#this is wild from start tofinish

[lesbitchka]

(submission)

alright so i’m gonna dump my long long club story in here (cw for q slur stuff, some mentions of prior abuse, kink, drag) this is gonna be really long, i’m sorry! my way of narration is kind of obnoxious

i’m a copresident of my campus’ lgbt group after i was asked by someone in my class to run for office during my first semester at my current college. i’d never been to a meeting before, but i accepted, honored to have been invited. in retrospect, that kind of should have been my first red flag- being asked to step in in an administrative role to a club i had absolutely no familiarity with. i’m a white, autistic trans man who is on the aro/ace spec because of my history of trauma. this will be important later on 

i showed up to the election and was elected handily, because apparently the person i was running against has a history of being abusive? i don’t know anything about that. anyway, at the same meeting, the person who had held my position before me, a nonbinary trans woman, was ousted publically and stormed out of the room, furious. at the time, i wasn’t too bothered by it. this person had a history of posting weird, intimidating right-leaning stuff about “defending someone’s right to free speech all the way up until they act on it”- that includes threats to murder and rape people, in her own words- and mocking club members for mental health problems. all around, a legitimately abusive person that i totally understood why she’d be removed. and over the summer, that was that- no further discussion. 

i moved across the country to the la area to live with my longterm partner over the summer. during that time, we lived in a disadvantaged area that was primarily latinx, close to anaheim, where over the course of the summer we heard a lot of police violence come out of, both on the news and in word-of-mouth from our (primarily trans) friend group. despite being white, this left me worried about police violence towards me for other reasons; ie, i was an unmedicated trans man in a relationship with another unmedicated trans man, subject to different types of police violence should anything happen to our home, which we were sharing with a latinx family. while nothing became of these fears, this, also, will be important 

when i got back on campus, i took up my new position and started getting involved in club affairs. i noticed from a very early point there were some small issues, but nothing that was really a dealbreaker- the club had a strong focus on kink and many board members had a tendency to be very public about their sex lives in advertisements and tabling opportunities for our group, which, while i assumed i was being oversensitive about because of my trauma, i noticed offput several prospective members who investigated our table. when campus police swept through the club fair, equipped and in full uniform, i expressed my discomfort- a holdover from my time in a troubled area, hearing about my white trans male friend face obstruction and hostility when turning to the police in a domestic violence case, having been home for less than a week- and was met by the only nonwhite member of our board explaining that he didn’t feel uncomfortable with the police there, so it was kind of ridiculous that i did and i shouldn’t. which may have been true, but jesus, felt pretty shitty to hear my feelings on the thing were bad. i also requested that we not refer to ourselves as the q*eer club when hosting events and referring to my membership and was told by the same administrator that because he is latinx and likes the word, no one else should have any reason to take issue with it, b/c he was most strongly effected by pulse…? that was his reasoning for why we should keep using the q slur. again, a bunch of small things i could easily brush off, but things that stuck out 

things didn’t get really bad until this semester. over winter break, two things happened. the aforementioned nonwhite board member we had was hired by the school and is no longer legally allowed to be involved in any club’s board. also, i started dating a member of our club, a nonbinary transfeminine person (gonna call them bug for this post) who’s two years younger than me and getting their feet in school. i was feeling really awful after a week-long hospitalization early in the semester and having my longterm partner across the country; they were facing academic difficulties and poverty that will probably keep them from returning next semester, so it arose from mutual need and desire to support one another, with mutualistic understanding of the fact that our relationship is probably on a timeline. bug came into our school hoping to get involved in lgbt activism, so when we had elections after winter break, i encouraged them to try out. 

it’s also worth mentioning that bug was and is one of only three transfeminine club members who would regularly show up to meetings. the other two, who i’ll call mercury and simone, are both older than me; mercury was part of the board before i joined, and simone joined at the same time as bug, due to our awareness of our club’s appearance due to having something like 30 regular attendees and only three transfeminine ones; even now, simone is the only one who identifies as a trans woman, not nonbinary.my roommate, who i’ll call marcie, also joined at this time, becoming our only nonwhite board member. 

so, convergence of events: bug and i start dating, and bug, simone, and marcie all join this club. things are great at first! everyone loves each other, we’re all excited to be working with our friends. i’m overjoyed to have my roommate, one of my best friends, and my brand new datemate working with me on something i’m really passionate about. 

when we try to put together our first event of the semester, though, things go HELLA south. the new director of the board, the boyfriend of the guy i had a couple issues with at the beginning of the year, asks the board what kind of shirts we want for our event: tanks or tees. bug speaks up first, saying that they don’t want a tank because tanks show their shoulders too much and make them feel dysphoric. simone and mercury echo bug’s sentiments; i, knowing that our membership has had some issues with our lack of inclusion for transfemmes, decide to go with the transfemme voices on our board. this becomes the biggest controversy we’ve yet faced as a board. the director becomes enraged, talking about how tanks make him LESS dysphoric, how for our last event he got baseball shirts that make him dysphoric and that he hates (and that he also wears almost every time i see him, hm) so we should make a concession for him to get a shirt he likes. he tells us to vote; me, bug, simone, and mercury all vote for tanks, which means that we have the majority on our seven person board. the situation is now wholly out of control, the director gets angrier and says we’re getting tees anyway, marcie says something off hand about how it’s not a dysphoria contest, which makes bug feel like shit because they brought up the topic of their dysphoria first as a reason they personally wouldn’t wear the shirt if we bought it and then was countered by our director’s claims of how dysphoric tees would make him. simone says that this invalidation of her and bug’s lived experiences and the hostility they were met with for asking for a shirt with transfemmes in mind is transmisogynistic behaviour. remember that guy who got hired by the school? he steps in now to defend his boyfriend and shuts down the conversation (yeah, he’s still in our group chat, despite that being, y'know, illegal.) everyone is furious. more than a few people are brought to tears. 

pretty fucking dumb, right? over shirts. don’t worry, though, we’re heading into some even more ridiculous shit. 

the next time the board talks, it’s to say that we’re obviously all very upset with each other and we shouldn’t meet in an unmediated environment. (spoiler alert: what has come to be known as shirtgate was at the beginning of february and we JUST had a group meeting for the first time ever since that this sunday…) we hold our event successfully despite the fact that half the board isn’t talking to each other. i’m feeling hurt and isolated from my friends and withdraw a bit, spending more time with bug. the board is divided into two tiers: the wider board, and the presidents’ board, which i’m on, and which, coincidentally, is basically just our regular board without transfemmes. ha. the presidents’ board meets and discusses how unacceptable the situation is, attempting to appeal to me to change “sides” because those rowdy transfemmes, right? i’m grossed out and feeling like i’ve been isolated from the group of people i have a vested interest in supporting and stand my ground, officially marking myself as no longer one of the InGroupTM. for the most part, i do nothing as a club administrator from here on out. things are magically out of my hands. hm 

our next big controversy happens when we hold a screening for moonlight, about a week after it won best picture. this is a public event, and many people who are not in our club show up; i assume that all we are providing is advertisement and prepare to enjoy the movie. here’s where me being autistic comes in. the lounge is crowded with people and i’m surrounded by some of my favourite people, including bug, who’s off their adhd meds for now and doesn’t have a lot of impulse control. my friends respond audibly to some of the scenes, cos we’re a bunch of gay kids who’ve rarely-if-ever seen representation for ourselves before. due to being in a social setting where the people around me that i trust, esp bug, are being very emotional and responsive to the film, i can’t really not join in and make noises of excitement too- it’s just the way my aspie brain works, tbh. i feel awesome! this is great! 

it’s not great. the event ends and people are furious, complaining about how the movie was ruined by the talking during a handful of scenes. the board cracks down on me and bug (and, to a lesser extent, simone) for being vocally excited. in retrospect, fair, and definitely something that means i should stay away from crowds more often. however, this was an environment of friends, i thought, not people who’d get really upset with me for unintentionally making sounds of excitement when, for the second time ever, i see gay men represented in the context of a film. marcie is furious most of all, as our only non-white board member, and goes on a facebook rant, vagueing about not just bug, simone, and i, but about our friends and members who were not quiet either. me and bug’s close friend, who i’ll call mirage, is incredibly hurt by this, as marcie uses their non-whiteness to describe why they’re frustrated by this behaviour; mirage is a nonwhite nb kid who was most vocal during a scene in the movie where the protagonist hits a bully with a chair, making an audible joke about it, which they did because they found the scene triggering after they were hit with a chair by a teacher growing up. this was also the moment of conversation marcie had the biggest issue with. bug and i are feeling pretty shitty about our neurodivergences and how the club has previously made promises to be understanding of symptoms, but this seems to only extend to depression and anxiety. the club fractures further. 

we’re basically not talking to each other unless we have to at this point, with bug, simone, and i staying close, marcie, the director, his boyfriend, and their housemate making their own group, and mercury disengaging from all of us entirely. we hold an event. it’s called kink 102 and is the sequel to an event we had in first semester that i missed during my hospitalization, where apparently the director and his boyfriend demonstrated floggers and crops on each other in front of an audience who came to learn about kink, not expecting to be part of a scene. people are very apprehensive about this, especially because we have had several meetings focusing on kink and drag- our director’s passions- and none focusing on, for example, nonbinary people and aroace-spec people in the lgbt community. this becomes a huge point of contention, as several ace-spec people approach various board members and express their discomfort with how overwhelmingly sexual many of our meetings are and how our director seems so keen to involve strangers in his sex life- he has admitted rather freely to being both an exhibitionist and a voyeur. a student makes a public post about how we’ve had two meetings about kink and none about aroace lgbt people. bug steps in and comments a bit snarkily about how much they agree, having heard me, their ace-spec boyfriend, talk a lot about how i’ve been honestly triggered by some of our events; bug is very much not an ace person and is in fact an exhibitionist and voyeur themself, but thinks the issue is this important. i step in as well as a board member, feeling the need to address a public complaint, and reassure them that i would very much like to spearhead a meeting about aroace people, including the different ways it can manifest and how it isn’t equivalent to non-heterosexuality, as the only ace-spec board member. i admit to my discomfort at the environment we often create and say that it’s something we certainly need to work on. 

shit pops off in the chat, but only at bug! not at me! hmmmm!!!! 

bug stops talking in the group chat unless prompted at this point. 

the post goes mostly unresolved; all that happens is bug (and, later, simone, who posted a rather snide comment on the same forum expressing her frustrations with the group as a whole, both backing up me and bug, and as a trans woman who’s been repeatedly involved in drag events now) get CHEWED THE FUCK OUT. simone says something about how we have way too much focus on kink and it makes it seem like we’re saying it’s equivalent to being lgbt. the director loses his shit over this, and says, quote, “Thanks for invalidating my identity. I can’t discuss this further. Erasure of my culture.” which is… a lot, as someone who was abused in the guise of kink by older, paedophilic partners. 

i go to the kink meeting with bug because i want to learn how to tie them up safely and am hoping to learn about knots, but mostly because i feel like if i don’t go, i’ll get yelled at. there is no guide for tying knots. there is a brief discussion of consent, then the director ends up topless, getting whipped against the wall of the student lounge. a friend of mine sits next to me and sucks a fucking pacifier the whole time

we still haven’t met in person in months. this sunday, we finally meet. the director reveals he is resigning and also dropping out of college and tells us it’s mostly because of simone, which, wow, okay, is a lot to hear from someone who i spent hours counceling about whether or not he should go to the inpatient i went to and take a semester off first semester, before simone was ever even involved. the meeting is mostly just that. simone doesn’t come. we have a president’s meeting after, which basically equates to us staring awkwardly at bug until they leave and mercury retreating to their room, cos we hold this at the director and his boyfriend’s house. not weird and awkward, definitely doesn’t feel like we’re having a boys’ club meeting. nope. 

by this point i am distraught. i’m feeling like complete shit because all these people, despite their previous rounds of drama and weird comments, were my friends. i was so excited to work on something i cared about with people i cared about, and now no one even talks to each other. i confess my concerns about everything to the group, and shit gets wild. the director is quick to tell me that things aren’t my fault, but that his issue is with simone and bug. and then he starts getting really shitty. i had previously mentioned how eager i was to protect the incoming freshmen, because my first year of college, i was raped by a trans woman who proceeded to manipulate her way through the lgbt club on that campus to turn people against me and keep me from speaking out, which resulted in my utter academic failure and dropping out. the director begins to tell me that, in my personal goal of keeping freshmen safe, i have made bug entirely dependent on me, that the fact that they don’t talk to half the board anymore is on me, using words and phrases i used to describe my previous abuse to say that, hey, turns out you’re abusive. which… is fuckt, coming from the person who capslocks curse words in the group chat and then has his SCHOOL STAFF boyfriend come in to tell us how justified he is. the boyfriend tells me i never should have expected us to be friends. which i guess is true, but hey, i was introduced to the group by their roommate way back last year, and really didn’t know what to expect at all. i am also told that kink is easily as important as lgbt activism in our history, that it should be considered a part of the acronym, that all these young kids uncomfortable with two three-and-five-year-older people acting out scenes under our banner at our events need to learn their history. any second now i’m expecting our name, LGBTQU+, to grow a k. hilarious that they’re concerned about history now, but me asking us not to use the q slur to describe our members is ridiculous because no one’s bothered by it anymore! 

i meekly offer to step down, but the director says that because he’s leaving and his roommate is graduating, we won’t have a board anymore if i step down, considering bug and simone are ready to leave. the boyfriend and the director lecture me for like five solid minutes about how this is the oldest club on campus and if i don’t stay, it will collapse and that will be on me, basically. so yeah. accusing me of perpetrating the same abuse my ex perpetrated against me, then guilting me into staying to keep our club active- a club that is now reputed for being more focused on kink than lgbt events, for not being welcoming to nonwhite people or trans women (forgot to mention at one point students formed a qpoc group separate from us and the boyfriend was FURIOUS and tried to overtake it, using us, the board that was entirely white except for him :) ), and for being the biggest cesspit of drama on campus. in other words, a club i would very much like to l e a v e. 

i know this wasn’t entirely mogai hell or ace discourse, but there’s shades of every kind of shit in this group, tbh. and i really just needed a place to vent about it. i know we all made mistakes, but jesus, i’m hemorrhaging friends and feeling like dirt, my pals. i just need space to whine. 

oh one more thing, forgot to mention: the director tried to use bug to tell me to get a fetlife, because bug has one, because they’re not ace. also had bug ask me to pose with them naked for one of our event posters to circumvent me talking about how i felt unconfident naked, which thankfully never happened. also seem to think that because bug and i have sex i’m not ace anymore, therefore we shouldn’t talk about ace stuff because we don’t have an ace board member? didn’t know where to put these ones, but yeah! ;) 

ok! sorry for the length of this. thank you for listening! <3