I finally decided to leave Reddit because I got banned from the CPTSD sub for defending an abuse survivor. I need to get this off my chest because it made me feel so deeply upset and I can’t ever share this perspective on Reddit without getting banned or harassed. If you find controversial opinions about LGBT rights uncomfortable, skip this.
TW: abuse, DV
So what happened was that a woman whose partner of several years severely abused her physically, emotionally and sexually. She finally got out with major trauma and tried to continue her life. But soon she found out her abuser changed genders. He became a woman. She talked about how she was scared for other women because the person that abused her so violently for years was now allowed to walk into female spaces. A fear that I find very legitimate if that person was so violent towards a woman. She expressed that she is angry and confused with herself for not being able to respect this persons pronouns or treat them as a woman. She wanted to talk about this bitterness, injustice and the fact that her abuser is now under a social protection and likely labeled as “stunning and brave”.
So I very much understand the political nuance of this and that this likely touched a nerve of people with gender dysphoria. But has also deeply touched a nerve of DA survivors and women with fear of male violence. So instead of support, this womam got crazy amount of hate for “not respecting his pronouns and identity”. They said “someone may be an abuser, but they still deserve to be respected”, they said that to a SURVIVOR. They sided with an abuser just because he decided to transition. I defended her and said that she owes no respect to her abuser.
Well of course, this woman had to delete her account and I was banned. I was banned for saying being trans doesn’t erase the vile things you did and that nobody owes you respect. As someone with CPTSD I felt betrayed and disgusted with the exclusion and invalidation of a survivor whose story didn’t align with political agenda. She was silenced on a sub that was supposed to be a safe space.
Now I want to clarify that I am NOT from the US, and in my country I am a great supporter of equality and LGBT rights. But I am against social protection and special treatment for people based on identity REGARDLESS of their actions and treatment of others. This story doesn’t mean trans people are abusers, but it means they CAN be! And that “can” was unbearable truth to hear for many people on that sub and I feel so bad for that poor woman who was told to shut up and respect her abuser.
Thanks for reading my rant and if I get banned I will at least have the comfort of getting this deeply upsetting incident off my chest. Last thing - don’t take this as a free pass to insult trans people for being trans or generalize. This is about personal accountability and a system that overlooks facts that don’t fit the narrative.
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I don’t agree with commenters attacking the survivor at all. Nevertheless based on your comments here I’d have banned you from my community. Misgendering someone and then defending that isn’t ok, trans people are a very vulnerable group. In future you could help others and yourself by approaching things differently.
I’m sorry you’ve been abused. Trauma like that never goes away.
You insisted on knowingly misgendering the person, in a place that stresses it’s a safe space. (Which means safe for everyone, not just you) and are conflating issues with that with defense of their assault.
“The abuser changed genders to get more access to women’s spaces” is just regurgitated transphobic propaganda.
You’ve chosen to see it as a protection of the abuser when their abuse is unrelated to their identity. Nobody has called them “stunning and brave.” You have chosen that as a condemnation on LGBT people, despite claiming to support us.
I’ve never seen a soul deny that queers can be abusers. Protection from sexual abuse is an important part of lgbt rights. Implying that because we insist upon the right to self-identity, we thus protect or defend abusers, is a wanton and willing misrepresentation.
As seen in other comments in this thread, if we allow misgendering when we don’t like the person or when they’re an abuser, then what leg do we have to stand on? Support for that does not conflate support of abuse.
Trans rights are human rights.
Abuses are not entitled to respect. No one has that right so why would it be applied to trans rights? This person is literally a known misogynist brutalizer. You think that will magically stop due to transition? There is a huge difference between applying a harmful stereotype to a person and applying their own past actions to them. You are literally engaging in the invalidation along identity lines that this person is venting about.
the abuser does not give a shit if their victims validate their gender or not, because they never gave a shit about the victim in the first place, so your not harming anybody by misfendering the abuser, but other trans people who you invalidate because of one bad apple.
there is absoubly no excuse for treating somebody like that, but hurting others in an attempt to do what exactly? harm this one person? seems like just more hatred to me.
How does misgendering an abuser then invalid others? There is literally another comment saying it is inherently immoral to misgender an abuser.
The same way calling a murderer that happens to be black the n word. It’s not an attack against the person, it’s racism.
The same way you don’t misgender cis people: because it’s not an attack against the person, it’s transphobia.
No one gives a shit when cis people are misgendered. Did you seriously compare misgendering to the n-word?!
Yes I did.
Blocked
🤡 no arguments huh?
The problem here is that when you misgender the abuser, when you insist that they be treated like a man, you aren’t hurting the abuser, you’re hurting all trans people, who are also at incredibly high risks of sexual and physical abuse themselves. Moreso when they’re forced in to spaces with cis men, who are the most likely group to assault or abuse women (trans and cis).
Which is to say, the victims hurt shouldn’t be a reason to spread more hurt, and put more people at risk of abuse
Yes and high risk of suicide as well.
The victim should have a choice to choose wherever they decide to respect their identity or not. He left a strong male imprint in her and that cannot be erased or minimised. And it’s not about hurting the abuser, it’s about protecting the victims dignity and reality.
Favourite talking point on Reddit is “freedom doesn’t protect you from consequences of that freedom” . Well of you decide to torture someone for 10 years there will be consequences. I don’t understand that the movement is so eager to protect abusers instead of casting them out. To now own them. They shouldn’t be accepted, same goes for pdf files. Are we going to respect them too after they raped a child because it “hurts other trans people”? Thats absolutely sick.
As I said, the issue here when you misgender a trans person who was abusive isn’t the abusive trans person, it’s every other trans person, because you’ve just told every trans person you know and every trans person that reads this that you don’t think trans folks gender is real, that you’re only humouring them as long as they’re polite.
Spreading more hurt is not the right response to receiving hurt.
Well of you decide to torture someone for 10 years there will be consequence
Yep. But right now, you’re arguing that all trans people should face consequences because some trans people can be abusive. Trans people are under attack around the world. We are having our rights stripped, we’re being forced in to spaces with the folk most likely to abuse us, we’re having our identities stripped away.
And your post here is empowering all of that. It’s saying that it’s ok to do those things, because a trans persons identity is a privilege, not a right.
The expectation that everyone else not only treats you the way you want them to but also feels the way you want them to is utterly ridiculous. When is this expectation applied to literally one else?
How are other trans people going to face consequences? How? I don’t see the connection at all. The victim has a right to call that monster wherever she wants, trans or not. You can’t make other people call you what you want. Why are you making this about trans peoples feeling instead of how that poor victim felt when the sub ganged up on her and told her she was “transphobic” for misgendering her abuser?
Language is a human right. You can’t police other people’s language. Maybe in your country you managed to do that, but where I am from you cannot demand people to call you something they don’t believe you are if you don’t even bother yourself with respecting them. I might not like to be called by my full name, but people call me that all the time. Should I file a report for hate speech? I am over this convo because you people are so self-absorbed completely incapable of understanding that your demands are oppression of other’s freedom and safety.
So, if the abuser was a cis woman would it be normal to call her a man?
You can call the abuser a monster, you don’t have to defend the abuse. But invalidating her gender for whatever reason is just being transphobic.
And respecting people’s identity doesn’t mean you respect them as a person or that you’re “on their side”, otherwise you’d be on the side of every cis person abuser you don’t misgender. See my point?
No, don’t see your point. If someone obviously look like a woman why would I call them a man? You think I insist on calling someone who is basically unrecognisable from a woman a man? But if I knew that woman before, been in extremely abusive tortuous relationship with her for years, and now she decided to become a man, I am not going to be bullied into calling her “him” because it hurts bunch of strangers feelings. What I call someone is nobody’s fucking business. “Misgendering” is merely the opposite of paying someone the respect of validating their mental state and psychological reality. They have no basis of asking me for that other that “it makes them feel better about themselves”. Do I want my abuser to feel better about themselves? Hell no. Other trans people have nothing to do with it.
If someone kicks you in the leg on the street and you call them “bastard” and some random person pops out and start attacking you for calling this person a “bastard” because they don’t like to be called that way then what? Are you gonna tip toe about a complete strangers hurt feelings? Well if you would thats on you, you cant force others to do that.
so uh, generally, as transgender people and allies, we use one’s respect of a transgender person’s gender as a gauge of how valid they perceive the self identification of gender
and this includes trans people who have done shitty things, committed crimes, or, as in your case, been abusive
we use this as a gauge because it reflects how much the viewer believes that respect of gender identity is a right vs a privilege. if a trans person commits a crime or wrongs you, and you decide misgendering that person is OK, then it would seem you think treating trans people as their gender is revocable i.e. a privilege, not a right
it’s not so much “hurting our feelings” as, indicating to us, that trans rights are not important to you, or that the transgender identity is only worth respecting if you’re a “good person”, or whatever you judge is such
now, i will say, it’s completely understandable that the woman you’re talking about has trouble gendering her abuser correctly, for many reasons you have pointed out, and i think it would have been good for her to have been met with more compassion, since this can be a difficult thing even for people coming from less abusive circumstances
however, i would also note that you are misgendering her abuser, and you have no such defense, so why do you feel like it’s alright to misgender someone because they’re an abuser? you say you’re a staunch defender of LGBTQ rights, but for the reasons i explained above, those actions are not reflective of that ideal
defending this abused woman, in this case, makes a lot of sense. but you have no defense for misgendering her abuser, you were not the one abused, so why are you doing it?
obviously, we can’t control your language. however, free speech is not a guaranteed right, here in this community, and honestly, i would advocate for you to be banned here, too, since it really seems like you care more about your ability to misgender someone because you think they’re bad, rather than recognize that trans people can do bad things, and we can still condemn that (and honestly, insult them and call them bastards or whatever), without having to resort to misgendering them and furthering the normalization of delegitimizing trans people
Your response to abuse and pain is to put more hurt in the world, and not even aimed at the person who caused the initial pain.
And that means you don’t care that you’re hurting trans folk. And that’s transphobia. End of story.
I’ll be blocking your account from this instance now, because whatever your reasoning, making the active choice to hurt people impacts the people around you. You don’t get to spread the hurt just because of past hurt
I mean language is constantly “policed” socially; It’s the only way to maintain a coherent communication system. But I agree that hate speech laws are bullshit and primarily used to protect the rich and powerful from public criticism.
Has the person been reported to the police?
I am not sure, she deleted the post and then her account so I couldn’t find out.
If it’s any consolation, 99% of the stories on Reddit are fake.
We are all people and people can be pieces of shit.
I mean that is not very helpful.
Reddit doesn’t do nuance well, I’m sorry both you and the DV survivor you were standing up for had that experience.
It is pretty clear that lemmy isn’t doing so well either.
Abusers don’t deserve respect. Ironically the comments prove your point.
Life is a story. Don’t judge someones story because you only saw their shitty chapter.
Just a head’s up, people can be assholes here as well, just take a break when people arent kind and move along.
When someone’s “shitty chapter” involves regularly beating a loved one, they are not entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
You ran into political ideologues and they use every single cult tactic. I would even as far as saying it is a cult. From love bombing, to isolating people from their family and friends, and ostracizing anyone who questions anything.
You might want to make an account on beehaw they focus on heavy moderation and creating a positive environment for their users
