I went to Clown School

The results of the 2024 clowngames pronoun tournament are in. My new pronouns are We/Us/Our (royal). Please use those pronouns when referring to me from now on.

Example sentences: "I invited clowngames to hang out but We said Our energy was too low and We needed to rest. We said to go on and hang out without Us, so that's what we're doing now."

Anon sent a follow-up ask which I'll add here for the complete message:

Like yeah, am I fucked up? Yes. Do I need to work through the trauma of dealing with white supremacy so that I don’t take it out on my white peers yes. Am I angry that I literally won’t say it to any of my white friends out of fear of retaliation? Yes. And like. Yeah.

It's a nuanced subject that I have a history of weighing in on and then avoiding weighing in on. But I also want to make it clear that the context in which this ask was sent was even more complicated:

I wrote a piece of 2nd-person microfiction about Jax's mother from The Amazing Digital Circus in which I referenced her hating men, and also hating "weak" men. And I think it's really important that in her case what's happening is a seemingly-contradictory combination of hating men because of patriarchal trauma and still fully buying into patriarchal ideals that produce those men.

Jax's mother is an abuse victim and an abuser. Her husband was the type of man the patriarchy trained her to want; exactly the type of person most likely to traumatize her into hating men. Because she was so conditioned by the patriarchy, she punished her son* for failing to live up to the very patriarchal archetype that she was afraid of. Jax/Lee was damned if they do, damned if they don't.

I don't even think this is a case of "I hate men, so I'm going to take it out on my male child." Because, like, the majority of women I see saying they hate men are most likely not going to resent their own son if they had one. That's maybe a problem that exists, but I've never seen it.

Imagine hating men, and hating "weak" men even more, and taking it out on your son because if he's not one he's the other. And he finally tells you he's not a man at all, and that he'd rather be a woman, and you laugh, because that's the most pathetic weak man shit you've ever heard, so you start making fun of him but the more you think about it the nicer that sounds; a daughter instead of a son. He'd make a better woman, anyway, and maybe the two of you could even grow closer if you just stopped pushing him to be something he obviously wasn't ever going to be. So you go to hug him, and he pushes you so hard you hit the counter and the floor and are knocked out cold, and you never fucking see him again.

You've gotta feel like you were so close to finally understanding him. And now you've got hospital bills and he's gone and maybe it's what you deserve. Maybe you failed him. Maybe you poured all your love into the wrong vessel and he never got a drop. And you think, was that hug the first time you touched him since his dad left? But now you're thinking about his dad, and you're thinking, maybe he responded violently to affection because that's who he is. Maybe it wasn't you at all.