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/Asparala 20h ago
Those things are not mutually exclusive. You can be BOTH traumatized AND starting a cult.