Keep an eye on the emergency exit in your social routine

queeranarchism:

joyful-avocado:

queeranarchism:

queeranarchism:

I thought today might be a good day to remind people that there are abusers who can and will use any system to their advantage, no matter how awesome that system is under normal circumstances. 

Example: We have important social cues in social justice communities, like “If a trans person tells you something is transphobic it’s probably true and cis people should not speak over that” and other variations of “believe the person with actual lives experience, not the person with privilege to protect”. And 99,9% of the time, that’s a really good social routine to have. 

But even that routine can be abused and I’ve seen that happen a few times by people who were just plain bullies and abusers and who used this specific social routine to do their abusing, capitalizing on their ‘more oppressed than the person I’m bullying’ status to get away with it. 

Recognize this and use the emergency exit of your social routine when needed. And don’t use that to run, take action. Deal with that abuser. Even if you know you’ll look very uncool being a cis person calling out a trans person who is calling you transphobic. If someone is actually abusing the system, find the courage to be that fucking uncool. 

(and, ya know, don’t use that as an excuse to destroy the entire social routine, because it’s there for some very good reasons)

joyful-avocado said: What does/could this abuse look like? I’m not doubting the concerns you raise, I just wonder if I’d be able to recognize it. I’m not sure I could. If you have the time/energy, a specific example would be really helpful. Thanks

It could take various forms. In the case I’ve witnessed, the abuser started out calling out real shit (and continued to do that) going on in a community and as a result gained a lot of respect and status, to the point of being considered sort of the expert on transphobia. 

Then they started capitalizing on that gained status by using the treat of a call out as a weapon in any situation. First they’d see if they could get away with minor bullying by calling the bullied person transphobic or responding to a minor act with a massive lash out, then they’d expand on that. Eventually, they’d create a climate of fear within their community, a “you better not mess with me or I will find any excuse to call you transphobic and in that case I will scream in your face and use any violence I deem necessary and people will support me because I am a trans person calling you transphobic and they have been trained to respect that”. 

All the while, they’d continue to be an actual valuable activist calling out actual transphobia, but they’d also become a person who could bully anyone, abuse anyone, because no one would dare mess with them anymore for fear of being expelled from the group as a transphobe.

Wow, this is some insidious shit, thank you so much for the example!

I can picture this being such a hard thing for communities to address. Because of course we want to challenge oppression, so on the surface these accusations would seem reasonable, especially if they’re mixed in with legitimate, non-abusive action. So people begin to doubt their perceptions, questioning themselves and not feeling right about speaking up when they have concerns. Which is just how abuse works!

I think this probably (hopefully?) only occurs rarely, but it’s still something to be mindful of, and reflect on. Also, this is probably another reason why it’s a good idea to build communities that have a balance of power across members, rather than having a few people who become de facto representatives or authorities on social justice issues.

Yeah. And when people hear stories like this or come across a situation like this, their first response is to think “this can’t be true. Surely the person must have done something transphobic to warrant this response”. And that is a really really good instincts to have. It means you’re inclined to trust the story of the person with the least social power. Anyone with that instinct should keep it. 

But then there’s the catch: real, calculated abusers can notice this instinct and use it to their advantage. I’ve come across 3 abusers so far who operated like this. I think the most important tools against them are to know that it happens, to continue to use your own judgement and to be fundamentally prepared to look bad in front of people you care about. That last part is the scariest. No one wants to look like the attacker, but if how you appear becomes more important than stopping an abuser, that’s something an abuser can work with. 

As for balanced communities, while that’s generally a good idea, I think it’s important to remember that abusers can play the long game and can shape communities to meet their needs. The trans person from this example was white and knew that they could only play there ‘I’m truly oppressed so I know more than you’ scheme in an all-white group. So what they did was at first bully only the white community members while pretending to be best buds with the people of colour. At the same times they told those people lies about how racist the white people were behind their back and spread general lies about how racist this community was so other people of colour would steer clear of it. The result, of course: they seemed like a great ally in the eyes of people of colour, while achieving the all-white community that they required for their manipulation.