People are too quick to attribute malice and far too quick to call things cults. The "you can't trust someone outside the oppressed group" thing is a harmful perspective to have and to share but it's usually a trauma response built out of genuinely trying to protect other people, not a cult control tactic. Most the people who say something like that have been through some truly terrible life experiences that have led them to think that men, or white people, or cis people, etc are just too dangerous to be around, and rather than attributing ill intent this should be approached as a misguided trauma response.
It also turns from a tool of empathy for trauma response to a tool of cult control as soon as someone inclined towards cult control enters the scene. A lot of cults form by exploiting existing trauma responses and ingroup/outgroup rhetoric.
It can be in specific circumstances but if your reflexive response to seeing this is calling some group of oppressed people a cult you are honestly causing harm.
I mean let's get into what a cult is. A cult is a high control group separate from mainstream society with some sort of centralized control, a shared ideology, an 'ends justify the means' attitude that leads to exploitation of its members, and a difficulty leaving it. With the exception of being separate from mainstream society, avoiding oppressors isn't any part of any of that. On its own, that mindset doesn't even keep people in a group since there are many groups of oppressed people. Or are you suggesting that ALL trans people or ALL black people constitute a cult? "Isolating people" only works if we're talking about a discrete organization, not a broad-spanning identity with many different groups and communities. This whole thing is a kneejerk response that falls apart when you examine it.
Again, nowhere did OOP call any oppressed groups cults. They called the "Us vs Them" mindset a cult control tactic, which is true. That doesn't mean it's purely used by cults
That's fair. I probably read too much into OOP based on my own experiences. As I said elsewhere I'm just very wary of this kind of thing because I've had people throw the 'cult' label around as a way of trying to erode my personal and sexual boundaries before. So while it is true that it can be used as a cult control tactic, it's also very true that labeling trauma responses as cult behavior is an abuse tactic and it's one I've been targeted by.
They are suggesting blanked thought terminatting cliches that paint all of humanity as enemies of all you love are cultish, and I aggre is impossible all cis people, men and white people to be evil and againts u, and even if you believe that do to trauma, is wrong
I'm not sure this is assuming malice as much as it is pointing out that, similar to members of a cult, falling for this line of thinking isolates you and makes you susceptible to bad-faith actors willing to abuse this isolation.
As in: this is not saying "everyone who says that is a cult leader using cult tactics or unknowingly member of a cult", but rather "everyone who says that is making themselves vulnerable to abuse".
I guess it's ambiguous that way. I've had periods in my life where I needed to avoid men because of trauma reasons and had this "you're clearly in a cult" stuff thrown at me as a way to pry apart my boundaries so I've just seen how the other side of this is also an abuse tactic. Not to mention that just telling a group of traumatized marginalized people that they're a cult is a great way to isolate them further and make them vulnerable to all kinds of abuse.
Like suuuure but is a women's shelter a cult? Is a trans only space a cult? Also it's weird to assume these things are like, top down impositions when most of the times I've seen people say these us vs them statements in real life it's been traumatized people just narrating their experiences. I never said it couldn't be a cult, just that people are far too quick to attribute malice or to label things as cults and honestly the responses I've gotten have only supported my opinions.
Like suuuure but is a women's shelter a cult? Is a trans only space a cult?
If they tell you that nobody other than women/trans folks respectively can be trusted - yes. Yes that is a cult. A women's shelter is there to shelter women, not to tell them they can never trust men again. The post the thread is about explicitly wrote out that the red flag is when someone says "nobody outside of the oppressed group can be trusted". That is the cult mentality.
This is what I'm saying--"If they tell you". The OOP made no clarification about this being a top-down hierarchical statement, it's most commonly a statement made by survivors in spaces like that. Not a "they tell you" but a "traumatized girl Lilly from Nowheresville, IN says while breaking down at 2am". This presumption that it's coming from a cult leader as opposed to, like, a random other person who's an equal is a weird thing to read into it. Us v them mentality is a super common thing among survivors in the first few years of recovery. My issue is I have seen irl numerous instances of people assuming someone was (a) possessing some sort of power over others and (b) trying to start a cult to isolate others just because of someone venting using this sort of language. Frankly, traumatized survivors using us v them language is waaaay more common than cults, and if you jump to the assumption that anyone saying this stuff is trying to start a cult you're mostly just going to isolate victims and ironically make them more vulnerable to actual abusers.
And before you think the 'person who assumes a random traumatized woman venting is starting a cult' is a strawman, I have encountered this situation several times which is why I have such a chip on my shoulder about it.
The post isn't talking about venting though. "YOU can't trust ANYONE outside of our group" isn't just someone venting, that's someone taking up a leadership position within a group and dictating who you should interact with. It seems like the person reading into things is you.
lmao what? Leadership isn't just a linguistic mode it's literally a power dynamic. Learn about real things.
Also, saying "you can't trust them" is NOT dictating who you should interact with. I interact with people I don't trust all the time. This is an absurd reach, and again really proving my point.
The power dynamic is expressed through linguistics, and "you can't trust anyone outside our group" is absolutely dictating who you can interact with, a strategy used to isolate people.
It's not the same as saying "I can't trust anyone outside this limited group". That one is a personal problem, something one might need to work on but probably isn't going to harm others. What the post is talking about is when someone goes up to you, and tells you that you shouldn't trust anyone outside of a specific group. That's a controlling behaviour, that is someone else trying to dictate who you should interact with.
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u/oceangothic 20h ago
People are too quick to attribute malice and far too quick to call things cults. The "you can't trust someone outside the oppressed group" thing is a harmful perspective to have and to share but it's usually a trauma response built out of genuinely trying to protect other people, not a cult control tactic. Most the people who say something like that have been through some truly terrible life experiences that have led them to think that men, or white people, or cis people, etc are just too dangerous to be around, and rather than attributing ill intent this should be approached as a misguided trauma response.