Discussion on Trauma and Feminism

where after a few years of the Me Too movement,

people have said things like, believe all women,

which is, in theory, not a bad idea.

Believe people who are victims of oppression and rape and sexual abuse.

But that's led us to a particular situation where a lot of TERFs,

a lot of transphobic feminists in Germany,

say, I'm a victim of sexual assault,

therefore I can't be in a fitness studio or a sauna with a trans woman who has a penis.

Because a man raped me, this trans woman is somehow triggering to me.

And the fact that we view that as a rational political position

and not a disturbing trauma response from someone who desperately needs therapy

for sexual assault is something that I think is honestly a failure of these sorts of liberal politics,

where it's like, I am this, therefore you must do this,

has led to this particular situation.

I can understand why someone might be afraid, but

I try to not make my trauma other people's problem.

I don't think if a woman was raped by a lesbian,

that gives her the right to say, I don't want lesbians in my space.

It would be like, shut up.

Why do you think that you experiencing something means that you get to discriminate?

And I think when we allow those narratives to

take hold, then they sort of embolden stereotypes.

I know with the trans woman and the penis thing,

there's this idea that trans women have hairy fucking huge horse cocks and stuff that are swords that they're using to kill people.

The feminine penis is much different than the masculine penis.

When we allow trauma to take hold of a conversation, it distorts it because that's what trauma does.

It's very disturbing.

It's irrational, right? It's irrational.

And somehow that's been allowed in Germany to be normalized.

And I think that's, maybe it's a good note to end on.

I think that's a very bad impulse to just accept unquestionably.

And I say that with an immense amount of empathy for anyone who's also been through the horror of sexual abuse,

but that doesn't have to be my problem.

I wanted to end on a lighter note.