This is not going to be a good essay. This is going to be a terrible essay, which you should not read, for two reasons. First, I am extremely upset by the continuing accusations of misogyny and white male privilege. Second, the things I am going to talk about now are unpleasant. I do not talk about them. In fact, some of this stuff, I have never publicly talked about.

Stop reading now.

Before my 10th birthday, I had already been the victim of molestation, incest, and torture. I was raised by my mother, with two sisters. My father once picked me up, held me over his head, and dropped me. My first step-father beat and tortured me for sport. My second step-father punched me when I was sleeping, and kicked me out of the house before my 18th birthday.

When my mother divorced my first step-father, my life was in such jeopardy that I was sent to live with my grandparents in Mississippi. While there, I was the victim of racism, called things like “gook” and “chinaman” because of my Japanese father, which was ironic, because growing up in Hawaii, they called me a “haole” because of my white mother.

I took home economics both years I was in Mississippi. I was the victim of sexism and homophobia, forced by the school to take shop because my interest in cooking and sewing was judged queer. I was the only boy in school to join the Future Homemakers of America, where I was barred from events because I was a boy, despite paying the same dues as everyone else.

When I came back to Hawaii and went through puberty things only got worse. My mother recognized my father in me, and hated me for it. She would mock my genitals, and encourage my sisters to do the same, saying things like, “you know what they say about Asian men.” My nickname at home was TWP, which stood for “teeny weeny peeny.”

After high school, I tried to leave, moving to Florida to live with my dad. His wife kidnapped me at gunpoint, forced me to write a series of false “confessions,” which cost me my relationship with my father, then threatened to kill me if I spoke a word. I moved back to Hawaii, but the victimization continued.

I was not allowed to finish college, because my mother wanted me to work, whoring me out to anyone who needed some holes dug or some rocks moved. During this period I was nearly murdered by a carjacker. After being diagnosed with PTSD, I was denied treatment, and lived in constant fear, only able to leave the house in the middle of the night.

How could so much bad happen to one person? Because victimization leads to victimhood, and victimhood invites victimization. As a victim, I was always looking for someone to save me, but every savior that came along was just another victimizer. This cycle is well known and heavily documented phenomenology.

I broke the cycle when I worked at Alaska Airlines. On the ramp, I was stuck between the union and the company. I tried being a union man. I tried being a company man. Then one day some union members attacked me, spray painting epitets on the front door of my apartment. The company didn’t care. I realized I was alone in the world, and that nobody would ever save me.

That job was dangerous, with a 100% injury rate. I had two friends die at work, and several close calls. I taught myself to code because I needed a less dangerous job. I sacrificed everything to go work for Wil Shipley, to get where I am today. Nobody ever saw the talent in me and gave me a chance. My life, and my career, were paid for in blood.

I broke the cycle by refusing to let victimization turn me into a victim any more. I have since passed that hard-learned lesson on. That is, in fact, what my last essay was about. You don’t get to decide what life hands you. You don’t get to control what other people do. The only person you can control is you. You have to decide how you are going to deal with things.

As a side-effect of all this, I have come to hate two things: people who victimize others, and people who are false victims. The first one is obvious. Most of the time when I get really out of control angry, it’s because someone has kicked a metaphorical puppy. The second one is more subtle. It’s best illustrated with a story.

I believed you.

Back in the day of landlines, before things like call waiting, you would get a busy signal if you tried to call someone who was on the phone. You could, however, call the operator, and have them break into the call with an emergency interrupt.

One day my mom was on the phone and a female friend of mine broke through on an emergency interrupt. My mom handed the phone over to me, but she was furious, saying that it had better be a real emergency, whereupon my friend blurted, “I was raped.”

I responded with, “I believe you.” If you think that sounds weird, I think so too, but in school they taught us that if anyone ever tells you they were raped, you should tell them “I believe you.” I did believe her. I was terribly upset. I wanted to call the police, to take her to the hospital. It quickly became clear, however, that she was not raped, and in fact had just said that to get my mom off my back.

She didn’t see a problem with that. Our friendship ended there. The reason they have to teach kids to believe people who say they were raped is because of people like her. Faking victimhood is not an innocent game. It causes far-reaching and long-lasting damage to real victims.

This was the thrust of my first essay about the Violet Blue hubbub. To crash a party, act horribly, then position yourself as a victim is a disservice to real victims with real problems. It also sets the terrible example of dealing with life’s imperfections by casting oneself into victimhood.

I spent most of my life as a victim, but I am not trying to make this a pissing match of misery. I am trying to make the general point that, whatever horrible things life hands to you, letting your victimization define you as a person only makes things worse. This is not the theoretical rambling of a privileged white male. This is hard-won, first-hand advice of a non-privileged non-white victim.

We need to stop being -ists who beat each other over the head with our -isms. These are walls we erect that separate us from society. We need to be people who take care of ourselves and each other. We need to work together to solve specific problems. We need to give up our very real right to be offended, not because we don’t deserve it, but because it’s not helpful.

If you think that makes me misogynist over-privileged white man, I think that makes you an asshole with a reading comprehension problem who is over-compensating by projection. I have no more time or energy to spend on people who are wrong on the Internet.