Guest post by tiggerthewing.
It is not the trans community as such who is isolating and marginalising women. Most trans people just want to blend into the background, and not be noticed.
But not the TransNarcissists. Oh, no.
Like a lot of other mutual-support communities I’ve been involved in over the decades, a handful of people with malignant personality disorders have taken over the microphone and tried to make the whole thing about them.
This inevitably leads to the implosion of the community, because they are loud, and manipulative, and not remotely interested in supporting anyone else.
It happened in the autism communities, it happened in the atheism communities, it has happened in the trans communities, and now they are trying to bring down feminism and the women’s movement.
They are a cancer. The internet has been a wonderful tool for getting isolated people together into online communities. Unfortunately, it has also provided the perfect platform for narcissists to organise and compete – and everyone else gets to be collateral damage.
Has anyone read Interview With a Vampire? I couldn’t finish it, because it became too uncomfortable as I realised that the description of the vampire’s life was basically a metaphor for the way Cluster B personalities view and treat the rest of us.
We need to step in and support their victims. Reassure those being accused of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia that merely wearing a pink pussy hat and marching in solidarity with others isn’t any of those things. Point out that the accusers are being manipulative and abusive in order to undermine their resolve to make things better.
Some of us, thanks to talking with other victims of Cluster B vampires, have learned to recognise them by their behaviour. It’s not quite as simple as the mirror thing as shown in films – they do actually have a physical reflection; it is when they hold the mirror up to themselves that they see nothing. And *that* is why they suck the lives of those around them. Not our blood, our emotions and self-esteem.
Comments
11 responses to “Guest post: A handful of people with malignant personality disorders”
Thanks Tigger.
Learning about personality disorders now….
Guest: Here is a very good place to start. FlyingMonkeysDenied.com. It’s the Cluster B personality disorders (Borderline, Narcissism, Anti-social/Psychopath) that Tigger is referring to.
*cough* Freethought Blogs/The Orbit *cough*
Wow. The bit about, “When they hold the mirror up to themselves,they see nothing”. Damn powerful metaphor.
Eloquent as always, tigger…
Bravo.
Really insightful and great prose.
But what makes these communities so vulnerable? How can communities protect themselves? How can someone protect themselves?
It always seems to come down to that difficult question of where to draw the line. Until when is something a legit request to be heard and when does it start to be an attempt to silence the other. Until when is something a legit request to stop harrasment and bullying and when does it start to be an attempt to tone policing.
It seems too many people want easy answers to such questions, which means they are easily manipulated by slogans like: Intend is not magic. Which of course is correct but sometimes seem to be used as if intend is meaningless.
This is brilliantly put.
I know six trans people. They are perfectly nice, perfectly ordinary people. We can talk about stuff and while we may well disagree about some things – one is a “female spirit” person and I don’t even believe in a soul, let alone one with gender so we’re never going see eye to eye on that – we agree to differ. They accept my difference in experience having grown to womanhood as a woman whereas their experiences start later.
They are as different from the fundamentalist trans-advocates as chalk from cheese. And I think that’s something that, as a gender critical feminist, I have to try to remember: that the fundies don’t represent the majority of people who just want to get on with their lives.
@Josh Spokes
Loving the flyingmonkesdenied.com site, but I don’t see a page on how to deal with a POTUS that’s a narcopath with a cabinet and congress full of FlyingMonkeys.