Social Anxiety Ups and Downs

I’m so disappointed in myself. 

Over the weekend I went to Pride.  I got to march in the parade, which was cool, definitely a first for me.  It was euphoric.  I cannot begin to describe the feeling of walking through the streets while people cheer you on.  For a few minutes I actually didn’t hate myself. 

Before the parade, they had to evacuate the area for impending bad weather.  I had to hide in a post office until the weather was nice enough to continue.  It only delayed the parade by about 45 minutes, so that was a nice bit of excitement.

I’ve been wanting to put together a new D&D group.  Specifically, I’ve been trying to connect with other LGBT gamers.  I want a group where we all have similar interests, where I if I wanted I could show up in a dress without ridicule.  I probably wouldn't, but I'd like the option to be there.

I’m also only free on Saturdays, and only interested in D&D 5th Edition.  Yes, I know, it’s a lot to ask.  It’s hard enough to get a regular group together, much less one so specific.  But D&D is getting a huge influx of new players right now, mostly because of Stranger Things, so it’s the perfect time to meet more gaymers.

A few weeks before the event, I used a free business card service to print up a bunch of “Looking for a group” cards.  My plan was to pass them out at the event.  My rainbow d20 shirt (and matching necklace) was to be the conversation starter.  People would see it and think, “Cool, another D&D player, I wonder if they have a group I could join.”  They’d say hi, we’d talk a bit, and I’d give them the card with my e-mail address on it. 

Well, the shirt was a hit.  At least twenty people complimented my shirt at the event.  I told every one of them “Thank you,” but that was the most my social anxiety could handle.  I did not give out a single card. 

Now, to be fair, sometimes it would have been awkward to do so.  Sometimes the person giving me a compliment was going in the opposite direction, and to stop and talk would have held up foot traffic in both directions.  And sometimes the other person was just so much younger than me, it would have felt icky.  “Would your parents be okay if I came over and played dice games with you in your basement?”

But those are just excuses.  I still had plenty of encounters where I could have drawn out the conversation, but I dropped the ball.  I just did my usual at the festival – walked around the entire event several times, took a handful of pictures, sat down a lot and watched people.  I didn’t even go around collecting buttons and free samples like I usually do, because I didn’t feel like standing in lines.  It was too hot to stay the whole time, and while I did stay longer than usual, I still left earlier than I originally intended to.

So now I’m depressed.  All that euphoria I got from being in the parade?  It’s gone now.  I keep kicking myself for wasting my money on two Lyft rides when I didn’t stay very long or pass out any cards.  I won’t get another chance to be around so many LGBT people until next year, and who knows if people will still be interested in D&D by then.  Plus, next year’s festival probably won’t be as big, since this year was the 50^th anniversary of Stonewall.

I want to be proud of myself for marching.  It was something that scared me, and I did it anyway.  Heck, even using Lyft for the first time scared me.  Getting in a car alone with a stranger?  In the South, while wearing a rainbow shirt, headed for a Pride festival?  But it was important to me, so I overcame my fear long enough to do it.  Now I just wish I could enjoy the memory.  At this point I barely remember the festival, I mostly just remember the sunburn.

Maybe someday I’ll learn how to be happy.

When Real Life Taints Fiction

On October 10, 2010, a webcomic called d20 Monkey published this strip:

I apologize for not being able to find a high resolution version; they did a pretty good job of scrubbing it from the internet.  I wouldn't want to post a high-res version anyway, since it's not my work to redistribute.  I can't read all the words, but here's a transcription of what I can get:

Panel 1:"What's the big damn deal, (anyway)?  The (issue) is handled."
"You have no idea what you've done, do you?"
Panel 2:"Enlighten me, Frodo."
"You Bizarro'd us.  You demanded no 'Emo Church Girls' and now, through the law of Bizarro we will get just that.  Emo church chicks forever."
"What are you boys talking about?"
Panel 3:"Hey pops.  Count Chuckula here thinks the Bizzarro law is crap."
"It's true.  I once specified 'no trannies' (? ? ?) for new players.  Someone answered the ad and the following week...  I opened the door and Bam!  Tranny.  And I don't care what they say, a good looking tranny is still a tranny."
Panel 4:A good looking tranny is still a tranny.
A Public Service Announcement from d20Monkey.com

Basically, the punch line makes fun of trans people.  Now, you could argue that it’s just that one character who’s transphobic, and it doesn’t reflect the views of the writers, but I don’t buy it.  I think you would have to be transphobic to think of the so-called “joke” in the first place, or to find it funny.

When that comic was first posted in 2010, it had only been a few years since I realized I was trans.  I was brittle at the time, evangelical about LGBT issues, and ready to be offended by everything.  I also should mention that trans issues weren’t in the news back then the way they are now.  Trans people were acceptable targets, a group you could mock without as much fear of retribution.

I was also fairly new into D&D.  I learned about d20 Monkey from an RPG forum, and enjoyed the first few strips.  Then I came to that one.  I tried to laugh it off, but it just bugged me.  I posted a reply to the comic, complaining.  I checked back for a response or apology, but never saw one, and eventually they took the comic down.  But I could no longer enjoy the comic any more, and soon stopped reading it.  I didn’t think about d20 Monkey again for years, and honestly forgot they existed.

Until one of my favorite webcomics, Dork Tower, let d20 Monkey do guest strips for a week.  During Pride month, no less.  Now, I have no idea how involved d20 Monkey has been with trans issues in the years since I stopped reading.  For all I know, their comic now features a gay main character and they contribute thousands of dollars to trans charities.  All I can tell you is that seeing them temporarily take over a beloved webcomic was a bit like seeing the White House taken over by transphobic white supremacists.  A flood of emotions came over me.  Memories of the severe depression I fought through when I first realized I was trans.  Remembering when I first noticed just how much anti-trans “humor” permeated our society.

It's a fine line.  When actors or writers turn out to be bad people, it can taint their work to a such a degree that it’s completely unenjoyable.  Sometimes I have to remember that it takes hundreds of people to make a movie, and I shouldn’t let one actor bring it down for me.  But then, if the movie hinges on that actor’s performance, it’s hard to enjoy watching them.  Books and comic strips always hinge on the writer’s performance, so they’re right out.

For example, I still enjoy older Mel Gibson movies, even though they’re not quite as fun as they were before I disliked the actor.  Same goes for Johnny Depp.  I have no pull to see any new Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp movies, but I would still see a movie if they were in it but not the main star (Crimes of Grindelwald, for example, which sucked for entirely different reasons).  At least I know my money is being divided among hundreds of people.

However, I can’t enjoy Orson Scott Card’s books any more.  Books are too intimate a medium, like you’re walking through the author’s mind to explore their imagination.  If I don’t like an author as a person, it’s almost impossible for me to enjoy reading their work.  I’ve also stopped reading Dilbert, and I sold all the Dilbert books I had in my house.  I just haven’t found them funny since Scott Adams went off the deep end.

In the case of d20 Monkey, I only found it sporadically funny in the first place.  I enjoyed it because it was a D&D themed comic at a time when D&D comics weren’t quite as common as they are now, but I only really laughed at maybe one out of five comics.  So it’s not a big loss for me.  I have no idea how progressive the comic is now.  I have no idea if they ever posted a public apology anywhere, or just quietly removed the offending comic hoping nobody would remember it.  I don’t know if the author’s opinion of trans issues has changed in the past nine years.  They’re allowed to have mistakes in their past, as long as they learned from them.  I know I’ve got plenty of regrets of my own.  I don’t expect other people to stop reading the comic just because I personally found one of their older strips offensive, and I’m not pushing to get the comic taken off the internet.

But it did bother me enough to write a blog about it.

The Greatest Insult

Everybody has their idea of the worst insult, the worst thing someone can say to you.  For Marty McFly, it was being called chicken.  For Sheldon Cooper, it’s disrespecting his grandmother.  For some people, insulting is an art form, while others just randomly pull words from a bucket of obscenities.  I had a friend in high school who had written and memorized a page-long insult that took several minutes for me to read, but he could recite it in 20 seconds like he was channeling Dennis Leary.

I once saw an insult comic at a RenFest, who would take money from the audience to insult other members of the audience.  He ended the show with a $100 insult, and it was pretty impressive.  Everyone laughed their heads off, including the one being insulted.  Nobody got offended, because his insults could have applied to anybody.  The comic didn’t actually know the people he was insulting, so they were just words.  His insults didn’t point out physical flaws – he didn’t make fun of anyone’s weight or height or baldness.  Instead he made long, baseless accusations about things he couldn’t possibly know.  So if he ranted at someone for being a chronic masturbator, the words meant nothing because he would have said them to anyone.

If the movie “Roadhouse” has taught me one thing (and hopefully it hasn’t), it’s that most insults are just words designed to provoke a specific response.  If you give in to that response, you’re giving them exactly what they want.  The words themselves mean nothing if the insulter doesn’t know you.  Did he call your mom a bitch?  Well, does this person actually know your mom?  Did he say you have a tiny penis?  Well, has he actually seen you naked?  If the insulter would say these things to anybody to get into a fight, then the words are hollow, and you have no reason to feel disrespected.

The greatest insult has to be from someone who already knows you, or at least knows things about you.  If a customer calls you lazy because you made their burger too slow, they don’t know if you were up all night taking care of the baby and had to mow the lawn that morning before coming into work.  But when your wife calls you lazy, it’s because she knows you didn’t do either of those things.  She also knows you played video games all weekend when you were supposed to be fixing the car, and now she has to take the bus to work.  When she calls you lazy, it should hit hard, and you should feel guilty about it.

The greatest insult, in my opinion, doesn’t involve any offensive words, doesn’t involve any references to your mother, and can only come from someone who knows you at least a little.  And drumroll please, here it is, the worst thing one human being can say to another:

The world would be a better place if you weren’t in it.

That’s it, that’s all, but it has to be said with sincerity.  The idea that your existence not only causes the insulter pain, but many others as well.  That you are doing more harm than good in the world.  That if you would simply fade away, society would benefit.  That anything good you’ve ever done is outweighed by all the bad.

When someone criticizes you for your political opinions, they don’t know all the reasons you voted the way you do.  Maybe you don’t like Politician X, but still vote for them because Politician Y is so much worse.  Maybe you don’t like your candidate’s position on Issue A, but you overlook it because Issue B is so much more important to you.  I get that, I really do.  Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and push that button, electing the lesser of two evils.

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people ask why we can’t just get along, saying we should love our neighbor regardless of their political opinions.  And I want to believe that.  But your politics don’t exist in a vacuum.  Your vote directly helps or hurts people besides yourself.  Sometimes I’m the person your politics hurt.

If you vote for Candidate X, and Candidate X believes that the world would be a better place if people like me weren’t in it, it’s hard not to take that personally.  Your vote is a direct insult to me, the worst possible insult, and it may even put me in physical danger.  So as much as I want to reconcile with the other side, as much as I want to accept people’s politics the same way I accept other differences, it’s a much harder sell.  Politics are a choice, and if you’re making the choice to hurt people like me, we’re going to have a hard time being friends.

My Pet Monster

So I got into bed last night, after watching several spooky videos on YouTube.  A few minutes later, some mysterious creature jumped up on the bed, and curled up into a ball on my back.  Intellectually I knew it was my youngest cat, Kara.  However, it felt a lot heavier than Kara, and the way she initially curled up, it felt like she had more legs than cats usually have.  I pictured a giant hand pressing against my back, or some large tarantula-cat hybrid.

I started picturing all sorts of weird, demonic animals that could touching me.  I kept wanting to reach out and touch it, but I didn't want to get my hand bitten off by demon spawn.  But then it occurred to me, so what if this is a demonic spider-cat.  It's curled up next to me sleeping.  This means it loves me, and I make it feel safe.  If it is a demon creature, then all the better, because it's my demon creature.  You can't get better protection than your own little monster.

I finally did pet it, and it was, indeed, Kara.  Kind of disappointing, to be honest.