thedragonchilde:prismatic-bell:iamtheshieldthatguards:sourcedumal:aellagirl:samandriel:crypticcorvid
thedragonchilde:prismatic-bell:iamtheshieldthatguards:sourcedumal:aellagirl:samandriel:crypticcorvid:samandriel:How to give your kids trust issues and anxiety brought to you by privacy invading mormon DadSee Also: How to further endanger people in abusive relationships, brought to you by privacy invading mormon Dad, with control issues.It’s honestly like Christian Grey level micromanaging. Do you wanna fuck up your kid? Because this is how you fuck up your kid.My parents did this to me as a teenager.Nothing will ever match the horror of being called into your dad’s office at the age of 14 and him showing you screenshots of your own computer from the last several months.Screenshots of private conversations with online friends.Or records of my internet browsing history.And then my fundamentalist christian parents asked, “do you masturbate?” because they found I had signed up for this site called “okcupid” in order to do the fun personality quizzes they had on it. And okcupid was a “sex site.”And they would play mind games with me, pretending that they had been recording more of my activity than they actually had, but refusing to tell me how much, so I never really knew how much they actually knew, or how long they’d been spying on my computer, and I lived in constant fear of them pulling out a “WE KNOW YOU DID THIS, GOTCHA.” at any moment.Sometimes when I left the room they would sneak onto my computer and go through anything I had left open.I’m 23 now, and to this day I have a soul-crippling paranoia of anybody getting near my computer. Not even long term romantic partners. NOBODY touches my computer. Never ever ever ever.Because instead of actually communicating with your children, stalk them instead to manipulate them emotionally.My parents pulled similar shit. Mostly my father. Welcome to Trust Issues 101.My computer and phone are both password-protected because of this, with passwords in languages my mother doesn’t speak.For this reason. I’m 26. And I will never forget literally getting on my knees in front of her, crying and begging her to believe me, because she just kept letting out these sarcastic “uh-huh”s when I told her Fastweb was a scholarship website. Because looking up Jesse L. Martin for a school project meant I wasn’t taking my work “seriously.” Doing anything on the computer that wasn’t schoolwork meant I wanted to fail, and warranted groundings of up to three months at a time–often extended for the most minor of infractions. I started browsing the Internet at school because I felt safer with Net Nanny going than I did browsing at home.Today, my mom is not allowed to use my computer unless I’m literally hanging over her shoulder. There’s nothing bookmarked on here that’s objectionable–a few YouTube videos I don’t want to lose, a couple of online stores, a coin-collecting forum–but that fear is still there. The other day she told me I think she doesn’t know what I do online, but my comments get back to her “from Twitter.” When I told her I haven’t used my Twitter in over three years she backtracked quick, but now I have to wonder just how many of her so-called monitorings of me were lies.I was 14, maybe 15, and I was part of the wonderful fan community on the AvenueQ.com forums. I was well known for my giant adorable crush on Natalie Venetia Belcon, and thanks to my handle (this was the place I first went by JJ) I was assumed to be male until I include myself in a drawing of several fans with the show’s cast. Nobody really minded when the tiny, starry-eyed little geekling in the pleated skirt was not the straight boy they had expected, and neither did I mind that they had thought such a thing. In this space, from then on, I could be unapologetically bi, at least.One day I was hanging out on the porch with a friend, and we heard all sorts of banging and crashing from upstairs, but were too scared to investigate. After several minutes of that, my mother came out and asked us how we would react to seeing a gay couple on the street. We immediately knew this was a loaded question, and my friend grabbed her backpack and left.On my bedroom door was an angry printout message that made specific reference to recent forum posts I had made.Inside, my computer was gone and my room was completely trashed.I got it back a year later (without the tracer program but with an absolutely cannibalizing word filter), but not before making up whatever lie would make sure I was not kicked out, and not turning in papers out of fear that I was being tracked at school, and going about twelve steps back in both my self-acceptance and, ironically, my faith.I’m 24, and I still wonder if I’m being tracked. For years I would Google my name and all my email addresses to see what came up, and if any of it could be used against me. I didn’t tell any online friends this story until fairly recently (and even then they had to drag it out of me), in case my messenger clients were bugged. I’m afraid right now that somehow me typing this has just enough recognizable detail to trip off a search. If my ride home from work is late or there is radio silence from the folks or any number of situations where I don’t know what’s going on, my first thought is always that I will come home to a trashed room and a missing computer and receipts of my online safe spaces to explain, all over again. -- source link