On Pride, Prejudice, and Privilege…

So, I’m off of social networks for a few days until I can fake sanity, or at least civility toward my fellow netizens. I got pissed off at a lady who was talking about how her dad caught her dancing, and he told her to think how the world would see her, dancing like that. And she was so proud of this story, that he didn’t spank her or nothin’. He just shamed her for dancing, is all.

Well I lost it and said something mean, and she told me I should reread her posts, because clearly, I didn’t see how him shaming her was a good thing. And then she went off on me, saying, “I won’t bother with someone who can’t check his/her White privilege.”

I had to wonder if she used his/her as an insult to a trans person, or if she did it because she couldn’t tell my gender from my picture. My hair is kinda short these days, and my tits are kind of small. But then what pissed me off was me being given something by a black person that I couldn’t get from white people, because I’m too queer to fit in with them.

But isn’t that always the way? Somebody always has a reason for why I can’t hang with their crew.

You know how I first encountered prejudice? My mother decided to take custody of us and move us in with her into the projects in San Antonio. We got treated like shit because we were white. We got told that we were really rich, and that we were just hiding our wealth to mooch from the government. Most of the kids in our hood had TVs, even if they were small black and white sets from the pawn shop, and we didn’t even have a stereo. But even after I’d invited other kids into my house to see that we didn’t have jack shit, we were still accused of hiding our wealth.

Mom had a black boyfriend, Matthew, and we heard shit about our ho momma stealing their men. Mom WAS a ho, but Matthew was no great catch, being a junkie and an abuser. So I was deathly afraid of him unloading on me the way he unloaded on Mom. No place was safe for me, and after complaining to Mom, she hired two babysitters, sisters, and friends of one of the chicks she worked with in the bars.

And our babysitters molested us. So, right then and there, the pattern of my life was set, with physical abuse from the boys, emotional abuse and neglect from my parents and teachers, and sexual abuse from my babysitters.

I was only seven when I snapped. I could tell you the day it happened, with me slashing a kid’s chest with a kitchen knife, but I’ve already told that story before. The point is, after snapping, I began to hate how nowhere I went was safe. I had no allies, no gang to hang with. There was just me and my little brother, and even he didn’t like being around me.

Well, after a year of this shit, Bro caught a beating from the older boys, and mom chewed me out for not being there. In truth, Bro had that ass kicking coming, because he’d been taunting the black kids for ages, calling them stupid niggers and then running home to lock the door. I’d found out about this after slashing a guy’s chest to defend Bro for his dumb ass racism. The guy I cut was the one to tell me why they were chasing him, and I’d told him, “If he does it again, you can have his rotten ass.”

So they finally got a hold of him, and suddenly it was my fault. I lost it, and I told Mom it was her fault, for putting us in hell just because she thought she was fit to raise kids. I told her our father could probably do a better job of raising us. Mom got all weepy, and then she packed our bags, and away we went to Denison Texas.

There, I saw the opposite side of the prejudice spectrum, because there was only a handful of black people in Denison, and I heard from other kids how they stole all the white peoples’ stuff. Well I knew that probably wasn’t true, because the only thing a black guy ever stole from me was my girlfriend, and I was kinda relieved about that because seven is a little young to have a sexually active girlfriend.

In Denison, I saw why the black kids in the projects thought were were hiding our wealth. I saw white women wearing fancy clothes and jewelry, pulling out food stamps to pay for their pile of groceries. I saw white people collecting beneifits as cripples out riding their bikes, the fake ass walker left at home when they didn’t need to act hurt. I saw a church pastor preaching about the goodness of poverty and charity before walking out to his expensive sports car to drive back to his four-bedroom house. I saw why the blacks were so pissed, and I felt for them more than I did for the whites.

But it didn’t mean I belonged to either group. The white kids othered me for acting queer. They beat me up, either alone or in gangs. The white teachers let me be beaten, and they told me I had it coming. But I couldn’t hang with the few black kids in Denison, because they thought I was just doing it out of pity. They couldn’t see or acknowledge that I had nowhere to belong, and I just wanted to hang out with them to have ANYBODY to talk to. It wasn’t pity, it was a desperate desire to belong somewhere.

In my head, I kind of thought it was unfair. In my young mind, I always felt that if you were black and the world hated on you, you got to run home and say to your folks, “It’s not fair!” And your folks would hug you and hold you, and at least you had someone to relate to. It wasn’t like me, coming home to say “It’s not fair!” and having my folks tell me, “Well maybe it wouldn’t happen if you acted right.”

But of course, I know now that if you’re black and trans, you’re in the same boat. No, you’re in a worse boat, because then you’ve got to put up with everyone else’s prejudicial bullshit, PLUS racist white “allies” and your transphobic family. Not that dealing with abuse in my life was easier. I’m just saying, I know how it is to catch shit from both sides.

I dropped out of high school. I tried college for a month before giving up there too. I didn’t qualify for financial aid, even though I was dirt poor. I never qualified for loans, or for credit. I was at best a cling on to any social group I tried to be a part of, and I never felt right with anyone because there was always something they said to make me feel like an outsider. Sometimes it wasn’t even a comment that affected me. It might be a bit of racism, or sexism, or whatever. It might be a friend suddenly saying out of nowhere, “If I just had five minutes alone with one of those perverts, I’d beat the fuck out of them.” At one point in my teens, I thought I could trust my cousin with my thoughts on race, because he listened to rap and loved Michael Jordan. So I tried to talk, and he stopped me and said, “I’ve never had problems with niggers.” I didn’t bother trying again.

But what I’m getting at is, I don’t belong with the whites. I don’t identify with them, and I don’t understand them. They never made me feel like a part of their world. I can’t even fit in with the trans community, because I watch some of them talk about how unfairly they’re judged, only to show their own transphobia by attacking transvestites as “ugly bearded men in dresses.” It’s not okay when a cis person does it, but if we do it, it is? I don’t think so.

But when I’m trying to say something to a black person, and they don’t like what I’m saying, man, suddenly, I’m privileged. Suddenly, I have “advantages in life,” based solely on my skin color. And it doesn’t matter if the whites treated me like shit for being queer. I had it good, and I just didn’t know it until someone othered me and invalidated my opinion. AGAIN.

I think someone who is black and trans probably gets where I’m coming from, or someone black and gay. Or Hispanic and queer. But my point is, they get what it feels like to never have a “home base.” There’s no community to belong to without clinging on the edges, and then it’s us who have to bite our tongues and say nothing or risk losing that little harbor of safety. But it’s not really safe there either. It’s just less dangerous than the rest of the world.

I’m not welcome in any social circle when I’m “loud and proud.” The whites don’t like me reminding them of their oppression of everyone. The minorities love to shove me in with the whites and tell me I’ve got privileges I don’t have. I got banned from a trans support group talking about my past because the moderators said some of the other members with children didn’t feel safe around me. We’re five thousand fucking miles apart, and I’m not going to look up their kids for a date, but I still got shoved out for talking about my past.

People wonder why I lose my shit so often. Why everything seems to set me off. Why can’t I be more happy, now that I finally got mine? Why can’t I just fake a smile more and be nicer to other people? Well, maybe it’s because people around me say mean, petty shit all the time. And it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t aimed at me. I have to wonder what they’ll say about me behind my back to someone else.

Even hubby gets mad at me for always being so upset at the world. But he doesn’t hang out on social networks, and he doesn’t understand me anymore than anyone else does. He loves me, sure. But there are still times when he looks at me with shock and says, “My God, you’re crazy.” (And he’s an Atheist, so that should tell you how much I rattle him. I bring him down to invoking a God he doesn’t even believe in.)

All I ever wanted was some place to fit in, and no matter how far out on the fringes I went, I never found a group to belong to. I get people stuffing me into groups for the sake of their prejudices. I get shoved into groups to be painted with a broad brush by ignorant people from every walk of life. I tried to join the horror community, and they othered me and said I wanted a membership in NAMBLA. I tried to join the gamers, but quietly slipped away after listening to a bunch of sheltered white fucks call each other fag and bitch “in jest.” I can’t even find a home in a freaking trans community without feeling like I’m clinging on, desperate to fit in even when I know I don’t.

No one listens to me or understands why I feel so broken and lost. No one hears me or recognizes what I’m saying. Everyone hears me through the filters of their clique or tribe. So many of y’all talk about how we need more tolerance, but tolerance isn’t good enough. Tolerance is what we have now, where people act like shit to each other, but don’t outright declare war. What we need is acceptance of each other. What we need is to stop finding reasons to hate and be mad.

And that’s easier said than done. I know this, because when a black woman expressed pride over her father shaming her out of dancing using the judgement of the world, instead of asking why I saw it as a bad thing, she said I was passing judgment on her using my White privilege. It couldn’t have anything to do with my own father using the same shame to keep me trapped in my queer closet. It couldn’t be that we had something in common, the use of patriarchy to define our behavior. No, because she saw that shaming as a good thing, and if I couldn’t see it that way, it could only be because I’m white, and I don’t know nothing about systemic oppression and abuse.

In short, it was easier to hate me and dismiss me than it was to accept that my view might also be valid.

I don’t like being so upset that everything sets me off. I don’t like having to stay offline because the social networks are my only connection to the outside world. But sometimes, I can’t deal with y’all people. I can’t watch you complain about every little thing, or brag about something you think is good, and it’s really sad. I hate feeling like I want to go to war with the whole world.

I’m just tired. I’m on the other side of the planet, and y’all can’t touch me with your fists anymore. But sometimes your words hit with almost the same impact. You call me tranny, whore, queer, pervert, monster, pedophile; I’m a piece of shit, or a screeching bitch, and sometimes, I’m a privileged white.

I don’t belong anywhere. On a planet of 7 billion people, I have no one to relate to. I keep screaming out, hoping I’ll find someone who gets me and who loves me and will let me love them in return. Sometimes I feel like hubby gets me, and he’s the one person I need. But sometimes, he shouts at me, and I realize, he doesn’t really get me either.

I hate being an alien. I hate that I never have a group to belong to, not even to the groups I get shoved into by others. When I die, if there’s an afterlife, I’m going to seek out God and ask him point blank, “What was the point of all that? You had me beaten, raped, neglected, and mocked, and not once did you ever give me a place to feel right in my own skin. So what was the point of putting me through hell and never granting me a sanctuary?”

And maybe there won’t be an answer. I think that’s what upsets me the most. That in all this time I’ve been here, people won’t have learned anything about acceptance. They’ll still be hating each other right up to the point that the planet becomes toxic under their feet and kills everyone all at once. There will always be an excuse to hate each other, a “good reason” to heap abuse on one another. There will never come a time when a queer kid like me can grow up without fear, knowing equality and having someplace to belong. God help that queer kid if they’re white, because even the other minorities will tell them “You just don’t know how good you’ve got it, cracker.”

I want to dream of a safe world for that child. But sometimes, I get tired of dealing with the reality that the next generation is just as fucked from the word go as I was.

But please, go on and tell me how I don’t know nothing about your plight. Go on and tell me how hard you’ve got it. After all, I can always use more stories like yours in my fiction. You know, the stories I can’t sell to anyone cause they don’t read about homos and trannies.