I've forgotten it all

In 2002 I blogged with regularity. It was all classic 22 year old navel gazing with a side order of loneliness. I lived in rural Japan with a lot of snow and dial up internet. I fell in love with the idea of a poetic American man living in Poland. I walked the streets of the village I lived in, glorying in the snow. I pretended to be straight. Other strange things happened. It was the year I realised I could be a person, perhaps wanted to be a person. I sporadically continued blogging through the late 2000s. Slightly older person navel gazing. By 2010 Twitter was where almost all of my thoughts went. Eventually, Instagram too. For a brief period Tumblr was a thing and now after over 20 years of social media Instagram and Blue Sky seem to be where I remain. On Instagram it's all little snippets. I'm learning to post again on Blue Sky, slowly. Over time I became largely silent. It correlates with more leadership positions at work and an overall trend of taking up less space.

Leaving Twitter when the Nazi(s) arrived felt like having half my brain removed. I'd used it for many different purposes though it turned out to be predominantly for learning: about myself, about others, about organising, about disasters and jokes and the many distinct threads of leftist politics through the 2010s. It also introduced me, to me. Through Twitter and Tumblr I found the sexuality and gender discourse I needed. I finally had the words and gave myself the permission to describe myself how I really saw me. I even said it out loud, to other people! I came out at 18 but there was a long way to go before it all fit together, into sentences.

And so it is 2025. Fascism walks boldly forward and I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways we encouraged its arrival, what I contributed to this. At the time I wouldn't have said my politics were those of enablement. Looking backwards I realise there was a large amount of timidity in me. It arose in the way I was shaped by reactions to some very normal desires. For some reason, I struggled to claim personhood. I don't think I'm responsible for the oligarch who did a Nazi salute at the inauguration. But I do think tech culture shaped some of how we got here. And I contributed to that culture. I started formally in tech in 2010 and at that time there were occasions where I had to ask people not to use the homophobic F word and I was often the only person who wasn't a cisgender man at the table. I had always had a pull towards the work of justice and in those spaces, at that time, I pushed for it. It was not an easy road and I personally didn't see a lot of payoff for my work. I got tired. I gained a reputation as a bitch. I talked about whether "guys" was gender neutral until I didn't care any longer. Classic. I was trying to create space for myself and others, things did change. Seeing the way DEI work is being rolled back at pace in the US is not a surprise to me. Many people only were engaged because it felt like the time supported it. Times change. I connect the start of this to Gamergate. Or maybe not the start but a real kicking off point. It wasn't the start of harassing women and BIPOC and queers. That's a time honoured tradition. But it did shift the spaces harassment occurred and ways women, BIPOC, queers, and gender minorities experienced the internet. Really anyone who wasn't a white cisgender heterosexual man. Things got worse. The chuds we see now started to ascend. I also connect this to the way research shows when a room has 30% women, people assess it as a 50/50 split. In Aotearoa tech has gotten close to 30% women. Enough already! What more do you want! What more could you possibly want!

I always wanted to be a person. As a young woman (inside I knew I wasn't a woman, I just didn't have the language to explain it yet) I was always made an accessory to someone else. Some of it was no doubt youth. A lot of it was the way women at the time weren't welcome in many of the spaces I liked to be in. Or if they were there the directive was to be pretty, to be looked at, perhaps to be fucked, to be helpful, that's it. I sometimes think back to the ten year stretch between 20 and 30 and understand I took on too many men's opinions about how I should be. And then I look at 30-40 and think the same thing. Men is not the right word of course. Everyone has the capacity to be a foot solider of the patriarchy, as Mona Eltahawy says. I took on too many people's opinions about how to be a self. (Even though I don't really think the self exists.) It was just a numbers game in the spaces I was in that so many of those people were men. At almost 45 it is strange to me for 20 years when people would argue with me about my right to be myself I would simply, eventually, acquiesce. Yes, of course, you're right, etc. My surface layer became calm. The mask more comfortable to be around, so much less demanding, so much more smiling. I still made the choices I wanted to. I continued to be me. I just reduced my volume. I opted out of children for many reasons but mostly because there is really no equality in parenting when one partner is a cisgender man. It's just not how things work. I have watched many of my friends, feminists all, struggle once a child arrives, with that central concern of being a person.

I have worked in tech for 15 years. Longer really. But it's these 15 years and the performance reviews and the growth mindset that really shaved off my hard edges. And I think, how hard were those edges in the first place? Just last week an ever so slightly commanding tone caused an adult man to go off at me on the street I live in. He asked me to think about my actions. The thing I was asking him to do. Instead of taking on his feedback it was a bolt of realisation. I had listened too hard to their criticism of me instead of seeing it as the deflection it is. He, actually, asked me to be nicer, openly. A new self that's appearing inside me said: I don't have to be nice to you. A shock, honestly. For a decade I have worked very hard to be as kind as possible to everyone. I don't always succeed. Kindness is in the eye of the beholder. But I once got very sad with myself for saying to a very, very late pizza delivery person I was frustrated with them. Try harder! That's barely rude! You can stand up for yourself! The hard edges appeared when people had negative responses to me asking them to be accountable to what they'd agreed to. Or when I was asking them to offer a place for more people to have a little space, room enough to stretch their legs. Or actually even when I was witnessing assault or other misconduct. These are good hard edges. Important hard edges. I'm not ashamed I made myself more digestible. I wish I hadn't, but at the time my livelihood depended on being palatable. And palatability for those assigned womanhood is a very strict definition. The man who was angry with me called me "Lady" and it was clear it held a derogatory meaning. Despite my own understanding of my gender people see me as a woman. So I am party to all the rules that say women must be so nice. Just really nice. All the time.

And maybe I'm wrong in assigning some of what we see now to this timidity in asking for rights, politely requesting a right or two, please, sir, may I have another. It is true for women to have more space there must be less space given to men. But there are some spaces where women want men to take up more space, parenting for instance! It is also true in some spaces women must give up space to those of us who are gender minorities, nonbinos such as myself. Perhaps, even if I hadn't taken on this message of gentleness nothing more would have changed. I've caught more flies with honey, definitely. But does it make more room for refusing accountability, for not setting more hard lines, clearer boundaries? How much of this behaviour change I took on was just gender policing being slippery and adaptable to conditions? In other situations I am very clear: tone policing is a distraction, a tactic. Make the request for those rights more politely and I may consider listening to you. Complete rubbish. But when you connect it to my livelihood I find it harder to stand up for myself, to call the gender policing what it is. I have noticed our language gets co-opted, meaning changes and polite fictions are revealed. Palestine reveals that International Law is kind of just a polite fiction. If the US doesn't want something to happen, it won't happen. Turns out there can be a president who is a convicted rapist. Turns out having a backbone is actually a little challenging. Turns out Nazis can return in significant numbers. Why do some groups care about future consequences and others seem to not? Is there a conflict between the pursuit of power and the pursuit of correctness? Is that even a fair distinction between right-wing and left-wing politics?

An effect of PTSD I endured for years is I often can't figure out what's happening to me in the moment. Twice I was sexually assaulted in my 30s and had to talk to other people to process what had happened. It is three years since I experienced a type of therapy that has allowed me to be present in the moment. As such I keep surprising myself by acting instead of freezing, by knowing what's going on. It's amazing. It is very helpful in these times. I shook from the adrenaline of that recent street altercation I described above, then I cried. I completed a full circle of emotional response. Congratulations to me. I was, also, crystal clear on the fact my behaviour was appropriate and the request sound. I knew the response was sexist rubbish from a man unused to being questioned. I can hold space for the fact he was maybe having a bad day, or hadn't thought before about the ramifications of taking up two parking spaces in a street with limited parking or a bunch of other things. His behaviour though was all deflection. He hoped he could make me go away by being sufficiently unpleasant. By reminding me of my place, subservient to the wishes of his kind, men.

The evidence is in the behaviour. I get pushback when I call behaviour sexist, racist, transphobic, or homophobic. We act like the evidence isn't there. Like it's a risk to say it out loud. And ok sure, it is. But it is also a risk not to name what's happening in front of you. More and more I need to name what is happening to me, noticing the way it fits into the systems we're surrounded by. For instance, with the current government, the cruelty is the point. There are many other reasons they're doing what they're doing. But cruelty is part of it. They are reinforcing who and who is not a person. Who deserves and who is undeserving. They have access to power and we don't. We don't deserve it. The answer to so many of our questions about why we can't eradicate child poverty or why we can't have a functioning health system is: there's not enough money. But that's not true. There is plenty of money. It can go many places if we had the will. But we don't have the will. For some reason we want some children to be hungry, to have holes in their shoes, to get a rough start. They deserve it. There is a also a reality where they are pursuing power but are actually incompetent. That's true too. But the cruelty matters.

Is there some central human trait that makes us tend toward cruelty? Why does it happen so much? I want to believe in our general goodness, about the possibility inherent in each of us. PTSD recovery has been a process of learning other people aren't threats, but they are. Perhaps it is more accurately described as learning where the real threats are. I am ultimately, a threat to myself. But beyond that the threats are largely systemic. I tend towards friends who are queer, trans or neurodivergent. In those spaces, people understand me, mostly. If I dip out into the heterosexual world things get dicier. If I hang out with too many cisgendered people things wobble. Let's not even discuss thin people. And so on. We point to dehumanisation as a reason for cruelty or as a marker of who we can be cruel to. But it's a little mind trick. Even though we dehumanise people, we know they are still human. We just offer them up as a threat and we punish them: look at what could happen to you if you don't fall in line. It is all about reinforcing systems of power and control. We seek to belong, but we've got to keep an eye on what groups we're belonging to. There's an anecdote going around the internet again about a bartender kicking a Nazi out of his bar. We don't want to suddenly be a Nazi establishment. Vigilance and good boundaries. Say no to fascism.

In 2020 and a couple of the years that followed, workers massively increased their rights. The pandemic necessitated flexibility for our working models to continue. As the first layoffs started in 2022-2023 at companies that could fund the laid-off workers' salaries for many years with one year's profit (Meta, I'm looking at you) it became pretty obvious to me the layoffs weren't about the economy. They weren't about any of the stated reasons. They were about control. You can't feel tooooooo secure in your employment. It is a truth that we workers are all much closer to being unhoused and unemployed than we are to being rich, especially to the 1% level of richness. The layoffs were a reminder of our place. There are so many and such pervasive stories about people making it. About entrepreneurs, about possibility. This too is about control. Stay in your place but reach for the stars. Reaching for the stars is so improbable for most of us. The dream of exceptionalism. Unachievable but it could be a life's struggle. You can opt out by having enough but what is enough? Who gets to have enough? Why is precarity important? Precarity is important because if you're worried about your income, about survival, you make different choices. It is risky to stick out.

I have always stuck out. Is it autism? Trauma? Something in my upbringing? Just inherent weirdness? I don't really know or care any longer. I'm just like this. Sticking out + PTSD has meant I find community hard. Humans are after all just weird little guys (gender neutral?). I tend towards thinking I'm the absolute worst at all times but I'm learning to see where everyone struggles with connection, with people, with relationships. The problem I have is, truly our real response to oligarchy, to fascism, to all this shit, is being together, working together, standing together. The 100,000 humans who gathered in Pōneke for Te Tiriti all sticking out together. Safety in numbers. It is hard to remember this in a continuing pandemic where I'm often a lone masker or one of a lone few. It's hard to remember this when we are regularly pitted against each other for jobs, for benefits, for attention. Like the real class division, the owners and the workers. I'm a worker. I make money. I have stability but I am very aware it could go away quite quickly. The vector for me is likely to be disability. And still, sticking out together is the way to go.

So what am I saying? Am I just doing more navel gazing over 20 years later? Probably. I come to writing to figure out what I think. I stopped, actually, because there was a period of time where if I wrote something on the internet I got hounded for sources or correctness or proof of what I was saying. I saw many of my thinking friends get harassed and shamed and stalked. Over time this wore me down. It made me equivocate and struggle to make statements. Through writing this piece I've tried to keep the caveats out. You don't have to think I have the best intentions. You can disagree with any of my points. I'm mostly writing this for me. To think things through. To develop ideas. In the day of LLMs being widely adopted to outsource thinking I want to get back to my artisanal roots. I want to make the thinking by hand. Knead the thought dough. Key press after key press. Holding no thought too tightly. Being adaptable, being open to new ideas. But also holding firm to what I know through experience, through being me in this world that thinks I'm kind of an abomination, in multiple ways. Because it's not the only world. We get to create new ones. They are struggling to be born, right now, right here. I'm writing it down just in case in 20 years I've forgotten it all.