there is no point to vulnerability without hope of reciprocity 🧘🏽 there is no point to vulnerability without hope of reciprocity 🧘🏽 there is no point—
i do not. understand. what sort of parallel universe this fandom has slid into when it comes to anthony edwards : just literally a textbook domestic abuser : but not for reasons. i don't get it. i do not fucking get it. it makes me nauseated. as in literally physically in my body sick every time i try to take half a step outwards in this fandom from where i've kinda collapsed into myself and every fucking time it's another instances of cooing and fawning and making excuses for This Fucking Guy. Who Fucking Sucks. He Fucking Sucks. What World Do You Live In Where He Doesn't Obviously Fucking Suck And Not Just A Little.
and like. you know. you'd probably be hard pressed to find someone more pro absenteeism and anti the innate sanctity of a mother than me. after i got over the knight in shining armor fantasies about my father, i was just grateful that a person who resented my existence stayed gone. my mother, failed at the job in about every way imaginable, short of like, gleeful sadism, including some ways that are just like embarrassing classist and racist stereotypes except it's like my actual life that i lived. i have this kind of unshakable core belief that my point of being was at my conception, so that it may be a turning point in my mom's life, and in the good timeline, the pre-sentient cluster of flesh that i have turned into was disposed of in a biohazard bag and she stopped doing what was vaguely expected of her and decided to finally find something that actually made her happy. and that is not what happened.
so what i'm saying is that i've had to pretty intimately work through the whole eugenic angle of Who Gets To Be A Parent And When And How And To What End. and frankly it's been kind of hilariously painful watching this fandom bumble through that shit in so many regards. the foundation of your existence being a punchline is like so much fun. but to speedrun the history of reproductive control — again, right now, from the eugenic angle, meaning to serve the end goal of reducing birthrates — in the u.s.: it happens big time, and it purposefully targets black, brown, and indigenous people; migrants; disabled people; victims of the legal system; disabled people; poor people; people exercising sexual freedom, queer people, trans people, women who didn't wait till marriage; all the ways these overlap and intersect and create a million scapegoats for the innate failures of white christian settler colonialism.
so let's agree that cannot be up for debate. i don't like existing, but it is my right to. (and, of course, the scale of loss when i stop thinking about specifically myself versus all the people in my life who i've loved who also fall within those categories quickly becomes unfathomable.) my mother wasted her chance at finding whatever satisfaction people who want to be parents and then acquire a child get out of the experience, or at least the moral victory of Not Being An Abuser, but it was her right to try. i really cannot emphasize enough how whatever absenteeism is just go listen to chromakopia again WITH "mother." edwards having a bunch of kids is whatever. him not being particularly interested in parenting is whatever. the vast majority of innate harm to his children or children in situations has more to do with societal structures than The Need Of A Mommy And A Daddy Who Are Perfect (As Defined By A White Christian Settler Colonialist Society).
the problem is that anthony edwards treats the women he impregnates like shit. repeatedly. absolute dogshit. and what's the counterargument here? that he just keeps having bad luck with predatory manipulative gold digging baby trapping whores? i don't know why i'm using a question mark lol that is literally it. okay. cool.
you know i've really spent months trying to wrestle with that it is, of course, possible that edwards has been set up, extorted, and fallen victim of imposed paternity. of course it is. and i genuinely find the idea horrific; just about the only thing i appreciate about being afab is that i can trust myself to do everything in my power to ensure no child of mine ever comes to fruition. i mean probably just a vasectomy is still easier, but, shit, i'm trying to be empathetic here. okay. male victims of domestic violence exist, and not just as mra talking points. talking points that become most relevant to mras pretty much only when it comes time to discredit a women's experience. it can actually happen.
so i had another wave of edwards-induced nausea last week after skai jackson's story came out, about her ex partner trying to force her to drink bleach and abort their child. you know a week after halle bailey had to take legal action against the abusive father of her child. you know both of whom have gotten absolutely fucking dragged through social media over their choice in partners and being demanding dramatic baby mamas and so on. you know a couple months after keke palmer had a whole feature about how she struggled with having to be A Public Domestic Abuse Survivor after splitting with the father of her child. and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on.
and then you Log On Here and baby princess anthony edwards is fucking everywhere. and for months i tried to throw away my intuition about his whole fucking deal, because what if i was wrong, what if i'm being unfair, what if i'm a racist piece of shit for thinking to myself, "i can't wait until the next accusation outs him as a stealther and we can stop dancing around the truth of this guy—"
except! haha! except there was no need to wait! that's already the accusation on deck! on top of endlessly meme'd abortion coercion! but that grown man with a whole immensely privileged—especially specifically haha when it comes to getting away with violence against women—professional career got groomed! so whatever! haha!
so like my thing is that i very literally actively spent my early twenties meditating or at least checking in on feelings about parenting. i was three or four when my mom was 22, 23. i remember how it felt being around her: boring, painful, tense, scary, miserable. i was working with kids when i was 22, 23. and you know by then i knew objectively that how she treated me was, you know, bad. and i also knew i'd rather be dead than a parent. and it still took experiencing the reality of the maturity of a young 20something to be like yeah yeah no that's fucking insane. that is a fucking insane way to treat another human being. and look me in my fucking eyes and tell me 1) i don't have significant parental-related trauma and 2) that i seem like i was raised or guided in any real way to be #better. like at some point that's just your character. and who the people around you let you be.
and i genuinely have no fucking clue if everyone just tapped out being at all informed with what is going on with him after agreeing on The Grooming Victim Narrative. which is fucking crazy because as established i've been hating this man's fucking guts while actively trying to avoid anything to do with him in hopes i would stop feeling so #reactive #traumatized #lol about him and i still heard horrific shit about him. and i learned more horrific shit about him today because i still don't fucking trust myself with this even though i was literally fucking correct. and i don't even. like how the fuck am i supposed to explain to someone who already considers themselves an informed feminist that the things he's done are wrong, and cruel. like i can't. it's not possible. and it feels fucking ridiculous to even have to go ARE FUCKING JOKING HERE because not even reddit. REDDIT. is as obvious and permissive about his behavior as this fandom is, fandom, which loves to brand itself as the progressive sanctuary away from mainstream sports fandom—
and, you know, i get edwards is not actually a uniquely terrible person. it's sports. it's men. i'm not above being nosier than what's strictly provided by The Mainstream Media; i know guys i like aren't winning parent of the year awards, neither, and on any day any of them could be accused of shit that would break my heart, and it wouldn't be particularly surprising.
but, in being nosy, i've also seen the same predatory manipulative gold digging baby trapping whores narrative thrown onto women who absolutely do not deserve it, and that's just. like that's the whole fucking thing. maybe, maybe, maybe edwards is actually more innocent than, uh, literally all of his behavior through all of this indicates. and maybe so is rose and kobe and johnson and every other alleged abuser this league cherishes. but that's, you know, kind of the point. we can't know. ... we can be pretty sure, given the general trend of things. we can at least be responsible enough to recognize the general trend of things and not contribute to those narratives and gloss up a man whose behavior is uh dubious at absolute best. like the closest we can get is mutual abuse. which isn't impossible. it's also a framing frequently used to shift at least part if not all of the blame onto female abuse victims but it's not impossible. and it's still. like. like the things he has done are abusive. that cannot be up for debate.
and it's not like we're not just passive consumers here, picking up whatever bag of apples is available to us at the grocery store. fandom, in the niche and broad sense of the world, makes decisions about what's important to them, what they believe, what they're willing to overlook, and in that is just the smallest speck of power to influence shit. and this is just. i don't know. i don't even know how i'm supposed to justify that this matters to me; that the apathy in turn hurts deep.
and of course the real kicker here, the thought that's been weighing on my mind for the last however long it's been since i broke and started begging people to perhaps take this an ounce more seriously, is that i've been here before. and like yay #DiversityWin : the fandom sweetheart that everyone adores and who drives a knife into one of the biggest sources of pain in my life and no one cares all that much is black this time.
and it's just. it's just literally the same. i'm not sure that people understood that, when i was losing my mind over The Verstappen Situation, a situation that centered the devaluation of the safety, security, and character of a black person in sports, i was also a black person in sports whose safety, security, and character was being devalued and attacked. it wasn't an uninformed, distant rhetorical exercise for me. i don't know if people get when i said i was hurting, that people were hurting me, how deeply i meant it. mostly i think people just really did not care. mostly i think i was more trouble than i'm worth. i think it's the same this time.
and i keep running myself around in circles about it, too, because in a lot of ways it really is easier to accept that that is true. i'm insane, i'm an asshole, i'm letting my hurt control me, i'm a hypocrite, some defect in perspective or character leaves me perpetually deserving of stabbing and distrust and alienation.
then the depp v. heard trial happened when i was fully post-verstappen post-career death fully actively suicidal and realized that actually it is pretty common for people to look at A Public Display Of How Bigotry Works and then look at How People Respond To The Display and feel some type of way about that, including deeply hurt and disappointed and distrustful, because, obviously, it's not just some thing over there happening to celebrities in a frivolous field, it's a mirror for the rest of us and our lives.
but. like. only sometimes.
so i was watching some video about bpd and it brought up how people with bpd have a sense of personhood that is a bit too permeable. which like fairs. obviously. like objectively y'all's opinions shouldn't matter that much to me—
simultaneously the knowledge that it could, it can, that this is a realm that people have made deeply meaningful relationships through—
but at the same time, it's like. well. like what else is wanting to be a member of society. i think it's a pretty necessary price for growing up how i did that i have to be open to being wrong, to needing to change. i think i'm pretty objectively correct for not wanting to reflect a lot. a lot. of what i came from. simultaneously the thing that triggered The Lost Years was having a therapist that walked me right up to the cliff of having an ounce of self worth and self respect, and then her not having any answers when it became kind of apparent that me valuing myself has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else valuing me, either. and it's pretty hard to get through this shit alone. like, impossible. or, like, possible, and also i don't want a single second of any of it. like being treated not how you'd like to be treated is painful but being alone is nothing at all.
so, you know, i really wish i could sit here and say, "fuck with me or don't, i don't give a fuck," except obviously i really truly just give such a massive fuck. when i say shit, it's because i deeply fucking care, about getting things right, about accountability, about not being careless in the ways we hurt other people. and, you know, obviously i'm old enough and fucked up enough to not be saying this shit from a position of sainthood. i know i've fucked things up by being too complacent, that i've hurt people in ways i don't want to hurt anyone ever again. that's not the kind of person i want to be or the kind of environment i want to enable. and it's really not that i don't value the people around me. it hurts me really, really deeply when i lose people to— i don't fucking know. not being trusted or valued or being in too much pain to keep trying to see it through. which i know is crazy bc like obviously sane people just dgaf.
and again through all of it, it's not like i actually have enough self-worth to hold myself as someone who's principled or some other positive trait that may be ascribed to anyone who matters, i'm just controlling, i'm cruel and manipulative, i'm a piece of shit, i must have anxiety or ocd or anger issues or delusions or fucking anything that completely devalues everything i say, which is of course a super disability friendly mindset to have—
anyway. i think i have to start therapy again. which sucks and is a whole process i don't have a whole lot of trust in at this point but lol #desperate. and i think fandom might really just not be a good place for me after all. which sucks.
it sucks because The Lost Years ended about a year ago. a year and two months. they started when i couldn't bear to be around fandom anymore, it ended when i found myself drawn back in. and god fucking knows i tried a million fucking things to bolster my offline life in that time. turns out losing something you love fucking sucks. i'm scared of losing fandom, inspiration, my ability to string words together. i'm scared of losing basketball; i really can't put into words what it's meant to me this year. and it's not, like, a choice. things just turn to ash in my mouth.
so. i don't know. i guess i need a break. i'd already felt this building up; i was hoping i'd be able to reset, relax, whatever, over the offseason. but i really just. can't. lol.
one last overwrought metaphor:
okay first: state of metnal ilnes: had to pause podcast p because melo's cohost said "the opposite of love is apathy" which is such a fucking instagram shitty not-even-trying-to-be-pseudo-psychological infographic of a quite but goddd help meeee
okay back to the metaphor: you know those fucking insane pictures of rock climbers sleeping on the side of cliffs just unspeakably high up and you're just like god no way in hell not ever. i feel like i'm living in one of those little sleeping bags and people are like "no way!!!" and i'm like yeah i would really love to get out of here. no yeah i've tried everything. everything. and also people keep stepping on my hands and throwing rocks over the edge. no not like maliciously, lots of great people just like tossing rocks, it's just— no yeah i've tried. i have tried. i've tried. swear to god i've tried.
