Warped in my social reflection
I want to expand on my previous ramble, because I got too wandery last time, in my opinion. I may have looked drunk, but that was actually written after a grueling Kinect workout. So my brain was blown out, just not for any druggy reasons. It was a healthy blow out…and I'm already wandering. Fuck.
This problem of image online confounds me at every turn because I've lost control of who people see me as. I thought I'd made myself pretty clear over the years, but with every exposure of my past or my inner self, there's a flurry of minor explosive reactions. People express shock that I'm not who they think I am.
Many tell me they can never talk to me again because they "just don't know me," and I fail to understand how they could have misunderstood me when I've been bluntly honest from the start. But part of the problem is, new people joining into the stream don't scroll very far back in my blog and Twitter archives before they've already built up a false story around me. As I chip away from their false image and show them the real me, they get upset and shut me out.
Which is why I work so hard to be honest all the time, because the people who stick around knowing the truth are the folks I want to reach with my work, in theory. Problem is, a lot of people who stick around say "I'm not a reader," or "This isn't for me." So the theory is admittedly looking pretty weak, thus far. .
As an artist, though, I feel I've come closer to representing an honest look at the shattered lives of myself and my friends. Which would be great if my readers also saw that. Some of them do, but now I'm also hearing that the stories I want to share aren't "good" enough, meaning my characters behave too badly for their lives to have any literary value. I'm hearing how I'm training perverts through my characters, or "glorifying corrupt lifestyles."
This is not my intent, but I'm no more in charge of this image than I am of the people who say I'm an entitled arteest, or the people who say I'm a brave role model. And this is why I'm withdrawing from the public a little more with every failed attempt to reach you. Because despite my efforts to get you to see me, you only see what you want to project on me.
As stories like Books of Daniel, Penny for Your Debts and Red, Redefined come out, I expect even more people to shout that I'm pro pedophile, because I'm making up these molester characters and then getting in their heads to explain what makes them act out. I'm an expert on these things, and probably one of the few trying to look at the problems objectively. At the end of the stories, there's no prison sentence or graveyard for the vile perverts. I even dare to suggest that sometimes bad people have happy endings too. But of course, we all know evil people don't have real lives like that. They just spend all day plotting against good people.
I want readers to see my characters as being in need of real treatment options instead of hate, fear, and threats of prison rape as methods of aggressive suppression. But many of you want to see evil monsters so terrible that you'd rather read about disemboweling and other mutilations. You can kill as many people in a horror story as you like and be a-okay. You can describe violence in graphic detail and get a rave review. But if I touch one little girl fictionally in a dark fantasy exploring the worst aspects of human sexuality, I'm a friend of the freaks. Nice. Can't wait to see how y'all react when I actually do write something pro pedophile with the express intent of pissing you off. That book probably won't sell any copies either, but it would stick in your side just for existing. And that might make me smile, knowing that you jerks were feeling bitter hate for me.
But hell, in truth I might not write that story. I'm just pissed that the only people who get to sell stories about sexual predators and deviants are the ignorant folks who do no research, spread misinformation and FUD, and who help perpetuate cycles of violence by advocating violent solutions in their fiction. And, those are the guys who sell well. If that's the culture I'm supposed to appease, fuck it, I don't want any part of that market. I've had it up to here with people who worship mindless violence and yet treat deviant sexual behavior as a white elephant that sullies real literature with its presence.
The people who will dictate the direction of this conversation will not see my efforts to explain a monster to the public. They will see me trying to defend that monster and make him acceptable, maybe even likeable. This could not be farther from the truth, but even as I'm explaining my views in detail, the lies being spun around me are accelerating. I say, "this is what I believe," and in an hour some asshole is quote mining me and going, "but what she really means is this!"
So I'm giving up on y'all. I'm lowering my standards to accept you for the shallow image worshiping posers you really are, and I'm walking away from you as a market.* I'm picking up my reputation as a friend of your enemies and putting it on. I am the Lomax, and I speak for the freaks, and I don't really care if this means you won't buy me. You folks threatening to withhold sales or friendship really aren't seeing me at all, or you wouldn't bother making these ridiculous threats.
As a transsexual, I had people tell me all the time to act the way they wanted to see me, or they would abandon me. And this was from loved ones, people I knew and really cared about. But my need to be a complete person came before their needs for a comforting false image.
It's the same with you folks, but you're complete strangers trying to make the same demands that my loved ones did. And I'm sorry, but if I only know you from a forum, and your private correspondence to me suddenly takes on a lecturing tone because I'm not acting good enough or professional enough for you, I'm tuning you out. You don't know me, and you don't know anything about me. Your image of me is as false as the one you project around yourself. I can't be who you want, because I'm too busy being true to myself.
*I just know someone is going to be pissed that I'm hitting on "everyone" again, so let me remind you, I'm only talking to the jerks. If you aren't a jerk, and you know this isn't about you, please don't take offense at me speaking directly to the jerks. I promise, I'll have some posts up for the rest of you soon.
