I know don't often talk about personal stuff on here. That's by design—I'm a self-professed paranoid freak who understands how much armchair detectives love to piece together bits of information that they find on internet randos like Charlie Kelly tracing down Pepe Silvia. That having been said, I'm the only one of my entire family who's anything other than cisgender-heterosexual. The thing is, no one but my mum knows this.
If you follow me on Tumblr, you probably saw the bit where I said I may have accidentally outed myself to my conservative extended family the other week. And, we have Bandcamp to blame for that, I might add. How? Since I wasn't a paying subscriber to Bandcamp Pro, I didn't get the basic human right of seeing who my followers were. I had 17, but I could only see who 5 of them were. So, when I made the announcement that I was moving over to itch.io, I had no way of knowing that one of my followers was this conservative extended family member of mine. In its initial form, my itch profile had my name and a link to this website on it—except that my name is different than the name he knows me by and, as you know, this website talks a hell of a lot about being trans. Plus, there's the big-ass "About the Webmistress" button right there on the homepage. It was as though I was standing outside this uncle's picture-window wearing my crop-top and wrap, carrying my Trans Pride banner. I couldn't take that risk, because this uncle happens to be the brother of an ultraconservative Christian fundie-type Trump supporter who can't keep a fucking secret; so I deleted all direct references to myself from itch. I couldn't risk having this other family member knowing I'm trans and then blabbing to the rest of the family, because they also happen to be the only two family members who ever talk to my mum—just, casual-like. "Hey, how you doin'" type of conversation.
The worst bit is, no one else from Bandcamp has followed me on my new site, and it's not like Mr. Conservative ever spent much money there in the first place. It's not like he snapped up everything I ever released. I'm serious when I say he puts Ebenezer Scrooge to shame, is how cheap he is. He bought, maybe, 3 of my singles, 0 of my EPs, and mum compelled me into sending him a free CD copy of Eight Solid State as a Christmas gift one year. In effect, what I did was warn my conservative extended family that I have a new storefront from where they won't ever buy any of my music, but where they can see if I link to a website that outs me. I had so wished that I could just disappear from Bandcamp and have this uncle believe I wasn't selling music online anymore, so I could rebrand LCI, use my new name, and generally be free of this cheap-as-free interloper for the rest of my life.
But, no. Instead, what I have is a Trump-supporting evangelical family never buying anything from me and making sure I don't ever come out of the closet. Does that make me a coward? I don't know. But I do know that if Trump-fundie finds out I'm trans, no one will ever ring mum on the phone again.
--21 November 2023--