Keep an eye on the emergency exit in your social routine

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)