My name is Lyra McMahon (artist name for Dielle Lundberg).
I created this project because there are only a few things that feel more frustrating to me right now than being judged for my choices without people understanding the full context that shaped them. In particular, people have formed opinions about me (especially around sex and online connection) without knowing the full story of what I have gone through in trying to find a safe outlet for my sexuality as a queer and transfeminine person.
Over the past decade and a half, I have experienced countless forms of gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, assault, manipulation, and online exploitation. These experiences profoundly shaped how I've navigated the world, how I've understood risk, and how I've sought connection and control in environments that often felt unsafe, while also navigating the challenges imposed by disability and madness (i.e., serious mental illness).
For me, online spaces were not fun or reckless choices. They were typically harm-reduction strategies. They were ways of seeking connection in a world where those things had often been distorted for me by violence, transphobia, and ableism. That doesn’t mean every choice I made was perfect, but it does mean my choices existed within this context.
This project is an attempt to make that context visible. It is not about avoiding accountability. I believe I have already taken accountability (see "9. attestation" and "14. no one is going to believe me" for more about that). Instead, more than anything else, this project is about refusing to be flattened into a narrative that strips away my complexity, lived experience, and the realities of being a queer and transfeminine person navigating both connection and danger. It is also about recognizing that many people are quick to try and impose flattened narratives onto me, rather than engage with my full truth. I have been subjected to that experience numerous times already in my life.
The project consists of 15 entries, each one consisting of a poetry, some contextualization of the poem, and a piece of visual art. The visual art was created from nude photos of myself covered and concealed with layers of scribbles. Interpret the metaphor as you will.
Through this project, I am not only documenting what happened to me, but I will also be creating an evolving resource hub of information I wish I had been given—ways of navigating situations as a queer person that are often misunderstood or stigmatized.
It was not my choice to have my story visibilized in the ways that it has been. However, I am choosing to tell it fully here, on my own terms, and to try to make an impact by doing so.
I don't really trust anyone these days.
There have been too many trust crises for me recently to keep trusting people.
But this project is a big step forward in trusting myself.