Can There Be Love Under Capitalism?

Dear Wrestling,

At one point last night, I got closer to actually starting a fist fight than I've ever been in my adult life. And you know me--I talk endless shit, and back none of it up.

But when a dude yelled, during a Su Yung match, "Your husband hits harder than that"...

Well.

I didn't! I did stand and glare and yell back, "Oh, because violence against women is hilarious!" I was good!

(I couldn't tell which fucker it was for sure)

(I am the very worst pacifist, It Is Known)

I can't wait for the show to go on High Spots because there are several matches I'm eager to see again--a big tag match between the Syndicate and several guys that were new to me, in particular, and which finally convinced that I absolutely need to get to the next Pure show. If I gotta sleep in my car, it won't be the first time.

I do highly recommend the show, but I'm not great at recounting matches at the best of times, and this is certainly not that.

No muffins, I'm afraid tonight your cousin Autumn is going to get a bit rant-y.

So yeah, first of all, at least one guy in the audience thought it was hilarious to joke about domestic violence. You know that scene in the Crow when he gives all of Sarah's pain to the drug dealer? I wish that was a power I had, precisely for moments like this. It's not that I actually want to hit the guy or that I think it would in anyway help: I know it wouldn't.

It's that I want to him to feel as shocked and hurt as I did. I want him to hear a joke about whatever the worst time in his life was, and not once, but hundreds of times, because the culture doesn't give a shit And I want that all in a hypothetical situation because no one should actually have to live like that.

For subject no. 2, we have RAW tonight. Specifically, the remarkably transphobic segment involving Sami Zayn and some dudes in dresses.

I'm nonbinary--that means trans, to be clear. No, let me start elsewhere: I once heard a promo in which Kevin Owens used the word f****t. It was many, many years ago, and Styles was in it too, and probably deserves at least some of the credit.

It hurt so, so bad, to hear my favorite use that word. And I remember being shocked at myself, because before wrestling there was nothing on this green earth that I loved so much that I'd let it disrespect me. Not my mother, not my favorite band or author, *nothing*.

Yet I found myself still a fan. Willing to forgive it, somehow. I did not at all understand this change and I found it terribly alarming. Is this who I am now? And where does it stop? Will I just let any  reprehensible bullshit slide now?

Maybe. Apparently.

I'm very angry about the segment, and hurt, but mostly I'm just filled with questions. Not particularly polite ones either, ones I would probably never ask to someone's face, but this post isn't about the hours I spend to archive their ephemera for possibly no good goddamn reason, so I feel pretty certain they won't find this:

1. How could you?

2. Do you understand that this hurts real people? That trans people are the most murdered minority, and the most at risk of suicide?

3. Do you think this is funny? Follow-up, how on earth was I so wrong about you if so?

4. You just not a fucking punk now or what? Dare I use the dreaded S word?

5. You do more humanitarian work than anyone else in that company, so how the hell does that work? You just turn your soul off when you go to work? God knows I have...

6. If you have so little power over the work you do, that you couldn't even object to this pile of moldy putrid disease, how on EARTH is this your dream job?

7. Is it your dream job because you came up in a time when it was the only chance you had of making money?

8. Seriously, just, what the fuck?

9. Is there a more direct insult you'd like to offer your fans? A straightforward 'fuck you', or just more general agreement with the current US administration?

I adore Kevin more than I can say, and Sami has given me so so much.

Is this the point when you start discreetly returning your friend's stuff, so you can cut ties cleanly?

I remember when he said the housewife line to Bryan last fall, and how sick that made so many of us feel. And we excused it, we said, "Oh, he's never really been a heel before, he's just figuring it out, he'll course correct! It'll be fine!" And he went on Talk is Jericho and said basically that, and we all said, phew, we still get to be fans, yay!

So I guess we get a few months at a time now, and then we get to have a big crisis of love again. How many fucking times am I supposed to watch someone treat me and mine like shit before I say ENOUGH?

I am really worried that I know the answer, and that it's very much the answer of a not-that-recovered abuse survivor.



Do fucking better, you piece of shit. I goddamn love you, gods help me.
Autumn