the detention, promising they'd get me next recess for getting them in trouble.
It's a repeating pattern throughout my life. I get hurt, I try to report it to an authority figure, they punish me, sometimes exclusively me, for bringing it to their attention.
Naturally this led to some unhealthy behaviors. Mum taught me how to throw a punch, how to make my boundaries known and then enforce them with violence, but I started resorting to violence really quickly at times. Understandably. They started fearing me a bit, enough that things got a little easier.
And the teachers would be exasperated, they'd punish me, and only me, for striking first when harassed, and I was like, who gives a fuck now?
About that time they threw me into traffic? That got a response… of the school saying it happened off school grounds so it wasn't their fault, a tune they slightly changed when mom started talking lawyers and prosecution. But only a bit.
In 2018, when I was trying really hard to be of some use to the CLP, I attempted to table at an anarchist event. I hadn't realized how loud and enclosed it was going to be. Initially I had support on site, someone to help, and to keep me from being too petrified by the sheer number of people there, but they had multiple roles in the organization, and were called away as arbitrator in something… more important, one supposes.
My wife and child showed up, and lovie went to take advantage of some of the services, while my kid went to play on some of the equipment that'd be set up.
I was very much in need of a ten minute break at some point already, when suddenly my kid fell, slid on the linoleum floor, and got a road rash that covered half their body. They were in horrific pain.
I had to leave the table unattended and start searching for someone in charge, such as it is at an anarchist event, who might know where a first aid kit is. It turned out there wasn't one on the premises, neither in our kit as commies nor their kit as anarchists, except out in the parking lot. So here I am with a screaming child, surrounded by screaming people, and the loudest Bingo game I've ever heard.
While actively abandoning my station.
We treated my child's wounds as best we could, and lovie finally was found and was able to take over, but I was no longer in any state to be of any help, at minimum not without the break I'd been promised.
I saw a comrade, and had apparently missed the part of the briefing where he was known to be coming in after a long day at work, nine hours or so of house painting, and in need of relaxation and succor. So I reached out, and I said to him, "I need a break," which was difficult words to get out, because I lose the ability to speak when sufficiently stressed. He seemed not to understand, and I felt it necessary to loudly repeat myself, yelling both to be heard and to overcome the inertia of my voicebox in my panic state, "I NEED A BREAK!" He clearly was upset by this, but I decided to deal with that later; I couldn't guess exactly how he felt, and knew that from a triage perspective I was not in any condition to handle anything else.
So I took my break in a quiet place.
I don't remember the rest of the event.
At the next meeting, there was a near-consensus that it had gone well.
I objected, stating that all my support systems had disappeared, my child got hurt and we didn't even have a first aid kit to do anything about it, and we needed to plan better, at which point two of the leadership clique began yelling at me about how very much I'd hurt that comrade by yelling at him, and how he's afraid of me and can't return to meetings anymore. And I… shut up, I apologized, and stopped complaining, and sought to apologize to him personally at the next opportunity.
Triage.
I had hurt someone, very badly, and any problems of mine were not going to be addressable until I had made amends. So I tried to find a way to do so. I asked to call, or to have a meeting with others present who hadn't hurt him, or some other opportunity to ask for a way that I can help, can make it up to him. My problems were unimportant while that wound remained. This is just how I tend to operate.
Looking back, I see it's a panic response, a fawning response. But part of it's the OCD. I tend to believe myself monstrous.
As the weeks went on, I ceased coming to meetings because I was made aware that while I was at meetings, he felt unsafe and couldn't come to them.
To be clear, I believe this is true, that he did feel that way.
I continued to do what I could as treasurer from afar, but there wasn't much I could do.
Weeks turned to months. I wasn't sleeping very much. I was crying at least daily; at some point in the day I would simply be overtaken by an unavoidable crying jag. This would continue for months.
Eventually, the party chapter decided that it'd been too long unaddressed, and they drafted a letter which everyone signed, and sent it to me. In the letter, they made it clear the usual grievance system was not going to be employed, so that there would be no official consequences, but that…
Well, I'll paste it directly.
[blockquote] We've concluded that the incident at the March Share Fair was a symptom of a larger pattern of toxic masculinity behavior that you need to work on. Identifying what toxic masculinity is and developing a plan to correct this behavior is your responsibility. Further aggressive behavior will result in a loss of good standing and that process being activated, but at present your participation in party activities is at your discretion. [/blockquote]
There would be no roadmap to tell me how and when I had made amends. There would be no making up for it. No official loss of good standing, only a permanent assumption of bad faith.
I decided I was going to be considered a monster if I stayed, I was going to be considered a monster if I left, and I was going to have my efforts considered monstrous if I tried to argue or even merely tried to continue making up for it, so… if there was nothing I could do to change their opinions, then it was no longer in anyone's interest for me to be present.
So I said I'd be arriving briefly at the next meeting.
I arrived with the cashbox and logbook, asked for a moment only at the beginning of the meeting, gave a final status of the chapter's finances and a repetition of the one unaccounted-for loss of twenty dollars which I could never quite pin down but considered myself responsible for as an accounting error, made clear the items I had purchased that were kept in the cashbox for events were party property and would be remaining with the chapter, and resigned as treasurer and as a member, and left.
There was approximately as much interest in that as I expected, none. Glad of it, to be honest. The last thing I needed was any drama or production about it. I was not missed. I didn't expect to be.
My egg cracked about a month later on yet another sleepless night.
I am genuinely sad to say the man who I frightened that day is no longer with us. I never meant any harm to him, and I don't think he ever really meant any harm to me. I wish his struggles with his mental health hadn't claimed him. We couldn't have been friends apparently, and it is not my responsibility that he is gone, but I wish I could've helped.
His spouse also has passed on, and is honored in our community. I am apparently not the only person whose work with her was not rewarding, but I am led to believe she did many good things in her life on behalf of the cause, so I write her off as a good but complicated figure who I was never going to be able to be on the good side of.
The party as a whole seems to have completely dissolved, and the chapter certainly so. I do not know how that came about, nor why. I think they made it clear long ago that it was not my business to know.
In 2024, we were homeless. This wasn't my first rodeo, and when we got into a temporary shelter for families that winter, it wasn't my first time in a shelter. And I recognized the general social dynamic as the usual high-intensity poorly managed situation as usual. I was surrounded by people who were not necessarily going to tell me if they hated me, would likely speak about me behind my back, I would be unable to avoid meeting the same people again and again day after day, the people in charge could bring down life-threatening consequences on me at any time on a whim simply by stating that I was doing something wrong. It was like school or work again. It was familiar territory, a crisis to be managed. I kept my head down, my back to the wall, minded my own business.
A particular person made a lot of stink-eyes at me. That wasn't my problem. She was the matriarch of a particularly abrasive family of obnoxious, loud and abusive conservative Christians, but the homeless come in all varieties. It wasn't my place or situation to make any fuss about it. And if I was reasonably certain it was her voice I heard repeatedly making exasperated angry grunts when she'd walk into the women's restroom while I was in a stall, and then turn and leave without using it, again I didn't regard that as my problem. I had a right to be there; she had a right to refuse to use it if she was gonna be a transphobic asshole about it. It was mildly annoying, but clearly more an inconvenience to her than to me, even though it did give me reason to be afraid.
But then one day as I was washing my hands, she and another person entered, and she said something terrible. Something along the lines of, she isn't going to use this bathroom while that is in there. I do not recall if she called me a man, or a thing. But I wasn't going to let it slide.
I approached the one trans person on staff and asked for a meeting to talk about it as soon as possible, as it'd gone on long enough.
And so they brought me in, him and one of the other staffers, and said, "we'd been intending to have a meeting with you about this already." Odd, odd… "We have been getting complaints that you are using both the men's and women's bathrooms, so we need you to exclusively use the men's bathroom from now on."
I remember the shock, the panic, the pain.
I remember the fear response, the fawning.
I wanna be clear right here and now, trans men don't have it easy and I did not and do not regard this as an incident which should factor against trans men in general. It's just a specific situation with a specific person who was not in a very high position of authority and was, perhaps, unwise.
I asked when this was, I knew they couldn't tell me who had made the complaint, but I needed to know when that might've happened, so that I could place it in my memory. When had I entered the men's room? Did I remember what it looks like? Had I walked in following my child, who would in fact occasionally use either restroom as they pleased? I knew I wasn't allowed to let my child out of my sight, and I was the parent on site most of the day, so it was possible I'd followed him in once looking for him?
They lept on that and said that was probably it. Surely that was my crime.
I couldn't understand, though, why this was their response. I don't remember whether I asked at that meeting or another, but it was such a wildly inappropriate response.
I came to them with a report of a hate crime… and I was being punished.
I knew I couldn't defend myself. There was no purpose in it, I was indefensible. There was no making amends, there was no making this better. Something was very, very wrong.
I was unsafe again. I was in danger. The authorities, even the token trans person, had determined I was a danger, and had set policies against me. There would be no support. I might even be physically attacked by a newly emboldened family of conservatives, so blissfully happy about Trump's reelection, so righteously angry that I dared exist, feeling so powerful that they had gotten me removed from the bathrooms, they could do anything they wanted.
I do know eventually I demanded another meeting.
The trans man whose job was to interface with us clients had said that they'd never been transphobic toward him.
I pointed out, (a) as a person who could conceivably kick out any client for misbehaving, they had no power over him, and would not flex it the way they did over me; and (b) they also possibly didn't take him seriously as a man, thus not feeling threatened by him; and (c) likewise, while they wouldn't regard me as a woman, they would regard me as weak and vulnerable, a fact which was bearing out as true.
And likewise, the policy to only use one bathroom -- modified from the initial response of requiring I only use the men's room, which I hadn't been asked if I'd been using, -- didn't impact me per se, but what of my child? What had my twelve year old child done to deserve consequences? What threat, what possible threat, was my twelve year old child using whatever bathroom felt most comfortable or safe? Why must whatever I might have done, harm my child?
Eventually, the matriarch managed to get herself thrown out. I don't know what she did and to whom.
The excuse made to me was I was the first trans client they'd ever had, and their policies were poorly planned and vague regarding people like me.
I told them I was the first openly trans client they had. They had at least one other trans client. I didn't tell them who.
(I found out today I lost touch with him. I hate this.)
I hate this pattern.
It's going to play out again some day, when I do exactly what I'm supposed to, go through exactly the right channels, and am personally made to regret doing so because it will turn out that the apparatus is intended to harm me.
I have been cruel to myself regarding my increasing timidity over the years, but yesterday was the first time I put together that I was responding to flashbacks from countless incidents as a child of the same goddamn thing.
So it goes. This will happen again. I will handle it gracelessly, self-effacingly, then eventually respond only if I find a strategem that gets around my self-loathing.
But perhaps next time I'll see it for what it is, and will be kinder to myself about it.
#trauma #traaaaaumaaaaaa #ptsd #cptsd #c-ptsd #recreating-high-control-group-environments-justified-by-therapy-language #questionable-comrades #problems-with-authority #official-channels
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