So I started a post that will probably never go up here about my sister and I's catfishing experience. Ironically getting flustered over it again led to my sister sharing her closure with me which is nice. Long story short I am now Facebook friends with the catfisher who turned out to be a better person than the man she was portraying. Today as usual she posted one of her request threads asking about music recommendations. I had come across "Thank God I'm Pretty" by Emilie Autumn and thought of her earlier this week. The song itself however err's on the bit cold and glass half empty for me. So while I shared it with her I was already set to think more critically about the music I enjoy.
She Wants Revenge is one of my most listened to bands now and being in the thinking mood I found something in their "Tear Her Apart" video deeply disturbing. The video itself is fine but it occurred to me that people physically enforcing their actions on me has been a theme in my life. No doubt since someone was complaining about a child petitioning to make the Scouts programs gender inclusive in the US. (It's co-ed in Europe who knew!) that took me back to the bad memories of horrible sexism and lack of safety I felt in the scouts.It's odd to be both persecuted and objectified for your gender. The scout mothers thought it was alright to let their children swarm me and hold me down or lock me in rooms so I could not leave. On the same hand their children left unsupervised with me thought it was alright to watch me urinate and take my clothes off to see my body because I wasn't their sister. My mother would remember from my young childhood that I very quickly developed a hands off policy because touching felt far to intimate, even with a nonsexual partner. I tend to think this tendency came about because being queer there is no gender barrier to who can excite you which is fairly damn embarrassing. At least two more times I had been held down by a group of people but only one other was sexual assault. Some male children in my sixth grade class had knocked me around into a submissive stance and took turns once my skirt was up molesting and sodomizing me. That last nearly twenty five minutes and the adults in sight magically were not alarmed by five boys bent over a girl with a skirt and panties off.
The last one I recall was a hate crime against me in high school. I sometimes wonder if this was where I acquired my head injury which affects me today. It is impossible to fight ten people at once despite what they show in movies and television. I should clarify that fight in this instance means to fight them off. I in no way engaged in anything, it was simply the knowledge I might be gay which caused me to become a target of gang violence. The only silver lining here would be that the individuals involved all got permanently expelled. I got in-house suspension because apparently I am big and green like the Hulk so obviously it was a fight and not a assault that the school would have to report to the police.
This would be the part where I turn into a sappy blubberer to prove that unlike some people I know I am indeed not a sociopath. My sister has been invaluable during all of these events. Sadly a few were reminiscent of things that also happened to her. It was my sister who spent months picking me up from school after the assault even to the taunts and threats of those who perpetrated it. It has always been my sister who lets me say point blank and no holes barred how I feel being gender a-typical. So I can't take back anything that happened to me in my life but I never have adorned the mantle of victim because I am lucky enough to have been always able to talk to someone. I dare say queer and trans people without that luxury are truly suffering.