My New Digital Boundaries

For the past four years every year on this day- June 6th, the anniversary of one of the most traumatic events of my life- I’ve started a tradition of spending the day doing something for myself that I hope will further my healing. This year, I’m choosing to give myself the gift of publicly stating my digital boundaries- something many of us struggle with as survivors of trauma. We all have a right to decide what we will & won’t tolerate in our own spaces.

I want to start out this post with a gentle reminder that I’m currently taking a long break from being active on social media until further notice, to focus on salvaging my safety, health & privacy; I may choose to share this post or any other blog posts or essays of mine on social media occasionally, or to share posts that people I know personally asked me to share, but I will be logging back out immediately afterwards. The reason I frequently repeat this is because I’ve had more people than I can count, often strangers, become aggressive with me for not seeing their messages sooner or at all.

At this place in my healing, I’m not up for having often-quick-to-turn-toxic twitter discourse about my own trauma & boundaries. I simply want to share some of what I’m going through & feeling in the hopes of it being meaningful to other survivors & our allies, but nothing I’m sharing here in this post tonight is up for debate or negotiation- which has unfortunately become the common way to respond on social media when people are simply sharing their own boundaries, experiences, & related thoughts.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read what I have to say here, it means a lot to me as a survivor to have my boundaries respected on any + all levels & contributes to my healing <3

This is not the concise type of bullet point post; this will be long. I kind of think of reading longer blog posts like watching a half hour-ish YouTube video- us hanging out online in a way- but in writing instead. This longer blog post format works for me best right now because I’m still too anxious to be on camera at the moment, & I also don’t currently have the spoons to spend a lot of time & energy editing & shortening what I want to say here. I have a lifetime of not being able to set my own boundaries to make up for. If you choose not to respect my boundaries, I wish you the absolute best but do not want to have any kind of relationship or contact with you.

Right now, setting & upholding boundaries is critical in my still extremely fragile healing process. Thank you for understanding <3

Intro note:

I think it’s perfectly valid to state a personal boundary & expect it to be honored without having to explain why you have that boundary. As trauma survivors, it can be extra difficult for us to feel okay about doing this & I want to acknowledge that & tell anyone who needs to hear it that this is valid & that you don’t owe anyone an explanation for any of your personal boundaries.

That being said, if you are able, it would mean a whole lot to me if you could read the more detailed elaborations of some of my boundaries because for the purposes of this blog post, I’m choosing to share some personal details. I’m choosing to do this here for a handful of reasons, including the hope that it’ll help other survivors learn & set their own boundaries & stick to them by exploring the reasons why. I believe this is a very empowering & healing thing to do <3

Please understand that every single boundary mentioned here is one that has repeatedly been violated by others, even ones that I’ve already publicly stated. This is not me daydreaming potential scenarios for online interactions, but responding to already-occurring subtle & not so subtle ways I often feel dehumanized as an outspoken survivor.

None of these points are about one specific person, but rather how I’ve been repeatedly treated in my interactions with others by many. If you read something here that hits a nerve, I’m asking you with the utmost love to please explore why it bothers you that someone is setting a boundary. Speaking from personal experience- others setting boundaries can often feel intimidating & even kind of threatening & sometimes like rejection when we don’t yet really have any sense of our own boundaries. I want to gently encourage anyone reading this to work on both respecting the boundaries of others, as well as setting your own. I believe it’s one of those things in life that’s a journey, not a destination. We all slip up sometimes & don’t always fully or properly honor others boundaries or our own, but we owe it to ourselves & each other to try our best to do so.

Please keep in mind that the definition of “boundary” I’m using here is my own personal limits for my own spaces in both my offline & online life- not me trying to control anyone else does in their own spaces. Boundaries are our own limits on how others treat us & what we will & won’t tolerate. Rules are about power over other people’s decisions & trying to control them.

For example: I can’t make rules for you, you can do whatever you want. But when I set a boundary for how I’ll tolerate being treated, you’re not entitled to be allowed room within my spaces if you violate any of my boundaries.

Another example of a perfectly reasonable boundary; blocking someone on social media. I have had multiple people become absolutely hellbent on trying to hurt me in any way they can simply because I blocked them on twitter, usually for saying or doing something hurtful or repeatedly disrespecting my boundaries. Even people I’ve never once actually spoken to or about. It’s not okay to try to punish or harm someone in any way for exercising a very basic boundary. I also have had people I don’t even know bizarrely become aggressive with me when they realize I blocked them back, after stumbling across their profile (such as when others were replying to them) and realizing they have me blocked. I block back whenever I come across a random account that has me blocked, as a personal safety precaution because many accounts have harassed me & attempted to incite even more harassment against me by quoting my tweets from behind a block.

Blocking online also highlights another example of boundaries vs rules: someone is not being silenced on social media for having access to someone else’s spaces or platform denied or revoked. They can still post elsewhere. But no one who makes you feel unsafe or uncomfortable is entitled to access to your spaces.

*Another social media related example: you can set a boundary on who you follow or interact with online, but you are not entitled to make rules about or police who others follow or interact with online.

I may modify & add to this list as I continue to heal & re-learn what it means to set & honor boundaries for myself. Doing so is a crucial part of my ongoing commitment to relentlessly pursue healing after spending over half my life in fight, flight or freeze mode. I cannot force anyone to respect my boundaries; but I can for the most part choose to minimize some of my interactions with people who don’t. This is a choice I did not always have & fought hard to be able to have the freedom to make, & I owe it to myself to honor this boundary & all other boundaries I set for myself. This list is inspired by other survivors I’ve seen lay out their own boundaries in different ways- I’m so proud of & inspired by you all ❤️ So, here goes:

My Digital Boundaries:

•This first boundary is not just a personal one, but a legal one- do not EVER send me illegal/abuse materials or links to illegal/abuse materials to report or try to help take down, there are proper channels this needs to be reported through. I will help you with that but you cannot under any circumstances send individual people the links. If you are trying to report CSEM, report it here.

•Whether online or offline, don’t ever take photos of me without my permission & don’t ever post photos of me without my permission, or reference my location in any way. I realize this is a pretty common thing to do, but it’s no secret that there’s a lot about my life circumstances that are not common. People doing these things when I’ve asked them not to has resulted in abusers & stalkers finding much of my personal information & using it to harm myself & my family. I don’t want any relationship with anyone who can’t respect my privacy & safety needs.

•I no longer do writing, speaking, lived experience related consulting, or other engagements about my trauma for free, as the emotional labor & re-living of my trauma it requires takes a significant toll & requires both prep work & time for me to recover afterwards as well as extra trauma therapy sessions. Please contact me via social media to exchange emails if you’re interested in hiring me, & I’ll reply as soon as I see it once I’m active again. I do not put my private contact information publicly on this site or elsewhere due to anonymous harassment that always follows.

•Please don’t make content about me or my trauma without my permission. Watch this video I made for more information on why this is harmful to me:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdcYjuAu/?k=1

•& please watch this video I made for an intro to some of my thoughts on ways to uplift survivor’s stories without causing further harm to us:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdcY7oEj/?k=1

•Please understand that I represent & speak for myself & myself only. Please don’t ever claim I said something I did not unless you’re directly quoting me with proper context; Please don’t claim I co-signed things I did not; Please don’t claim to speak for me or try to speak over me.

• Please don’t ever use my trauma, my words, or anything about me or my life to push an agenda of any kind without my consent.

•I’ve become a little anxious about announcing reconciliations publicly for several reasons so I may not make it known I’m now on good terms with someone I previously wasn’t, so if there’s someone I’ve had conflict with (either online or offline or both) please don’t assume I still do. As I go into more detail about later in this blog post- a lot of healing has happened between myself & other people & our overlapping communities in general especially over the last year ❤️ I really value taking every chance I can to make things right with anyone I can, because I know we’re all hurting in different ways & when I can make peace & maybe even friendship with another person I’m always grateful to try.

•I take full responsibility for & ownership over my words, but not what others may project onto my words against my will. I cannot control if someone is committed to intentionally misunderstanding & misrepresenting me, & I won’t apologize for things I did not actually say or do because another person has tried to twist my words as a projection or manipulation or trolling tactic. Although it’s common online, it’s not reasonable or healthy behavior for anyone involved to wildly project onto something someone said or get angry that something about their experiences doesn’t apply to you, & I will no longer have continued interactions with people behaving disingenuously like this.

•I’m very anti-MLM (multi level marketing) as I believe they’re extremely unethical & have noticed they also tend to target survivors & people in poverty & other marginalized people, & some have connections with labor trafficking so please don’t ever message me trying to get me to participate in one on any level.

•Please understand that I’m not ever obligated to “out” myself. To name just a couple examples that apply to me- I’m not obligated to put myself as an LGBT+ person or as a marginalized worker in one of my jobs-in spaces I feel unsafe to do so in. I will make my own choices about when & where I disclose marginalized aspects of my identity, & if I choose not to in certain spaces it’s out of self preservation, not because I’m ashamed of any part of who I am. <3

•Don’t use my digital spaces or posts to harass, bully, insult or dehumanize me or any other people. If you do this on any of my posts or in response to others on my posts, you’ll be blocked.

•Understand that I generally no longer believe public call-out / accountability posts of individuals are positively impactful (with the exception of warning others about someone who assaulted or abused you, which I support every survivor’s right to do if they choose as it’s often our only way to try to safeguard our communities)

Aside from abuse/assault/stalking exceptions, understand that call-out posts aren’t something I do or boost anymore. I will not engage in harassing, dog piling, or trying to isolate another person. I don’t believe in treating people like they are disposable. I’ve seen this type of harassment happen to far too many who’ve done nothing wrong, & even in cases where the person actually DID say or do something hurtful, it doesn’t usually bring about lasting positive changes to take this public punishment type of approach. (Will elaborate more on this later in this post)

•Please understand that for over a year now, my approach to social media has shifted to try my best at all times to uplift what I’d like to see more of in the world. For many years, I’ve been surrounded in every facet of my life by pain & trauma with no escape & I want to help lift up people who are being good to other people instead of giving even more attention to people hurting others. Now that I have a choice, this is what it feels more impactful to do. This is why I choose to uplift & promote compassion & good work I see, instead of focusing on doing call-outs of individuals.

•Please understand that as a general rule I don’t post things just because “everyone” else is or someone else says I should, as I feel that’s performative at best & controlling at worst. Feel free to search my post histories on any of my profiles online to see if there’s an answer about something about my experiences or my views if you’re genuinely curious with good intentions. & if you’re not being genuine & don’t have good intentions- know that I’m no longer going to give any attention to attempts to troll, sea lion, or manipulate me.

•Please keep in mind that most of my advocacy work is offline, & I am not running any “professional” social media accounts- my accounts are all personal. Let me shitpost when I want or mindlessly scroll for cute animal posts in peace without giving me a hard time for being online but not checking messages, because mindless posting/scrolling is sometimes a little escape that allows me to balance out the harder things in my life & my work.

•Please understand that me not posting about any given topic or issue does not mean I don’t care about it. I often don’t even post about things I’m personally impacted by because it’s either overwhelming or currently unsafe for me to do so, & because my focus is on making tangible differences in these areas because while making posts can be a very powerful thing, it’s also often not enough by itself & sometimes comes at the expense of the real work needed to help someone not really getting done.

•I’d hope you wouldn’t go into someone’s physical workplace & make a scene, so do not for any reason ever bring stress, harassment, bullying or drama about myself or anyone else to any of my paid platforms- these are my digital workplaces. If you have trouble respecting any of my boundaries, please do not follow me there even with intentions to financially support me. It’s already significantly worsened my financial struggles to feel unsafe enough to post on my public social media for most of this year, because twitter is how I earned much of my income as a writer & content creator. It causes me a lot of anxiety to keep posting on even my paid platforms when the last thing I want is to be online at all right now, so if you’re going to interact with me there please understand I am working on those platforms & do not want anyone in my workspace who is going to make it more stressful for me in any way.

•Men: don’t try to follow my paid platforms for free- this just shows me you can’t respect a very basic boundary & feel entitled to intimate access to me, & I will most likely just block you. I create paid content to pay my bills, not for free entertainment. I find it really disrespectful how the same 20 or so men will often request to follow my pay-to-follow accounts over & over again without paying, even multiple times a day at times, hoping that I’ll erode this boundary of mine just for them. It’s not going to happen, & I’m going to remember your lack of respect & not want anything to do with you.

•Please understand that although most people would consider my views pretty left-leaning, & I’ve done & still do a lot of organizing & advocacy work in leftist spaces- I don’t fully identify with either wing of the colonial Western bird nor am I obligated to. I owe no loyalty to any aspect of the violent state & systems that left me for dead as a traumatized child in more ways than one & have also harmed my loved ones & communities. In many of my identities including but not limited to the facts that I’m an indigenous person, a trafficking survivor, & a woman, I’ve been directly harmed by abusive people on both ends of the Western political spectrum & everywhere in between. & yes, that includes many leftist individuals, organizations, & movements too. So please don’t try to force me into these boxes. I didn’t sign up to join anyones political club, & I don’t need to be told what to think. My principles & values are based on my love & respect for people, animals & the land & aren’t dictated or restricted by ever changing Western policies & trends.

•Please understand that I’m chronically ill & have been since I was very young, & I also have multiple permanent disabilities- most of which are from being assaulted & abused. What separates chronic illness from acute illnesses & permanent disabilities from temporary illnesses, is that in the later cases they will often times get better eventually. Some days are better & some days are worse, but I live with illnesses & disabilities every day of my life.

Please don’t ever say something to me like “have you gotten a second medical opinion” or “you need to try this diet to cure you” or “why aren’t you trying to get better” because I assure you, I already spend every day of my life trying to manage, minimize the severity of, & cope with my health struggles as best as I can & many days simply don’t have the energy, strength or focus to carry a conversation.

Please also understand that if my writing or posts seem “messy” or disorganized or too drawn out or repetitive, it’s likely because I’m struggling to express myself during a low spoons time, & I am also not neurotypical. If you’re not familiar with spoon theory in relation to chronic illness, please google it<3 & if you’re going to ridicule or mock me for struggling to express myself in concise ways, I’m not going to engage with you about this because while I sometimes make time for writing lengthy things, I don’t have time for either accepting or giving out unproductive pointless negativity masquerading as criticism.

Also, posting into the void online requires a very different type of energy & pressure than holding conversations. Me struggling to stay in touch & keep up on messages doesn’t reflect how I feel about a person whatsoever, it’s just the circumstances of my health & my life situation.

•Please understand that my trauma & pain never have been & never will be the ONLY things I post about. I’ve gotten so many entitled messages telling me I should speak about my traumas even more, & people threatening to unfollow me or implying I don’t care about the issues I am directly impacted by if I don’t post about it 24/7. This is hurtful. I am more than the ways others have brutalized me, & their actions do not define who I am as a human being.

•Please do not ever for any reason try to police who I follow or interact with, & don’t try to “guilt by association” me especially when said association is something as benign as following someone online or reading or responding to someone’s tweets for example. As a multiple abuse survivor, I’ve had more than enough of any person on this planet trying to control who I listen to speak or speak to for any reason. I realize this has been normalized online as a thing to do, but it’s actually very controlling & entitled behavior. (Will elaborate more on this later in this post)

•Please understand that I get more DM’s than I can keep up with on every social media platform I’m on, & although it’s almost always been this way for many years now, it’s gotten even more intense over the last few years. I’m never intentionally ignoring anyone who approaches me in a way that’s genuine & with basic human respect.

•Please understand that since I was a preteen, I have had people both offline & online pretending to be closer with me than they are, often for harmful reasons which I’ll elaborate on later in this post. With very few exceptions, I don’t really post about or publicly interact with the people I’m closest to for their own protection because of the unique circumstances in my life & some of my most painful traumas having been international news. If someone claims to be close to me, ask me before assuming they’re being truthful. Again, I’ll elaborate later on why this is important to me.

•Please respect my privacy, especially when it comes to my family & other close relationships, my culture, & my personal life & understand if I don’t want to share details or answer certain questions about any of those things.

•Don’t ever under any circumstances give anyone my personal information (such as my phone number, location, or any of my emails) without asking me first, & don’t ask others for this information of mine if you haven’t already been given it from me directly.

I’ll add to this list as I continue to get to know myself once again & continue to learn healthy boundaries, but these things were on my heart tonight <3

Elaborations On Some Of These Specific Boundaries:

On Not Making Content About Me & Using MY Trauma Without My Permission:

Once again, please do not ever make content about my trauma without my consent. Please do not use my trauma to push any agenda without my consent. Don’t EVER use my trauma to try to minimize, attack, or discredit another survivor. I’ve had others use my trauma to attack others this way, & I’ve had others use someone else’s trauma to try to falsely discredit mine. This is rape culture all around & I want no part of it.  Please uplift my own words & my own posts about my own trauma, rather than creating your own & speaking over me. Every survivor deserves autonomy over our own stories & lives. There’s a very big difference in someone talking about my experiences that have been made very public, vs profiting from my pain via literal or social currency.

Please watch this if you didn’t catch it above:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdcYjuAu/?k=1

On Privacy:

I used to very much be an open book on social media, especially twitter. This was for a multitude of reasons, which I’ll share more about in a future blog post here. However, due mainly to safety risks for myself & my loved ones, I am no longer as open as I used to be & likely never will be open on the same level I was ever again. My privacy, something I for a long time felt it was pointless to try to protect because it just kept getting ripped away from me in pieces over & over again, is now something I hold very close to my heart. Much of my life has been made public against my will; but what I can keep private, I now do.

On How I Choose To Use Social Media & My Writing:

I’m focused on learning how to feel safe putting things out in the world again right now, not engaging in discourse or debates. Once upon a time social media sometimes fostered healthy & mutually respectful & eye opening discussion, but now it’s more about hurting people hurting other people & trying to wildly project onto others & make other’s experiences about them somehow or trying to uplift yourself by knocking someone else down. So while I won’t be posting online or engaging in discourse publicly much for the time being, I will still be posting here on my blog. I jokingly call it antisocial media with my family 🤓

I want to again stress that I’m asking people to not give me a hard time for not checking/being behind on DM’s, I get more than I can keep up with on every single platform I’m on & am also seriously chronically ill & fighting to heal from complex PTSD, major depression, & panic disorder. I also help care for other disabled relatives, & have very little free time. I don’t always have the spoons for one on one conversations or discourse, but sometimes like to just look at things online like anyone else.

It makes me uncomfortable to feel like my every move is being watched online or off & when people become aggressive with me for not seeing their messages faster- sadly this happens pretty often. It’s very jarring to get messages like this from anyone.

Also, I struggle with isolating myself when depressed. Someone I respect recently assured me it’s perfectly rational to be wary of people when you’ve been harmed by people. I often need a lot of space & alone time, & I’m learning that is okay.

For my last note on how I use social media these days, please understand that I no longer want to do call out posts or participate in the culture of bombarding an individual & pretending that’s a form of activism or creating any real positive change. We have to all live in this world with each other- doing something like shipping someone to a deserted island for having hurtful behaviors or views is a fantasy, not a reality. I want people to genuinely treat other people, animals, & the land better & I no longer believe you can digitally batter & dehumanize someone into doing that. I now try to focus on uplifting the people I see being good to other people on social media, to encourage more of that. I believe it’s a lot more impactful than trying to call out the people who are not treating others well, because those people are clearly going through it themselves & I genuinely hope they can heal so that they no longer hurt others or themselves. I don’t believe harassing, lying about, & trying to take away someone’s entire support system contributes to healing, but actually causes more harm that then spreads to others too.

Please do not ever take me declining to participate in public call outs as me co-signing someone else’s words, actions, or behavior. I cannot control whether or not people are committed to misunderstanding & demonizing others, but I don’t want this behavior in my spaces. When I say “uplifting good” I mean people being good to one another. I’m not a fan of what’s been (accurately in my opinion) dubbed toxic positivity- I try to hold space for the entire spectrum of human emotion & hope others do the same for me too as it’s exhausting pretending to be fine when you’re not. The negativity I try to avoid isn’t people discussing their pain & struggles (I don’t see that as negativity) but rather I try to avoid helping people who are hurting others bring more attention to their harmful behaviors- that’s the negativity I’m trying to stay away from.

On Follow Policing/People Trying To Control Or Dictate Who Others Follow Or Interact With:

If it’s not obvious yet, this is something I feel very strongly about. I’ve had entire harassment campaigns mounted against me as backlash for me speaking out about my trauma, but since that’s not widely considered a socially acceptable reason to try to hurt someone, I’ve had people lie & claim all sorts of things about me to try to discredit my character & use asinine things like me following certain people on twitter as “proof” of my supposedly being a horrible person who deserves to be punished, doxxed, blacklisted, & threatened. These harassment campaigns have bled over into real world violence against my family & I multiple times, & I have zero tolerance for any of the associated behaviors being in my spaces. It’s hard on my nervous system when people repeatedly violate this boundary because they think it’s stupid or not important. It is important to me, so if you  want to engage with me you need to respect my limits.

Please understand that I am a traumatized person working on healing, which is not always linear. Things may trigger me or cause me anxiety for reasons you may not understand. Also, please understand how dehumanizing & insulting it feels to have people tweet or message me things like “why are you following this person?? If you don’t unfollow them by the end of the day I’m unfollowing you!!” & it goes from feeling insulting to outright disrespectful & tone deaf when it’s in response to me sharing a painful update online like that I’m in the hospital or dealing with something painful. Please understand that my life does not revolve around answering to people online for imaginary crimes like following the tweets of a person you dislike, especially considering a follow or interaction is not an endorsement in any way, & I’m not responsible for anyone else’s words or actions but my own.

Also- & this is a really important point for me to stress- if you are someone who has personally harmed me in any way, I find it beyond offensive, disrespectful, triggering & audacious for you especially to try to dictate who I talk to. Regardless of whether you’ve apologized to me & we’ve had any sort of reconciliation, I especially do not ever want to have this boundary violated by anyone who has ever personally hurt me & added to the harassment & trauma in my life. If you want to have a relationship of any kind with me, you can choose to stop engaging in this behavior.

*I’ve gone more into detail about my feelings on follow/tweet/interaction policing on twitter (I’ll copy & paste the big twitter thread I made on this topic soon here in this blog post, because my twitter is presently on private)

I’m not okay with anyone policing who I follow or interact with on any level. It’s one of my triggers as an abuse survivor because multiple abusers of mine isolated me by cutting me off from others, & being treated this way stirs up a lot of those feelings. I sometimes follow & interact with people I disagree with deeply on issues close to my heart. I sometimes follow & interact with & even sometimes try to help people who have harmed me personally.

Regardless of who I follow or interact with or why, please don’t ever tag me in posts or dm me demanding to know why I follow someone’s tweets. I realize it’s become normalized, but this is actually very entitled & controlling & weird behavior.

I don’t need to agree with someone’s every view or even *any* of their views to learn something from them, & I want to keep up with what people are doing that impacts me & my communities for better or worse. I feel like this is all so incredibly obvious it shouldn’t have to be stated, but I also feel like people interact with each other online in ways they’d likely never face-to-face.

It’s also not lost on me that many of the people always trying to go around this boundary, are often the same people others are messaging me about demanding to know why I follow them. Hurting people hurt people, & everyone of us has hurt or offended or been otherwise awful to others at one point or another, but I have to hold onto hope that most of us will do better someday & won’t be in that place mentally forever.

Also- I’ve survived many traumatic years & have in part developed my character in positive ways by having “reverse role models” of who I don’t want to be. I learn from people I disagree with & who have or are trying to harm me, even if that lesson is just who I don’t want to be. Not everyone has the privilege to only surround themselves with people they agree with 100%, 24/7. As an advocate, I often have to deal with all sorts of people in pursuit of healing & justice for other survivors. & to be honest, I find it really confusing that so many people who claim to be anti-carceral frequently act like cops to each other online in this way & some of the others mentioned in the blog post.

The twitter thread I made in October ‘21 on why I do not want to be tagged in posts or DM’d being interrogated about why I follow or interact with any given person:

                (Beginning Of Thread)

I want to make a thread on something I’m seeing more & more on social media (especially on here & especially among younger people) I believe this is toxic, & even harmful. It’s something I’ve done a few times myself last year, but a post I saw about how toxic it is made me stop👇🏼

The thing I want to talk about is policing who someone follows or interacts with on here, in any way really but especially those posts @ ‘ing people & demanding they unfollow a specific person & then harassing them & projecting a bunch of wild accusations onto them if they don’t.

I see this happen constantly, it’s happened to me many times, & as I said earlier I’ve done it a few times of myself- I can admit now my mental health was not great in those moments, & I was grasping onto an illusion of “doing something” about someone hurting me or my friends

But I feel awful now for putting some of my mutuals on the spot like that. That wasn’t my place to do. They’re allowed to follow & interact with whoever they want, for any reason. Following someone does not mean co-signing all or even *any* of their views.

I’ve tried hard to find it again to link here with no luck, but a post I saw earlier this year really opened my eyes to how toxic this is. It talked about how anyone but especially more vulnerable young people should not internalize it as normal behavior when someone does this +

& it also talked about how harmful it is to be constantly getting into back-&-forth quote tweet fights with people- something I also used to struggle with a lot last year when really hurtful things were said about my trauma. It was bad for my well-being to engage with that stuff.

Another post that further made me committed to rejecting this behavior online was this Instagram post (the caption of the post will be in my next tweet in this thread)

Every single time this happens to me, whether it’s in DM’s or being tagged in a post or even just seeing a tweet that says “mutuals unfollow this person or else you’re a ___ & I’m unfollowing you” it gives me such bad anxiety & stirs up the same feelings I had with abusive exes.

No I’m not calling a person an abuser for doing this- just saying it stirs up those emotions & its painful. Not only my abusive exes but also my traffickers tried to control who I talked to, interacted with, etc. It made me even more isolated & unable to escape for a long time.

I’ve even had multiple people grasping at straws trying to justify doing some pretty awful things to me, & they would cite me following “problematic” people as reason why I deserve harm & abuse & to try to incite others to bring more my way. I’ve seen it happen to others too.

I fought hard for my freedom & I don’t want to ever feel like I’m allowing someone to violate my boundaries again just so I can maybe be spared being piled on. & I never want to make anyone else feel that fear ever again either. It’s unhealthy for everyone involved.

What breaks my heart the most is that often the people I see doing this the most are fellow abuse & assault survivors. I think we want so badly to feel like someone will stand up for us (or an issue we care about) & we want a sense of control & power to do something about harm.

That’s where I was coming from the 2-3 times I did this last year. I was scared & in pain & my past traumas were front & center publicly again, & I had new traumas piling up. I wanted to feel some sense of justice. But it didn’t actually help.

In the following tweets I’ll share some of my own thoughts- not because I have to justify why I follow anyone, ever, but because I’m hoping it can change someone’s perspective who is trapped in this cycle.

I’ve completely changed how I use social media these last 10-11 months & my progress hasn’t been completely linear but I’ve come a very long way & its made such a huge difference, in a good way. I am able to get a lot more real work done in my communities & in my own healing too.

As an abuse survivor, feeling like my interactions both online or off are being policed is deeply triggering to me, as well as being assumed to be spoken for by someone who I very well may disagree with on nearly everything, just because I follow them or interact briefly.

As an advocate for other survivors, it makes me deeply uncomfortable to be put in a position where anyone is demanding to know why I follow someone- I’m definitely not going to broadcast the trauma someone trusted me with privately especially to “justify” me following them.

Especially when it’s survivors who haven’t shared their story publicly. Since I opened my Twitter account, the most common reason I follow someone are usually because they are a survivor who has reached out to me with their story or for help or both. I’ve said this many times.

Other reasons include wanting to keep up with what people are saying & doing about issues that directly impact me- whether I agree with their actions & views or not, if it’s going to impact my communities I want to know.

I also follow back people who have helped me with mutual aid, if I’m not already following them & my customers who are nice. It gives me hope to be able to stay in touch with people who have shown me & my family kindness, especially when I’m feeling really depressed & alone.

These are just a few of the many reasons I might follow someone. But I don’t owe any individual an explanation, nor does anyone else. We can’t ship people we disagree with off somewhere. People grow by learning from & interacting w others

I’ve very, VERY rarely changed someone’s mind by getting in a quote RT fight with them or by calling them out & asking people to unfollow them. I have however changed many minds by just talking to people.

& I’ve even had a lot say just following each other & seeing my posts opened their eyes to stuff, which means so much to me. With very few exceptions (such as r*pists & child abusers) I don’t believe in just giving up on people.

No marginalized person owes anyone emotional labor or free education, but if someone comes to me genuinely I’m personally usually happy to try to help open their eyes to issues if I have the capacity in that moment.

We all have to live in this world together. Tysm for reading❤️

           (End of my 10/21 twitter thread)

On Many People Misrepresenting Their Relationships With Me:

Something I’ve dealt with repeatedly ever since I’ve been active on social media as a preteen but more often than ever before these last few years is people claiming to be closer with me than they are. Most of the people I’m closest to, are not on social media at all. Throughout my life, both online & offline, I’ve had many people falsely claim to be my close friend or significant other or otherwise be in close personal relationships with me.

I’m a little hesitant to even talk about this, because I never intend for anyone to feel rejected in any way or unsure of where they stand with me but this needs to be said because of how others have done this for harmful purposes.

These harmful purposes have included but are not limited to these individuals trying to use their supposed closeness with me as a launch pad to spread misinformation or lies about me & * appear* somewhat legitimate while doing so. Often times, these people have used this as a way to try to have an “in” with other people who feel strongly about me one way or the other & this almost always has ended up being used to violate my privacy or hurt me in some other way.

I see this happen a lot to other people in a similar situation online as I am, where we have a little bit of a big following by some standards but aren’t famous. We’re in this kind of weird spot where we have a bit of notoriety online but are still accessible so I’ve seen a lot of us in that position get a lot of the treatment I mention here in this blog post, especially when posts about us go viral somewhat regularly.

I have in the past, even the fairly recent past, called many people “friend” because the hopeful in me wants to believe that most of us have good intentions most of the time & are all connected as fellow human beings. In addition to Friend, I also have tended to use other terms of endearment liberally online because I genuinely feel so much love in my heart for any & every person who takes time out of their day to connect with me in a kind or otherwise positively-meaningful way.

However, because of the trauma of the last few years of my life including dealing with being a victim of violent stalking hitting me like a ton of bricks recently I’ve realized that I need to set some new boundaries with my relationship titles in this way.

I have also had multiple people try to form friendships with me for the sole purpose of feeding my personal information & life details I trusted them with back to my abusers & stalkers, which is a trauma in & of itself that I’m still trying to unpack & process & recover from as best as I can.

I have had people claim to be extremely close with me in order to try to portray me as co-signing something like them putting words in my mouth or going after another person. Or to try to find out things about me from other people I know. I have had people pretend/falsely claim to be my best friend(s) & my significant others & my family & former classmates or teachers of mine just for the purpose of trying to violate my privacy & harm me.

Many people who have deeply harmed me have also, through force in some cases & varying degrees of pressure in others, tried to get me to give off the impression that we’re close & there’s been times I’ve complied with this because I just wanted these kinds of people to stop hurting me. That’s not genuine friendship, & anyone who has apologized to you for harm caused but makes their apology dependent on you giving any kind of relationship with/access to yourself is not genuinely sorry. If I apologize to someone it’s because I’m genuinely sorry, & I will respect their decision without retaliation if they never want to speak to me or have anything to do with me again. All I ask is that people aren’t dishonest about me or any of their interactions with me.

I have many people I care deeply for & who I’m so blessed to know care deeply about me, but I have very few truly close friends who know the everyday details of my life, & the vast majority of the people I’m close with, I don’t talk about much on social media at all for their protection. Me being very friendly with others on social media does not mean I have close personal relationships with them. Me sharing similar experiences with others in any capacity does not automatically mean I have close personal relationships with them.

The closest relationships in my life are almost always very private to me, so please don’t make any assumptions.

Having once been close with someone does not mean I still am, it’s often been people I was once very close to who have hurt me the most.

Being “just” acquaintances/mutuals/etc with someone is still a valid & meaningful relationship to me, & not even remotely a category where I mentally place people I think lesser of. I actually almost always think very highly of the vast majority of people I consider acquaintances.

But being a close friend takes time, trust, consistency & respect of boundaries both ways. My close friends & I have earned calling each other that, because trust doesn’t generally come easy to most of us.

Please do not ever assume anyone is one of my best friends, my partner/significant other, or my relative (whether through blood or otherwise) unless I outright say so in no uncertain terms. I have recently dealt with different people falsely claiming to be my family, my best friends, & my significant others & none of these people hold those roles in my life.

Please understand that while I like to consider myself a naturally friendly person (who is also big on heart emojis in just about every conversation) it’s not easy for me to trust other people & become close to them due to my trauma. I try to be friendly to just about everyone, but that doesn’t mean I have a close personal relationship with them or that they are able to speak for me with any authority in any way.

On How I Will Use Social Media Going Forward:

I am always so deeply grateful for & touched by any & all kind messages I receive, & by others sharing their lives with me whether it’s their own life stories, pictures of their pets, or art they’ve made. What follows is NOT me asking people to stop DM’ing me or reaching out, but just to please not reach out in a disrespectful way as sadly many people do to me online.

Again, I’m currently taking an extended break from social media, & will keep taking breaks as needed even after I’m “back” as in regularly active again. If I pop online occasionally to retweet something or answer a specific message or just want to scroll my feed for cute animal pictures because I had a hard day, I don’t want to be bombarded for that.

It feels really suffocating when sometimes people will see the smallest internet “sign of life” like me retweeting a post or liking a picture on instagram, & then blow up my messages demanding to know why I’m “ignoring” them despite being “active.” This happens disturbingly often & is often done with aggression by people I barely even know, but I’m not okay with it being done by anyone at all.

Like I said earlier in this blog, it makes me uncomfortable to feel like my every move is being watched online or off & when people become aggressive with me for not seeing their messages faster- sadly this happens pretty often. Also, I struggle with isolating myself when depressed. Someone I respect recently assured me it’s perfectly rational to be wary of people when you’ve been harmed by people. I need a lot of space & alone time at different times as I pursue healing. <3

Also, please don’t message me asking “why are you silent about ___” (any given topic) - Please understand that me not posting about any given topic does not mean I don’t care, & often much of the advocacy work in different areas I do offline, I rarely if ever post about online. Maintaining some type of separation between my online work & offline work is crucial for protecting the privacy & the safety of the communities I serve, as well as protecting myself.

Also, my main focus is & has always been helping survivors of sexual assault & abuse & I can’t even count how many messages I’ve gotten where survivors felt unsafe reaching out for help from an organization or individual because they felt they’d be judged for their political views, their jobs, their financial circumstances, their race or ethnicity, you name it. When a survivor comes to me for help, I don’t interrogate them about their views, lifestyle, or anything else before trying my best to help them. I don’t believe any living thing on this planet deserves to be a victim of sexual violence, & that will always be the view I hold.

As a bit of a statement on its own & a preamble to the next section all at once, I need to say this- please do not apologize to me if it’s not genuine. In my time online in 2021, I’m so grateful that a lot of healing & reconciliation happened in my overlapping digital communities. I received apologies from people who have participated in harm, threats, harassment, slander, & abusive & hurtful conduct towards me. I’m always grateful for genuine apologies.

That being said, it makes me deeply sad & lose trust in others when I see many of the same people who apologized to me for harming me, continue to behave abusively towards other people in the same ways. It makes me feel like I was only apologized to because the people involved want something from reconnecting with me, rather than it being genuine & I also would not wish anyone be treated like this either.

I also don’t like feeling like someone who apologized to me is on the verge of trying to harm me once again if I set a reasonable boundary with them or need space or am still actively processing the harm they caused me. Forgiveness is often a process, not just a one time decision. If you are genuinely sorry, do not lash out at me for setting boundaries or needing space. Your apology to someone should not be dependent on them giving energy, attention, or time to you or having a relationship with you in any way.

It would be difficult to even count at this point how many times, both online & off, someone has apologized to me just to become abusive again if their apology isn’t treated as a key that unlocks unlimited access to me. This kind of behavior just furthers the cycles of pain, distrust, & dysfunction that most of us survivors are trying to break free from.

I’m saying this with the deepest sincerity & love: please understand that living in a state of constant chaos & drama & always going after others is often a powerful numbing agent that just stunts our own healing. If you’re currently the type of person who is always going after another person online, please respect that I don’t want to be involved in that myself. It’s neither activism nor entertainment in my eyes- we need to maintain perspective that there are real human beings with feelings & trauma of their own on the other end of our online interactions. Speaking of:

On Harassment & Slander Masquerading As Activism:

I can’t stress enough that I no longer give into the pressure to subscribe to the view that bombarding & dog piling other human beings is activism or true accountability or reconciliation. I do not support lying about another person & spreading rumors about them as an attempt at justifying relentlessly going after them.

I don’t believe it has any real lasting positive impact for a better world to only ever talk to people who completely agree with you. Organizing isn’t just communicating only with people who already agree with you & then harassing anyone who doesn’t.

I don’t believe you can force someone to be accountable for harm they’ve caused. Making someone pretend to be sorry when they really aren’t isn’t a genuine apology, & it does not protect people that may still be vulnerable to harm from them. The best accountability is consistent changed behavior.

I will not dog pile, bully, or harass another person with you, even if you passive aggressively threaten to label me “bad” too for my refusal.

Also- please understand that I am under no obligation to believe rumors spread about other people, especially if the person spreading it has made up lies about me personally too. I do not have to take someone’s word as fact when they have a history of using their words to lie about & cause harm to others for whatever reason.

I want absolutely nothing to do with the harmful behavior (that’s most common on twitter it seems) of constantly going after other people & stalking their every interaction to try to turn people they speak to against them, & then harass said people if they won’t do what you say.

I don’t believe it’s okay to call someone an abuser or otherwise slander them as retaliation for something like setting a boundary with you (like blocking you on twitter) or responding in a less than friendly way to you harassing them. I see this happen constantly, & it’s happened to me too many times. This behavior is in & of itself abusive, & an attempt to silence, slander & control myself or others for setting boundaries is not something I’ll tolerate in my spaces.

I’ve been personally subjected to harassment & smear campaigns that have led to real world violence against my family & I more than once.

& I deeply regret that I’ve also been sucked into taking a scorched-earth approach to calling out others that just led to more hurt for the other party & myself. I don’t want to be treated this way, & I don’t want to treat others this way. I’m a flawed & traumatized human being who will slip up & occasionally still react in ways I wish I hadn’t to hurtful comments from time to time, but I’m trying to avoid that now because I want people causing harm to heal for the sake of themselves & others around them. That’s a lot more satisfying & impactful than just dunking on someone.

Also, understand that if you’re the type of person who spreads rumors about people & believes every negative thing you hear about someone without critically considering the sources or lack of evidence, then it’s hard for me to believe you won’t do the same to me. I have had some pretty awful lies about myself, my family, my trauma, you name it be spread by abusive people trying to make up things to justify why they’re hurting me more times than I can count now. I can’t control who chooses to believe smear campaigns, but I can choose not to interact with people who contribute to abuse culture & inciting harm against others in such a way.

A clarification concerning some of these points: I also don’t believe marginalized people owe people who contribute to oppression against us anything such as educating them, which is often exhausting & triggering emotional labor. But if others who are in a safer place are able & willing to try to educate & organize & start a dialogue with people causing harm, I think that is often a good thing. I for one want a world where people are genuinely trying to treat each other better, not doing something like a performative accountability post in response to demands to, but actually changing nothing. I want the people who have hurt me to never hurt someone else in the same ways ever again. That feels like as close as I can get to “justice.”

If you read all of this, please let me know on social media; it might be a while before I see it, but I’ll appreciate you bearing witness to this step in my healing process more than I can even begin to put into words. <3 If you’re comfortable & would like to, please also feel free to share with me your own current or future digital boundaries. For me personally, it has been very empowering & healing to not only decide my own boundaries, but to chose to state them- it’s hard to do because rape culture & misogyny & other oppressive systems thrive on trying to discourage us from setting boundaries, & punishing us when we do.

Sending so much love to every single person reading this, thank you for being here with me in this space <3

If you care about forming, repairing, &/or maintaining a relationship with me in any capacity, please do your best to respect my boundaries- as I will always do my best to respect yours as well. <3