This is literally what it’s like to be part of a marginalized group. Politeness is met with refusal to listen, and anger is met with demands for politeness.

A.M. Leibowitz, an author

I am marginalized. (I’m calling out my autistic side first.) But it really didn’t do much. Most people were nice. I succeed in school and did pretty well growing up.

I got along with people in school growing up, for the most part. I was quirky and weird and often didn’t make friends easily. People kind of bullied me in some circles. Not maybe for anything specific (I wasn’t that inherently autistic), but because I was different enough to be called out for being different. Kids don’t like people who are different.

A lot of schools I attended growing up had people I was able to get along with but often didn’t have people who seemed to be there for me. I don’t see it as direct discrimination, but rather, the average person’s response to seeing someone highly autistic who is more functional and on the opposite side of the disorder spectrum. Being hyper intellectual at a young age and sharing stories thinking it was objective information was a trip.

Because people would share all these stories with each other (at camps, or school, or other social arenas) about books they liked and shows and you know, experiences and interests and the like. I didn’t really understand my interests were both nerdy and often made me sound more proud and bragging rather than as someone who was objective.

I struggle to this day with how to answer questions when people ask me things and I am so overwhelmed and hyperstimulated that my ability to mask is nonexistent. I am seen as defensive when presenting my responses to questions, and often people would ridicule me, saying “I’m not attacking you,” when I never once said they were.

My passion and vigor for talking about things that excite me or are part of who I am are the things that I don’t know how to stop. It’s the part of me that can’t mask – or hide – the autistic traits that come up. I get so passionate that when people respond I get into a debate-like mode. I’m very direct and complete in answers. It does scare people though.

That’s where my second marginalized identity came in.

I was a queer woman. That wasn’t always that good. Not to church people.

I dated this religious guy who was abusive and had problems of his own. At this point, I was still very autistic, but no one really said anything – or cared – or mentioned it. I was not bad at masking around people, but if I live with you and you learn how to get under my skin and you overwhelm and trigger me, yeah, no. The mask cannot resist torment.

So now I claim the identity of both victim of abuse and survivor of domestic violence.

And those are almost as bad as the next that came with it: deconstructed Christian (survivor of relgious abuse and relgious trauma, and has a healthier view of God for it).

There was a school where my one degree didn’t work out. It didn’t work for a lot of reasons, and one of them is my being marginalized and not respected. I am now going to share the story of the guy I met there who showed me this, and I think is going to end up being okay, and if he’s not, he’ll professionally be just fine.

This guy “Patrick” wanted to complain to me about his marginalized status – mostly about his church being racist and discriminatory toward him. He had heard me explain that I had been through similar troubles and always wanted my advice and support.

It really was no issue. It’s stressful to go through life and think you have very few people to talk to about anything. I am happy to support friends and emotions don’t bother me.

But one day I asked Patrick if we could find a time where I could share about myself. I knew he was being friendly and I just don’t need to vent all the time like that. It comes in spurts and waves; it’s very inconsistent. So we agreed on a day and time.

The day we were scheduled happened to be a stressful and overwhelming day for Patrick. It was a yearly day that was hard. He simply had forgotten and was too embarrased to inform me ahead of time. I could tell when he picked up the phone that he wasn’t ok. I made sure he was okay to talk. He said he was. He talked about what happened.

He stops telling me how he is and says something to the effect of, “Start talking.”

I am stunned and floored because in all the stories I hear from him, this is unlike him. In the past, he normally will ask how I am. He’ll at least be more friendly. I don’t speak.

And so he goes, “Why aren’t you talking?” (Or say something to that effect.)

And I, in my overwhelmed, off-guard state, where my mask is no longer accessible, I bluntly respond with, “That’s not how you respond.”

And he goes off about how that’s being mean and rude and offensive. I try so hard to calm him down and yet all I hear is a bunch of accusations that I am doing something wrong and offensive by explaning what I meant. Even saying, “Are you okay?”

He ended the conversation in a huffy rage that I offended him by saying he was being dishonest to me and trying to figure out what he wanted. I texted him that it was not fair to me to lie to me, pretend that’s okay behavior, or even put on me that he couldn’t get it.

He and I later came to an understanding with one another.

He wanted to use me for free therapy, not to be friends. He didn’t want to hear about me or learn about who I was or what he could do to support me and my life. When I called him out, he went ballistic saying, “I can’t have dual relationships”. Which is funny, because I never asked him to be my therapist, I am not his therapist, and were we not friends?

It was then I understood my issue.

As a marginalized person, I am polite in how I ask for friendship. It is often met with a refusal to be friends. My anger at people refusing to listen and asking me to be perfect when I don’t need to be gets met with a demand for an apology for how I’ve hurt them.

I don’t accept being treated like that.

And for a school to have accepted someone marginalized enough where the average student is highly caring, but not toward highly and frequently marginalized people in society (especially those allowed to be discriminated against in relgious contexts), it seems irresponsible and neglectful. Maybe I cannot fix that.

The issue for me was not that people were mean or cruel.

People just were being allowed to perpetuate religious abuse and discrimination.

I share the story of Patrick not to say Patrick was mean or cruel. But rather to say that he represented my gripe with a functionally similar to an MDiv program (where theological training is super important): the people there are kind and can become great in their role but are not challenged to expand their worldview or consider the harm they have caused by not listening to and validating voices other than their own.

My voice was unable to be validated.

I had to learn to not use it, or risk failing a program.

I tried course after course to address the harm that sticking to saying the theology can cause a person. I was diplomatic and blunt. I followed directions. I didn’t break codes of conduct or use scripture translations outside the accepted ones. I compared and contrasted harmful theology with deconstructed theology. And neither are perfect.

But I was unallowed to share my story.

I learned after the first time I shared it, when no one replied to my discussion board post, that the class didn’t see it as important. The guy who had a gay brother got sympathy comments. The girl who spoke freely about wanting to change the way theology gets used so it doesn’t harm more people got crickets. And that could have been on me.

The school said they wanted me.

But I didn’t belong.

Breaking one student to see where your program failed isn’t fair.

I am marginalized because of things out of my control. Sharing those in a clinical program shouldn’t have been so alienating. And the moment it was and I called them out, I was told it was not my fault. But they didn’t do a damn thing to fix it, either.

I don’t fault someone for being in an environment they were meant to be in.

I blame myself for not being aware sooner.

Just because someone says, “Yes,” doesn’t mean it’s true.

I’m ok though.

Because there are some days I let my autistic side out a little more, and there are some days I keep it bottled up. There are some days my advocacy voice is louder. Some days I am silent. There are some days my internal need to let it out is bolder. And some days my trauma consumes me so much that I freeze until I have breathed so deeply I am ok.

But the point was so much bigger.

I often feel like I cannot claim being marginalized. It’s really hard as a highly educated, fairly financially stable, white person to claim that title, too. I can claim all the titles that contribute to being discriminated against and kicked out of spaces. But it’s hard.

I often see that trauma and marginalized identities go hand in hand.

There’s a lot of trauma being bullied for existing.

Especially when it’s being bullied for just exisiting as yourself.

And when people who think being marginalized means “People disagree with me” (looking at the Christians who say it), they don’t know how to talk to someone whose experiences with that term are really getting at “People rejected me for existing in a way that was different but not different in a way that held them accountable”.

People have relatively agreed that racism is bad.

It still exists in many systems, and that is horrific. I do not discredit the impacts, effects, and ongoing systemic injustices happening due to racism. Those are real, and I see and hear you. I do not say your struggle is any less than mine. I see yours as so valid.

People have a harder time saying you deserve to be mad that someone hurt you.

Systems of power and oppression exist AS WELL to find the ways that victims of abuse, especially abuse from a dominating force (patriarchy, religion, etc) are the “bad guy” if they speak up against their abuser. Because “not all -” do that. It’s invalidating.

I know there are so many overlapping features, and I am not only bringing up these in comparison to say – I see my struggle as different than racism. I don’t claim that. I do though know the same feelings and inner wounds that it causes. The rejection of being autistic (and really smart) in spaces makes me really compassionate of racism.

Not because I can say I personally have experienced. But the feelings? The inner guilt, and shame, and ways you blame yourself for saying that you deserved it because it’s not like anyone will believe you? All of that, I totally and completely understand.

Victimization and the ways marginalized people experience it are challenging.

I think it does cause mental distress. And is that an abnormal response to an already abnormal experience? I don’t know. But I do know that I thought people who had experienced hardships would want to know the parts of me like that, too.

But marginalization also includes being asked to not talk about your experience.

And that doesn’t always happen.

But often, it does.

And I want to be there for people. So someone listens to them.

Because no one deserves to be alone in that.

XOXO,

Dorothy B.