El remedio puede ser peor que la enfermedad
CW: This is a personal blog post that includes non-descriptive mentions of rape, trauma, dysphoria, racism, and transphobia
There is a point in every lifetime — when it’s a lifetime like mine — when someone will say no after you tell them who you are. An intersection somewhere on your internal roadmap where a person you love, or a person you don’t love, or a person you know, or a person you don’t know, will claim to know you better than you know yourself. This is an integral part of transgenderism and transsexualism. A deeply ingrained experience each and every one of us hear spoken, bear witness to, prepare for. We brace, hoping it’ll come like a bee-sting, and we flinch, already rehearsing an apology.
I’m sorry, we’re expected to say, you’re right.
But it’s a feeling I hadn’t prepared for. A thing I hadn’t designed myself against. The accusations stayed with me. They’re a liar proclaimed like fact, with such surety. Cockroach, said with ease and confidence. That’s what someone determined I was: an insect that wouldn’t die. They looked at me and they saw a creature, saw untruth, saw a weapon they could wield.
There is a point in every lifetime — when it’s a lifetime like mine — when someone will say no after you tell them who you are. Sometimes you’ll say I come from a place where roots grow to the core of the earth. Deep, deep down. I’m Huarango, an everything tree. And someone you don’t know, someone who doesn’t know you, will claim you’re a wax plant — five-dollar special at a craft store, fake as can be. But I didn’t expect this to happen when I attempted to launch a business as an online tarot reader, then a poet, lastly a storyteller. I didn’t expect this to happen when I decided to be the person I’d inhabited inside closets and wardrobes and armoires, and told myself to be unafraid. I’m safe here, I told myself. I’m allowed here.
I first read about Isabel Fall after I’d taken a shower. It was a warm and balmy morning, and I was cleaning my teeth, scrolling through a website I’d not known how to use. I came across an article titled ‘How Twitter Can Ruin a Life: Isabel Fall’s Complicated Story’ and I clicked it. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped brushing until foam hit my phone’s screen. The shock was palpable. How could this happen? I’d thought, and I went to my partner, and I asked out-loud, “How could this have happened to her? How could they have done this to her?”
Birthdates used like bullets. Syntax examined, shredded, interpreted violently. Science fiction torn apart and repurposed, and a woman used as cannon fodder in a larger game, in a power-play, in an online act where the death of an identity was celebrated with faux-woke threads and pats on the back. Isabel Fall is a ghost. I read in a quote-tweet. Isabel Fall is a ghost. I was angry. Angry and confused. Angry and hurt. Angry and afraid.
If someone as talented as Isabel Fall could be driven out of an industry as large and wealthy as publishing by an online community as small and contained as the queer and transgender writing community on Twitter, what might happen to others like her? If someone as spectacular as Isabel Fall, a woman who had hardly gripped the beginning of what promised to be a rocketing career, could be driven back into the closet by paranoia and outrage, what might happen to another person the Internet decided didn’t belong? I was enraged. I leaped down a rabbit hole. I read about a talented new voice in Fantasy, slandered by his friends, dropped by his literary agent, exiled by his peers, and bullied off an established platform by speculation-turned-hyperfixation. I read about a young author accused of plagiarism by a creator with a competing title. I read about Black authors being mistaken for one another by booksellers, then painted as aggressive for expressing offence. I read about a Podcast outing someone. I read tweets aimed at authors, artists, creators that said: Die, Rot, Get off the Internet Forever, Leave, Never Write Again. I read about a blogger outing someone. I read about bullies being bullied by other bullies. I read about an author outing another author. Name after name. Story after story. Someone wasn’t this enough, someone else wasn’t that enough.
You’re too mean. You’re not mean enough. You use too much Spanish in your books. You don’t use enough Spanish in your books. Are you sure they were raped? I don’t think they were actually raped. I don’t know if she’s bisexual. I’m pretty sure she’s not bisexual. Are they even trans? Okay, but what kind of trans? Can you detail your trauma for me during this interview? Well, if it didn’t happen to you then why are you writing about it? Are we sure you’re transgender? Are we sure you’re Latine? Are we sure —
I read, and I liked, and I tweeted my thoughts to two-hundred followers at the time. I was no one. I’m still not much of a someone.
But I was enough like someone, I guess.
There is a point in every lifetime — when it’s a lifetime like mine — when someone will say no before you tell them who you are. They will have decided on you without speaking to you, they will have passed judgement on you before acknowledging you, they will have led themself to you — dressed in wool, teeth bared — and you will extend your hand without clocking their intention to bite. This is an integral part of transgenderism and transsexualism. Granting trust in curated spaces. Places that are wide and organizable. Places where we flag each other down with pronouns in our bios, look for relatable content in prose and poetry, find comfort in people who have built platforms around their authentic selves whether-or-not that ‘authenticity’ extends beyond a screen. We find community in one another. We’re a little safer where we can mute and block, where we can change our names on a whim, where we can explore sexuality and gender through lenses relatable to us — joy, trauma, inexperience, language, diaspora, unlived milemarkers, repulsion, sexual gratification, kink, pregnancy, assault, survival, simplicity, fear. All of it. Everything.
But it’s easy to hurt someone in those very same places when you aren’t forced to witness the hurt itself. It’s easy to feel empowered over someone else’s suffering when you are standing on very high ground, saddled on very high horses. It’s easy to jump to conclusions, to ignite false starts and create coincidences, when other people have been rewarded for harmfully paranoid behavior in the past. It’s easy to claim justification when you have been hurt before, too, and when the guise of protection takes the shape of something you’ve loaded, aimed, and fired.
It’s easy to be cruel when you’ve convinced yourself — and been convinced — that cruelty is deserved. It’s easy to play cop when you’ve decided on your robber.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. That’s the truth. I don’t know if I’ve written this down to have a conversation with myself: Soy Freydís. Sí, soy Freydís. Or if I’ve written this down, because I’m pleading with a larger system, because I’m watching a bigger, far more destructive pattern come, go, and arrive again. That someone who did not know me decided I would be their caricature. Their villain. That someone saw me, saw my writing, saw me reaching for community, and concluded: no, they do not deserve it.
When someone has decided on their robber, they will convince themself and anyone who will listen that you’ve stolen something that belongs to them. This is an integral part of transgenderism and transsexualism. This is an experience sewn into the fabric of our lives. We are stealing, we are apprehending, we are establishing ourselves. We are thieves, we are fake, we are criminal. That word comes back to me now: cockroach. We are living when others have decided we shouldn’t.
I can’t say I don’t know why I was targeted, because it’s a thing I’ve seen many times over. I can’t say I don’t know why someone would want to convince anyone at all that I’m not what I say I am, that I’m not who I say I am, that my name is not mine, that my life is not mine, because that accusation is an intersection on my internal roadmap. It’s a place every person like me finds themself at one point in time or at many points in time. When a person you love, or a person you don’t love, or a person you know, or a person you don’t know, will claim you are not what or who you say you are, that your name is not yours, that your life is not yours.
I think I’m writing this because I need to say it: I am hurt. It hurts. I need to say: I lost weight, I trembled, I forgot to eat, I had heart palpitations. I need someone to know: I barely slept. I cried. I lashed out. I was hurt. I am hurt. I need you to know: I had to tell my employer. I had to tell my family. I had to warn my loved ones. I am a person. I don’t think this blog post will change anyone. I don’t think the people who hurt me, or hurt Isabel, or hurt the countless other creators who have fallen prey to online harassment will read this, or care, or look inward. I think people who gossip and bully will continue to gossip and bully. I think people who question gender, sexuality, trauma, authenticity, and culture will continue to ask for personal information to disqualify or verify a stranger’s right to explore gender, sexuality, trauma, authenticity, and culture. I think this will happen again to someone else.
There is a point in every lifetime — when it’s a lifetime like mine — when someone will say no after you tell them who you are. I remember when someone said a woman who had written a challenging story could not possibly be a woman. I remember when someone saw a tweet about my Latine story and said I could not possibly be Latine. I remember when a South Asian author was called ‘fake’ for an unpopular opinion. I remember when people behind a screen told the world we are not who we are.
Sometimes I wonder if this will end when the worst happens. When we lose someone for good, even though we already have. I don’t think it will. I think cops will always need robbers, even if they have to create their own. I think people will drink poison to rid themselves of guilt. I think they’ll call it protection, valiance, truth. I think they’ll call it medicine. I’m sure they already do.
So, yes, I am hurt. I am hurt and I am divining. I am hurt and I am writing. I am hurt and I know someone will read this, and paste the link into a private chat, and say it sounds like them, doesn’t it? Similar vibes? Syntax will get you every time. That’s our robber. Squash them. Hunt them. Hurt them.
There is a point in every lifetime — when it’s a lifetime like mine — when someone will say no after you tell them who you are.
If you can, be louder.
Soy Freydís. Soy Freydís.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: US 800–273–8255
Trans Lifeline: US (877) 565–8860 CAN (877) 330–6366
