Thread by @SharpSweetBella

14 years ago today I was outed for being #bisexual and #polyamorous by a now defunct local Republican blog. Upset they weren’t getting more media attention they started sending my posts & photos to my board members & legislative leaders.

I quit my job when the press harassed me.

Because I deviated from the straight, monogamous norm, I was treated as a scandal per se. They felt free to dehumanize me, advocate for my children to be taken away from me and speculate wildly on who I had slept with. They constructed a tale where I traded sex for votes.

I was turning 29 in a few months and had a surprisingly successful legislative season as a lobbyist. I accomplished more in one year than anyone expected, including doubling the state’s moral obligation. I did it by being honest, sincere & transparent.

So the allegation that all of that success was due to a nefarious plot to trade sex for votes was devastating. I knew that I turned down those same kinds of offers. This became their way to punish a successful Latina who lived an openly loving life.

It has taken years for me to see that this was sexual harassment. It wasn’t even that they were punishing a successful Latina.

They were punishing a woman who sleeps with others who wouldn’t sleep with them at all. They crucified me because I said no.

I blamed myself because some of my public blog entries on LiveJournal gave them enough detail to know who I was. They were pairing me up with every Dem they could think of, even though it had been GOP that was propositioning me all the damn time.

I will likely continue to blame myself on some level. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t take on the system. And I’m the one who put my info out there to begin with.

I struggled with the trauma of it, continuing the punishment of my deviance when they were long gone.

I lost all credibility - I became radioactive ☢️ and no one wanted to hire me. I had lost my dream job because some selfish pricks were upset that I said no.

I left my job to save the careers of those around me. I was toxic and I was damaging others through my existence.

I tried committing suicide four months later after another job rejection. I hadn’t filed unemployment because I genuinely thought I was responsible. My org offered to not fight it if I made a claim. I did and was able to at least pay for meds for my kids.

I believed myself toxic for years after that. I took low paying jobs because I felt that was all I was good for. I didn’t want to risk good people with the stink of who I am. I became obsessed with pouring myself into work because i had to prove myself valuable enough to stay.

When you’ve lost your job for simply living your life, nothing about work feels safe. I grew paranoid that coworkers were spying on me, going to tattle and tell stories about me. I didn’t socialize with coworkers outside work. no happy hours, no weddings or parties.

And while my life wasn’t private - anyone with a simple grasp of google can find everything, it was that I knew the realities of my life are easy to exploit for others to get ahead. I didn’t want their belief in monogamous het culture to cost me another job. I kept to myself.

Last week the reporter who kept asking people about the non-story, keeping it alive and growing it to ridiculous proportions came across my feed. I can’t stand to see their face so I blocked them years ago. Seeing even the name brought all of this to the surface again.

I cried a lot that day. I cried a lot when I reached out to female legislative to thank them for sharing their stories of harassment. I cried when they told me that they’ll have my back if I return to politics. I sobbed for hours at the kindness I had been denied 15 years ago.

I work toward a vision of a trauma informed society because I want people to think about the impact that even the consumption of gossipy shit contributes to others’ trauma. We believe the lies in media, arbiters of social norms, feeding a false deviancy formula.

Trauma informed care is much deeper than this of course, but when I see people feeding into the gossip machines, they are creating incentives for journalists, bloggers and anyone with an agenda to twist our lives into spectacles, into fluffy talk for happy hour.

I didn’t post for #NationalComingOutDay because my coming out story was stolen from me. Stolen by media so ravenous for juicy election year drama that they allowed republican interns to repackage my story of divine love into something dirty and sinister. Changing me forever

So when we consume stories about celebrities & politicians who are “caught” doing something we view it through the lens of deviance as defined by media that directly benefits from pushing particular narratives and viewpoints. The more we are scandalized, the more ads they sell.

Other people’s relationships aren’t our business. We don’t know their agreements. We don’t know how they’ve customized their lives to survive in the public eye. And even when we do get that insight, we scrutinize it to death, using it to prop ourselves up.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of that, even minimally, I am here to give a different perspective. To turn the mirror on the ways in which we use gossip as weaponized shame not only with celebrities but in our own lives as well.

I am here to stop that practice.

It’s also quite disappointing when professionals in this field use “trauma informed care” as an excuse to ignore and dismiss the relevant lived experience of trauma directly shared with them.

“Dump his narcissistic ass” isn’t a nuanced viewpoint of trauma. It reinforces shame.