Revenge Is Something You Do With Your Teeth

Don’t look away from all this. It will hurt. It will be overwhelming. It’s a fraction of what I’ve gone through since February 2023, however long it takes you to read this instead of over a year. If you’re part of the DC community, this is the bare minimum you can do. Small vague lies are easier to hear and accept than a large, complex truth. I’m sorry that you’re being put in the position of needing to hear the latter when so many of us have so many other things going on. Some of this will read as “interpersonal drama” at times, but its all part of how I’ve had my life destroyed for the past year and change. I don’t care if you have to do it in chunks because it’s “just too much to handle all at once.” Read this whole fucking story.

If you look at this and have the response of “Anonsee used too many big words, this is too long for me to care, etc.” – I don’t care. I have been suffering because of all of this for over a year and a half and I keep having new things pop up and throw me back into the midst of all of this every couple of weeks. Don’t skim it, don’t just look for the juicy bits, read it.

I want to be clear to those reading this who took part in all of this. Your initial response will likely be to want to lash out and harm me further. To try and punish me for everything I say, everything I show, here. To make sure your big angry violent Black tranny scapegoat stops being uppity and knows its place.

Except it’s not just me. It’s the other Black queer community members who saw what y’all did and no longer trust y’all. The multiple Black folks who no longer feel safe around y’all, who have told me how they’re terrified that they’ll be next if they step out of line. Who felt it was safer to pull back or disappear than take on the risk. Which may be your goal, I suppose. Do you even remember the last time you saw them, or notice how they faded back?

In particular, however, this has also reached the point where my roommates are catching strays for the crime of living with me. People are contacting them “to make sure they’re safe” and forcing my roommates to explain this story to them and reassure them. To be blunt, two of them were housing insecure/homeless, three of them are refugees from states hostile to trans folks. I’m currently covering bills, food, and sometimes healthcare and transportation for them as well so they can focus on building their own lives up again without suffering, and y’all forcing them to deal with this as well is completely unconscionable. I don’t fully expect y’all to ever stop targeting me, but at least exercise some restraint.

Now! With that out of the way.

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TW; Racism, transmisogynoir, antiblackness, threats of racial violence, ableism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, gaslighting

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I’ll give you all a summary of what you’ll find in this essay between text and screenshots: Two of the people I know falsely accused me have either publicly repeatedly changed their story of “what I did” or have told wildly different stories publicly versus privately. For one of them, I have a witness able to confirm my innocence in addition to the person’s story changing. Of the three (one pair, one individual) community leaders that were involved in my initial exile/banning, a member of the pair confirmed the story one of the false accusers told them is different from the public stories the person has told. As for the individual, they predicated my access to restorative justice to my willingness to interact with two unrelated white exes who have publicly spoken about their desire to lynch me. Additionally, a local Black-run organization recently stopped organizing with this leader due to racism on the individual leader’s behalf, which is also showcased towards me in the screenshots later on.

As far as I can tell based on the information I’ve been able to gather over the last year and a half, in particular since the beginning of this year, I am actually innocent. Last year I couldn’t say that with any reasonable certainty, but with two of my accusers publicly lying and contradicting themselves, and one of the leaders involved confirming that at least one of the stories doesn’t match up with what they were given to support my exile? I’m at this point willing to fully advocate for my innocence.

~~

This is an elaboration on my third story from Position of Guilt, where I had obfuscated the identities of those involved and cut down to essential details. I had hoped that if the members of the DC community involved in this changed their behavior on discovering their schemes hadn’t worked the way they had hoped, that by not including their identities at first I could avoid directing public/community blowback for their actions to them. Regardless of what they’ve done to me, or how they’ve acted towards me even to the present day, I genuinely desire for the least amount of harm possible to come to them as a result of telling my story.

To be clear up front, I believed them. I believed everything told to me about how much harm I had caused until I was given enough evidence to prove that people were lying for their benefit and at my expense. The past year, I primarily wanted to avoid doing anything to hurt anyone else, even those who harmed me. As a survivor of sexual violence/abuse who had people tell me not to do anything about it, I didn’t want to replicate that dynamic and harm to someone. I do not want to continue the cycle of violence I have fallen victim to before.

But along with all this, as someone who has been a victim and either not believed or told to hide it, I also want to ensure I highlight that false accusations when considering the entire population are a small percentage of total accusations, many of which will never see justice in any form. However, it’s also well known and studied that within the white supremacist society of the United States, false accusations towards Black people and transfemmes are much more common and expressly accepted as a weapon of whiteness against these marginalized groups, even if their smaller demographic sizes make them still a fraction of the total accusations. While studies primarily focus on the carceral justice system, their implications extend to how a white society treats these marginalized groups.

For transfemmes, false accusations range not just surrounding sexual assault, but well, pretty much anything considered morally dubious, especially in the increasing politicization of transness and ongoing attempts to write us out of legal existence. These claims primarily focus on us being inherently sexual predators – whether that’s in accusations that we transition solely to rape women in public bathrooms, whether it’s accusations of us being “groomers” or “pedophiles” by virtue of being trans women, or whether it’s that we are simply liars and deceivers by default by virtue of being trans and therefore “not what others think we should be” – see claims of trans panic or “rape by deception”.

As much as we’d like to assume that other trans people wouldn’t be willing to perpetrate the same assumptions and stereotypes in various forms, we aren’t immune to internalized transphobia, especially when we are constantly bombarded by it. We don’t currently have much in the way of public studies on the tendencies to treat trans women this way, or on the data behind our lives in a white supremacist society, all we have to go off of is the stories of trans women who speak up, such as within Hot Allostatic Load by Porpentine.

Meanwhile, what has been studied is that innocent Black people are almost eight times more likely to be falsely convicted of rape. A prisoner serving time for sexual assault is more than three times more likely to be innocent if they’re Black than if they’re white. If Emmett Till is “too inflammatory” of an example, we also have examples of whites using Blacks as scapegoats for their own crimes, such as Amanda Knox trying to accuse a Black man of the murder she was convicted of, or another woman claiming a Black man kidnapped her children, who she had actually killed. Need I continue?

Accusing Black people of sexual assault, sexual harassment, being a “sex pest”, in varying ways and terms is white culture and has been for over a century at minimum. The standards for us are completely different and its possible for us to forget that when we’re multiply marginalized and finding community amongst our other marginalizations. We can let our guard down, and be punished severely as a response. When both Black and Trans marginalizations combine in the way we’re treated within a white supremacist society, as inherent deceivers who operate from a default position of guilt, it’s a hellscape that often leads to our complete abandonment and the refusal of others to put even the bare minimum of effort into checking whether their preconceived biases are true or not.

For clarity’s sake, as I’ve organized my story by “when I learned things” rather than “when an event in question happened” and I recognize the minor timing shifts may be slightly confusing, I’m including a list of the individuals involved up front along with their pronouns and roles in the story.

• Maya – Accuser – A white transfemme who uses It/Its, but also uses feminine terms such as “girl”, boyfriend uses “her” for it as well – @G1RLFL3SH on Twitter/Instagram, girlflesh.bsky.social on Bluesky.
• Jo and Coach (Rach) – Owners of As You Are, Collaborators – Jo is a cis woman who uses She/Her. Rach, who’s nicknamed Coach and commonly goes by that, is non-binary and uses They/She – As You Are’s Instagram/Twitter/TikTok is @asyouareDC.
• Samantha – Accuser (Through Melanie), Community Organizer – A white transfemme who uses She/Her – Runs Greetings from Queer Mountain (@GFQMDC on Instagram) monthly at As You Are as well as being involved periodically with a significant number of local events.
• Danny – Moderator for DC Cherry Blossoms discord server, fledgling community organizer – A white transmasc who uses He/Him – @danimalssweeps on Instagram/Twitter, also goes by probablynotcanadian.
• Melenie – Mediator, Community Organizer – A white transfemme who uses She/It/They – @berenexia on twitter, @hidden__cities and @dctranspicnics on instagram, berenexia.bsky.social on Bluesky, organizes the DC Trans Picnic and other events, formerly held a significant role in The DC Center’s trans support group, unsure if she still does.
• Hemlock – Maya’s boyfriend – A white trans boy who uses He/It – @HemlockTapioca on Twitter.
• Saoirse – Activist, DSA, Accuser – A white transfemme that uses She/Her – @Saoirsefashion on twitter.

These are primarily other leftist/anarchist/abolitionist queer and trans folks – other transfemmes in particular – that did all this to me. They are particularly vulnerable to social isolation and being cut off from community. I do NOT want the same thing that happened to me to happen to them, I want some form of actual restorative justice to take place so that this doesn’t happen again within the DC trans community. I do NOT want y’all to take justice into your own hands or to harass any of them, and any social media handles I provide are so that you can choose for yourself whether you feel comfortable working with these folks or attending their events still, as many of them are either “community organizers/leaders” or trying to become one. If you’re truly their friend, help make sure they don’t do this to anyone else.

Unlike Position of Guilt, I will be updating this one with any fun bonus information I get after publishing it to ensure the most information I have available is provided. If you want to talk further about any of this, or your own stories, you’re free to reach out via social media. I’m ItsAnonsee on twitter and anonsee.rhelmot.io/ on Bluesky.

~~

Over the course of summer 2022 and on, I become more involved in the DC local trans community to try and find some semblance of the friendship and belonging I had lost in the breakup and fallout from the exes that talk about wanting to lynch me now. Honestly, for months, being in the DC trans community was amazing. I’ve always been an extrovert, and I found a lot of meaning in being able to go to the plethora of trans and queer events in the DC area, make connections, and explore more of who I actually was rather than continually being forced to define myself in a reactive fashion.

I lost my job that September and threw myself into community organizing/event hosting while job searching as a result. Being surrounded by other trans folks almost constantly and actually being able to partake in trans joy regularly, being able to suddenly exist in a world where I wasn’t as much of ‘the odd one out’ – yes, I was still Black in several majority white queer spaces, still disabled and using a mobility aid when most others didn’t, but I was able to find connection, able to feel desired, able to exist fully in a reality where even if things weren’t great financially, I wasn’t alone.

The DC trans community is functionally racially segregated. I don’t know if this is a recent development, or if it has always been this way. But unless an event specifies its for BIPOC, BIPOC-run, or BIPOC-focused, most queer events in DC end up being 70% or more white despite DC itself being an almost 50% Black city.

This, unfortunately, leads to some heavy replication of systemic white supremacist dynamics, even in spaces with folks that self-describe as “Anti-Racist”, “Abolitionist”, “Anarchist”, “Communist”, or otherwise left-leaning. Despite spaces, groups, and events saying they’re intersectional, often I’d find myself attending meetings ostensibly meant to benefit the entire trans community and finding I was the only non-white person in attendance. Efforts to push against this dynamic and open up the greater community to have more BIPOC engagement, to make existing spaces actually safe and welcoming for BIPOC trans folks, largely stalled out and led to more focus on, again, segregated events. They claimed titles they did no work to earn and actively stifled my efforts to fulfill their empty promises.

In mid 2022, realizing there weren’t very many generalized spaces for folks from the DC area to find community, make friends, find out about events, etc. especially if they weren’t able to make it out to queer spaces or events, I made the “DC Cherry Blossoms” discord server in order to fill that role and help facilitate at least some additional local community. As the server grew from a couple dozen to hundreds of local trans folks, I added a mod team of four other volunteers.

In late 2022, I started organizing a “Trans Night” at As You Are, the local queer bar and cafe that had functionally become my home away from home over the past several months of unemployment, to try and provide a similar space to the local “dyke night,” but focusing explicitly on trans folks. For the first couple months, I acted as a “host” for the event – spending all but the last hour of the event focusing on helping newer and nervous trans folks find groups to chat and make friends with, checking in on people, and trying to help things run smoothly. For the last hour, I’d actually partake in more relaxed socializing with friends or flirtationships, flirting or making out, and enjoying myself.

In early January 2023, the owners of As You Are, Jo and Coach, talked to me about wanting to swap the format of the event (Fig 1) to be more in line with the format of dyke night, where the only host is the bartender, so that I can actually take part in the entire event instead of “working” it for free every week as I had been. Because of my own anxieties, I checked in both initially and a couple times in the following weeks about whether I had “done anything” to prompt the change, or whether there was anything I needed to personally change or adjust. They both repeatedly assured me I hadn’t done anything, and that I didn’t need to behave any differently or do anything beyond keep enjoying myself.

Around this same time, I also had a falling out with one of the local trans community leaders/organizers, Samantha. There wasn’t anything super notable about this at the time; while it wasn’t a big blow-up – she said she wanted to focus more on her closer friendships/relationships at the moment, and I agreed – she also said that while we spent a lot of time together in community, she felt we weren’t as close because we spent minimal time alone together instead of also with friends, partners, or other organizers.

To be clear, there is/was a common misconception due to how Samantha and I interacted and our similar roles in the community, and I want to ensure this context is understood – at no point were we dating, nor did I ever claim we did. Any time I would get asked whether we were dating, I’d ensure the asker knew that we weren’t. While we had gone on an initial date early on, and I did develop feelings for her, the extent of things between us at any point never went past kissing each other hello/goodbye on seeing each other and minor non-sexual intimacy like general physical contact. I primarily considered her a closer friend that I could trust for the majority of our friendship.

Our friendship often ebbed and flowed in how often we spoke to or saw each other due to both of us being busy. A couple months before the falling out, we had stopped talking for a bit because I had personally fucked up with her, and we had mutually agreed to have some time apart until she wanted to interact again. She re-initiated our friendship after three or four weeks, and we were generally good again after that point, although busy and not showing up to many of the same events.

A couple weeks after the early January “closer focus” conversation I sent a follow-up text to her. In it I specifically stated that I wasn’t expecting or asking for it to change anything in terms of her wanting to shift her focus to closer friendships/relationships.That I wanted to communicate how I was feeling about that conversation since we had to continue existing in similar spaces as organizers, and how I felt some of her phrasing in it seemed to erase some of our experiences together.

I received no response initially, but about two weeks later I received a message from the owners of As You Are, Jo and Coach, while I was out of town visiting a partner. The message read “Due to several parties coming to us with harm caused by you acting outside AYAs consent policy we have decided to ban you from the space, effective immediately.”

I was extremely confused, as since my experience with my exes I’ve been exceedingly conscientious in how I behave when interacting and flirting with people, including asking for permission before any type of physical contact besides with close friends and lovers that I’ve established the lack of need to ask with. I couldn’t think of a single situation I’ve been in that would raise to this level of severity, much less multiple.

I arrange an in-person meeting with Jo, Coach, and the general manager Zed, along with two supporting friends.The conversation is terse and largely cyclical. They inform me “we’re not going to tell you who you harmed,” “we’re not going to tell you how you harmed them,” “we’re not going to tell you how to prevent it from happening again or harming others,” and “we can see how you could do everything right and still end up here.” Questions that the supporting friends, a Black enby and a white trans woman, ask are largely treated similarly, and any concerns politely brushed off.

While I understand (to some degree) not naming names and giving certain key details for fear of retaliation, how am I meant to fix my behavior and not hurt others if I am given absolutely nothing to work with? Not even a suggestion that they could extrapolate, despite having all the knowledge of the situation in question? Up until now, I’ve been protecting the identities of people that have harmed me for over a year while talking about what’s been done to me, even when considering that with the current information I have, I would’ve been well within my rights to release that information ages ago. I haven’t until now because of the degree to which I wanted to avoid even the possibility of them receiving the same harm I have.

I check in with and give the few details I have at the time to friends I’ve messed around with before, regular flirtationships, anyone I know who I’ve messed around with and have contact info for, trying to figure out if I’ve been doing something that I’ve just been missing as being ‘wrong’. I’m generally met with confusion because their experience with me was that I was constantly checking in and asking for permission to do things, and they aren’t sure of any behavior that they had experienced or witnessed from me that would qualify either.

As all of this is going on, I also get informed by a member of the moderator team for my discord server, Danny, who had spoken to Jo and Coach on his own, that these issues were “tied to removing you as trans night host” despite them repeatedly telling me otherwise. This is also despite Jo and Coach telling me that the “multiple complaints” had all come forward in the two weeks prior to texting me.

A few days later, Danny informs me that I’m being banned from that space as well because of an unnamed person coming to them with additional accusations about me.

The slight details the moderator gives me, that the person had consented to having sex with me, but explicitly didn’t consent to certain sex acts happening that apparently occurred anyway, that we had negotiated ahead of time and that I then ignored the limits outlined in the negotiation? Don’t align with any of the times I had sex with someone since joining the local community, and I can’t think of any person or situation that fits the minor information given, especially as my bottom dysphoria means that I rarely have “actual” sex versus engaging in kink or foreplay focusing on my partner. But we’ll come back to this later.

I’m additionally told that multiple people including the owners of As You Are have said they’ve “tried talking to me about it” but the only talks that I’m aware of that have happened, apart from one conversation with Samantha, were when people I had made out with or messed around with prior came to me and told me they weren’t interested in doing more or continuing to do things at the same level we had (whether because they only wanted it to be a one night thing, their situation changed, or other scenarios).

In each of those conversations, I had repeatedly reassured the people who came to me that I wasn’t upset with them, didn’t have any expectations for them to maintain anything with me, that I was completely fine with us not doing anything else going forward, and thanking them for letting me know their interest had changed so I could adjust my behavior appropriately. Depending on how they phrased things in those conversations, I asked clarifying questions to ensure I understood their expectations and boundaries, such as flirtationships who no longer wanted to do anything sexual, but still wanted to kiss or make out platonically.

In the one in-person conversation with Samantha, a few months prior, it had primarily been a conversation about the differences in how “public” we are about our behavior – how while she may at most make out with a date in public occasionally, I would often be flitting between people at events and very visible in the way I was willing to give and receive affection. She informed me that some people found that visibility in poor taste or were uncomfortable with it, which I acknowledged but felt was an unfair standard given how often others did similarly, but “stood out less” as people. She also told me that some people felt I “moved too fast” which is entirely fair on an individual basis, but given that I was also regularly very clear with people I flirted with that I often wasn’t looking for relationships or more, I feel there was ample opportunity for there to be a highlight of a mismatch of interests in that way.

After the conversation with As You Are, near the end of February, I reached out to someone I trusted from the community, Melanie, to act as a general mediator. We had long, multi-day text conversations with each other to try and address the issues. I can’t speak for her side, but every response that I gave was peer-reviewed before sending by other Black, trans, and Black trans people to ensure that I was handling this in the most appropriate way possible.

These attempts go poorly.

Early messages were polite. Gentle, even, as she informed me that people felt I was using my marginalized status as a shield against accountability and to preemptively silence “those I had harmed”, and emphasized that there were many other Black and non-white trans/queer folks who had not been the subject of concerns of such nature.

 

 

 

I bring up my history of the exes directly prior to me entering the local community falsely accusing me, and how my experience with that led to me increasing an already “appropriately” frequent checking in and consent queries even further in the hopes that if I did so, nothing like that would happen again. It reached a point where some partners (whether sexual, ‘just kissing’, etc.), aware of my history, would ask me to ask them less and trust that they would speak up and tell me if they had an issue. I also explain some of my personal history regarding racism to further inform her on my point of view and actions.

 

Melanie referred me to a new document that As You Are and members of the community had put together on consent (which is a living document, and has since been updated from the version I was initially given and I unfortunately don’t have a screenshot of the original), and I had already been doing everything on the list prior to this incident. Which, again, was confirmed to me by those I had previously interacted with at the time.

She brings up the idea of mediated conversations with any that feel safe talking with me and addressing what happened between us, which I agree would be a good idea and stress that I’m not trying to avoid responsibility, and that if this many people feel I’ve harmed them, I want to fix it to the best of my ability. She then asks for permission to be direct regarding some of the issues regarding me, and I tell her to go ahead.

She begins with some general vague-ish issues:

• “People felt intimidated by how you tower over them, making them feel cornered”
  • I’m 6’2” and often wear heels, but I also have spinal damage and use a cane as a mobility aid that often enforces space between me and anyone close to me unless I lean it against something nearby. Beyond this, I also intentionally change my posture to be read as smaller/non-threatening in most social situations because of racism and transphobia.
  • Secondarily, I wasn’t the only tall flirty Domme/top in the larger trans community who commonly wore heels, but I sure was the only Black one in these spaces during this period of time, and I would never hear the heights of the non-Black dommes described as anything other than some variation of “really hot”.
• “People felt like they couldn’t say ‘no’ when you asked them to do things because of your social capital”
  • I was an unemployed, disabled, Black transfemme who had been in the larger DC community less than a year. While I was an organizer, I very strictly delineated between “work” and “play” in terms of events I hosted or helped with – even if my general demeanor is flirty by default because that’s my personality, I would often pair it with comments of how I wouldn’t be doing anything because I was focusing on the event.
  • I am not a mind reader. I am not a behavioral profiler. I’m an autistic person who did their best to regularly evaluate common body language of other, primarily autistic and neurodivergent people, in addition to being very verbally communicative regarding consent – If it at any point someone seemed “not enthusiastic” or otherwise gave me a “no”, I would back off and check in, often including reassurances that I had no expectations of them and was fine stopping if they wanted at any time. Sometimes, people would tell me they’d like to take a break or stop – whether it was due to overstimulation, falling out of the mood, or otherwise. In which case I’d thank them for spending that time with me, and we’d either go back to talking for a bit and maybe continue again if they told me they’d like to, or part ways.
  • Also related to being autistic: I ask clarifying questions about everything that seems vague to me in the context it’s given, especially when it comes to consent and communication regarding it. They aren’t a challenge. They aren’t me “trying to weasel my way to what I want”. They are me trying to ensure that I am properly understanding intent and desire. You cannot claim that I am “not doing enough to ensure I have consent or avoid doing something that may harm someone I’m interacting with” then continue on to tell me that me specifically trying to ensure I am understanding other primarily neurodivergent people properly is bad, actually.
• “Jo and Coach felt like you were implying to others you had a closer relationship with them than they felt accurate, or that they were considering hiring you, making them feel they were implicitly condoning your behavior.”
  • I was unemployed primarily surviving on meager savings, money given by partners, or later on mutual aid, and would make jokes that they should hire me to help run their social media in a broader and more dedicated way than they were at the time. I made these jokes because I was performing a significant amount of unpaid labor (which to be clear, they had not directly asked me to do, I was doing on my own because I wanted to see AYA succeed and be a space both more trans inclusive and more racially diverse than the other queer spots in the city) in advertising events and organizing new ones. Months prior, they had begun calling me an “Ambassador” to AYA without me prompting them to, and this continued until these events. Additionally, we had talked about the realities of whether they could actually financially afford even a part-time person in that role months prior, and determined it was unrealistic with their financial constraints at the time, but I was still willing to put in the effort because it was important.
  • Regarding “a closer relationship with them than they felt accurate” – While I was unemployed I spent multiple days a week at AYA as a queer third space where I didn’t have to spend money to exist if I didn’t want to. Honestly, at this point, I couldn’t tell you what they actually thought of me that whole time given these events, but I considered them friends that I loved and trusted. That sometimes I’d sit with after close and bullshit for a couple hours. That I had cried with, comforted and been comforted by. I’m not sure if this was an attempt to distance themselves from me because of their business focus on “enthusiastic consent” being antithetical to what I was being accused of – I can really only speculate at this point.
• “They were afraid if they turned you down you’d accuse them of racism.”
  • If what you get out of a Black person talking about the racism and/or racial trauma they’ve experienced from others to you is “oh no what if they accuse ME of being racist if I don’t capitulate to them?” y’all need to get right with your chosen spirituality.
  • Really don’t know what to tell you here other than don’t act in the blatantly white and racist ways depicted in screenshots throughout this essay and people won’t say you’re racist. If you plan to call yourself antiracist, actually work to be a traitor to whiteness and live by your espoused ideologies rather than just when it’s convenient to you.

She informed me of ways in which I could “be a better top socially”, instructing me on behavior becoming and unbecoming of a top, as she felt that my reputation as a top/Domme was mostly the result of self-aggrandizing, despite the fact that I had been a kink educator both back in Montana and here in DC for nearly a decade cumulatively. She also told me how there was a “widely perceived pattern” of me “targeting newly out, white, trans girls who may be afraid to ask for help.” Regarding “targeting newly out, white, trans girls”, I’d like to point back to my previous comments about racial segregation within the larger DC trans community. As much as I tried to change things, if an event ends up 90% white, it’s 90% white, and I was generally willing to give anyone a chance that showed interest in me unless they were significantly younger than me or there was some other conflict of interest.

Additionally, this was in mid-2022 to early 2023 and a significant cross-section of the community had come out and/or started HRT during the pandemic. I had personally only been on HRT for a little over a year on entering the local community in 2022, and had previously been a “non-transitioning” Enby with minimal trans community outside of work or some on the internet. That is to say, that as all of this was happening a lot of the “newly out” girls had been out or transitioning for about the same amount of time I had or a bit less, and this seems to be an extension of the racial stereotype where Black people are considered older/more mature by default than their white counterparts, especially given that there were several white trans women who had been out longer than I had (including some of those named in this story) and who would routinely mess around with the same “newly out” girls without it being mentioned as a concern.

Following this, in the politest terms she could as a white trans women, she suggested that I needed to act Blacker and reassured me that I shouldn’t worry they wouldn’t think I wasn’t really Black (despite me never telling her I was even concerned about that, as I wasn’t, making it a projection of her views of my Blackness onto me) by stating that I should “seek out other Black trans people and study their vibes” and that I “shouldn’t worry about being ‘black enough’”. This was followed by informing me that I should be assuming white people are about 40-60% more prudish than I may believe, and that while its not fair how things are for racialized transfemmes, that its how things are and I must “move at the speed of trust”.

From there, she included some personal stories and anecdotes from her own experiences that I haven’t included both to remove unneeded info and as a kindness. She informs me that my concerns regarding her interest in others’ “sides” but not my own are unfounded because others have offered her their own receipts and she’s turned them down.

Then comes the first accusation, and one that until writing this I hadn’t brought up even in my own personal processing of all this, as Melanie asked me to discard it as it “wasn’t her place to share” but Samantha’s story, and as such I refrained from speaking about it until now both out of respect for someone I cared about and because it was asked of me by another.

• Samantha’s accusation:
  • According to Melanie, Samantha told her about our first date back in mid-late spring, where after grabbing food we went back to my place. The only context I was provided for the accusation was that I had undressed without her consent after her repeatedly saying she wasn’t interested in doing anything sexual. Melanie then stressed that this was assault, especially when factoring in that I live somewhat rural and had driven her there, then told me it hadn’t been her place to share and didn’t want to discuss it further.
• What actually happened:
  • We went back to my place with the understanding that nothing sexual would happen or be expected, just to continue talking and spending time together. We had been laying in bed together, both talking and kissing. My room is the hottest in my house, and at this point the AC hasn’t been working very well and the fan in my room isn’t particularly helping either. I ask her if she would be comfortable with me taking my dress off because of how hot it is, acknowledging that we aren’t planning on doing anything more sexual and that I plan to keep my bra/underwear on. She gives me verbal consent, and I do so, and don’t make any moves to engage further physically, sexually, or otherwise beyond carrying on our conversation, including not initiating further kissing. I don’t think much further on this after the fact, as we both are or have done sex work and have discussed being largely ambivalent towards nudity or minimal dress in private. It is never mentioned to me later at any point as having been an issue, even during detailed conversations about issues between us. We continued to develop a friendship and get closer after this point – I won’t write further on the details of that unless forced to in order to correct inaccuracies, as it’s much more personal with less direct relevance.

After this point we continue to talk about the potential of restorative justice in the form of managed conversations with victims, in which she focuses on both Samantha and interacting with the previously mentioned exes as someone I have to go through this process with. I inform her that I’m terrified of those exes, as they have escalated to talking about lynching me based on their own lies.

Melanie responds to this by instructing me to “put myself in the shoes of a trauma survivor instead of assuming you must be the antagonist”, to which I make her aware of the fact that I’ve been previously serially coercively raped, and have been sexually assaulted otherwise twice. I won’t elaborate on these here, but if you feel you need to know the details for me to prove I was “really a victim”, again, contact me.

Additionally, I inform her that I was also previously trapped in an abusive relationship for three years, in which I suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. I state that I’m looking at this from the point of view of a Black transfemme survivor who is not interested in getting Emmett Till’d, as I know and have explicit proof my exes are lying, including accusing me of things such as being ‘religiously abusive’ by trying to “forcibly convert them to the Black diaspora spirituality I practice”.

Melanie responds by saying that my invocation of Emmett Till, which was the phrasing multiple other Black people familiar with my exes and what they had done had used, and which multiple other Black people had specifically peer reviewed to be sent to Melanie, is inappropriate because she’s from Mississippi and queerness is ‘incompatible with white supremacy’ as abolitionists. She further informs me that if I truly believe my welfare is fundamentally antagonizing to white queer and trans people, that I don’t believe a mutually supportive abolitionist community is possible.

She then informs me that she wishes to be very clear that she’s not dismissing my concerns or minimizing the effects of white supremacy on everything involved, but that I need to acknowledge the autonomy and responsibility of people in making their decisions on who they engage with, including the decision to bring private harm into a broader discussion of community safety, especially when racial dynamics are involved. As such, I do very much hope she also acknowledges my autonomy and responsibility in making my decisions on this, including that to bring details of private harm into a broader discussion of community safety, especially given how racial dynamics are involved.

She also says that they (white queer and trans people) are all actively working to unlearn white supremacy, but that that doesn’t mean they aren’t entitled to basic respect and I need to recognize how difficult it has been for many people to mention being harmed by me, due to “their fear of being called racist as a consequence, much less this inflammatory, inappropriate, and extremely offensive comparison to Emmett Till”.

From this point, the conversation breaks down further into ideological argument surrounding my exes’ behavior, particularly her objection to me describing my exes as wanting to lynch me, in which I clarify “no, I’m not scared they’ll draw and quarter me, I’ve talked to these exes in depth of my fear of getting lynched due to growing up Black in Montana, and its a very conscious choice on their part, and they have spoken about wanting my vigilante execution based on their own lies.” Additionally, this portion of conversation took place the same week national news dropped of the finding of ‘no foul play’ in the lynching and dismemberment of a 25-year-old Black man named Rasheem Carter in Mississippi, further inflaming the effect of her statements on me. The last real response I received was a statement that she had broached the possibility of mediated conversation with another affected party, and that she’d keep me posted.

During this ongoing mediation, I’m rarely going out. I try to go to the March 5th 2023 Ekko Astral/Spring Silver concert at Comet Ping Pong, and one of the local dolls I know, Maya, asks me to come outside with it to talk. It spends the next five minutes threatening me for “being a shitty person who nobody will tell what’s going on because you have a habit of accusing people who accuse you of being racist. I’ve heard enough of what you’ve done to know you’re a horrible person, and this is a safe place for me and my friends that you are infringing on.” When I tell it that I still don’t know the vast majority of what I’m being accused of, it tells me “I should know” and ends by threatening me should I give it plausible deniability to harm me.

This solidifies my decision to stop going out apart from errands and the rare times over the next few months when what friends I have left drag me out of my home.

At this point, I’ve run out of savings and other ways to survive without crowdfunding, and multiple other unemployed and otherwise housing insecure trans folks that live with me are relying on me to be able to pay the bills. To this point I’ve been relying largely on the community to be able to access my medications due to not having health insurance anymore but also somehow not qualifying for state insurance.

I put up a mutual aid post on twitter, and soon after get a message informing me that one of the people who had apparently accused me was Maya, the same doll who threatened me and who “happened to” be one of Samantha’s reoccurring friends with benefits at the time. It was messaging people that shared my mutual aid post to tell them how abusive I am, and how I had “assaulted it and strangled it without her consent”. This is how I learn one of the things I’m being accused of, and that it’s not even a misunderstanding or me forgetting something that had happened, but instead just Maya wholesale lying about me.

• Maya’s accusation:
  • It has told at least four different versions of what happened, it’s boyfriend, Hemlock, has told a fifth. I’ve included the screenshots below, unedited except for removing its last name and my deadname, which it chose to include despite knowing I went solely by Anonsee now. The first it was sending by DM, the second it posted on Twitter and Bluesky as a public “call out” of me, the third is it’s boyfriend’s phrasing after the two of them happened to encounter me in person – more on that later. The fourth is an “updated” public callout of me that still deadnames me. The fifth and “original” I do not have a copy of, but Coach has directly verbally confirmed to me that the story Maya told As You Are as part of supporting banning me is not any of the stories it has told publicly.

 

• What actually happened:
  • Maya and I met up with each other at AYA. We were flirting downstairs across a table before moving upstairs to have a bit more comfort in doing so. It asked me to perform breath play with it in the bar, in public, and I turned it down at the moment because I felt AYA wasn’t the correct space for that. We walk back to my car, parked just past AYA’s lights, and I turn to it and ask if it’d still like me to perform breath play with it. We had discussed the risks of breath play, and it gave me its full verbal consent so I pressed it up against my car to do so. When I do breath play, I always count out loud how long I plan to do it for – either down from five or ten – because those are from my experience the safest times to do it for the desired effect and I want to make sure my partner knows exactly how long they have so that if they need to, they can tap out early. Any time more than that needs to be explicitly negotiated.
  • I honestly don’t remember whether I did five or ten seconds this time, but after I finished, it did indeed faint, in that its legs gave out on it for a brief moment, which I understand can be scary for it and how that could be an individual negative experience. Between holding my cane for my own personal support, and not expecting it because I’d never had someone drop on me from breath play at those durations before, I wasn’t able to catch it. It didn’t lose consciousness – it spoke as its legs gave out and was aware and conscious, if disgruntled, with no time elapsing between it falling and being responsive. I helped it back up and gather a couple items that had dropped. I checked in further on it, whether it needed anything or specific aftercare in the wake of that experience, and if it was ok. It confirmed it still wanted me to take her back to its place, so I spent the night with it, and left the next morning. We still interacted normally afterwards, including one other instance where I went back to its place with it and spent the night platonically because we had both had a bad day and simply didn’t want to be alone.

Later on, I discovered more about Maya’s behavior both during this period and after. It turned out that I wasn’t the only local transfemme it had tried to spread lies about in this fashion, I was just the only one for who it stuck, as it otherwise would target primarily popular, attractive, white transfemmes. In particular, over the months we would interact normally, it would describe its experiences in an “on-again off-again” relationship with a particular transfemme.

Near the end of this period, Maya would get progressively angrier about its “treatment at the hands of this other transfemme”, and in the times we met at events and it would update me on her life, if the other transfemme was present, it would describe how badly it wanted to “cause a scene” with her or assault her over her behavior. Learning later on, they hadn’t actually dated, they were just part of the same friend group, and many of the incidents described to me by it may have been false for the sole purpose of trying to do to her the same thing it would later successfully do to me. While this ultimately seems it didn’t stick to that transfemme overall, some people without additional context continue to describe her as a “sex creep” or “sex pest” until given more info.

Later on, come January, I discover that I hadn’t blocked Maya yet on twitter. I find this out by twitter suggesting a post it made in my “for you” where it quote posted a different person’s tale of sexual violence by “a black ‘nonbinary’ male engaging in obviously male behavior”,with Maya  stating how its “certainly not far right” but “the bit abt society’s unwillingness to visit judgement upon an NB/minority sex pest is uncomfortably relatable”. After seeing this, I block it and largely try to forget its existence.

After I publish Position of Guilt, someone else finally comes forward to me with the identity and story of another accuser. There had been only two people I know of by name I could even think of who might’ve had reason to accuse me that I had messed around with, and it wasn’t due to anything that happened during sex, but due to verbally holding grudges against me later on. It turns out that one of these two, Saoirse, was indeed one of my accusers.

• Saoirse’s accusation:
  • I’m giving two versions – the one I was given earlier this year, and the one she posted publicly in late April to support Maya. Additionally, based on the phrasing of the latter accusation, I strongly believe that she is the one who provided an account of me “sexually assaulting her” to Danny, leading to me being removed from the local discord server I had created and organized.
  • Initial (what she had told other community members at the time): That in the one and only time we hooked up, the week before Christmas of 2022, I had done extreme degradation play, seemingly bordering on riskier, harder, kink play such as consensual psychological torture play, without her prior consent or negotiation. After doing so, I had claimed I was “too tired” for aftercare and went to sleep immediately.
  • Public: That i had performed unspecified sex acts that she had specifically asked me not to perform on her without negotiation or consent. She later clarified that the unspecified sex acts were bringing her to orgasm during sex or forcing orgasm, and furthermore stated that I had done neither but that she “faked it out of fear”.
  • As a small personal clarification, while she says that I had forced her to orgasm against her “explicitly stated desires” and that is how I sexually assaulted her in otherwise consensual sex, we also did not negotiate edging, orgasm denial, or similar kinks as an expectation or a planned part of this initial hookup. Without those facets being specifically discussed, and it being an initial hookup rather than a partner who’s body I already know the responses of, I’m truly unsure of how she would’ve expected me to ensure she didn’t orgasm without simultaneously engaging in a different kink we hadn’t negotiated beforehand.

What actually happened:

• • She had wanted to hook up with me and I was willing to see whether we vibed or not sexually. After bringing her home with me, we discussed what we were planning on doing (minimal kink was planned for that night) and expectations before having pretty vanilla sex. She fell into subspace partway through us having sex in a way that made her partially non-verbal (we had discussed both verbal and non-verbal safewords, after she went non-verbal I asked her to use her non-verbal safeword, squeezing my fingers, to show me she still could which she did, and I also asked whether she wanted to keep going, which was a very enthusiastic affirmative head shake), and after we finished, I cleaned us up, and she was verbal again, immediately started talking about long-term relationship plans and D/s dynamic ideas, including making presumptive comments about me thinking of her as my submissive, which I very carefully told her wasn’t what I was looking for and reminded her that I had made her explicitly aware of that multiple times before we even left for my house. I continued to give her aftercare and cuddle with her prior to us going to sleep.
  • In the morning, my roommate Mala made us pancakes and talked with us while we ate. During this time, Saoirse continued to be very affectionate towards me. After we finished eating, I drove her home and dropped her off.
  • After seeing Saoirse’s public accusation and reading what she claimed happened for the first time, Mala, the roommate that I’ve lived with the longest, and who used to share a bedroom wall with me, ended up posting a response as she had been a first-hand witness, able to hear our conversations and comments clearly the entire time, including consistent and enthusiastic verbal consent.

For the next week, Saoirse continues to be very lovey-dovey to me when we are in the same spaces despite the fact that I had politely told her I wasn’t particularly interested in more than friendship and maybe platonic interaction with her. During this period, I also consult with several friends, including Jo, on how to handle this, as it’s the first time within this community I’ve had to deal with someone not respecting my boundary of “I’m just messing around with people right now, nothing more. If you want more than that, I’m probably not the right person for you currently.” As a result, I once again tell her that i’m fine being friends, but have no interest in maintaining anything more with her.

One of those friends, who was previously unaware I had hooked up with Saoirse, ended up letting me know that I should “be careful around her” because she had a reputation in activist spaces – particularly the local DSA community prior – for being extremely manipulative, holding grudges, and being willing to work communities she was in to make others act on her grudges for her, whether they knew it or not. She later on did this against AYA using the discord community I ran, DC Cherry Blossoms, to spin up her personal grudge against Coach and Jo into a “group safety issue” until everyone learned of said grudge and her puppeteering, and a number of folks directly apologized to them for getting manipulated.

After finding out that Saoirse had been lying, I had my first real relief since everything started in February 2023. With Maya, I had been assuming she was an outlier and that I might have still harmed others. With now knowing that at least two of the accusations were false from people with something to gain or a grudge, I actually felt vindicated and freed of so much doubt that had been plaguing me.

Come April, I’m finally starting to go out more for my own joy after a year. I have some more consistent local friends again, and something bordering on a friend group. I still rarely go out alone unless its to majority-Black spaces or events, but after months of having gone from being an extreme extrovert spending most nights of the week out, to only leaving the house for errands or on request from friends or roommates due to new severe social anxiety when alone, it’s better than I was before.

In the beginning of April, I go to the Ekko Astral show at Black Cat with my friends, despite how many people that hate me without ever talking to me about any of this tend to show up. I’m scared this may go poorly – worse-case scenario, someone thinks they can attack me there – and I make sure my friends know that’s a possibility.

Despite some weird behavior and glares, I’m largely left alone through the night. I have a really good time, but when I get home I have a ‘spidey-sense’ moment of “this went far too easily with nothing going wrong, I don’t trust this” and decide to check twitter. I temporarily unblock Maya, and discover it was indeed posting about me, having shared its callout of me once again.

I leave the situation for the night to pass out, and over the next two days decide to keep an eye on the post to see what further happens or whether it responds further about it. I learn two things from this. The first is that, in discussing me with another person, it seems that its overall goal between lying and repeatedly bringing it up is my full eradication from being in public in DC. The second is that beyond what she’s done to me, her general racism has gotten worse, such as speaking about her “skepticism for the Palestinian cause” and that “America is a country for Bright Young Foreigners”, as well as speaking of how she brought “plus-size shorts” of a thirty inch waist to a BIPOC-focused clothing swap to “help the less fortunate”. Obviously, this is in addition to the previous comments of believing minority sex pests aren’t adequately dealt with.

Beyond this, nothing more happens, so I once again return to ignoring her existence.

On April 13th, I happen to come face to face with Maya in a tea shop my roommate and I had stopped in for lunch while out of the house. Maya and its boyfriend had been trying to get my roommate’s attention while they were zoned out, and when I turned around on hearing the “excuse me, excuse me?” found its face a couple feet away from mine. We lock eyes for a few seconds before I calmly turn back around and finish my food, then leave with my roommate.

I make a post about interacting with Maya and not reacting poorly despite everything I know its done to me at this point. Soon after, its boyfriend quote posts me to call me out for “choking her unconscious and assaulting others in the community”. I respond with similar info as I’ve laid out here, and also inform him that I won’t judge him for however he needs to act with me to ensure his own safety, knowing that I’m not the only person that Maya has done this to and that likely I won’t be the last either.

The week of April 22nd, I get told that not only have Maya and Saoirse posted new callouts of me (included in individual accusations), but that they’ve continued to deadname me in them over a year after I’ve changed my name. Besides learning the content of the new callouts, not much more happens until April 25th. On that day, my roommate, Mala, informs me that she had seen Saoirse’s callout on twitter with the first real detail Mala had seen of what happened, and that she had posted a response to the callout (posted with Saoirse’s accusations) because it was an explicit lie to what Mala had both heard first-hand and seen afterwards.

Maya attempts to beat back Mala’s comments and tries to discredit Mala in multiple ways, doing its best to paint Mala having witnessed events aligned to my side of the story as callous victim blaming rather than a year long campaign against me falling apart very publicly, leaving both Saoirse and Maya scrambling to patch it back together in the wake of Mala’s story.

And as an aside, the following screenshot is the first time Maya hasn’t deadnamed me in the past 14 months!

Along with all that, Maya slips up once more, telling a lie about an apparent “current or former roommate” calling it in a panic on finding out about my “history as an abuser”. The only “former roommate” I have is an older Black enby who, respectfully, is too damn grown to act like that. My current roommates all either moved in before all this went down, don’t interact with local dolls like that in person or online currently, and/or had no idea who Maya even was. I’m not sure why you’d try to lie about this without knowing more than one of my roommates.

With the addition of the stuff from 4/25/24 I’m really hoping it helps y’all see this for what it is. I’ve been going through hell and I’m so tired and I just want white people to stop being freaks to/about/around me. I want them to stop trying to punish or harm anyone who sees through their games and does the actual right thing, up to and including threatening some of those who dare to be publicly associated with me.

As of late April 2024, not only have the parties involved continued to try and cut me out of community further upon discovering I was trying to engage with the local community in a limited capacity with what remaining friends I have, in what spaces I could (mainly concerts in a variety of venues), but they have made clear that they believe any level of my existence in public in DC is incompatible with their goals.

~~

In July 2024, I’m informed by a volunteer that a local Black organizing group, Harriett’s Wildest Dreams, has stopped organizing events with Melanie and organizations she leads due to her racism. As I’m learning this second-hand, I do not have further information.

~~

At the beginning of August 2024, I finally have another in person conversation at length with Coach. They continue to refuse to provide me specific details as to who accused me or of what, beyond information I already have at this point. However, they are able to answer several critical points for me.

• None of the statements other community members have been making on Jo and Coach’s behalf since my banning are true or remotely accurate, including specifically the ones from Melanie and Danny. They have not been discussing it with others since the original banning.
• They were not aware of how As You Are’s ban of me was being used by others in the wider community, or in other communities, and hadn’t intended the extended effects caused by it.
• Informed me that the accusation Maya brought against me to them is not the same story whatsoever as the ones it posted about me publicly. They still refused to give me exact further details beyond this.
• They were specifically pushed away from exploring restorative justice options other than an immediate and total ban, and felt they were rushed into making a decision rather than having the time or ability to consider further.

Coach informs me that they need to have a conversation with Jo regarding our conversation, and we have not spoken again since.

~~

This brings us to the present day. I don’t know if I’ve discovered “every accusation against me” yet – I probably won’t ever know every true motivation behind people doing this because it would require people admitting what they’ve done to me and feeling shame or guilt for it, and I honestly don’t see that happening any time soon.

Please consider how horrific it is that I have to do all this to prove my innocence as a Black transfemme after over a year of trauma and hell, whereas all they have to do as white trans women is post a single text image vaguely accusing me to tie up a huge portion of my life in which I could be doing so much that isn’t this unless I want to just allow them to keep lying about me. Also consider how any showing of anger, frustration, or desire for justice over all this – with what you know now – was and is treated as a de facto admission of guilt. Anything less than perfection at all times is as good as a confession regarding Black folks unless there’s overwhelming evidence in our favor, and not everyone like me will have saved this much proof or had any support to help save us. I’m one of the lucky ones, the next ones likely won’t be.

~~

I want to be clear, while this is primarily to address all the info I have at once, this is as much a reminder that you are not alone, and you are not the only person something like this has happened to. That I’m not the only person this type of thing has happened to. I’m not the only Black person, the only transfemme, I’m not alone in this. I’ve spent the past year yelling about everything thats happened to me and what I’ve found over and over is other Black folks telling me “Yeah, white people do that to us” and other transfemmes – both BIPOC and white – telling me “that happened to me too, I thought I was alone/a monster so I never spoke about it.” How so many of them didn’t have the distributed support networks I did, and were devastated by the results. How many of them weren’t told what they “had done,” weren’t even told why they were getting cut out, how many found out later it was for a minor affront or something they hadn’t done at all.

It impressed upon me how I was a lucky one, even with how much you’ve read until now. I survived and had the ability to fight back. So many transfemmes, especially BIPOC transfemmes, don’t have that. So many rely on never bringing what happened to them up because they’re scared their world will come crashing down around them once more.

Washington DC is a city in which the larger/general queer and trans communities are functionally racially segregated and any attempt to change that is punished. In a 50% Black city, I shouldn’t be seeing queer/trans events, large groups, etc. that are 70% or more white. It shouldn’t be a struggle to get community leadership, organizer groups, etc. that aren’t almost completely white. We shouldn’t be forced to become outcasts or exiles for trying to change this in a way that challenges the white status quo that inflicts further racialized, transmisogynistic, or transmisogynoiristic, harm on members of our community.

I’ve spent the past year of my life scared. Scared of being an “even worse person”, scared to be harmed further, scared of so much. But I refuse to be scared anymore. I refuse to allow my story to continue to be dictated by those who seek the comfort of lies in order to support their own desires. The less I speak, the more chance of this harm befalling others. The more chance of these patterns replicating themselves on new people that don’t deserve it. I won’t let my own fear, or my own complicity in what was done to me by trying to protect those who harmed me simply because I gave my word I would, continue to hold me back.

To my accusers and their supporters, specifically:

If I were anyone who had any form of actual institutional or social power within this community, I wouldn’t be continually having to deal with this shit every time I sneeze. But unfortunately, I’m a disabled, Black transfemme who, at the time, was unemployed and reliant completely on community aid to pay bills, access medication, and take care of the multiple other trans folks in my home who otherwise had minimal or no income.

At no point do I believe I’m some ”perfect smol bean” who can do no wrong – I’ve fucked up a lot both over this period and prior, and I’m willing to speak to those ways I’ve fucked up if asked because often I do want to do better and change what led to me fucking up. But I also refuse to accept guilt for something I explicitly haven’t done. Every thing I conceivably “did wrong” over this period, whether it was dyke drama, a misunderstanding, or “cringe emotional shit,” was at worst a case for me and an individual person or small friend group to avoid each other at parties, not for the continuous isolation and hot allostatic load they’ve decided was appropriate.

In particular, I’m ashamed of those of you who call yourselves anti-racists or abolitionists, those of you who posit yourself as “transmisogyny understanders,” who helped boost all this despite knowing it followed the exact same patterns you’ve seen happen time and time again. Despite knowing that you could do better within your own ideologies if my exile didn’t benefit you. You can’t weep over something happening to a white trans woman, talk of how they don’t deserve to be cast aside, then do the same thing to a Black trans woman with complete callousness.

I can’t be returned to Macy’s just because you decided you didn’t like my color after all, and I’m so sorry that that seems to infuriate y’all to no end, to the point of being willing to compromise your own professed ideological ties because you caught a severe case of Anonsee Derangement Syndrome and decided to make it my problem, to the point of continually and intentionally deadnaming me months or even a YEAR after you know I changed my name – but of course, I forgot, proper names and pronouns are only for the good white trans women, not the evil rude Black ones.

Y’all transitioned well – that is to say, you’ve transitioned into white womanhood perfectly. You’ve learned how to leverage it as a weapon, whether that’s in supporting your own goals, ensuring that people you don’t like suffer, or ensuring that any attempts to desegregate the DC trans/queer community are done on your terms, or not at all, as suits y’all.

If this same type of thing happened to you at one point, and if that is why you decided to do it to me, I’m truly sorry that you went through that. It doesn’t justify what you did to me, but I understand the urge to seek power over your past in that way even if I don’t agree with it. You weren’t at fault for what was done to you, but nor does it excuse what you did to me. I hope that after this, your friends wrap you in their arms, hold you close, and help you change so that you never do this to someone else again.

I will not continue killing myself in the hopes it will make you stop torturing me.