Controversial is an adjective which means ‘to give rise to, or be likely to give rise to public disagreement‘.
I would never have imagined myself to be controversial, or my art or writing to be so. At some point I became controversial. Since my ‘Dead Men Don’t Rape’ t-shirt being blocked I have slowly come to realise that some of my ideas are subject to public disagreement.
I have been googled a bit of late. Googling my full name gives new acquaintances, and colleagues access to a plethora of information about myself and my past, and has lead to a few awkward moments of ‘public nakedness’. One of the people that googled me asked me if my art and writing, being so publicly available concerned me, particularly that which references the abuse I suffered as a child. I said that no, it doesn’t.
When I upload something to the internet it leaves my hands. It is forever outside of my control. It can be viewed, duplicated, redistributed, googled, copied, altered and completely destroyed. I can’t stop any of this. Obviously I do not want my intellectual property stolen, and if I found someone profiting off my pain, and hard emotional work, I would most certainly kick their arse from here to the highest court in the world, be that necessary. However, I acknowledge that risk. Some of my art stays safely on my computer. Some doesn’t leave the sketchpad. I have a diary which is a book that never leaves my bag, and never gets reread, by myself or anyone else.
When I make my personal experiences and opinions available on the internet it is for a reason, and that reason is to destroy secrecy, and raise awareness. I was sexually molested when I was six. Five years later, when I was eleven, the perpetrator confessed and I was interviewed by the police. My mother punished me for not telling her about it sooner. I was 21 when I finally found out that yes, the man that molested me was punished. Ten long years of believing he got away with it, of being sent to my room whenever I asked about it, of everyone knowing, and no one speaking to me about it.The secrecy gave me a lot of heart ache, and bred in me a lot of anger, and resentment which disappeared the moment I found out that I was wrong. If someone had simply told me all those years ago, that he was very very wrong, and was punished for his actions, I would have been able to come to grip with so many things so much sooner.
I need people to see the pain, to see the healing and some people need to see it. Some people need to see that even though they have been through something similar, there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Others need to see that this abuse does happen, and this needs to be addressed by society.
I am unashamed. I do not care if people know that once, when I was powerless, someone bigger, stronger, and more in control than I was able to molest and abuse me. That isn’t my fault. It isn’t my mother’s fault. It isn’t his parents fault, or the church we belonged to. It was HIS action. It was HIS fault.If someone can think less of me because I have been sexually abused, then well… they are probably already preoccupied by my gender representation, or queerness, or non-traditional career path.
I am 
I am 
I am 
The Comments Policy or “Ryan is Control Freak”
July 15, 2008 — RyanA charmer called ‘Rachel’ posted a comment on my post about the DSM-V.
It doesn’t show up on the post, its been sitting in moderation for a while as I have considered what to do with it. I thought that perhaps I would post again about my comments policy. This comment was in flagrant violation of my comments policy. In the past I have fisked comments from my moderation queue, just for educational purposes.
Here I am only going to post part of the comment… the nice little signature. You see, most of it was just “OMG! BAD TRANNIES!!! DON’T PROTEST ANYTHING!!! SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, AND LET THE GOOD DR ZUCKER LOOK AFTER YOU!” and similar drivel. That didn’t violate my comments policy, I probably would have posted it, and fisked it just for interests sake.
THIS is what violated the comments policy:
That last line? That would be HOMOPHOBIA. Its not allowed here.
Besides, ex-gays are yucky. EW.
Anyway, I shall reiterate… this is MY BLOG, what I say goes. There’s no point in commenting again and again if you’re comments keep a disappearin’ into the ether cos you are a homophobic, transphobic, DOUCHEBAG.
Give up, go away, go play with the other trolls, or comment on a big site where they enjoy troll baiting.