Student Politics : An ugly, honest truth

CW: Mental Illness, Rape, Sexual Violence

To those of you who know me, it’s no secret that 2018 has been a rollercoaster journey, I started this year in crisis mental health care after relapsing into dangerous habits and attempting to take my own life on three individual occasions within days of the new year starting.

I have always found a grounding, a reason to carry on fighting another day, a purpose in activism. In earlier posts I’ve talked about my Psychotherapist often acknowledging I find a purpose in fighting injustice because there was no one there to fight for me, when from the earliest memories I can remember, I had gross injustices committed against me.

There are many things that I’ve not talked about, there’s a lot of things I’ve never explicitly put out there into the world, there have been implied comments, there have been indications but never have I ever spoken candidly on my experiences, partially due to ongoing police investigations,partially due to fear and partially due to that ingrained belief that no matter how many times you talk it out with people and no matter how many times you tell yourself and are told by others that it wasn’t, what happened to me was still my fault.

A lot of people I’ve encountered, especially since growing up and moving away talk fondly of their childhood, they talk about memories with siblings, family holidays and how great their childhood was and every single time I find myself hating myself a little more for not being able to connect to that.

I wouldn’t say that I had a childhood, I would say that my childhood was stolen from me. I sit here, typing this twenty two years of age, as a survivor of rape.

My earliest childhood memories are of graphic accounts of what was done to me and what was taken from me, there hasn’t been a night that has passed where I’ve closed my eyes and not relived it, there isnt a day that has passed where I’ve been able to look at myself in a mirror or have a photograph taken of me, because every sight of myself is a reminder of what happened to me and a reminder that my very existence is genetically because of a man who molested me.

I live every day in fear of resembling him, I live every living moment in fear that he will track me down, I live every single second of my life fighting the internal war in my head, the constant internal dialogue that I’d be better dead, that I deserved what happened.

It is only now with weekly therapy, daily medication and a close knit circle of friends and a few members of family that I carry on fighting, that I’m able to shut down that internal narrative and keep myself centred.

As a child, I distinctly remember looking around classrooms of children and not understanding why I wasn’t like them and absolutely resenting every fibre of my being for not being able to be the same as them. I found a voice in calling out injustice, questioning why things were the way they were, how things could be made better - I owe my very existence to the teachers that encouraged this and for having a mother who nurtured me the best she could and fought my corner. This progressed from student councils in junior and high school, through to sitting on the governing body of my college and simultaneously joining a political party.

I think I had been a member for three weeks before I was canvassed by a local candidate and my MP, we talked in depth about why I had joined, what mattered to me and was quickly talked into attending local branch and constituency meetings. This led very quickly to spending nearly every Saturday and Wednesday evening knocking on doors around the North West and I am eternally grateful for the ways in which this helped build my confidence and even ever so slightly hold that internal dialogue at bay — I may have been incomprehensibly hurt beyond healing by the man who should have taught me how to tie my laces, how to kick a ball, how to shave my face, I may have been let down by a policing system that made promises to a child they made no effort to keep but aged sixteen I was channeling that into helping local people with issues that really mattered to them and helping to elect representatives to fight for them. I think for a long time I’ve found myself in the habit of acknowledging that what happened to me must’ve been part of a higher reasoning or power setting my path in life to use my past as a means of helping others — yes even when it comes to getting their weekly bin collections and fences fixed.

I am forever grateful to the activists who dragged me out in the wind, rain and snow and taught me how to productively use my voice for the better, for encouraging me to use my voice to take a platform people like myself are often excluded from, to be visible. I am fiercely proud to be the product of a working class upbringing, the child of a single mother, an NHS nurse, the grandchild of a busdriver and cleaner. I am proud that when I look around me, I am still one of the only queer people from a council estate in Liverpool using my voice and talking about my experiences, making no apologies for my upbringing, making no apologies for taking a space I know I was not meant to fill in institutions, organisations and structures build for people made from a different cloth than the one I’m made of.

Upon starting University, like countless other working class kids around the country I have suffered imposter syndrome, I have questioned my right to be here. My rational thought path in finding a safe space, surrounded by people like me, was to join the university society affiliated to the political party of which I am a member, yet every event I was surrounded by people with experiences nothing like my own, people from extensive privilege masquerading as working class students, lying about their upbringing and alienating people from backgrounds like my own, denying them a platform and pushing them out of spaces where their voices should have been supported and encouraged.

Like any scouser, when met with a problem or a difficult situation, I saw this as an opportunity to change things so that people like me would never be made to feel the way in which I and many other students were made to feel, balancing my studies with a physically, mentally and emotionally abusive partner and severe mental health problems, by no means did I do this perfectly, but all things considered I did things to the best of my ability. I came away from the experience with a solid group of friends, people I felt I could finally be myself around, people who made me feel like I was at home and safe, people I, for the first time in a very long time, thought I could trust.

These people gave me the strength to walk away from a man who with his hands around my throat , told me I deserved what happened to me and build from the ground up. I trusted them with the secret I had held in and felt like for the first time in a long time I could finally start discovering who I am beyond an experience that I had allowed to define me. Never did I expect this to be weaponised against me, never would I have thought anyone would intentionally use such severe trauma to isolate and further traumatise me, never did I think anyone would act in such an abusive, malign and callous way.

That’s where I was wrong.

As much as political and more recently queer activism has granted me a freedom and sense of purpose in so many ways, student politics has consistently been used as a tool to isolate, exacerbate and marginalise me. I’ve seen first hand an organisation I saw so much potential in and gave so much to, bully and attack people whilst also preaching about inclusivity, safety and a fairer society. I was privy to conversations and phonecalls with plans of targetting, no platforming and alienating activists whom didn't abide to an ideologically narrow criteria of what it takes to be on the in clique.

What I struggle with the most, is the extent to which so many young people from all across the country, so many talented activists are lulled into a false sense of security, are promised safety and inclusivity but are spoon fed a factional, disingenuous narrative. Hundreds of activists around the country, from local University to national level will have been deterred, bullied and driven out of an organisation affiliated to a party they have absolutely every right to be represented and heard in. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what you know, it doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you work, what matters is which faction you agree with and your fate is sealed.

I have on several occasions, had my past weaponised against me, I sit here as a survivor, who for every day of their life has fought to carry on and I am exhausted, I am worn down and I am appalled at how an organisation can enable, justify and cover up actions of its own members who have weaponised my own rape and mental illness against me.

I sit here as a queer person, who has had their identity weaponised against them, has been threatened, bullied, intimidated and managed into silence because I dared ask for my own needs to be included.

I sit here, typing as a victim of personal and institutional bullying, who had was told their own rape, something that is painful enough to live with daily, was an ‘inconvenience’, made homeless and mocked.

I sit here, an activist, but no longer an activist for an organisation that seeks to enable, cover up and encourage this kind of treatment.

I sit here a survivor, a survivor of what happened to me, a survivor of the very worst of mental illness, beaten down, exhausted but I will not give up.

I implore anyone reading this, to please channel your activism into local, grassroots organisations, to channel your activism into organisations that value your labour, that support and encourge you regardless of what faction you may identify with and acknowlege the hard work so many of you put in, not to allow a redundant organisation to beat you down the same way it has myself and countless others before me.

Queer Lib, Black Lib, Womens Lib, Disabled Lib, Trans Lib, we all have SO much more to do, we have SO many more battles to fight, to continue fighting and we must do this, we must organise in political movements, not organisations held together by cliquey friendship groups, late night calls and deals behind closed doors.

We deserve to be here, we deserve to be heard, and we deserve better. We deserve structures that are truly accessible, intersectional and representative, institutions that are truly safe spaces for us to flourish in, not ones that seek to ostracise us, hinder our growth, ignore our voices and bully us into silence.