Voting for people that perpetuate violence and enact legislative oppression is an act of violence and oppression.

I'm at about that point with my mother. I'm debating just completely cutting her out of my life, like I did with my father. They were never good people.

My father has always been completely evil; when I was a kid he would beat me for being too feminine (he thought I was a gay man but I'm actually a femme trans lesbian).

My mother mostly just blamed me for "provoking" him, and said it was my own fault. They are conservative christians who worship Reagan more than Jesus.

I was heavily brain washed as a kid, my access to outside information was restricted, I was told not to watch certain news channels because they were filled with lies. The whole town was super conservative.

In school, history and social studies classes were basically just right wing propaganda with names and dates to memorize (they even glorified the smallpox blankets as a good tactical move), science class taught that global warming was made up to sell newspapers and boost TV ratings.

The ideas they forced on me always felt wrong and uncomfortable, as compassion warred with indoctrination in my mind.

Before I could go to college, I had to wait until I was old enough that my father's income didn't count for student loans since he made something like $200k per year but refused to pay for my college. He wanted to keep me living with him, where he could make sure I didn't do anything he deemed "gay".

I couldn't get a job and leave, since I have fibromyalgia that makes a job where I have to stand all day or do physical labor nearly impossible for me. Plus being encouraged to stay inside watching TV and playing video games all day with no responsibilities was pretty tempting, especially when he would often talk about how I would probably starve to death if he didn't let me stay with him despite the fact I was in my 20s, so I didn't really see an alternative.

I was able to break free due to a few different factors:

  • I am incapable of faith, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't make myself believe something without evidence. I stopped believing in god when I stopped believing in Santa.

  • I am intensely compassionate by nature, so suppressing that with indoctrination doesn't work very well.

  • I'm a trans woman and was beaten and abused because of my feminine nature.

  • At about 14, I found out trans people exist due to an episode of a cop show where the murder was a trans woman. I'd always felt I was a girl in the wrong body, but that let me know I wasn't unique, I wasn't alone.

  • I went away to college. Just not being surrounded by indoctrination helped, no one in my family (including me) was on social media either, so I was isolated from them, except for occasional phone calls. I didn't make any close friends there and didn't go out much but if I had it might have helped even more. (I was in my mid to late 20s and had less experience with social interaction than most 14 year olds since I had never had any friends my entire life, so people understandably didn't want to hang out with me) Another thing that limited it's effectiveness was that my father offered to help cover the cost of an apartment so I wouldn't have to have roommates, but this was a trap so he could control me by threatening to stop giving me money and to isolate me from people further.

  • While at college I researched which states were more accepting of trans people and decided to move to California.

    • Right out of college I got a job as a software engineer at game company in silicon valley. But I still didn't understand my father's trick and accepted his offer to have him help me afford a nicer apartment. Which came with strings of him requiring regular video calls.
  • I lost my job a few months into the pandemic lockdowns (people ran out of money to spend on video games during lockdown I guess) and eventually got a new higher paying job where I wouldn't need my father's "help" anymore. This was the big one, he no longer had any strings to pull to control me, I felt free to think clearly for the first time in my life, without part of my mind evaluating every thought to try to determine what he would think about it. I scheduled an appointment with a doctor to start my transition within a few months of starting my new job.

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