·wiikifox's den: about me

freedom is the inherent right of every living being — may it be fulfilled or not. my freedom ends where other's start, so nothing that i do should limit what you can, nor viceversa.

equity levels the ground where we exert our freedom, acting as a countermeasure to the inherent inequality of life. equity gives the everyone the tools they might need to achieve what others can without them.

creativity is the way we enjoy this level ground: when you're free from any burden, what else is there to do but to create, and enjoy the creations of others? art, creation, is the essence of what makes us human.

chaos is the source of creativity, the spark that ignites the creational fire within us, chaos is what drives a free, burdenless life. nothing lasts forever, everything changes — even memories do.

playfulness is the embrace of chaos, the acceptance that life doesn't make sense, and doesn't need to. do what makes you happy, let others do what makes them happy. enjoy life, since we don't know what comes next.

being raised in a cult made it take control over my entire life pretty fast. where even thought is regulated, there's no room for individuals, only the hive mind of "brothers and sisters" that comprise the community. i spent my childhood behind a mask, which i eventually forgot i was wearing.

when i first got my hands on the internet, i started by following the advice given at the time by the society (the headquarters of ·jehovah's witnesses): avoiding contact with anyone i didn't know personally (i.e. other witnesses), online discussion spaces (i.e. forums and the like), apostate material (i.e. anything talking against the religion), among other things. but i grew curious, i started to ask myself what was beyond the garden wall, which led me to try out social media for the first time.

i found a place in the furry fandom, which slowly challenged the queerphobia that is characteristic in the cult. cognitive dissonance started itching.

i stumbled upon free software and its ideals pretty fast, and under a year of owning my first computer i already was running linux and writting software, i was 13 or 14 years old. computers have always drawn my attention, and it really felt liberating to use my computer on my own terms. i migrated from ·twitter to the ·fediverse, before dropping social media altogether. social media overall was and is a source of stress for me, but it gave me the closest i had to real world connections — outside of the cult, that is. cognitive dissonance started burning.

one day, scrolling through some profiles, i found a link to something i had never heard about before: a pubnix, a shared unix system; i found a link to ·unix.dog. i filled in the form, submitted my application, and a few weeks later, i was in.

·unix.dog offered an ·xmpp server, where i joined and met other members of the pubnix. i started to branch out to other places on the network, meeting people that changed my life a lot. i remember a conversation with someone in a group chat which impacted me a lot, even if i refused to believe it did then. he was surprised to find a ·jehovah's witness on a furry ·xmpp groupchat. i agreed to have my beliefs challenged, and he didn't fail at it. i heard for the first time of all the atrocities the ·watchtower organization had made, and very good arguments against my whole belief system. i ignored him at first, as my "bible trained concience" told me to do; but the seed was planted. cognitive dissonance started hurting.

what does it mean? cognitive dissonance happens when you hold different, opposing thoughts and beliefs in your mind. for me, i "knew" i was in the one true religion™, but also knew all the stuff that was wrong with it. i "knew" that homosexuality was a bad thing, but also was friends with lots of queer people. i "knew" that the ·watchtower society was always right, but also knew all the times that they've backtracked in their decisions several times. i "knew" a lot of stuff, while knowing a lot of other stuff.

cognitive dissonance is a feeling that lingers in the back of your head, and grows stronger and stronger over time. i slowly started to question everything, to be more skeptical towards everything. i realized that the "truth" that i believed in my whole life was nothing but a scam, a very cruel and elaborate scam.

with time, pain and the great help of my friends, i deconstructed my beliefs, my sexuality, and at last: my gender.

if unix.dog helped me find my freedom, ·queer spark taught me what to do with it, it taught me how to help others to find it too. i learned about ·queer spark when it was still called ·jabbering queer, a small ·xmpp server for queer folks. it was a safe space to deconstruct and vent, a nice place to hang out. as a sample of gratitude, now i help as a volunteer in the project with any help i can offer, i'd love to see it thrive even more.