Toxic Positivity, Bullies & The Story I've Never Told - By Kane Jackson

Introduction

This is a photo I just took of my hand. In it, my nails are painted, as they almost always are these days. I'm wearing an engagement ring, that I had to ask 25 million strangers for permission to wear, and, a pride bracelet that was made for me by a 14 year old trans student my partner teaches. I wear it every day, to all my meetings, just as I paint my nails, to remind myself that I am not at all like I appear, and, to remember that truth always means more than the comfort of hiding from it.

Toxic Positivity

The Toxic Positivity that has infected LinkedIn, and which distinguishes it from other places frequented by humans, has created a breeding ground for the empowerment and legitimisation of bullies and liars. 

This culture, that now defines LinkedIn and influences everything that occurs on it as a platform, discourages critical thinking and truth-telling, and, instead, promotes an illusion of unity at the expense of honesty. 

Before LinkedIn, bullies and liars were largely confined to the bottom rungs of the professional world where they deserved to be, and, from where they could do little material harm. Society said that’s where they belonged, and, we policed it well, with critical thinking and truth-telling. 

But, not anymore. 

For the first time in shared our historic narrative LinkedIn has given a voice to people who society otherwise says are not entitled to one. Now, bullies and liars are empowered to thrive, emboldened by the absence of challenge and accountability to confidently project their harm into a world that’s increasingly broken because of them.

And yet, even today, 20 years since LinkedIn was created, few people know how, or are brave enough, to discuss this issue in the open. 

Instead, the topic of Toxic Positivity and the behaviour it breeds has been relegated to private messages and group chats between like minds where it’s made the subject of jokes; about the nefarious people that this culture allows to thrive, by the few people too ethically minded to simply walk by it. 

These private messages, the shadows of the internet that allow for difficult conversations few wish to have in the light, are where the only real truth and critical thinking occurs, so far as LinkedIn is concerned.

For this reason, LinkedIn and its users are heavily ridiculed by journalists and users of other platforms whose statements are challenged, not obsequiously congratulated by peers who share an interest in maintaining illusions so weak that they cannot withstand the slightest criticism.

The bullies and charlatans that now thrive on LinkedIn group together and attach themselves, like a virus, to legitimate host ‘communities’ or ‘ecosystems’, membership of which their survival comes to rely on. 

They hide in these ecosystems amongst good people who are, because of the Toxic Positivity that exists there, afraid to say anything true against them, lest it be perceived as negative or contrary to the interests of the community their survival also relies on. 

These bullies and frauds, conmen and women, liars and cheats, in this place free from critical challenge, band together and rally against criticism of anyone in their community, often becoming the loudest of the voices heard, for they are the ones with the greatest need for that particular narrative to be the one which is heard. 

They do this even when criticism cites fraud, deception and unethical behaviour that is known by almost all within their community. They do it even when such behaviour has been proven in a court of law. These people are so dependent on a positive narrative, to which they’ll never be entitled, that they ignore fraud, lies and mistruth, and, they tell it anyway, hiding from criticism behind a false banner of supporting their own. 

Then, they expect the same narrative to be told of them in return, from everyone in their ecosystem, should challenge or criticism ever be planted at their feet, for, they know, because of who and what they are, that it most surely will be, it’s just a matter of time. 

This is the effect of Toxic Positivity; that no matter how dire or difficult a situation, or, how uncomfortable a truth, ‘we mustn’t be critical’, ‘we mustn’t be negative’.

The cost of this Toxic Positivity is the loss of critical thinking and truth-telling. But, it also comes at the expense of the people that that honesty would otherwise have served, who are, coincidently, almost always less privileged. Because, as history tells us, neutrality always helps the oppressors, and never the victims. 

Because of this, Toxic Positivity is one of the most dangerous cultures that humans can be a part of. It harms society dearly and deeply. 

Elon Musk didn’t buy LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is not a congregation place for people with diverse thoughts each challenging the other in the open. LinkedIn is the congregation place for people of privilege, power and pedigree who don’t challenge anything, or anyone, no matter how much damage it causes society. 

LinkedIn is one of the only places today where people are free to move about unencumbered by challenges from people who are unlike them, and who would otherwise seek to hold them to account. It’s become an echo chamber of privilege, mistruth, misdirection, lies, and, bullies, who hide in the shadows behind the curtain of Toxic Positivity. 

In fact, the traditions of privilege and abuse of power that permeate our historic narrative perhaps find themselves better represented today on LinkedIn than any other place that so many of us frequent.

It is not surprising, then, that those who rely on a false pretence that they are good people doing good things assemble here, each supporting one another to believe that thing that they so desperately need to believe, and which their success relies upon, but which their actions alone never before earned them credit for, nor likely ever will.

These people shout the praises of themselves and others into a confirmation bubble so powerful and blind that any challenge to it is met with a collective outcry, born from Toxic Positivity, of “You’re negative. You’re the problem”.

Under the guise of unity and support, these like minds, of so often questionable character, gather together, united in their need to tear down any challenge to the variable illusions under which they operate, and, must maintain at all costs. 

For many, these illusions are foundational to the harm they cause others. That is why speaking truth to their actions leads them to shout “You’re negative. You’re the problem”, often in lieu of rebuttal to the truth itself, for, if you cannot discredit the claim, you must discredit the claimant…

Today, LinkedIn is where humans most wrap dishonesty and deception in a cloak of kindness and decency, projecting themselves, under it, out into the world, as if they’re saving it, one act of deception at a time.

But, if the world was a dining table on Christmas Day, make no mistake, LinkedIn is the white, bigoted Uncle that the rest of the table knows is to be ignored, lest his views infect those who actually wish to have a productive conversation.

I chose LinkedIn as a platform for the same reason I chose finance as an industry; it is the one that is most broken and which features those who most harm billions of people - people who aren’t equipped to challenge that because they aren’t there. 

I thought that I could pursue truth in finance, and on LinkedIn, without speaking to my own. I thought my story, the thing that defines why I do all that I do, was the one thing that bullies couldn’t take from me. 

But, I was wrong. 

Because I have stepped out against the Toxic Positivity that allows the worst to thrive, those offenders have been waiting for an opportunity to criticise me. They’ve been waiting to rally their kinsmen and conmen and to pile onto one of the only threats they’ve known to their narrative since LinkedIn invented the culture they now need to succeed.

In challenging bullies, liars and bad actors - which I am well known for - without telling my story I have allowed them to tell it for me. And, because I am challenging an ecosystem, I never attached myself to one. Because you simply cannot support, or expect to be supported by, the very thing you are intent on replacing. 

By not doing so, by not weaponising Toxic Positivity as a pseudo defence of myself, I lack a layer that protects others when they are challenged. 

In its place, I thought my story and my truth would suffice. 

The only problem is, I never wanted to tell it. 

I always knew I would be attacked. I even prepared for it, in fact; with my family, friends and some of this country’s most successful people. I prepared for what would come toward me when I made it known that I don’t buy into Toxic Positivity, and that my allegiance is to the truth, not an ecosystem. 

But, what I didn’t realise, is that without telling my story, which people with ecosystem support never have to do, I allowed bad actors to tell it for me. 

And what a fiction it’s become…

Bullies

Last month, lies were told about me, and attacks were made on my character, by several people whose lack of ethics and well known poor treatment of others had previously lead me to express to them, in private, that I wished to have nothing to do with them.

It was said by one of these people, amongst a number of insidious fictions that others blindly piled onto, that I “had made Andrew Tate like comments” and that I was somehow like Andrew Take.  

This lie told about me is the most prima facie, deeply untrue and egregious insult to ever be levelled at me. And, it was levelled at me by no other than a bully; the kind of person who all my life has projected their shortcomings onto me as if I am the problem in their life. 

This person, who I’d previously told I wanted to nothing to do with because he is a bully, was so aggrieved, so offended and so shaken that he’d been seen for who he really was, that instead of looking inward to reflect and grow, he decided to tell lies about me to protect his truth. 

Instead of admit his flaws, his mistakes, his bullying, his arrogance and his lack of self-awareness, this man - as they so often are - chose to tell a fictional narrative about me that would have you believe I am like somebody who thinks women are inferior, that homosexuals are degenerates and that rape victims are responsible for their fate.

I loathe this lie because it represents the sum of all the lies told about me by bad people all of my life because the truth of my story makes them uncomfortable about the truth of theirs. 

I loathe this lie because the man who told it is a well known bully toward women.

I loathe this lie because the man who told it laughs about the shit product he sells his customers but would never use himself.

But, most of all, I loathe this particular lie, more than any other before it, because I am queer, and because I have been raped. 

This man’s comment is the worst example I have experienced in my life of a bad person trying to reshape an unpleasant truth about themselves by telling lies about me. 

He made this comment because he has come to expect behaviour like his will be tolerated and supported because of the Toxic Positivity he relies on to thrive, and, because, like most bullies, he’s well known to need the last word. He’s made that clear in public on many occasions, muscling his way over weaker people on industry panels to exert the dominant opinion he thinks his mere existence entitles him to. 

He made this comment because the Toxic Positivity he has come to rely on for his success comes at the cost of honesty, about himself and others. 

The lies that are fabricated in this culture, by people like this man, and so many more, cost all of us, but they cost people like me the most. 

In many of these comments, which some supported with extracts from our private conversations which conveniently lack important and contradictory context, I was labelled as having traits which I do not have and which those people themselves displayed in doing so, seemingly oblivious to their hypocrisy, seemingly devoid any self awareness. 

This is how toxic behaviour thrives. This is how Andrew Tate grew to the fame that he now uses to infect the world with the belief that people like me are degenerates. 

Hatred and lies attracts hatred and lies, just as kindness and honesty does too, it’s just that Toxic Positivity doesn’t allow for the latter to thrive and that’s why it’s so dangerous; it lets lies win against truth and disguises the damage as unity. 

Some of the people involved are cowards, some support unethical businesses that harm the weakest in our society, some lie to their staff and their customers, and, some are well known bullies, liars and manipulators - as was confirmed in some calls I received last month from industry figures much more connected than I.

I have written about people like these, calling out their bad actions, for many years, and have blocked many of them along the way. So, it is no wonder that many of them found support, amongst other questionable characters, in the small bubble of the internet that is my blocked list. 

These are the kinds of people that my life has taught me are best avoided in a room, let alone in business. But, whether it’s bullies I’ve actively expressed I want nothing more to do with, or simply those who’ve shown their true colours in public, I always block these people, because removing the voice of a bully is the only way to remove the effect of one. In fact, I have never blocked anyone who isn’t a bully. 

Unfortunately, as a result of Toxic Positivity, blocking someone is a guaranteed way to anger anyone who is arrogant, who needs the last word and who lacks self-awareness sufficient to know that they possess traits that others find toxic and revolting.  

95% of people believe they are self aware, but only 10%-15% of people possess evidence of such traits. Blocking those who are mistaken is an effective way of protecting yourself from the delusions that the remainder operate under, and I remain a strong advocate for it, especially for people who’ve known bullies all their life, and who know how to spot them because of it. 

These people, and many like them, hurt others and hide from it by suggesting that’s in fact what others do and then they pretend that they are victims instead, as was done last month. But the only things that these people are ever victims of is the truth, and themselves. 

This behaviour, of fictionally suggesting that others do what you in fact do, is known to psychologists as ‘Projection’, and it’s amongst the most vile of human behaviours. Especially when it is used in a setting rife with Toxic Positivity. 

Today, thanks to Toxic Positivity, Projection has become so much a feature of our daily life, and for so many people, that this once clinical term has been colloqusalised and entered into the social fabric of our daily life. We now call it ‘gaslighting’. 

I know the things above about many of these people, and much more that I haven’t shared, because all my life strangers have inexplicably felt as if I am someone with whom they can share the truth about the harm that others have done them. Even when I was a child. I have come to believe it’s because I live vulnerably and in the open, and because I have been harmed by people like them, too. But, I really don’t know.

Dozens of people last month alone messaged me, telling me, amongst other things, stories about many of these people, and hundreds have done so in the past. These stories are where the material for most of my articles and content come from.

A message on LinkedIn, from someone who had been harmed by a bad actor moonlighting as an innovator, is what lead to my article in The Market Herald being the most read there ever. This is just one story of the several I’ve published, and the many dozens that I sit on. 

Like all good journalists insist, and all editors demand, these things are always tested before they are published. In the case of The Market Herald, and many others, they are tested by lawyers. That is why rumours I heard last month, amongst others, that I am being sued by 3 people for defamation, are amusing to me. 

My allegiance to truth is such that I would welcome the opportunity to submit, in any court, the defence of absolute truth that I lay over everything before I publish it so that I can be sure such a defense is always available to me.

The things I could tell you about many of these people, and many others, would likely be career ending for them, as would be sharing the full conversations some have chosen selectively from.

Plato said that ‘nobody is more hated than he who speaks the truth’ and that became apparent to me last month when the lies told about me crossed a line I’d never imagined them crossing. It caused me to reappraise, reconsider and reconsult on the strategy that I must pursue in opposition of these people and the damage I’ve come to know that they cause our society.

I’ve realised that I need to tell my story. One thing I’ve never wanted to do. Because, without sharing it, and without belonging to an ecosystem that would blindly support me because of Toxic Positivity - even in the face of damning evidence - people have no way to judge me, or, perhaps more appropriately, they have no way to think that they can judge me.

And so, here is my story.

My Story

Since first studying to become a psychologist - because of people constantly asking for my help - and then through a decade long commitment to community service that started with my multi-year leadership with intellectually disabled youth at Camp Diversity, my work with the Mirabel Foundation, Very Special Kids and the Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning Program (SAIL), and culminating in my decision to complete a degree that would allow me to become a paramedic, I have been committed to helping others. And, I still am. 

But, the truth is - for those concerned with such things - unlike for many, that commitment to other people didn’t come out of love or kindness. It came out of other people’s internalised hatred and shame, like the comments that were made about me last month.

When I was at school - a religious, homophobic, misogynistic, all male grammar school with a history of child abuse, I was relentlessly bullied because I stood out. 

I was gay, autistic, jewish, and, I could see through people like you wouldn’t believe. And people don’t like that, especially those who are most ashamed of what’s inside. These are the people we know in our life as bullies.

In year 10, I had a private conversation with another boy, during which he told me he was gay, and during which I told him I was. 

Two days later when he was being bullied, as we both so often were, feeling shame, like the people I criticise for lacking ethics and good character do, he outed me to distract people from his truth.

As was done last month, by adults who should know better, he showed people a selective extract of our conversation that lacked the context he didn’t want them to see. He told a partial story that suited him so that he could avoid persecution for the truth of its whole.

I have come to learn this strategy to be a favourite amongst those who lack moral fortitude and who are most deeply ashamed of who they are, and who always act toxically once they realise that they have been seen by someone like me.

For this reason these are the people I most try and avoid in my life. But, as last month made clear, it’s impossible to that because I find myself in the finance industry, where so many of them reside.

Despite the months of soul destroying ridicule that followed my outing, and the loss of all but one friend, who himself would later turn out to be gay, I never shared the rest of that conversation. I never spoke about it, nor did I out him publicly to the people who bullied me while he stood by and watched them attack me for the thing that he himself was, and which he knew the truth about all along. 

I ran into him 16 years later, and, unsurprisingly, he is still ashamed of who he is, as so many people who do such things remain for so much of their lives. 

In response to the ridicule, and instead of exposing his secrets and poor character, I endured bullying I cannot describe, and I withdrew from my life as a result. 

My marks slipped and I became combative to everyone who tried to reach me. I was the only ‘confirmed’ gay kid and I copped the internalised homophobia of that entire school, including from many of my teachers. 

I was a young boy who never fit in, coming to terms with differences that weren’t diagnosed until later, and a mystery for most of my life, a sexuality I had no choice in and a heritage I didn’t opt into. For those things I was bullied by my peers, and, my teachers; the people who were charged with fostering my growth and development as a human being. All because of things I couldn’t change and didn’t choose.

That was my life. That’s always been my life. That is why I seek truth, justice and fairness. That is why I help people who others don’t see. That is why accusations that I am anything like Andrew Tate fill me with rage.

I have experienced the Andrew Tate inside monstrous men all of my life and I still do, every day. I have no contact with any person I graduated school with; the people I spent my entire adolescence with. And, I will never send any child I have to an all male private school because of the monsters they create out of young men. 

Many of those young men now lead the finance industry. Many of them I’ve privately expressed that I want nothing to do with, as you might imagine that somebody like me wouldn’t want. 

I hated myself from the ages of 13 to 18 because bad people wanted me to, because it was easier to project their self-hatred onto me than it was to look inward and to grow. I have been a punching bag for miserable people all of my life, and I thought it would pass, but no. My commitment to truth, because I was never allowed to express my own, is too much for them. I am still a threat to the same kind of people that hated me at school, I just don’t defer to them any more.

Being told to die on a regular basis is challenging for anyone, but it’s particularly challenging for a 16 year old who wakes up everyday wishing he wouldn’t, all because of what bullies say about things he has no choice in whatsoever.

I spent the formative part of my life feeling worthless because I let bad people tell me I was. That has equipped me as an adult to be particularly sensitive to bad people, and, it has given me a determination to call them out, which I am committed to in such a way that my existence likely depends on it. 

In a last ditch attempt to reach me during one of my low points at school, our Chaplain, Reverend Charles Butler, who kindly pretended he hadn’t heard what was being said in the yard, dragged me along to a Friday night with St Vincent De Paul’s Soup Van, where we cooked for and fed the homeless of Melbourne for 4 hours, before heading back to clean the kitchen. 

My life completely changed that night. And, if I'm truly honest, it was likely saved by it. 

I remember a specific moment, smiling from ear to ear while scrubbing a pot that was bigger than me, because it was the most pivotal in my life thus far. 

It was the first time since I was 8 or 9 that I’d been truly happy. It was the first time I didn’t feel ashamed to exist. Because, as my co-founder and oldest friend reminds me, age 8 or 9 is when people started hating me because I made them uncomfortable about who they were. 

That night at Soup Van was where I learned that the pathway to not hating myself, because of the things that others said about me, lay in doing things for others that made me more proud to exist than I was ashamed. 

The many nights I spent with Soup Van are where I learned that happiness, for me, lies in doing something that is more important than me, and that benefits others more than me. For how else do you find pride in yourself when people tell you that you shouldn’t have any?

Those nights, and the series of events that followed, led me to be the only person ever nominated twice to attend one of Australia’s most well known leadership programs; Lord Somers Camp. There, I met some of the best people I know today, who themselves have been and are some of Australia’s greatest leaders and who still contribute more to society than any other group of people I know. 

I met people like Professor Glenn Bowes, the Camp President and Deputy Dean of Medicine at Melbourne University, who was the first powerful man to teach me that not all powerful men were toxic toward people like me, even if a great many were. 

Glenn’s son, Charlie, my friend, my first life mentor and an adolescent nurse specialist, was the first person I ever told I was gay and who witnessed the first time I ever said those words out loud after 15 years of being taught that I shouldn’t say them. 

That moment happened on a mattress at 3am, as we sat on night duty at Camp Diversity, making sure none of the kids we were looking after wondered off from their dorms in the night.

That night, and the life that followed for me, wouldn’t have happened without my commitment to helping others and the people that that commitment gave me access to. 

In many ways, that commitment is as much one that I rely on for me as it is a commitment I’ve made for anyone else. But, either way, it makes that commitment solid, and one that I depend on to be happy. 

The latin motto of Lord Somers Camp translates to “Seek service without seeking recognition” and through my long involvement with the organisation I learned the embodiment of the phrase ‘moral fortitude’, which I believe to be best described as ‘doing what is right even when you know nobody is watching or will ever find out’. 

I have lived by those words ever since. 

It wasn’t until after my grandmother was gone that I realised she too had tried to teach me this in her own way when I was a small child, when she would say to me at the beach ‘if you see rubbish pick it up, no matter whose it is’. 

That’s a lesson this world would do well to apply, in every domain. 

I have been committed to acting with moral fortitude and doing things without seeking recognition ever since Somers. I have come to believe this is one of the two reasons why I have never told my story. The other being, of course, that I was told for most of my life that my story wasn’t welcome. 

But I realise, now, in not sharing my story, in committing to keeping it private, I have let others assume things about me and tell my story for me, taking from me the same things that were taken from me my entire childhood and adolescence, and, by the very same kinds of people. 

The theme of my life since Soup Van has been helping people - people who are, often through no fault of their own, momentarily or systemically weak, and just need someone to help them find their strength so that they can keep on looking after themselves - which is what real leadership and kindness are both about. 

That’s why, when I trained as a paramedic (which is in every way the perfect career for me) and identified that most patients didn’t need a paramedic as much as they needed to be a part of a fair economic system that didn’t penalise them for being poor, I left the career I was most looking forward to and I committed to fixing the industry that most exacerbates the problems those people face - finance. 

I don’t want to be here. I hate finance. I hate financial services. I hate the industry, I hate the culture, the conflict and the people who protect it from change. But, I’ve come to believe on my journey that doing something bigger than yourself is the secret to happiness and the only authentic way to find it, and so here I am, in the worlds most toxic and damaging industry surrounded, again, by the same kind of bullies that I thought I’d left at high school. 

At age 23, the year I came out on my terms, and started telling the story of my life as it is today, I joined the board of Minus18 and served as Treasurer, to help enhance support for youth facing difficulties in their life associated with their sexuality and gender. I did that so that maybe I might help someone just like me at a time when they who hate themselves more than anything else in the world because of what others say about the things they cannot change. 

Being told by the world that you don’t deserve a place in it because of something you cannot control is one of the worst things to live through and develop with. For that reason Minus18 is one of the most important organisations I know and I would encourage everyone to support it. You can do so here.

My story, as all our stories do, informs my life today. But not telling it starves my work and my mission of context that allows bullies to tell a story about me which is far from true. 

It’s not surprising, I guess, that there is no cisgendered heterosexual white male on my founding team. There is my oldest friend, Caitlin Robinson, who I’ve known for 29 years and who also trained as a paramedic. She saw, like I did, that half of all patients attended by Ambulances wouldn’t need an Ambulance at all if they were part of a fairer financial system, and so she has made that her mission. She is proudly queer and, with her partner, is about to welcome their first child. I cannot wait to see the wonderful mother that she will be. 

Also on my founding team is an Indian man, Arj Agarwal, who was raised black in South Africa and who still faces discrimination and bullying here in Australia by white men, but who is committed to undoing the damage they’ve caused through this industry. 

Then there’s my favourite, yes, I have a favourite - sue me (apparently that’s a thing…) I am lucky enough to say that I share my role with the world’s first non-binary founder of a fintech, an Indonesian native who dreams of reforesting their home country. Ally Atmadja is autistic, like me, they are brilliant and so much of what I do I do because they experience a side of life I am lucky enough to be able to hide from but which I wish they didn’t have to see. They experience the worst of what humanity and this industry has to offer because they fit in even less than I.

Together, we represent all the people that this industry does not currently serve, which is everyone who does not draw an income from it. 

It’s been said that we have the most diverse founding team in fintech, and I agree, but they don’t feel diverse to me because these are my people. 

My hero is Hannah Gadsby, because her show ‘Nanette’ changed my life. And, because like so many broken queer people the world laughs at, I came very close to pursuing a career in comedy. Many of us do that because hiding in that laughter is so much easier when you think you’re in control of it, and, because trauma is the best fuel for humour. That’s if it doesn’t kill your first, which 42% of queer people contemplated last year, but that 75% didn’t speak to a professional about because of what others have told them to do with their truth.

I aspire to love and to understand the world like, renowned Poet, Comedian and Activist, Alok Vaid-Menon, who is the most eloquent human being alive today, and who you are at a loss for if you haven’t heard speak. They are the best of what this world has to offer.

I fall in love with creatives, because at heart I am one. My partner of 8 years and Fiancé, Nick, is an art teacher and a dance coach, he’s a singer and he paints. He’s filled our house with art, and made it our home. He’s the truest of educators I’ve ever known, the bestest of people. 

Then, there’s my other partner (yes, you read that correctly), Tom. He too is a creative and will soon be an Architect. He embodies all that you’d want in the human being designing the place for you share with those that you love the most.

For the past 3 years I have been in a polyamorous relationship with 2 people. We live together, in the most supportive home that many who meet us, especially those who've not known supportive homes, have ever encountered. We live there with our human-sized Alaskan Malamute, Lincoln. Who sheds an awful lot.

And, I’m not actually gay, that’s just what I say because society doesn’t want to hear my story. I’m pansexual, which means I’m attracted to people irrespective of their gender. This is why I am such a strong ally and supporter of the trans community - I don’t see gender like most do. And, because they are the bravest people I know. 

My best friend is an artist - a potter. Jack’s wares are scattered throughout my home because I love him and because each piece is an expression of him at the moment he made it. I suspect his art speaks differently to people who don’t know him, because it’s brilliant, but in each piece I feel a struggle that is somehow resolved when it’s glazed and fired. Each piece feels like a piece of Jack’s growth as person that I can hold, and that's so incredibly special. 

I buy and gift his work to people I know because I can feel him in every piece, and even if nobody understands him like I do, I want to share him with the world. The joy of sharing his work - of seeing others celebrate him for it - is one of the most beautiful things in my life. And so, if you ever get pottery from me, please look after it, because it’s very special.

These are the things, and the people, that matter to me. I don’t care about money, I don’t want fame, it’s one of my greatest fears, actually, and, I don’t want recognition. But, I don’t want to be bullied any more by people who would tell you any story about me but for the one that I have actually lived. 

I want the people I love to exist in a world that isn’t harmed by people who tell them they are lesser. I want the world’s largest system to say to people that no matter who or what you are, you can use it just the same and you won’t be punished for things you cannot control.

The majority of my friends work in healthcare or social work, if they aren’t creatives, because those are the only people I truly relate to. I spend my time with academics and activists because they are the only people who care about material social change - which is what I care about most. 

I have gone to zero for my beliefs and my commitments, and will do so again and again because I believe in creating a world that is honest and that doesn’t celebrate people who succeed by harming others.

I am allergic to people who project their weaknesses onto me and to others. I hate when people make those around them feel lesser because of things they cannot control or change, and which harm absolutely no-one. 

These are the people I am committed to challenging, because they are the people who do the most harm in this world. They are the people who make people like me grow up feeling worthless, or that force my-cofounder to leave a Fintech Industry Dinner, after crying in the bathroom, because they were being bullied for their gender at a table in front of twenty people by a privileged white man who should know better!

These people include Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), who at a Fintech event labelled as gender inclusive by industry leaders, that was anything but, asked my co-founder “why do you choose to identify as non-binary when it would be so much easier to keep that private and not let it define you” - as if to suggest that how you relate to your own body could somehow ever not define you. 

These are the people who say they support people like me and my co-founders, but who don’t know what true support looks like. These are the people who threw eggs at me a week ago as I stood with my partners outside an event in Sydney for World Pride, and shouted “FUCKING FAGGOTS” as they drove off. 

These are the taxi drivers who drive past people with my story, the police who beat us for loving who we love, the politicians who pass legislation to stop us expressing ourselves. People saying that they support us without understanding what support means are in so many ways worse than those who throw eggs, and if you don’t understand why, then you’ve never been desperate to feel supported. 

I spent last Friday night cleaning egg off my clothes in a venue bathroom, being reminded that many people think I am a worthless piece of shit because of something I cannot change, all because I left the house. All because I didn’t hide. 

What did you do last Friday night? Because, that is my story. It has always been my story and I could tell you 500 more stories like it, ranging from the less harmful airborne poultry, to being assaulted because of who I am.

It’s unsurprising that the people who find and seek me out tend to be those harmed by the people and systems I am committed to undoing. Queers, POC, gender non-binary, women, eccentrics, neurodivergent thinkers, victims of powerful men and victims of bullies, to name just a few of the people who understand bullies.

Whilst that might sound to some like a patchwork quilt of society’s rejects, I find that more of these people, and their millions of allies, share a human decency that makes them so much more than many; a commitment to never harming others.

That is why these people are my people, and will always be my people. 

It is why I fight for them. I am them. 

Finally, I’d like to say that the incident last month was a first. But, it wasn’t.

3 Years ago, when the CEO of Big 4 advisory company invested in Maslow, a bully, who was jealous and threatened by a reject like me achieving the success that he hadn’t, sent the partners at the firm an email attacking my character with fictional statements, and statements that lacked context - which, as you now know, is so frequently their strategy. 

On a call I had with the CEO, during which I was certain he’d distance himself from me, he said something to me that I honestly believed I’d never have to think of again, but which I have reflected on a lot this past month. 

He said “Kane, when you put your hand up and try to do something that makes others feel like you’re doing more than them, the worst ones will try to tear you down. It will happen again, and again, and again, and each time you’ll be just fine.”

I don’t like having to share the private stories of my life, which up until now have belonged to me. But, I like bullies and their impact on the world much less.

I am committed to helping others, and will remain committed to it all my life, no matter what any bad person says about me, because it is the only thing that makes me happy. It is the only thing that makes me more proud to exist than I am ashamed - because nobody ever unlearns the first 20 years of their life. 

And, I want it to be clear about a few things. 

My help will never extend to being kind to bullies. It does not extend to supporting powerful people, dripping in unacknowledged privilege, who each day seek advancement by harming those who are less powerful and who hide behind the lies that allow it. 

My help will never extend to supporting people who actively prove themselves unworthy of support. 

If you are someone who thinks Grace Tame should have shaken Scott Morrison’s hand out of respect to his position, you are not my people. You have to earn people’s hand. You must prove that you are worthy of it. Giving it blindly is Toxic Positivity, and its anything but positive. 

My help will never extend to being quiet while bad actors move about, encouraged by others like them, in a confirmation bubble that they created for themselves to the detriment of all others. 

My help will never extend to any person who’s shown me that they harm the people I am committed to seeing lifted up.

However, the help I will extend to anyone wanting to make this world better for others is endless, as is the help offered to me by other people like that. 

I will continue to be kind to good people who have earned support and will continue to call out bad actors who harm others and hide from it. 

These people will continue to say things about me, as will others in the future. 

But, regardless, I’ll be just fine. 

Some of these people have said that I ‘punch down’, and I do. But they are wrong to think I punch down at people weaker than me. I punch down against bullies, dishonesty, unethical behaviour and the treatment of others as if they are rungs on a ladder, to be stepped on so that some can advance themselves.

More people will wrongfully say this about me in the future. 

But, regardless, I’ll be just fine. 

Some of these bad actors say I’m overly negative, and, that’s true, too. But not of what they’d have you believe. I am overly negative towards any person who does more harm to this world than good. They’ll continue to say that my negativity is bad for the ecosystem. 

But, regardless, I’ll be just fine. 

I have learned that when bullies pile on...when bad people step forward, good people always step up, and that happened this last month in so many ways that I’ve never felt more supported in all of my life. 

And, so, if unethical bullies want to get together and call me things I am not to feel better about the things that they are, that’s okay, because I have learned from a lifetime of that, that the only people who actually listen to bullies are bullies. 

To those still reading, because only good people will be, I want to say one final thing:

If you’re a truth teller, or you support them, we are your people. 

If you want to make the world better for others, we are your people. 

If you’ve been harmed by the bullies of the world, we are your people. 

If you are open, honest and fair, and you expect the same, we are your people. 

We won’t always get it right, but we will always try, because it’s the good people in this world who form the only community that we’ll ever be a part of. 

Because of that, we will be just fine. 

Kane Jackson. 

(Nothing like Andrew Tate)