I Lost My Special Interest

Anyone who knows me knows that my main autistic special interest through my entire adult life has been professional wrestling. But ever since the Covid-19 outbreak things in the industry have taken a turn for the worst and while I still love wrestling in the sense of the art form, the athleticism and so on, I've majorly fallen out with the industry and I'm no longer willing to support it. This post is more of a rant than anything else but I need to vent as I've been sitting on this for at least a couple of weeks now.

I guess we should start at the beginning with the outbreak and the worldwide lockdown that followed. The first issue is with how WWE have handled the situation. They literally did no testing for Covid for the first 3 months or so meaning that their wrestlers and their off-camera staff were put at risk. They had changed to taping shows in an empty arena at their training facility which protected the public from infection, but that comes with its own issues which I'll get to in a moment. Despite a number of different wrestling promotions still continuing to put on weekly televised shows, I'm strongly of the opinion that all shows should have been cancelled until it was safe to continue, and I also think that taking a break like that would be beneficial to the company although my reasoning for that isn't relevant here.

Next up, we have a turn of events that was described by many as a "bloodbath" back in April. This was a mass release (a.k.a. firing) of many, many wrestlers and other back stage staff members. WWE have been known to hoard talent for quite a while now, resulting in having more wrestlers than they can feasibly make use of, and therefore a lot of them who really deserve better basically got lost in the shuffle. EC3 was a well noted example of this. He was a huge star in Impact! Wrestling before he went to WWE, but then WWE did next to nothing with him and barely gave him any screen time. Lots of these performers were cold-heartedly released from their contracts, which would normally have been a blessing for people like EC3, but it came at a time where the state of the economy itself was uncertain and lots of people worldwide were fearing for their jobs. There's also the fact that WWE really did not need to fire anybody at all. Yes, the firings free up some money for the company, but all of their financial reports show that with or without the performers and staff members that they let go of, and with or without the pandemic, they will survive as a company for years to come. After all, they are literally the biggest professional wrestling company in the world. Their hoarding of talent shows the stranglehold they've got on the industry, and although it's been known for years the firings well and truly demonstrate how much of a money-grabbing bastard Vince McMahon really is. But then, would you expect any less from one of Donald Trump's best mates?

Which leads me onto my next issue; WWE continued putting on shows because Trump classed them as an "essential business". Don't get me wrong, as a fan I'm grateful that we still got the shows as scheduled and I actually didn't mind the lack of audience to begin with, although the novelty did wear off. But the reason they got classed as an essential business -and thus allowed to continue as normal - is because Vince's wife Linda made the jump to politics a few years ago and is doing what she can to support Trump's re-election campaign. Basically, Trump allowed them to continue business as usual meaning that lives were put at risk in exchange for the McMahon family's help in getting him re-elected. Dodgy AF to say the least.

Now we go to issues that are primarily outside of WWE, but that's not to say that WWE wrestlers haven't been involved. This is the #SpeakingOut movement that saw females in the wrestling industry (wrestlers, partners, friends etc) speaking out about abuse that they had suffered at the hands of male wrestlers. The abuse that they told of apparently started in the British scene but had started to permeate its way into the US, and involved a whole range of things such as rape, manipulation, sexual harassment and the like. Lots of (mainly British) wrestlers were fired from the companies they performed for in the aftermath of these revelations and the most heartbreaking one for me was discovering that Ligero had been involved and subsequently fired from WWE's UK division. I'd long considered Ligero to be my favourite wrestler on the British scene having followed him for a number of years prior to him joining WWE, and he is (or at least was - I'm not sure if he still is after all this came about) one of the trainers at the wrestling school in Leeds that I would have loved to train at if I had the time, the money and no family commitments. I always wanted to train with him so now I feel betrayed by one of my heroes.

Then not long after #SpeakingOut took off, came the news that Impact! Wrestling had fired Tessa Blanchard - their world champion at the time. Not only is Tessa a phenomenally talented wrestler, but the fact that gave her as a woman the opportunity of holding the company's biggest championship speaks volumes about the faith they put in her... Until she went and threw it all away. The reason that I heard for her firing was that during lockdown she essentially couldn't be bothered to film any promotional/interview clips that the company kept asking for. As the company's top champion they quite rightfully expect her to keep her end of the bargain and actually do her job. This is even after they had stood by her through various allegations of racism and bullying, but she went and threw that back in their face. Just to give the magnitude of the situation some context, the last time any major wrestling company fired their world champion was way back in 1991 - almost 30 years ago -  when WWE fired Ric Flair.

You may think it's a good thing that they fired her, and I completely agree that it it is. But what pisses me off is that she's just 1 more example of this attitude in the wrestling industry that other people don't matter or are expendable, and the only thing that matters is that you get to the top of the industry. I mean fair enough, do what you can to make yourself successful and get to where you want to be, but don't do it by using other people as stepping stones, don't ruin people's lives for the sake of fame and fortune. Basically just be a decent person/promoter/company while also doing what you love.

If you follow me on social media you might have noticed that I was over the moon with my birthday presents in July, which were 2 wrestling Funko Pop figures. While I've fallen out with wrestling big time, the wrestlers who I've got figures of have done nothing wrong (at least to the best of my knowledge) so I'm still a fan of them as individuals. Plus my wife bought them both second-hand so I got 2 Pops that I really wanted without any money going to WWE. I've decided that I'm going to buy all of my wrestling merch second hand from now on. Just as a side note, one of the Pops I got for my birthday was Alexa Bliss. As an autism advocate I can sometimes dip into the mental health side of things, which leads me to look up to Alexa because of overcoming anorexia as a teenager, and because of how she's been known to encourage young people from time to time who are going through the same battles that she went through.

Sorry for the rant but I needed to get it off my chest. I was going to write this a few weeks prior to the actual time of writing but I was still too sore about it to bring myself to write it. In terms of other special interests, I love my Funko Pops and will collect more wrestling and non-wrestling ones, and I've been spending almost any and all time that I can on my PS4 - Currently playing The Last Of Us Part II if anyone's interested. please hit the Follow button in the side bar and follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: My shelf of WWE figures, but not my WWE Funko Pops, which are on a different shelf. At the front are my Nano Metalfigs from Poundland of (left to right) Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, Demon Finn Balor, Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins. Behind them are my 3 full sized figures of Becky Lynch, John Cena, Finn Balor and Alexa Bliss. All are still in their original packaging except John Cena.]

Victim Blaming: A Sudden Realisation

The reason I write this blog is because it's a way to use my limited time and skills the best way I can in autism advocacy. Any dealings in the world of autism will inevitably cross over into the mental health world although autism in itself isn't a mental health condition - it's just a difference in brain structure. It can also cross over into the way people treat each other and the way we raise our kids. This week's blog post isn't directly about autism other than being about the personal experience of an autistic person, but it does address my treatment at school and the issues it has caused. It's something that I suddenly realised today (although there is a delay of a few weeks between me writing this post and its scheduled publishing date) and it's something that the more I think about it the more I'm really unhappy about it. That being the heavy level of victim blaming that I was put through during my school years.

As a kid I was always bullied. Badly. On the surface of it, it was mostly for being overweight but I think I might have mentioned in a previous post that although I was severely overweight I wonder whether I would have been bullied anywhere near as much if I was neurotypical. It's clear to me that nobody knew I was autistic at the time but I must have been outwardly "autistic enough" to show some sort of difference or weirdness, and although they couldn't pin it on anything specific as they didn't know I was autistic they still saw fit to harass me for it. Targeting my weight was just the most obvious and easiest way they could do that. Why else would the autistic fat kid get bullied when the neurotypical fat kids were all treated absolutely fine? I tried countless times to get help to stop the bullying but my school did nothing about it. I was simply told to ignore the bullies and they'll stop. So I ignored them. They didn't stop. There were at least a couple of times when the bullying got so bad and/or I'd put up with it for so long that I reached breaking point (which takes A LOT for me) and I snapped and I physically lashed out at the bullies. Each time I reached breaking point and got into a fight the school would tell my parents "I'm not surprised, it's been a long time coming" and even "It's been heartbreaking to watch how the other kids treat him." Yet they were happy to punish me after they sat back, watched the abuse that the other kids put me through and did absolutely nothing about it. These teachers at my school were the so-called responsible adults whose care I was under. This is neglect and victim blaming, and it's absolutely not OK in any way, shape or form. It wasn't OK at the time and it'll never be OK due to the lasting damage that it's done to me, even now 16 years after I left school (I'm 32 - that's half my life!).

Because of the victim blaming I was put through I now feel like everything is my fault, or at least is going to get turned around and used against me. If there's something I don't agree with or where I should put my point across I don't, simply because growing up I was always told to ignore these things, encouraged to bottle it up, and then punished when it caused me to lash out. What kind of message does that send to a child at school age? It does nothing but show that their thoughts, their feelings, their opinions don't matter, and that when they reach out for help they'll either be ignored or have it turned around against them. If I'm completely honest I don't know which is worse. And yet people always wonder why I'm the quiet one and keep myself to myself. Your childhood is where you and your view of the world are shaped in preparation for adulthood. If your school can't (or in my case won't) set you up properly for adulthood then not only is it setting you up for failure in later life, but the school itself is failing in its duty of care.

I've always had a hard enough time talking to people and building relationships since I'm autistic but my experience at school certainly didn't help matters. The vast majority of my bullies at school were boys and I'm convinced that this is the reason I've always got on a lot better with girls. In fact, I'd even go as far as saying that I often feel intimidated by men to a certain degree, especially the ones who are overly laddish, macho and full of bravado. I would also partly blame this for my difficulty in forming romantic relationships as well. Because I always got on better with the girls I almost always found myself friend zoned when I hoped for something more. I'll leave the relationship side of it there because I've already addressed it in my previous post on Sexuality. Feel free to check it out if you want to delve deeper.

I have to wonder if things would have been different had it been known I was autistic. Both my primary and secondary school were equally guilty of ignoring the bullying that I went through, but looking back I think there was 1 teacher at my primary school who went as far as bullying me himself. I can't remember much about that part of my life but what I do remember is how he made it obvious that he didn't like me. I remember being put in detention a lot specifically by him although I really can't remember the reasons for it, and I'm not convinced that I knew/understood the reasons at the time. Based on what I can remember I think he probably just didn't like me because I was different, and I'm guessing that there was something I used to do that he saw as acting out when in fact it was most likely just autistic child behaviour. Either way, the way he treated me as well as the way my bullying was handled were unacceptable. I can't help thinking about whether this would have happened if the schools knew I was autistic? Would both primary and secondary schools have done more to protect me if they knew I was autistic? But then on the other hand, would an autism diagnosis have just given the bullies 1 more thing to target me for and made things worse? Would school have done more to establish and accommodate my needs outside of the bullying if they knew?

It's a shame that these questions will never be answered, and it's even more shameful that my experience at school has left me with these scars that I'll have for the rest of my life when they could have easily been prevented. It's strange how I never even thought about it this deeply until I saw a post on Twitter recently about a school that was guilty of victim blaming and it resonated with me so much. It's also strange how even though I always knew what happened at school it never really occurred to me how bad it really was until it got given the name victim blaming. I really wish that there was something I could do about it in terms of the specific schools I went to, but at least by blogging about my experience as well as about autism as a whole I'm raising awareness and educating so that hopefully the same kind of thing doesn't happen to other people.

It's been a bit of an emotional one this week but I hope it's helped put some things into perspective and helped your understanding. As always, feel free to comment if you've got any thoughts to share, and don't forget to follow the blog with the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page as well as following me on Twitter @DepictDave.