On the outside...

TW: Mention of suicide and sexual assault.

Or why social justice hurts. I should have learned my lesson but I never do.

White mainstream feminists have no time for me. I am not as privileged as them. I don't belong in their spaces.

PoC feminists do not want me in their spaces, because I am not one of them.

Gay and Lesbian circles have no time for me, I'm too "crazy" and Bisexual to belong there.

Trans circles have no time for me, I own a Uterus and am non-binary, and my life cuts like a knife in ways they don't like.

Poverty circles have no time for me. I do not fit the poverty porn mold of the virtuous poor person.

Survivors circles have no time for me, because I do not hurt in the 'right' ways or express that hurt in the 'right' way.

Autism circles have no time for me because my level doesn't remain stable when under pressure from other conditions.

Disabled spaces have no time for me, I am too harsh, too willing to defend myself. I lack what they feel is the right amount of 'vulnerability'. I never learned to play nice, it was smothered out of me by oppression.

They. I.

I'm on the outside, there are no spaces for minorities like me. We have too many oppressions clustered thickly on top of one another in great smothering sheets. We cannot exist within the spaces dedicated to one of our oppressions because those spaces don't acknowledge our layered existence, we're not just one thing, we're a multitude. A great mass of bleeding wounds, and spaces tenderly bandage one, then complain about all the blood on the carpet because of the others.

Yet we're never supposed to be angry or to resent those who yank open our bleeding wounds, peer curiously into the depths of our hurt and then declare it either not good enough or say there is no wound there at all. We're not supposed to talk about our conflicting lives with their intertwined existence of privilege and a whole mass of oppression. We're especially not supposed to talk about the ways the narratives single issues spaces push hurt us, or when another minority victimises us.

We're not supposed to talk about being told to not phone the police on minority rapists because the fact that the minority they belong to might suffer police oppression is considered more important than our safety and pain. We're not supposed to talk about the cult of nice. The cult that says speaking about oppression is so sacred that nobody may speak out when that speech oppresses.

We're not supposed to talk about how one sided it always is, with us walled out. The lack of support. The fact that social justice inevitably never applies to us, we don't belong so it's okay to slut shame, victim blame and do worse to us.

We're not supposed to talk about cut wrists and the sharp smell of blood, the rattle of yet another pot brimming with the little white pills. We're not supposedly to talk about hundreds of minority people hammering single person who doesn't fit, or the late nights talking, pleading, begging them to hold on, just one more minute, just one, until you're hoarse, exhausted and the sun is just coming up and you know the battle is won, at least until tonight when it starts all over again.

We don't fit and social justice advocates do this over and over to those of us on the outside. But we are never supposed to talk about it, our mouths stopped with "but you don't want to be a bigot" and told we're being unfair when we hint around the edges of why social justice hurts like a knife in you.

We are never supposed to talk because all is permissible in the pursuit of social justice for those with fewer oppressions. As silent as the grave we must be. Because we don't matter. We've never mattered, no multitudes turn out for us, our lives are unmarked by the concern of social justice advocates as fresh snow is unmarked by the tread of feet, we simply cease to exist in this landscape of neat boxes none of which we fit into.

Intersectionality? has never been for us. We don't fit into it's confines.