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hi i guess it’s time to talk about what transphobes in general, and TERFs in particular, get consistently wrong when they use trauma survivors to prop up their agenda!!!
first of all, i want to acknowledge that a lot of transphobes in general and TERFs in particular are survivors whose politics are based in part on their own experiences. that in and of itself is, i think, how most people generate their politics.
the problem is that transphobes and TERFs talk about sexual violence specifically and only as it affects cis women, and conveniently ignore the absolutely astronomical rates at which trans people are assaulted and raped: https://twitter.com/dylan_thyme/status/1271565827599413248
this is how you know that transphobes and TERFs don’t actually care about sexual violence as an issue so much as a rhetorical tactic that they view as a trump card. why else would you ignore those statistics?
which leads to my second point: transphobes and TERFs talk about sexual violence in a way that focuses specifically on perpetuating the trauma it leaves behind, not addressing it in any meaningful or productive way.
importantly, i want to note here that i am not and have never been a therapist, just a survivor who has talked to a lot of therapists — but kai cheng thom, a former therapist, has written about intracommunity trauma perpetuation: https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other-160978
thom writes, “if we are repeatedly exposed to danger through the behaviour of other humans, we come to see all humans as inherently dangerous, and all of our primal instincts are shaped around treating other humans as potential threats.”
she goes on to discuss how this leads to a culture somewhat akin to a circular firing squad, based on the belief that we must protect an ever-diminishing minority of the morally pure by punishing and ostracizing those who introduce uncertainty and discomfort.
looking at TERFism through this lens goes a long way towards explaining why it seems to have such an allure for many cis white women. it is an ideology based on the conversion of personal insecurity and intergenerational trauma into virulent bigotry.
first, personal insecurity: a lot of cis white women, particularly those with privilege on other axes — money or education or size or ability, for example — at some point become conscious of, and rightfully furious about, the enormous injustices perpetuated against all women.
but then many of them refuse to consider that anybody could have it as bad or worse. when you grow up expecting the world to be fair, and then discover that it is in fact inherently and deliberately skewed against you, it is very easy to get stuck in that place of grievance.
some people have real difficulty navigating the dual realization that they are not as privileged as they thought, but that they still retain privilege — and power — over others. i’ve been those people; we all have.
this is because it is much easier to think of yourself as so oppressed that you could never hurt anybody else than to consider that you may yourself be perpetuating the same deliberate cruelty that has been inflicted upon you.
but that’s the kind of logic that people use when they know they’re hurting other people and don’t want to think about it, because that would mean either acknowledging it or stopping. it is the logic you use when you don’t want to be held accountable for your own actions.
it’s the logic, in fact, of trauma — of a circumstance where you are always in danger and everyone around you is a potential threat. it’s survival thinking, where it’s you or them. it is the legacy of misogynistic violence and oppression and intergenerational brutality.
but when you don’t address trauma, you pass it on. when you don’t look at the ways you’ve learned to mistreat others, you perpetuate them. when you are unwilling to examine the lessons you’ve learned from your abusers, you run the risk of emulating them.
transphobes and TERFs cite sexual violence as something inherently linked with trans women and transfeminine people, which is the most abominable rhetoric possible. it is the most base bigotry; it should be shouted down at every turn.
it’s also emblematic of the ways that transphobes and TERFs are not, in fact, interested in addressing sexual violence or doing any of the work associated with trauma recovery — a huge part of which is learning to uncouple reflexive associations and rewire triggers.
if you associate a certain place or song or kind of stimulus with sexual violence, for example — if it is a trigger — then the end goal of trauma recovery is often to interrogate that association and reconfigure it.
persistent avoidance of triggers is actually a trauma symptom and one of the things that trauma therapy often aims to address. the goal is not to avoid triggers altogether but to learn how to negotiate your own reflexive responses and regain a certain amount of control.
(this is why trigger warnings matter, by the way — not so that people can avoid triggering matter entirely but so that they have the ability to make informed decisions about how and when to engage with it. sometimes that’s never!)
one thing you get very familiar with in the process of trauma recovery is the concept of reasonable accommodations — what you can reasonably ask other people to help manage as opposed to what is, at the end of the day, on you.
asking for trigger warnings is reasonable, for example. asking other people not to create media containing your triggers, however, is not. there is a shifting, situational line between asking other people to consider your needs and demanding that they put yours above their own.
so, for example, when you demand that trans people live out of sight and out of mind because you are uncomfortable with their anatomy or existence, you are refusing to address your own oppression-based trauma and thus directly perpetuating it.
in general, when you make other people responsible for your own thoughts and feelings, you are abnegating personal responsibility. this too is trauma logic, which justifies lashing out as preemptive self-defense — and you see a lot of that from transphobes and TERFs!
when they talk about the “trans lobby” or “trans rights activists” that’s what they’re doing — preemptively positioning themselves as the victims of a nonexistent mythical organization that only exists to silence innocent, uh, virulent wealthy bigots with enormous platforms.
which leaves trans people in a no-win scenario. if we speak up, we’re playing into that victimhood narrative and putting ourselves in the role of persecutor. if we say nothing, we leave hatred to stand unopposed.
transphobes and TERFs who specifically cite trauma inflicted by men as the source of their bigotry also put a lot of time and effort into erasing the one group that has perhaps the most experience when it comes to reckoning with that trauma: trans men and transmasculine people.
i’ve written about my own personal experience with this before: how do you come to terms with being a man when men are the group who have abused and raped and hurt you more than anyone else, your whole life? https://timesnewrowan.substack.com/p/youll-be-better-and-youll-be-smarter
i think every trans man or transmasc person has their own response, but in general, the answer is that you have to reexamine the ways in which you let yourself off easy — the ways that you generalize so that you can tell yourself you’re punching up and not down, for example.
and the ways that you tell yourself that however complicit you are in the oppression of others, it’s nowhere near as bad as what other people are doing, so does it even really count?
and the ways that you tell yourself that because you’ve been hurt, any harm that you do doesn’t really count. it’s just getting what you’re due. it’s justice in an unjust world, never mind who you grind underfoot to get it.
these are easy lies. the truth of healing is always much harder. often it feels like rebreaking a bone to set it correctly the second time around. but it’s the only way to avoid perpetuating harm.
by passing your own exclusion and oppression and damage on to other people, you are not addressing your trauma, and you are not healing your own wounds. you are not executing justice. you are just one more link in an endless chain.
anyone who has been hurt deserves to heal from that harm and to grow beyond it. but that is contingent on breaking the cycle — on being able to see both your own trauma and the way it informs how you treat others. you cannot become free of pain by inflicting it on other people.
but that’s what TERFs and transphobes get wrong, every time. for people who claim to have the best priorities of survivors at heart, they sure do willfully occlude the part of trauma recovery where you learn that you don’t get to use your trauma as an excuse to hurt others.
this is the great lie of bigotry and thus its appeal — that you can do unto others what has been done unto you, and call it justice when it’s anything but. recognize this rhetoric for what it is: the distorted thinking of survival, the same vicious logic used by wounded animals.
consider: that healing and justice and equality are not zero-sum equations, that none of us are free until all of us are, and, as thom concludes, that a better world is predicated on the understanding that “we do not have to kill each other to survive.”
thanks for reading! please support trans organizations in the UK, where this line of attack is regularly used to terrorize trans people and deny basic rights. https://twitter.com/timesnew_rowan/status/1272562939631824896
