Part 1: Ego, Power and Subjugation of Self
On exploitation of the human experience and denying our own personhood.
Ten years ago, during the very public blowout that resulted from my departure from the world’s largest internet niche sporting website and the article I wrote about my resignation as a contributor for that site, I gave many interviews to a wide variety of outlets including Glamour Magazine, Yahoo! Finance, Dirt Rag, Bicycling Mag, and beyond — and in one of those interviews, I denied being a feminist and instead, termed myself to be a humanist.
Later on, I eventually recanted my statement about such humanism for fear of rejection and recriminations from the ‘online sisterhood’ of feminists orbiting the cycling sphere — but it was already too late.
CHRIS MILUCKY: Are you a feminist?
AMANDA BATTY: A feminist? Sure, if you want to label it. I prefer “humanist” or even “sane,” but sure, let’s call me a feminist. But if I am, can we say that I’m probably the most liberal, wide-open feminist on earth? I don’t usually like to describe myself as a feminist because I don’t subscribe to a lot of the modern exclusions that mainstream feminism seems to be all about, and I also dislike compartmentalization.
With that single statement, more than any other I ever uttered before or since, I branded myself as an outlier who belonged to no single group or sect and thus, as being untrustworthy.
With a single flippantly honest, humorously blunt reply about the values and beliefs I held close, I bared my soul and showed the world who I was:
The questions were written by a man I still consider a dear and trusted friend (who had accommodated my then-undiagnosed autism by offering me the beautiful option of sending him written answers to his inquiries, for the sake of clarity, in the face of my wide-ranging verbal interview that deeply connected us to each other but left us with scant concrete material that accurately communicated my stance on the issues, as per my usual) — and he also paid a dear price for the gift he gave me in that article and his accommodations of my brain.
That Dirt Rag article still makes me cry, because I knew who I was and I was unshakeable in my knowledge of myself and what mattered.
… But then I let the world convince me that I did not, could not, and was not — I would spend the next decade questioning, answering for, justifying and finally accepting that I was that person.
Fortunately, my adventures (and misadventures) have brought me full circle as I’ve slowly returned to my true form, albeit carrying a lot more hardware and a great many additional scars in this version — because 2025’s version of me no longer denies the clear and blazing truth of that Dirt Rag article, nor do I pretend to be less of that person… both of which I did for far too long due to the deluge of harm that rained down after Issue 187 was published.
The world (and the bike industry) punished me for leaving Pinkbike, and even moreso for having the audacity to fearlessly defend myself and my choices and boldly assert my value — particularly when I produced evidence that proved my statements surrounding those events to be correct and accurate.
In the end, it didn’t matter to anyone that I was truthful — Pinkbike waged a PR war on an outspoken, hardworking, talented 28-year-old newcomer… And they won.
They won because they convinced the bike internet that I was broken and irredeemable, but more importantly, they won because I gave up on myself.
Instead of waiting it out and breathing through it, I left that version of me behind in 2015 and I internalized the entire circus as a reflection of my flaws and unworthiness rather than the mirror showing their ineptitude and mediocrity.
I shrunk myself to fit into a neat little compartment that was tinier than the drawers in the shop stackers I used to keep microscopic bike parts in… And then I kept shrinking when they told me that I was still too much and as such, unworthy of love or safety.
When my ex came along in 2019, I was so used to shrinking and minimizing myself, that doing it once more (especially for a chance at a love I had never experienced) was an easy continuance of the dismantling my own parents had begun decades prior — I replicated my own abandonment in real time and reopened the abandonment wounds I had spent so long stitching back together.
I’ve written about all of that recently, though.
Those wounds have bled loud and long, and inflicted new ones in other people along the way.
Many of you here now watched or even experienced the dismantling of Amanda Batty, or have read the jumbled and intermittent infections continuing to seep from my wounds — my now-defunct athlete blog that’s been lost to the chasms of subdomain death; my now-deleted ‘public figure’ Instagram account, abattycakes; all of the posts on both Medium and Substack that precede this one.
The bleeding of wounds I eventually attached my personhood to: more goddamned stuff I just couldn’t let go.
Ownership and absorption of wounds that weren’t mine, crimes I hadn’t committed, cuts I never made — things I couldn’t release because I thought they gave my life meaning.
They meant I had been loved, or at least ‘loved enough to be useful’… And my ego needed that ‘meaning’, that evidence, those scars. My ego needed to know that at one point or another, I had mattered to someone, anyone!, enough that they were able to harm me — I had meant enough that they were able to leave bruises.
But that isn’t love.
And the human ego’s sole function and priority is to keep us alive, not safe.
That’s why, in the face of the power or wealth that capitalism dangles in front of us (aka physical survival and fulfillment of basic needs), particularly adjacency to power or control, humans will *always* fold — because safety and stimuli are the only two motivators that our homeostasis-seeking meatsuits truly have. It all comes back and boils down to those two things. Love, war, instinct, fear: they’re all just extensions of our ego’s need to protect and maintain the status quo, and our physiological requirement that we create homeostasis in whichever way we possibly can.
We’ve talked about those motivators here before.
As psychographic marketing has pointed out over and over and over again: once you know what someone wants, you know how to control them for your own gain.
And control me they did, doing exactly that.
Hell, just look at what I gave up for the false promise of safety and love — from the goalpost-moving antics of USA Cycling that robbed me of a World Championships trip in 2017 to the desperation-fueled racing season that ended my career and nearly took my life in 2018, I would’ve given it all up for one single moment of “we’re proud of you, and proud to sponsor, support, endorse and stand next to you”.
After 2015, I would’ve given everything for the balm to soothe my core wound — and eventually, I did.
I just didn’t know that the balm I’d receive in exchange would nearly come at the expense of my own life this time last year. Last June, I did trade my safety for the possibility of love, praying that if I was perfect enough or blew through enough cash proving that I was perfect and willing to abandon myself all over again, I’d get it back.
Oh, I got it alright — but not in the ways I thought I would, and certainly not for the price I expected. hahahahahahaha!
The universe itself invented my most favorite type of kink humiliation: hard lessons that come in the shape of self-reclamation.
The ironic part of this entire fucking journey lies within my final discovery that temporary satisfaction is so much less fun than actual fulfillment — everything I tolerated was simply a reflection of my unhealed wounds.
Everything any of us tolerates is that same reflection.
If 2015 was the year I abandoned my truest self in a bid for safety and acceptance, may 2025 be the year I fully return to her.
But I couldn’t return to Amanda Batty while lacking comprehension of why my wounds repeated and compounded — and I spent this last weekend finally figuring that part out.
You ready?
Here it is:
My unhealed self’s Achilles heel is love:
being loved and having it reciprocated.
My ‘love language’ is feeling heard, seen and understood.
I know, it’s probably a huge surprise to absofuckinglutely nobody.
But it is.
And until I actually learned how to accept that I will never be any of the certain type(s) of person(s) who needs all of that shit sitting in that goddamned basement right now (and decided that I didn’t want to be the person whose emotional baggage claim would rival the acreage of a moderately-sized island nation), I remained blind to my own vulnerabilities.
These days, I’m starting to think that I might as well have the entire damn Dirt Rag article just printed out and distributed to anyone who even considers engaging with me, much like a tourist brochure at an entry point…
CM: Why did you leave your writing position within the bike industry?
AB: “I left because of the larger issue of community sexism and overall censorship. If we truly aim to grow the sport (instead of allowing it to stagnate into a political mire of what can and cannot be said), [we] need to allow dissenting opinions.
And it’s OK, honestly—I am unpredictable.
But I don’t play by anyone’s script of what’s appropriate and I don’t respect authority. Authority is earned, not given, and if you want to earn authority, you treat everyone with respect. I don’t respect hierarchy or chain of command, either.
It came down to a decision for me: Do I maintain my integrity and speak up as honestly as I’m able to about the issues that really plague us as an industry, or do I gloss over what I’m really feeling and churn out worthless, mindless, commercially valuable content?
And the decision wasn’t easy, but it was clear.
I write best when I’m passionately involved, and I stopped caring and my writing suffered.
The line ‘never push an honest person to the point where they no longer give a fuck’ is one that I’ve come to identify intimately with.
At the end of this all, it doesn’t matter if my career crashes and burns inside of the bike industry. I’m not racing to pay the bills, and I have a good education, a whole slew of skills and a creative mind. I work my ass off; I’m passionate as hell. I have insight to offer the world, and there’s value in that.
My experiences matter, and even if they help one person or they change one tiny thing that creates a ripple effect, then my life is worth something.
My existence has value.”
And I probably would waste my time and effort doing such if I hadn’t already paid the dear price to learn that most folks don’t even read what I write now because they’re lost in their own survival sauce, and even fewer are capable of comprehending it, so I simply… won’t.
I’ve learned not to attach myself too tightly to any one belief or thing. *wink wink*
Instead, I’ll tell you what else I’ve learned.
I’ve learned that ENOUGH IS A DECISION, NOT AN AMOUNT.
I’ve learned that my time, effort and energy are far better spent in the pursuit of helping other people and fostering connection than it is being spent on resolving (or even addressing) conflict with people who don’t truly want real repair nor even genuine healing — and I’ve clarified that any dynamic that requires my ‘selling’ of it or convincing someone of its merit is guaranteed to be neither safe nor healthy.
Read that one again:
ANY DYNAMIC I HAVE TO SELL SOMEONE ON OR INTO ISN’T A SAFE NOR HEALTHY ONE.
In the last six days, I’ve confirmed my previous knowledge that few criticisms come from a place of credibility or genuine intent to help and instead, are 99% just a boredom mechanism that comes from people who would rather talk than do. None of us will ever be criticized by someone doing more than us. The same goes for unsolicited advice.
Since June 18, 2025, I’ve also unearthed new links between my ‘trolls know they suck’ understanding and a fresh perspective on how COERCIVE ABUSE IS THE ACT OF AN ABUSER ADMITTING THAT THEY SUCK. Any abuse is, really, but particularly the coercive and exploitative abuse that comes from the broken ego of a narcissist who believes themselves so incapable of doing anything or achieving anything at all that they have to rob and steal it from someone they want to break.
*whew*
I know, that’s a heavy one.
Stick with me here, though — it’ll be brief (ish).
When I left my ex in May of 2023, we stayed in touch. Over the next 18 months, he would slowly exact his punishment on me for leaving him, using the access I continued to grant him and everything in his power to ensure that he ‘ruined’ me: physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, sexually, spiritually. As we all know, he very nearly succeeded with that. However, I’m an evidence-based menace. And even in the last year alone, I realized that while he ended up with whatever he ended up with, *I* spent that same year+ being my own attorney and giving myself a paid legal education in advanced specializations.
He’d meant to break me and instead of folding as I had in 2015, this time, I chose myself.
I let it make me stronger and smarter this time, even as it broke me (as the above hyperlink details).
That’s a core tenet of what I began building on this last week or so, because four days ago, I wrote to myself that “he has to start over with a new victim in a new place and create an entire story about someone who still exists and can be found online” while “I get to start AGAIN, as MYSELF, using all that I’ve done and learned”.
That’s a massive perspective shift, my friends. Nobody can take credit for the things I’ve done and built. And, going back to the evidence-based menace idea, the evidence points to my doing.
The constant, endless fucking doing, all in a search for love and approval and acceptance.
MY CORE CHILDHOOD WOUNDS CREATED THE EXACT EVIDENCE OF THEIR FALSITY THAT I NOW USE TO HEAL MYSELF.
Pretty good for a 96-hour-period, I’d say. *wink*
It gets even better, though: nobody can take any of that away from me. Sure, they can refute it or say whatever the hell they’d like to say on the internet, but the real proof is in the pudding:
when the dust finally settles, the doing speaks for itself by what stands done.
The bragging rights and credit belongs to the person whose doing got it done, regardless of anything else. I don’t give a fuck about what history says about me — all that matters is that it actually happened. Everyone can tell themselves whatever they’d like, and it will be whatever it is to them, but the actual seeds of the sowing will always belong to the one who sowed.
My birth family is the same way — taking credit for creating things they never even dreamed possible or achievable, even as they spend their time and effort coming up with ways to making sure I know that they’re still actively trying to humiliate me.
Good luck with that, babes. I hope it all works out for you. Really, I do.
But here’s the thing about leaning into Amanda Batty: that external bullshit only matters if I allow it to matter…
And nothing that I’m currently investing myself in is worth sacrificing just to go to war with people who didn’t deserve me then and sure as fucking shit don’t deserve me now — regardless of whether it’s a certain firefighter, a weird group of people I happen to be biologically related to or just some miserable internet trolls on the shop’s old Instagram account who are still stuck in Albuquerque and hating their own little lives.
Humiliation rituals, degradation, shame, control, and abuse don’t work on me anymore.
They won’t anytime soon, either — my sense of self has now been cast from molten steel in the literal fires of hell, for an entire fucking decade, making it so uncorruptible that I can admit online that I pooped my pants in my own kitchen back in November.
You’ve gotta be ballsy as fuck to admit that sort of terrible thing (and others!), my darlings… and also entirely shameless.
I happen to be both, and so much more.
I mean, I’ve already admitted (on here!) to playing around with fisting, folks — yet there are still people out there who think I’ll shrink under terror of ‘being exposed’… as what, the person I actually am?!
Dear god, please not that. Anything but that!
The truth of the matter is that the world can’t touch someone who refuses to be shamed, and who gleefully embraces the weird, sick, hilarious ups and downs of this human rollercoaster ride called life — the only thing you can do is kill us and pray to the heavens themselves that we aren’t beloved by anyone who can and will return the favor right back to you.
THAT IS WHAT I KNOW.
I knew it ten years ago, too — and then I let go of it to go learn other things.
But while many of those ‘other things’ were about my own wounds, I also gained a terrifying amount of knowledge about everyone else’s wounds, too.
In a moment of examining how AI and LLMs plagiarize actual human creations because it isn’t actually smart enough to generate a single thing worthy of its own, I had an epiphany about how abusers have to similarly steal the light and personalities of other people because they too are unable to generate beauty — they too are grifting pixelated pieces from everyone the abuser has ever hurt, hoping and praying that the ‘mirage person’ the abuser is building is more lovable than the version before.
An abuser’s covert theft of someone else’s personality, hobbies is their attempt to PROVE THEIR VALUE, but also to prove the falsity of their victims’ appeal — abusers abuse to prove that ‘everyone else is faking it’, too.
Abusers manipulate and control because they seek to prove that everyone, particularly remarkable and extraordinary people, is ‘full of shit’… Just like they are.
The abuser believes themselves to be worthless, so they must prove that even the most incredible and accomplished and ______ person is also inherently worthless.
This belief system (and its ensuing efforts) is the product of a warped ego, not a stunted one.
There are numerous aspects to this epiphany, including the facet where an abuser will specifically target someone extraordinary only for the sake of proving their victim to be inferior by virtue of the victim’s susceptibility to the abuser’s tactics… and even more so if their victim cannot escape the abuser or disengage from the abusive dynamic.
The abuser then will even use their victim’s perceived ‘weakness’ as ‘evidence of mediocrity’ to justify the abuser’s continued harm of that person, as though it’s some sort of ethical responsibility or calling for the abuser to ‘humble’ a remarkable person and 'prove to the world' that their victim isn’t REALLY all that smart or special or good or accomplished…
THIS is where narcissism and troll logic intersect, and widespread violent application of narcissism takes shape.
The crux of all of this abusiveness, however, is the truth:
If narcissists, trolls and abusers invested in themselves and their own lives even half the time that they invest in manipulating, hurting, breaking, controlling, ruining and otherwise harming other people, they wouldn’t hate their lives or be seeking external validation through coercion, abuse, manipulation and deceit.
This is what I’ve learned since 2015. Hell, this is what I’ve learned since 2019, and since 2023.
In 35 years of this struggle termed life, I was so very, very, very busy trying to get and earn and prove and hold on to love — yet once I thought I had it and I had stopped searching for it, the remarkable part of my existence actually took off.
That’s why I began crushing life in 2019, dear reader — despite all signs to the contrary, I could finally stop looking for love. hahahaahahahahahha!
No, but really: the reason I finally did so damn much with my life between 2019 and 2024 was that I wasn’t wasting time or energy trying to find love or prove my worth to every Tom, Dick and Harry just to get safety — instead, I was pouring all of that brokenness into a single person (and their wants) for whom I would’ve carved my own eyes out, trying to earn his love and prove myself worthy of his affections.
I was busy living it, and trying to thrive and survive, and believing I was cared about.
I was moving ahead and finally ‘living my worth’, having ideas and creating them, making those ideas into legitimate realities, simply because I wasn’t focused on earning opportunities or chances to do cool shit — I was just doing them.
Meanwhile, I had just simply opened a nightmare of ungodly proportions that would almost drown me… but isn’t that the funniest and saddest irony you’ve ever heard of?!
I would become a functional powerhouse of a human nuclear plant for him and his benefit, but not my own?? On my own?! I’ve also spoken of this sad fact before now.
At that time, during my relationship with my ex, I wasn’t dating or looking for love or trying to fill an empty space inside with endless possibilities of potential that presented in every new love affair that appeared — I was simply trying to live my best life and do cool shit to build a future with someone I loved instead of investing in strangers.
That’s the kicker: I was spending all of my time and effort investing in a future… not trying to prove my worth to strangers so they would love me.
It’s a delicate line… Well, not really, if one isn’t deriving a sense of self from external sources, but remember: I wasn’t past that point.
The ultimate problem with ‘living my worth’ via the love for someone else, however, was that the more I stepped into my own power and ability to create magic, the more cool shit I made happen through the power of sheer will — and the more insecure people around me felt, including my ex and my birth family who watched from afar.
Oh, my darling girl.
My heart positively aches for 2019 me, even while I’m so grateful for her and what resulted from our brokenness. I had spent so long chasing my tail and trying to figure out ‘what was wrong with me’, begging people to give me answers — but they couldn’t.
I learned that there wasn’t anything wrong with me outside of the handful of leftover coping mechanisms and survival tactics (and autism) that popped to the surface in the face overwhelming abuse and neglect.
Ahhhhhhh, lovely. Just like my childhood.
*wink wink*
Isn’t that the most tragic part of all, and also the most healing?!
the tragedy: unknowingly recreating the environments I hadn’t ever healed from, then pulled the plug to cut and run when I realized that I wasn’t safe nor loved, and in the face of the day-to-day not being all that stimulating anymore.
the healing: I didn’t want that, and it wasn’t filling my needs on either front. I wanted more. I needed more.
Even if I didn’t know how or why or what at that point, I knew I couldn’t keep doing that in the shop, my relationship, my house, my life, or that city… especially not when my physical safety and actual freedom were on the line, as I learned May 3, 2023.
The entire thing fell apart when the bones of the house I had built were bared: I’d had enough strength and intelligence and hope and sparkle to make something of my situation in 2019-2024, yes, but who I truly was and what I actually wanted could never coexist there… let alone thrive.
So I leapt.
And here we are now.
My fear of this thing right now, even as I type this, is very reasonable: me stepping into and grabbing hold of and living inside of this power of mine hasn’t historically been safe for me.
This power of mine also wasn’t something I’ve felt capable or qualified to handle, quite frankly, if only due to the impossibility of other people validating my capacity to hold onto and embody my own power —NOBODY IS EVER GOING TO TELL ME THAT MY ‘PROBLEM’ IS BEING TOO FUCKING POWERFUL.
… well, almost nobody. Someone has tried. Repeatedly. She still does, almost weekly. But I couldn’t hear words in a language I didn’t speak, and we don’t know what we don’t know until we know it.
nobody was about to explain to Amanda Batty that her ‘problem’ was ignoring and denying her own power.
You don’t just tell a wizard that they’re secretly the most powerful sorcerer ever born, do you?! So why the hell would anyone risk letting me in on the secrets of my own power when instead, they could reap the benefits of my power without any cost to them?!
Of course not. What was that Audre Lorde quote again?!
precisely.
No, no, it’s far better to distract and detract. Best to convince us all to play small, to coerce everyone into believing that none of us have any power whatsoever, and that we’re better off staying in line and maintaining productivity, right?! Don’t make waves, right?
So we offload our own power and give it away in exchange for the false premise of safety, love and false adventure —
… and therein lies the rub.
. TO BE CONTINUED .
this post is a lot of a lot, and it’s going to be a lot more, SO I HOPE YOU’LL BUCKLE UP.
The next one will talk about how I dove into a TV show during a ‘rotting’ phase during the rainy and cold weather on Friday and it accidentally offered me a visual model for this entire thematic ride.
It’s all wrapping up quite nicely.
thanks for being here.
xx,
AB