14. no one is going to believe me

you never expect someone to research
every person you ever connected with
on a dating app
or had sex with,
but that happened to me,
seriously...

and out of hundreds,
probably thousands of interactions,
these people have picked a couple,
and are trying to make a story out of them.

that i have somehow sought young people
or been negligent in my interactions.

but what do you want me to do?

i used 18+ apps,
everyone said they were at least eighteen,
and i usually asked people their ages,
if they didn't share them directly.
and i ended interactions if i thought something was off.

that's what normal users do.
that's responsible behavior.
you can't control 
if someone decides to misrepresent themself.

like this guy, you keep harassing me about
he told me he was twenty-one,
he was on an 18+ app,
he said he was coming from work,
and now you're telling me he was 16,
even though i'm pretty fucking sure that it isn't true
and you're just telling me this
to torment me and my OCD
because you know i care
about trying not to cause harm to people.

my only intention was to interact with adults.

half the people on grindr share nudes
via DMs or in their private albums.
sharing nudes with adults on grindr is not a crime,
and it's certainly not unethical when they ask for them. 

outside of that, i was in my twenties
and it was acceptable for me to connect with
adults older and younger than me.
connecting with a 21 year old wasn't wrong,
neither was briefly messaging with an 18 year old,
i have a limited dating pool
because of who i am gender-wise.
i wasn't intentionally seeking younger people,
and my dating history speaks to that,
i just messaged the people on my feed
or the people who messaged me.

if you go through ten years of dating history,
and pick out a couple of isolated cases,
and use that to try to tell some kind of story
that i'm some creep or predator,
you can probably get away with that.

because i'm queer.
because i'm a trans woman.
so no one is going to fucking believe me
when i try to change the narrative
unless i put together a super type A website
about it like this.

even so, some folks will still be only too eager
to use this to try and hurt me,
and to invalidate my political beliefs,
and everything that i am trying to do
to create positive change in the world.

so thanks for that,
for playing with fire...
and for fucking with my life...
and endangering everything...
that i've worked so hard to build and survive...

hope it's been fun for you.

In periods of mental health challenges (such as hypomania, mania, and hypersexuality related to PTSD and bipolar disorder), I routinely used 18+ dating and video sexting websites/apps. At times, I connected with other adults who were meaningfully younger (and older) than me. These interactions were within spaces where everyone present had attested that they were adults. I was also not intentionally seeking out people who were younger than me. However, I recognize that I was not as attentive as I could have been to age differences and power dynamics. I also did not fully consider risks associated with these platforms, including the possibility that they can be misused by minors or people engaging in trafficking and other exploitation. This reflected a gap in my awareness.

I wrote further about some behavior changes I implemented to improve my digital safety and ethics in "9. attestation", and I write about the tensions that queer and trans people face in regards to navigating privacy and online safety in an essay accompanying this project entitled "Digital Safety and Queer Vulnerability: Online Risk and Harm Reduction."

Despite the harassment I've experienced, I continue to care deeply about (1) consent in relationships, (2) the safety and well-being of young people, and (3) the safety for queer and trans people who find themselves targeted in online spaces, as I was. In my past interactions, I acted in good faith, took reasonable precautions, and never intended to connect with anyone underage. The standard they the people harassing me are holding me to—never having sex and never using online platforms—is unrealistic, especially for someone like me managing hypersexuality related to bipolar disorder. Besides, I am fully entitled to use adult platforms and make choices about my sexuality, like any other adult.

Importantly, the harassment I have experienced has caused me a huge amount of distress and required intensive mental health treatment to survive. This harassment is intentional gender-based violence and is psychologically abusive. It deliberately targets my OCD triggers related to my fears of causing harm to others to try to make me feel ashamed for how I have survived. I have reached a point where if I am subjected to further scrutiny, investigation, or any other attacks, I will not interpret them as genuine feedback on my behavior. Rather, I will recognize it as part of an ongoing pattern of abuse directed at me.  

Finally, I do not believe I would have ever experienced this level of scrutiny for my sexual history, nor would I have endured many of the original incidents of gender-based violence that led me to use online spaces, if I were not a marginalized trans and disabled woman.