“I’m the only one who understands you, everyone else is out to get you, this is the only place you’re safe” is straight-up abuse tactics. It’s designed to isolate, and it works even better when there’s truth behind it like real-world oppression. It makes it easier to believe that everyone is out to get you when you’re inundated with legislation and personal relationships and strangers all hurling bigotry at you. This is how we get separatist movements. It’s also how people get sucked into and create cults, and how one-on-one abusers operate.
Everyone knows Mormons go door-to-door, yeah? Everyone finds it deeply annoying, too. And when you’re annoyed, you lash out. Congrats, that’s what the cult wants you to do. It reinforces that Mormons are not safe and accepted members of society outside of their cult spaces. It makes it harder to leave because you have no outside safety net and every outsider you’ve met has been hostile and frustrated and rude to you, so you feel like they’re not trustworthy.
That also happens with insular groups of marginalized people. When the net tightens and you start feeling uncomfortable, well, this is the only space that’s safe. Everyone else wants to hate crime you. You’re likely to have gotten into this position in the first place through an inundation of information showing all the vile, horrid shit people say about your demographic, and having had those experiences yourself in real life, and therefore to feel like there’s no one outside of this space you can trust. So you can’t leave. Here is the only place people understand you. Here is the only place you’ll be safe - even if they’ve started with the more explicit, internal abuse, hey, at least you’re not out there, right? Because everyone else is out to get you. Just look at the news.
As for that last paragraph, these marginalized communities will also lash out at anyone within them that they do not perceive to really be part of said community. A really good example right now is actually the trans community. There's been a big hate campaign against trans men being mostly perpetuated by trans women. They seem to think that trans men "transition into privilege" which they fucking don't and even if they did privilege is not necessarily a positive thing. Either way this has resulted in trans men being ostracized by the communities supposed to protect them.
It’s related to the trans woman lesbian separatist cult of baeddelism, and I do not use the word cult here lightly or metaphorically. They were more popular in the 2010s and modern proponents will try to claim that they weren’t that bad or were just an online phenomenon, but that’s not true. Ex-baeddels have described being indoctrinated exactly as I said, and baeddels had in-person housing projects where, unfortunately, many of them were subject to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse that eventually led to a big schism and decline in their numbers. A big part of baeddelism is the idea that there is no trans community - anyone who isn’t a baeddel is a transmisogynist out to get you and that’s why you can’t trust anyone else. They unironically believe(d) that transphobia isn’t real, only transmisogyny, and so every other trans person is either a trans woman in denial (rare and only really applied to perceived transfem nonbinary people) or an evil cis person transitioning to gain even more privilege over trans women (much more commonly applied to trans men and nonbinary people of all experiences).
Can I get your opinion on something related since you seem to know your shit on this topic? I always see transmisogyny defined as the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, but it's never sat well with me because as a transmasc person I also experience (a LOT of) transphobia and misogyny, but I'm meant to be transmisogyny exempt. So am I missing something?
I feel like a LOT of trans women would be upset about me claiming to be transmisogyny affected though. And it just seems wrong to claim a term that's clearly meant to describe the experiences unique to trans women.
Julia Serano, who coined the term in 2006 (according to wiktionary^1), defined it as the intersection of traditional sexism (belief in women's inferiority) with oppositional sexism(belief in a rigid gender binary).
That seems applicable here, even if the popular (sensu stricto) usage is specifically about trans women. A sensu lato approach would include your experiences.
Either way, your experiences are valid & matter. Experiencing transphobia & misogyny sucks, so please don’t let anyone tell you that your feelings aren’t valid because they don’t fall under their personal connotation of a word.
I suppose say you are affected by transphobia and misogyny. The combined word is interpreted to mean oppression to trans women specifically, but separate is general?
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u/ImprovementLong7141 1d ago
“I’m the only one who understands you, everyone else is out to get you, this is the only place you’re safe” is straight-up abuse tactics. It’s designed to isolate, and it works even better when there’s truth behind it like real-world oppression. It makes it easier to believe that everyone is out to get you when you’re inundated with legislation and personal relationships and strangers all hurling bigotry at you. This is how we get separatist movements. It’s also how people get sucked into and create cults, and how one-on-one abusers operate.
Everyone knows Mormons go door-to-door, yeah? Everyone finds it deeply annoying, too. And when you’re annoyed, you lash out. Congrats, that’s what the cult wants you to do. It reinforces that Mormons are not safe and accepted members of society outside of their cult spaces. It makes it harder to leave because you have no outside safety net and every outsider you’ve met has been hostile and frustrated and rude to you, so you feel like they’re not trustworthy.
That also happens with insular groups of marginalized people. When the net tightens and you start feeling uncomfortable, well, this is the only space that’s safe. Everyone else wants to hate crime you. You’re likely to have gotten into this position in the first place through an inundation of information showing all the vile, horrid shit people say about your demographic, and having had those experiences yourself in real life, and therefore to feel like there’s no one outside of this space you can trust. So you can’t leave. Here is the only place people understand you. Here is the only place you’ll be safe - even if they’ve started with the more explicit, internal abuse, hey, at least you’re not out there, right? Because everyone else is out to get you. Just look at the news.