After I got doxxed that one time, I actually did cut off all contact with anyone under the age of 20, which directly led to one of my friends killing herself at age 17. I only learned about that a few months ago, when I accessed my old account and found her suicide note.
Apparently, she was heavily reliant on my support as proof that there were “good adults” out there.
But yeah, isolating teenagers away from any support structure whatsoever is totally safe for them.
My only friend I was truly close to and openly nonbinary to got sucked into the ‘you’re a bad, predatory adult for talking to a kid about fandom stuff’ and cut off all contact with me. For my own good. She cut off contact just after I had been raped at college and when I was beginning to have daily panic attacks. Cut me off after three years of talking to each other on the phone for hours, sharing fanart and fanfic with each other, watching movies and rushing to text one another about it, going over our very similar experiences as CSA survivors.
I was 17 when she cut contact because it was the ‘right’ thing to do. She was 20 when she was talked into thinking she was basically a pedophile for talking about Disney and Star Wars with me.
I’m 20 now and I’m still having trouble letting people in as a result of her bailing on me. I have a hard time believing people will stick around when she left me so easily after what felt like such a long time and a strong bond. She helped me through episodes of suicidal depression and I was her one-person cheerleader in convincing her that God didn’t hate her for being a lesbian, that she wasn’t a bad person for loving women, that it was natural. We were incredibly good for one another. I think hearing someone younger than her say it was no big deal gave her some hope in the younger generation, honestly. And hearing her explain how things could get better once I was old enough to get on medication for my mental illness (she was right) was a lifeboat in a stormy sea for me.
And there are lots of people on tumblr who would applaud her if I named her blog here for not being a ‘bad adult who talks to kids’. Who would see dropping me after one of the worst experiences of my life as a noble thing, a great thing, the standard by which all adults should conduct themselves – better that than be a ‘predator’ and return a text, an email, a phone call from someone so traumatized they dropped out of school and attempted to kill themselves twice in two weeks, right?
Any system of morality that allows you to cut contact with a rape victim and ignore them even when they nearly die is not moral purity. It’s not ‘saving minors’. It is killing minors and then saying they’re better off dead than ‘preyed upon’. The fear of being hurt is more important than actual hurt. The fear of being hurt is more important than the trail of bodies left in the wake of All Adults Are Predators bandwagon.
I am a bad adult because I would never abandon a 17 year old in my situation if the roles were reversed. I would never abandon a 16, 15, 14, 13, etc. year old and risk doing irreversible psychological damage or driving them to suicide.
I don’t care if that costs me the imaginary and worthless Moral High Ground ™. I just want everybody to make it out of these shitstorm years alive.
Minors who might be following me: I care more about getting you help than literally anything else.
If I wrote my heart out all day and all night for a year I couldn’t close the terrible holes in the world these authoritarians are making, and I’m so, so sorry, to both of you.
I write here because if I’d been a teenager in 2016, they might have killed me too.
And because I want to teach people to see what’s happening, and learn ways to question and reject and stop it.
Everything happens so fast. But we can still keep our doors and hearts open for the ones who aren’t gone yet.
“Anyone under the adage of 20 can’t be friends with anybody over it” is the new “Tumblr-friendly” version of “Men and women can’t be friends”
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Gay Hell 