[AishasWrath]

I've gotten grief from people for being butch...lots of it, in subtle and blatant ways. What's interesting is I got the more overt meanness after I gained weight. Before when I was skinny I only got passive-aggressive nastiness that was cloaked in therapy language about it.

"There's that F-word who thinks he's a D-word," that statement still haunts my dreams. It was the first strike of a campaign of harassment that nearly cost me my college education. "I have gay friends, but that...disgusting." "Crazy." "Stupid." The friends I had, my self-styled caretakers, weren't there. They said I was exaggerating and overreacting. They told me to ignore it. Some of them poked fun at me for being masculine too. Oh, but it was all in good fun! And it was justified because if I actually identified as male I wasn't marginalized so it was totally ok...and they had license to disparage masculinity all the time in front of me and roll their eyes if I protested...I was on my own. Being stalked, harassed, followed...probably nonconsensually photographed and videotaped, maybe even doxxed. And it was either "you're imagining it," "just ignore it," or that I somehow deserved it for getting above myself or betraying some group who laid claim to my life.

Before that, my mode of being was taken for a mental illness. People tried to read sexism, racism, any and every -ism they could into it. There were all the hoary old anti-butch mudslings and then some. Because I wasn't "doing butch" in the stereotypical way and I wasn't exclusively attracted to women, there were more. My affiliation with masculinity was construed as a toxic need for power and a statement of oppressiveness. "If you identify as female, why don't you want to be feminine? If you identify as male, what's wrong with being female? If you're butch, why do you want to have long hair and wear eyeliner? If you're attracted to men, why are you stone? If you're stone, why do you focus on your own pleasure? Why can't you be masculine in a more appropriate (read: preppie) way? Don't challenge men or make them angry, they're bigger than you and could hurt or kill you! Stop taking martial arts classes and working out, violence is bad and you could hurt someone!" These sentiments were from a self-professed feminist therapist.

Not following the sexist rules for socializing got twisted into "lack of social skills" or "lack of empathy." Getting mad about it was out of the question. I had to internalize all of that or continue to be incarcerated and overmedicated.

And by the time true naked bigotry reared its ugly head I wasn't in a position to effectively fight back, or have what was going on acknowledged. It's so seamless, creepily seamless, almost like it's theme-park engineered. I don't know what to make of it, other than something has gone wronger than wrong.