Preparing for Pride Month (Patreon)

CONTENT WARNING: violence, transphobia, trauma

Nobody asked but I'll tell you why I can be triggered by a "tagged!" notification. I'll preface this by saying this more or less stopped being a problem in 2016. However...

...back in the day people used to tag me on posts that contained violent imagery, directed at me. One was of my decapitated head, in other someone downloaded "Let's Be Clear" and added bloody bullet holes between my eyes. One grown man (and father) tagged me in a post that simply read "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

So yeah. That's my default assumption, that someone is trying to fuck with me. My brain and body immediately tense up when I'm tagged.

THEN comes the Non-Profits which are ALSO triggering. These are the folks that will use my artwork to raise money, clicks, traffic etc without any regard to me as a person whatsoever. Typically—if they mention me at all—they'll point out that I'm the creator of said artwork last.

Some of them have even put their own watermarks over my stuff. I don't make a fuss about it but it's nevertheless agonizing as so much of what goes on during PRIDE MONTH is performance and not activism, not community building, and not the celebration of queer artists who are often S T A R V I N G.

I felt pretty arrogant making these posts but I want to be proactive and I think this spells everything out fairly nicely.