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.
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
This was excellently well-worded and neutrally calm and cool, until part of your last paragraph that concerns me on here.
I deduce that @[email protected] perhaps felt directly empathic about the incident, but now we may never know.*
Banning is language control, and even direct language control; please tell me how it is not. This (mindset overall) could lead to the path of thought police and authoritarianism over time, though I'm talking only in the scope of online forums, not national laws; if a person will not listen, just let them leave on their own instead of banning them. As a large-forum admin elsewhere myself, I would have issued a formal pre-ban warning instead regarding generally unacceptable misbehavior. That almost always suffices.
*Banning also eliminates our ability to uncover any possibly critical supporting details, and just overall reduces the person's likelihood of reflecting on and reconsidering, which defeats the purpose; do you actually seek reform and understanding, or just want to silence the opposition? I do not suggest banning unless a person is specifically trolling to get a rise out of someone. I don't think this person was trolling.